We’re less than a month into the semester, but end-of-year festivities at Emory University are already picking up: Seniors are seeking post-graduate employment opportunities, the University is bestowing honors for graduating seniors and students are making plans for their last moments at Emory.
Concurrently, the world is in turmoil. U.S. President Donald Trump, only a few weeks into office, has flipped the country on its head. He withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO), issued executive orders banning funding for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices and promised mass deportations, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers targeting undocumented immigrants. While this chaos will impact all Americans, Emory students are bound to bear witness to these changes on our own campus in Atlanta. However, even as we enter a discouraging world, graduating students and professionals alike must remain firm in their advocacy, fueled by the imperative to prevent further abuses of justice.
Trump rips away opportunities in public health research for students, faculty
When the Trump administration announced its plan to withdraw the United States from the WHO, universities, including Emory, faced sudden and massive disruptions in their partnerships with the international organization.
The WHO serves as a global authority for coordinating health issues, setting medical guidelines for the world to follow. Emory, having one of the world's preeminent public health programs, relies on WHO funding to conduct research on vaccines and disease prevention. In February 2024, Emory’s Department of Rehabilitation Medicine became the first WHO Collaborating Centre for Rehabilitation in the United States. Meanwhile, the Emory Vaccine Center is also active in WHO groups working on vaccine policies regarding polio, measles and rubella — proof of the University's deep engagement with the WHO to advance healthcare research and treatment.
If the United States remains outside of the WHO, Emory researchers will likely no longer be able to engage in international collaboration with other WHO researchers, which has been crucial to its ongoing projects in epidemiology and infectious diseases. The withdrawal will disrupt the accessibility of critical information to address worldwide public health threats — ultimately weakening the public health field.
Emory’s WHO Collaborating Centre Director Sara Pullen (09PH) criticized Trump’s decision to withdraw from the WHO, calling it “extremely short-sighted.” According to Pullen, this decision will “directly negatively affect the health of not just our global neighbors but also here in the United States.”
In the long run, this retreat from WHO will render us even more ill-prepared to tackle any impending pandemics and deepen existing gaps in public health between countries: “What would have happened in, let’s say, January 2020, if we had no connection with the World Health Organization?” Pullen said. “[COVID-19] would have been even more catastrophic than it was.” Pullen warned that Trump’s actions risk “tremendous consequences” that will include “countless lives lost, and then children and adults dying of preventable or at least treatable diseases.” It is an attack on the very foundation of international healthcare and a disservice to the next generation of health leaders who will pick up the pieces.
On a broader level, the withdrawal signals a deeper message to Americans that the Trump administration does not value scientific progress. The message of instability and diminishing support for international collaboration weakens the drive for future professionals to enter the public health field. With this ongoing uncertainty, undergraduate students majoring in biology, neuroscience and psychology, which are among the most popular majors at Emory, may reconsider their career prospects in this new anti-health age.
Trump’s WHO withdrawal plan laid bare how tenuous such global health partnerships could be. To Emory researchers and students, this departure from the WHO underscores the importance of secure, sustained funding and the ongoing need to advocate for policy decisions rooted in science rather than politics. Looking ahead, cultivating strong relationships with international partners, WHO among them, is not a nicety — it is a necessity for the continuation of medical research and promotion of public health.
Trump’s policies targets diversity, equity and inclusion in academia and beyond
Beyond public health, the Trump administration has also set its sights on eliminating projects that have created support for marginalized communities in the United States. This calls into question not only the sustainability of federally funded research, but also the equity of accessibility to such programs — the new administration’s initiative to slash public funding for DEI programs has deeply undermined the security of academic equity for underrepresented students, including those at Emory. Universities across the United States have begun to cut back on DEI programming and efforts. In fact, some universities have been implementing cutbacks since before Trump’s inauguration — the University System of Georgia announced a sweeping ban on DEI initiatives shortly after his election in November. Under the guise of “institutional neutrality,” these cuts exemplify how universities and colleges are folding to federal pressures.
These changes are not just limited to public universities. Nearly all private universities receive support from the government in some capacity, and Emory is no exception. Emory is exempt from federal income tax and has historically received high amounts of federal funding — including more than $485 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2023. If Emory does not comply with Trump’s policies banning programs receiving federal funding from incorporating DEI programs, such benefits and funding have the potential to be restricted in the future. This would be disastrous for any student, professor or laboratory receiving NIH funding — and not to mention costly for the patients who benefit from such critical research.
Amy Herrera (25C), a biology student currently applying to Ph.D. programs, anticipates that federal DEI cutbacks will significantly impact her pursuit of postgraduate opportunities in healthcare fields. After graduation, Herrera previously hoped to participate in the NIH’s Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP), which offered federally funded research scholarships to students from underrepresented backgrounds.
“That funding is gone, it seems, because those programs are designed for underrepresented students,” Herrera said. Research opportunities in STEM fields have been posited as an important method of bringing diverse voices into the field, encouraging innovation and addressing systemic injustices faced by underrepresented minorities — many of which, like PREP, are at risk of dissolution now.
“The NIH website that outlines the diversity components, … that web page is gone,” Herrera said. “So, I don’t think those programs are going to run anymore, which has been kind of scary for me as a senior who’s trying to plan what I’m going to do after graduation.”
Trump has also already imposed restrictions on discussions of topics like race and sexuality in K-12 public schools. While he has not introduced similar restrictions for public higher-education institutions, they remain a possibility well within his jurisdiction. This action would profoundly threaten fields such as African American studies, Latin American and Caribbean studies and women’s, gender and sexuality studies, all of which rely on uplifting underrepresented fields of study and are critical components of Emory’s academic profile.
As an English major who plans to pursue a Ph.D. in African American literature — a field that might be “censored” under Trump’s administration — Halle Gordon (25C) is among the graduating students who remain uncertain about their place in a Trump-shaken academic sphere. “As a Black female person trying to go into this field, inherently, it’s incredibly scary,” Gordon said. From the sciences to the humanities, academia will endure severe ramifications as a result of diminishing diversity, and students who plan to enter these fields will bear the consequences. Those who choose to dedicate their work after Emory to study and address systemic injustices now find targets on their backs under a presidential administration that explicitly seeks to quell the progress made by DEI programs.
However, as a private institution, Emory still wields agency over the continuity of its DEI practices. Prioritizing programs like Cox Hall’s identity spaces and Emory’s International Student and Scholars Services, which provide unique support to international students, is the bare minimum that the University can do to double-down on DEI.
Some Emory students fear deportation with new immigration executive actions
Consequences of Trump’s executive actions reach even further than the sphere of academia. Now, Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric is driving policy changes, placing these sentiments at the forefront of national political discourse and misleading Americans into believing that immigration is a genuine national security threat.
One immediate concern is the potential for increased ICE activity near college campuses — namely, Emory’s campus. As early as last weekend, ICE raids began in Atlanta and the surrounding suburbs as part of a nationwide push by the Trump administration to deport undocumented immigrants. According to the American Immigration Council, the state of Georgia has over 1 million immigrants, nearly half of whom are naturalized citizens and 36% of whom are undocumented individuals. The Trump administration has gone as far as to allow ICE to detain immigrants in sensitive places, such as churches and schools, in a move reversing a decade-long standard.
In the past week, ICE operations have led to the arrest of nearly 6,000 people nationwide, and countless threats to many more, including college students. Recently, Trump signed an executive order to arrest international or immigrant college students using visas who participated in pro-Palestinian protests on campuses. This reality reaches to the heart of Georgia in Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett and Hall Counties.
The threat of renewed ICE actions on school grounds, especially in the wake of executive orders expanding federal authority, means that students who once saw education as a path toward security may now view it as a risk — and that is unacceptable. While Emory admits undocumented students and provides the same resources to them as any other students, the institution has no ability to protect students from action by ICE. Starting with universities, all the way down to elementary schools, spaces of education must be hallowed and protected from ICE’s assault.
The absconding of educational opportunities — and with them, the chance for self-determination — has become a deeply entrenched challenge in the lives of the American immigrant communities. Lisbeth Vargas (25C), the treasurer of Behind the Glass and a child of immigrants, elucidates the tiresome experience of having vested trust in a system that betrays her livelihood.
“Kids go to school and put all their trust into the adults that are there to protect them,” Vargas said. Yet, safety comes down to an unpredictable reality of odds. In the quest for education, children and young adults are now being forced to, as Vargas says, “always be playing a little bit of defense,” while federal policies chip away at their armor of resilience. Emory students and faculty, along with countless other vulnerable immigrant academics, should not have to live in fear of deportation. Everyone in the United States deserves the same rights to education and the same safe environment to learn within.
Spaces of education have long served as sanctuaries of hope toward brighter futures for immigrant communities, but the actions of this administration are trying to blot out this light of optimism. Emory students, particularly those who are undocumented or are from immigrant families, must reckon with the reality of policies that define them as political liabilities rather than individuals striving for education and professional success. Vargas and countless other students with similar backgrounds are grappling with the fact that their postgraduate lives are being molded in the vision of Trump’s America.
The future is uncertain for Emory students, especially for those graduating into a world that seems hopeless now. Already, some students are reconsidering their futures. However, in the face of oppressive policies and a budding authoritarian regime, students passionate about public health, DEI in academia, immigrant rights and countless other essential fields must not back down.
Vargas says that she is “holding out hope” for her future beyond Emory and expects that imminent change is in store because this issue is “so close … to people’s doorsteps.” Like Vargas, Herrera and Gordon, Emory students and other young professionals across the nation must look oppression in its eyes and continue to advocate for their interests, for the sake of our present and our future.
The above editorial represents the majority opinion of The Emory Wheel’s Editorial Board. The Editorial Board is composed of Editor Marc Goedemans, Carly Aikens, Hunter Buchheit, Allie Guo, Ethan Jacobs, Carson Kindred, Mira Krichavsky, Justin Leach, Eliana Liporace, Niki Rajani, Josh Rosenblut, Ilka Tona and Crystal Zhang.
