The Trump administration has followed through on its threat to pull Harvard University’s ability to enroll and host foreign students unless it gives the federal government information about students in the country on visas.
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Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced Thursday that she’s ordered her agency to terminate the school’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification. The move means Harvard’s existing foreign students have to transfer or they’ll lose their legal status in the U.S., and the school can’t enroll more foreign students.
“It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments,” Noem said, calling the move a warning to all U.S. academic institutions.
In a letter to Harvard’s director of immigration services that Noem shared on X, she said the university can qualify for recertification if, in three days, it meets several conditions, including all records Harvard has about illegal, dangerous, threatening or violent activity undertaken by nonimmigrant Harvard students in the last five years, as well as disciplinary records of all its nonimmigrant students.
A Harvard spokesman said in a statement that the university was working to get quick guidance to its community on the action, which could seriously harm the country as well.
“The government’s action is 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. 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,” the statement said.
“It’s really scary, and it makes the future seem like a not particularly nice place,” said Ivan Toth-Rohonyi, an international student at Harvard.
The Hungary native hoped to graduate in December after the fall semester, but Thursday’s news cast doubt on that.
“I guess I will be applying to transfer to another school, if other schools are able,” he said.
More than 6,000 international students attended Harvard as of April, more than a quarter of its total enrollment.
Commencement is in a week.
“What this represents is an outrageous assault on a private institution in the United States over a political vendetta,” said Harvard professor Ryan Enos.
It’s the latest salvo in the battle between between Harvard and the Trump administration over allegations that the school fostered an antisemitic environment, which the university’s administration and some in the community deny.
Harvard has said it would not comply with a list of demands from the Trump administration, which, in turn, froze $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million worth of contracts. The Department of Education had previously said the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism was reviewing the school’s funding.
“The university is doing their best probably protect a certain small group of people, but ultimately now, it seems that those actions have put a larger group of people — essentially all the international students — at risk,” said William Shen, a student at Harvard Medical School who might need to transfer. “I really hope that the university would be able to cooperate, in some sense, with the government.”
A webpage from U.S. Immigration and Customs’ Enforcement has described the Student and Exchange Visitor Program as “part of the National Security Investigations Division and acts as a bridge for government organizations that have an interest in information on nonimmigrants whose primary reason for coming to the United States is to be students.”
Another ICE page gives guidance to students at schools whose Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification has been withdrawn. “Active nonimmigrant students” and students in initial status who are in the U.S. have three options, it says: Try to transfer to another school with SEVP certification, change your status or leave the country.
“What I expect they will do is seek an emergency injunction on this so it doesn’t disrupt the lives of these students and I would hope that that will allow these students to carry on with their activities,” Enos said.
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