Two Immigrant First Amendment Heroes Separated by Three Centuries
Engraving of Andrew Hamilton defending John Peter Zenger in court, 1734-5 – Public Domain
Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student in child psychology at Tufts University in Medford, was standing alone on a sidewalk last Tuesday when she was surrounded a gang of unidentified black-clad assailants wearing black masks, Screaming in terror, the 30-year-old woman had her wrists cuffed behind her back, and was spirited away to an unmarked SUV even arrested, since her accostors weren’t even sworn officers of the law — in an unmarked SUV, driven across multiple state lines and brought to a number of government offices in violation of a federal court order. Over a period of 24 hours, during which she may not even have been offered any food, even though when kidnapped she had been on her way to break the Ramadan fast with friends, she was flown and driven without anyone’s knowledge and dumped in a for-profit privately contracted detention cent in Louisiana, where she now awaits potential deportation. In all that frightening time she was never formally arrested, because the thugs who hd grabbed her were not sworn law-enforcement officers.
Her “crime?” Committing journalism.
Although Ozturk has not been charged with anything, her student visa has nonetheless been voided by a boastful Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who claims an article she co-wrote (over a year ago!) in the Tufts student paper shows she is a supporter of Hamas, is “antisemitic” and “could interfere with US foreign policy”—all patently absurd falsehoods.
Read the op-ed article she co-authored in a student newspaper which is the whole basis for Rubio’s action. If you, dear reader, can discover the remotest shred of evidence of the authors’ supporting Hamas of being anti-semitic, much less a threat to US foreign policy, pleas email Rubio, because he sure hasn’t found it!
John Peter Zenger immigrated to New York from his native Germany in 1770 at the age of 13, where he was apprenticed to a New York printer named William Bradford. He e stablished his own printing business thirteen years later, printing his own news broadsheet, the New York Weekly Journal in 1733. A political publication it focused on exposing the corruption of royally appointed Colonial Governor William Cosby. When Cosby sued Zenger for the libel, the .pioneering newsman found himself locked away in jail for 10 months awaiting trial.
You may wonder why I am writing about Ozturk and Zenger together in this article. My reason is to point out that Ozturk and Zenger are book ends to the history of the First Amendment — the one that guarantees freedom of speeach, association, religion, the right to petition for redress of grievances and freedom of the press.
Zenger, even before the “shot heard round the world” that in Lexington Massachusetts on April 19, 1775 launched the American Revolution and among other things, laid down a marker asserting freedom of the press in the 13 British colonies. He did this by convincing a jury of the truth of his articles and having all charges dropped. It was the first case of freedom of the press to speak truth to power. The closely watched court case played an important role in enshrining freedom of in the press in the US Constitiution as that founding document’s First Amendment of 10 that became known collectively as the Bill of Rights, becoming the only profession to specifically have its freedom expressly protected.
Generations of journalists have learned about Zenger, who at any point could have sought some compromise to get out of jail and back to his printing business if not his newspaper. Instead, despite his having spent almost a year in jail, he chose to risk it all and have his case against the most powerful politial figure in the colony of New York put to a jury of his peers. That jury, ignoring the rulings of the judge on the case, unanimously threw out the charges against Zenger in a n ealy example of jury nullificatrion. In doing so, Zenger and those jurors established the principlein what would soon become the United States of Amnerica that truth is a powerful defense against libel and that the press must be free to report the truth.
It’s a lesson nobody apparently taught to Amazon founder and billionaire businessman and media baron Jeff Bezos as a student (or if a teacher did try did try, Bzos was too busy planning how to make money to pay attention). Otherwise, how could he have just announced a few weeks ago that his publication, the once proudly independent Washington Post, would no longer publish opinions critical of President Trump and how could he have banned a staff artist’s political cartoon depicting a group of[ of billionaires, including himself, genuflecting before a stern President Trump. (The cartoonist resigned.)
As for that current hero Ozturk, her detention ordeal is not over, though a federal judge has at least temporarily ruled that she cannot be moved or deported by the Trump administration’s agents until she rules on whether a federal court should have juristiction over her fate, and not Homeland Security or any other office operating under the authority of President Trump.
Ozturk had the courage to co-author, along with three other students, an op-ed article over a year ago on Marh 4, 2024, in the Tufts’ student paper calling on the University President to adopt three resolutions voted by the Tufts Community Senate. These articles called for for the university to condemn Israel for commiting probable genocide in Gaza, for it to disclose the names of companies in the University’s investment portfolio that are Israeli or that do business with Israel, and for it to divest its portfolio of those holdings.
That student opinion article was provided to the US State Department by a zionist organization, Canary Mission, which claims its objective is to “fight hatered of Jews on campuses.” The group singled out Ozturk as author and put her s photo on its website allegin on that in writing the op-ee she had “engaged in anti-Israeli activism in March 2024.” “
Her “activism,” that is to say, consisted of co-authoring an article for a newspaper—a fundamental freedom described clearly and unambiguously in the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said he revoked Ms. Ozturk’s student visa for what she wrote, which is why she is now being detained and is facing deportation.
It ia critical that she and some 300 other students whose visas and even green card permanent residency documens have been revoked on similarly unconstitutional grounds by this man who loves to refer to the US, as the “leader of the free world,” making himself, the Trump administration, and sadly the entire United States, a laughingstock.
Ozturk should be freed immediately or be brought before an honest federal judge to hear the Trump government’s ludicrous case against her. When that happens, I hope she and her attorney demand a jury trial, so she can win the same sort of grand history-making jury slap-down of tyranical power that John Peter Zenger won three centuries centuries ago.
