A US court on Friday issued a temporary stay on Donald Trump’s latest effort to prevent foreign students from enrolling at Harvard, as the US president’s intensifying battle with one of the world’s most prestigious universities continues.
A proclamation issued by the White House late Wednesday sought to bar most new international students at Harvard from entering the country and stated that existing foreign enrollees risked having their visas terminated. The order declared, “Harvard’s conduct has rendered it an unsuitable destination for foreign students and researchers.”
Harvard swiftly amended an existing complaint filed in federal court, asserting: “This is not the Administration’s first attempt to sever Harvard from its international students.” It further argued that the proclamation “is part of a concerted and escalating campaign of retaliation by the government in clear retribution for Harvard’s exercising its First Amendment rights to reject the government’s demands to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students.”
US District Judge Allison Burroughs on Thursday ruled that the government cannot enforce Trump’s proclamation. She stated that Harvard had demonstrated that, without a temporary restraining order, it risked sustaining “immediate and irreparable injury before there is an opportunity to hear from all parties.” The same judge had previously blocked Trump’s earlier attempt to prevent international students from enrolling at the storied university.
‘Vendetta’
The government has already cut approximately $3.2 billion in federal grants and contracts benefiting Harvard and has pledged to exclude the Cambridge, Massachusetts, institution from any future federal funding. Harvard has been at the forefront of Trump’s campaign against top universities after it defied his calls to submit to oversight of its curriculum, staffing, student recruitment, and “viewpoint diversity.”
Trump has also specifically targeted international students at Harvard, who constituted 27% of total enrollment in the 2024-2025 academic year and represent a significant source of income for the university. In its legal filing, Harvard acknowledged that Trump possesses the authority to bar an entire class of aliens if it is deemed to be in the public interest, but emphasized that such was not the case in this particular action.
“The President’s actions thus are not undertaken to protect the ‘interests of the US’ but instead to pursue a government vendetta against Harvard,” the university stated. Since returning to office, Trump has consistently targeted elite US universities, which he and his allies accuse of being hotbeds of anti-Semitism, liberal bias, and “woke” ideology.
Trump’s education secretary also threatened on Wednesday to strip Columbia University of its accreditation. The Republican has singled out the New York Ivy League institution for allegedly ignoring harassment of Jewish students, thereby casting doubt on all of its federal funding. Unlike Harvard, however, several other top institutions—including Columbia—have already acceded to far-reaching demands from the Trump administration.
