Ex-Purdue president says student protesters who break laws should be expelled and replaced

Former Purdue University president Mitch Daniels said on Sunday that student protesters who broke the law should be expelled from universities and their spots given to other applicants who originally were denied entry.

“I think that the proper consequences here, first of all, are expulsion from the university,” Daniels, who is also the former Republican governor of Indiana, said in an interview on NewsNation’s “The Hill Sunday.”

“These so-called elite institutions pride themselves on their selectivity,” he continued. “For every student who just broke a rule or a law there were 10, 20 students who would love to have had that space. And that space should now be made available to one of them so that they can come and use this wonderful opportunity of attending a good university as it was intended.”

Daniels said he does not support the idea of taking away student visas from those who "support Hamas," the U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization that carried out the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

"Probably not in most cases," Daniels said when asked about that proposal.

“Although if somebody broke the law, I suspect that there already are the rules that require or at least permit the termination of their right to visit this country. You don't have a right to come in and harm others, and there has been some of that go on,” he continued. “But no, not in general.”

As protests have escalated on college campuses in recent weeks, university administrators have faced scrutiny over their responses. Some have criticized schools for not taking sufficient steps to enforce campus policies and protect Jewish students who feel threatened on campus, while others have blasted the police’s intervention as unnecessarily aggressive.