On Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump signed a proclamation suspending, for an initial six months, the entry into the United States of foreign nationals seeking to study or participate in exchange programs at Harvard University. This directive comes amidst an escalating dispute between the administration and the Ivy League institution.
Trump’s proclamation cited national security concerns as the justification for barring international students from entering the United States to pursue studies at the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based university.
In response, Harvard issued a statement calling Trump’s proclamation “yet another illegal retaliatory step taken by the Administration in violation of Harvard’s First Amendment rights.” The university added, “Harvard will continue to protect its international students.”
The suspension has the potential to be extended beyond the initial six-month period. Trump’s proclamation further directs the U.S. State Department to consider revoking academic or exchange visas of any current Harvard students who meet the criteria outlined in his directive.
This directive on Wednesday followed by just one week an announcement by a federal judge in Boston. The judge stated her intention to issue a broad injunction that would block the administration from revoking Harvard’s ability to enroll international students, who constitute approximately a quarter of its student body.
The Trump administration has launched a multifaceted assault on the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university, including freezing billions of dollars in grants and other funding and proposing to revoke its tax-exempt status. These actions have prompted a series of legal challenges from Harvard.
Harvard maintains that the administration is retaliating against it for refusing to yield to demands aimed at controlling the school’s governance, curriculum, and the ideological leanings of its faculty and students.
Harvard filed a lawsuit after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced on May 22 that her department was immediately revoking Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, which authorizes the university to enroll foreign students.
Noem’s action was almost immediately temporarily blocked by U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs. On the eve of a hearing before her last week, the department reversed course, stating it would instead challenge Harvard’s certification through a lengthier administrative process.
Nonetheless, Judge Burroughs affirmed her intention to issue a longer-term preliminary injunction at Harvard’s request, asserting its necessity to provide some level of protection for Harvard’s international students.
An internal cable, seen by Reuters and issued the day after that court hearing, revealed that the State Department had ordered all its consular missions overseas to commence additional vetting procedures for visa applicants intending to travel to Harvard for any purpose.
Wednesday’s two-page directive alleged that Harvard had “demonstrated a history of concerning foreign ties and radicalism,” and possessed “extensive entanglements with foreign adversaries,” specifically mentioning China.
The proclamation stated that the FBI had “long warned that foreign adversaries take advantage of easy access to American higher education to steal information, exploit research and development and spread false information.”
It further claimed that Harvard had experienced a “drastic rise in crime in recent years while failing to discipline at least some categories of conduct violations on campus,” and had neglected to provide sufficient information to the Homeland Security Department regarding foreign students’ “known illegal or dangerous activities.”
