WASHINGTON—The State Department announced today that it is restarting interviews for student visas and implementing strict social media guidelines, including a requirement that all applicants have their accounts set to public to be scrutinized for hostility toward the United States. 

The following can be attributed to Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University:

“This policy makes a censor of every consular officer, and it will inevitably chill legitimate political speech both inside and outside the United States. During the Cold War, ideological vetting by consular officers resulted in the exclusion from the United States of some of the 20th century’s most significant artistic and intellectual figures, including Pablo Neruda, Doris Lessing, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Graham Greene. This new State Department policy is a digital-age version of a policy that history has already discredited.”

For more information, contact: Adriana Lamirande, [email protected].