University of Wisconsin-Madison Petition for a Sanctuary Campus

Jennifer Mnookin, Chancellor, University of Wisconsin-Madison

As a result of the policies recently implemented by President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, we may see mass arrests, imprisonments, and deportations of students who have lived the majority of their lives in the United States and have been educated in American classrooms. We have already seen the revocation of student visas at this very campus with minimal, opaque justification.The administration’s policies have also aggressively targeted the freedom of expression that is an essential and fundamental tenet of higher education in the United States. Students have been targeted for revocation of their immigrant status on the basis of First Amendment protected speech alone, and the president has threatened to expand this oppression to citizens as well. Other institutions have been pressured by the university to limit the free expression of their own students under pain of revocation of federal funding.

These issues – protections for vulnerable students, academic freedom, and free speech – are fundamentally interrelated. Without freedom of expression it becomes infinitely easier to oppress vulnerable members of our community, and without those very voices it becomes infinitely easier to take our freedoms of expression. The violent and tyrannical actions of the administration on these issues have prompted terror for our students and their families, and it is now a crucial time to defend the protective policies and fundamental values that are under threat from an increasingly authoritarian administration.

We will not stand for compliance with the president’s oppressive, racist and reactionary policies. Our demands, as listed below, demonstrate the minimum that UW must do to protect their most vulnerable students and defend higher education’s commitment to free speech and open expression. As stated by the UW-Madison Mission Statement, the university MUST “Embody, through its policies and programs, respect for, and commitment to, the ideals of a pluralistic, multiracial, open and democratic society.”


To: Jennifer Mnookin, Chancellor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
From: [Your Name]

We — the students, faculty, staff, and alumni of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Madison community members and organizers — call for our campus under your administrative leadership to reaffirm the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Mission Statement by declaring and implementing a plan to protect our students, staff, and community members as thoroughly as possible. UW-Madison is notably a nationally diverse campus, with a large number of international students, making up 15% of the student body. We specifically ask for the University of Wisconsin-Madison to be declared a sanctuary campus for undocumented, international, and DACA (Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals) beneficiary students, as well as all other marginalized and targeted groups of students and ask that the University of Wisconsin-Madison proudly and openly protect its students’ first amendment rights to free expression.

As a result of the policies recently implemented by President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, we may see mass arrests, imprisonments, and deportations of students who have lived the majority of their lives in the United States and have been educated in American classrooms. We have already seen the revocation of student visas at this very campus with minimal, opaque justification.

The administration’s policies have also aggressively targeted the freedom of expression that is an essential and fundamental tenet of higher education in the United States. Students have been targeted for revocation of their immigrant status on the basis of First Amendment protected speech alone, and the president has threatened to expand this oppression to citizens as well. Other institutions have been pressured by the university to limit the free expression of their own students under pain of revocation of federal funding.

These issues – protections for vulnerable students, academic freedom, and free speech – are fundamentally interrelated. Without freedom of expression it becomes infinitely easier to oppress vulnerable members of our community, and without those very voices it becomes infinitely easier to take our freedoms of expression. The violent and tyrannical actions of the administration on these issues have prompted terror for our students and their families, and it is now a crucial time to defend the protective policies and fundamental values that are under threat from an increasingly authoritarian administration.

We will not stand for compliance with the president’s oppressive, racist and reactionary policies. Our demands, as listed below, demonstrate the minimum that UW must do to protect their most vulnerable students and defend higher education’s commitment to free speech and open expression. As stated by the UW-Madison Mission Statement, the university MUST “Embody, through its policies and programs, respect for, and commitment to, the ideals of a pluralistic, multiracial, open and democratic society.”

We, the undersigned, demand that UW-Madison establish this institution as a sanctuary campus, loudly and publicly reaffirm the essential values of the university defending free expression, provide legal funds for students facing deportation, and take direct action to protect all students’ First Amendment rights. We demand that measures are taken to physically label which campus spaces are private and thus safe from federal forces without a warrant, and similarly to inform the student body and faculty on which zones are protected. Furthermore, we demand a retraction of Chancellor Mnookin’s 2024 neutrality policy, a public reaffirmation of the UWPD’s 2019 immigration enforcement policy, expansion of existent policy to require a warrant for immigration enforcement action anywhere on university property, not just in classrooms, and a return to 2023 protest guidelines as called for by the Faculty Senate.