Hundreds of college students and professors across Connecticut protested the Trump administration on Thursday.

At “Hands Off Higher Education” rallies at the University of Connecticut and Yale University, protesters blasted the White House’s orders on diversity, free speech and revoking foreign student visas.

Beneath Yale’s historic halls, a huge crowd protested outside Cross Campus. They said the White House has created an atmosphere of fear and silence – especially among international students.

“I’m feeling stressed and fearful,” said Jingjun Liu, a graduate student from China. “I’m here for advancing human knowledge. We don’t want any troubles, but I feel like we should be treated with respect.”

In Connecticut, the federal government has revoked at least 54 student visas, according to UConn and the Connecticut Conference of Independent Colleges.

Advocates said that some have not gotten a clear reason.

“People are being targeted without any kind of due process and for opaque reasons without any kind of recourse. And it’s shameful, honestly,” said Arita Acharya with the Local 33 graduate student union. “Seeing what’s happening nationally, it has me scared for them. They’re my friends. They’re people in my community.”

The Trump administration said it is targeting “woke” policies on college campuses, as well as antisemitism.

“The president’s position on this is grounded in common sense, in the basic principle that Jewish-American students, or students of any faith, should not be harassed and targeted on our nation's college campuses,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

The White House recently froze $2.2 billion in funding for Harvard University after the school’s president refused to make sweeping leadership and admissions changes. The administration also demanded the university audit views of diversity on campus and stop recognizing some student clubs.

“No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Harvard president Alan Garber wrote in an open letter to students.

The president fired back on Wednesday.

“Harvard is a JOKE, teaches Hate and Stupidity, and should no longer receive Federal Funds,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

For now, Yale has been largely spared. But the White House has frozen funding to other Ivy League schools like Columbia, Princeton, Brown and Cornell.

The administration is also threatening to revoke universities’ tax-exempt status.

“We’ll see what IRS comes back with relative to Harvard,” said U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon. “I certainly think, you know, elitist schools – especially that have these incredibly large endowments, you know – we should probably have a look into that.”

Yale has a multibillion-dollar endowment that could cushion it from federal cuts, but other schools do not have that kind of leverage.

The head of Wesleyan University in Middletown believes the White House is overstepping its authority.

“There are some things that the government insists upon that are contrary to law, which is to tell universities who to admit, tell universities how to teach,” Wesleyan president Michael Roth told CNN.

The impact could be felt far beyond college campuses.

Connecticut has almost 20,000 foreign students who contribute $777 million to the state’s economy, according to the American Immigration Council.

Some of that money is already jeopardy because of research cuts by the National Institutes of Health.

“We had a number of development projects that were in the pipeline that would have brought millions of dollars of tax revenue to the city, that are now stalled,” said New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker.

On Thursday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal wrote the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department, giving them until next Friday to disclose how many student visas have been revoked and what “form of due process” students received.

“Donald Trump has launched an attack on higher education,” Blumenthal told reporters. “You see it in what he’s demanded of Harvard.”