Judge temporarily halts Trump’s block on foreign students at Harvard

In announcing on Thursday the termination of Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, effective starting in the 2025-2026 academic year, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, without providing evidence, accused the university of “fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party”.

Harvard says a fifth of its foreign students in 2024 were from China.

US lawmakers from both parties have expressed concerns about the influence of the Chinese government on US college campuses, including efforts by Beijing-directed Chinese student associations to monitor political activities and stifle academic speech.

The university says it is committed to combating antisemitism and investigating credible allegations of civil rights violations.

HARVARD DEFENDS “REFUSAL TO SURRENDER”

In her brief order blocking the policy for two weeks, Burroughs said Harvard had shown it could be harmed before there was an opportunity to hear the case in full.

The judge, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, scheduled hearings for May 27 and May 29 to consider next steps in the case. Burroughs is also overseeing Harvard’s lawsuit over the grant funds.

Harvard University President Alan Garber said the administration was illegally seeking to assert control over the private university’s curriculum, faculty and student body.

“The revocation continues a series of government actions to retaliate against Harvard for our refusal to surrender our academic independence,” Garber wrote in a letter on Friday to the Harvard community.

The revocation could also weigh on Harvard’s finances. At many US universities, international students are more likely to pay full tuition, essentially subsidising aid for other students.

“It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enrol foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

Harvard’s bonds, part of its US$8.2 billion debt pile, have been falling since Trump first warned US universities in March of cuts to federal funding.

Leaders of the Harvard chapter of the American Association of University Professors called Trump’s action “the latest in a string of nakedly authoritarian and retaliatory moves against America’s oldest institution of higher education.”

Leo Gerden, a Swedish student set to graduate Harvard with an undergraduate degree in economics and government this month, called the judge’s ruling a “great first step” but said international students were bracing for a long legal fight that would keep them in limbo.

“There is no single decision by Trump or by Harvard or by a judge that is going to put an end to this tyranny of what Trump is doing,” Gerden said.

Karl Molden, a student at Harvard from Austria, said he had applied to transfer to Oxford in Britain because he feared such measures.

“It’s scary and it’s saddening,” the 21-year-old government and classics student told AFP Thursday, calling his admission to Harvard the “greatest privilege” of his life.