Rümeysa Öztürk announced Thursday that she received her Ph.D. from the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development at Tufts, ending a tumultuous journey that saw her detained by federal agents in her fifth year of doctoral study.
“My studies, research, and professional work focus on how positive media use among children and young people can nurture more kindness and compassion in the world,” she wrote in a LinkedIn post. “Despite the very brutal, illegal and unjustifiable experiences I faced over the last year, I remain hopeful that our world can become a gentler and more peaceful place.”
Öztürk has served as a course instructor, teaching assistant and teaching fellow in the child study and human development department since 2021. She began working in the department as a GIFT Teaching Fellow in May of that year.
She earned her master’s degree in developmental psychology from Columbia University’s Teachers College in 2020 on a Fulbright scholarship.
Öztürk made national headlines after being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Somerville last March after she co-wrote an op-ed in the Daily. She was held in a Louisiana detention facility until May, when she was released on bail.
Öztürk’s immigration case was dismissed earlier this month by a Boston immigration court due to a lack of evidence. A federal appeals court in Boston is expected to hear an appeal regarding the termination of her student visa record, which was restored by a judge in December. Another appeals court in New York has not yet made a decision on her habeas case following oral arguments before a three-judge panel in late September.
In a lawsuit filed by the American Association of University Professors, District Judge William Young found that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had based his decision to revoke Öztürk’s visa solely on the March 2024 op-ed. The op-ed denounced the rejection of three TCU Senate-passed resolutions calling for divestment from Israel by the Tufts administration.
In her post, Öztürk addressed ongoing human rights abuses endured by children across the world.
“From our children kept in federal detention centers in inhumane conditions, to our children in Gaza facing a genocide, from our children of war everywhere from Ukraine to Sudan, to our BIPOC children facing racial injustices daily and our refugee children whose childhoods are stolen, the oppression is connected and global, and so our compassion must be equally universal,” Öztürk wrote in her LinkedIn post.
At the end of the post, she wished readers a generous Ramadan and added: “I would like to be called Dr. Öztürk, not Miss Öztürk, from now on.”
