Donald Trump’s administration is blocking Harvard University from enrolling international students and is forcing currently enrolled foreign students to leave the university or risk losing their legal status in the country.
Thursday’s announcement accelerates the administration’s pressure campaign against the nation’s oldest school in an escalating effort to bend institutions to the president’s ideologically driven demands.
The Trump administration previously warned that the university’s federal funding was at risk if it did not comply with the president’s efforts to eliminate diversity programs, cooperate with immigration enforcement, dissolve pro-Palestine demonstrations and submit to a “viewpoint diversity” audit.
The Department of Homeland Security claims Harvard “has created an unsafe campus environment by permitting anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators to harass and physically assault individuals, including many Jewish students, and otherwise obstruct its once-venerable learning environment.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused the university of “fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party.”
“Harvard had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing. It refused,” she said in a statement. “They have lost their Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification as a result of their failure to adhere to the law. Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.”
Roughly 6,800 international students attended Harvard this year, making up more than a quarter of the university’s student body.
A spokesman for the university called the move “unlawful.”
“We are fully committed to maintaining Harvard’s ability to host our international students and scholars, who hail from more than 140 countries and enrich the university — and this nation — immeasurably,” according to a statement from media relations director Jason Newton. “We are working quickly to provide guidance and support to members of our community. This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission.”
Thursday’s announcement arrived as a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from revoking legal status for international students nationwide while a legal challenge is ongoing.
The order from California District Judge Jeffrey White blocks the government from arresting or jailing students over their legal status after the administration “wreaked havoc” on the lives of hundreds of foreign students studying in the United States.
White, who was nominated by George W. Bush, issued a nationwide injunction following a lawsuit from a group of students whose legal statuses were abruptly terminated by immigration officials earlier this year. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said he has “proudly” terminated hundreds of student visas.
In March, Columbia University in New York agreed to an unprecedented set of demands from the Trump administration — largely in an effort to combat pro-Palestine demonstrations against Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza — in an attempt to claw back roughly $400 million in federal funding that the Trump administration pulled from the school.
Dozens of other universities were warned they could similarly lose hundreds of millions federal funding if they didn’t fall in line with the president’s vision of campus civil rights, which has categorized all participants in pro-Palestine protests, which included scores of Jewish student leaders, as antisemitic Hamas sympathizers.
The administration then threatened to pull $9 billion from Harvard, the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university.
Harvard then filed a lawsuit alleging that Trump was simultaneously “exploiting” and ignoring federal law and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which forbids discrimination at federally funded institutions.
“Threats like these are an existential ‘gun to the head’ for a university,” according to the complaint. “They overtly seek to impose on Harvard University political views and policy preferences advanced by the Trump administration and commit the University to punishing disfavored speech.”
Harvard president Alan Garber and university lawyers also said the school would not agree to the demands.
“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,” Garber wrote.
