The Department of Homeland Security threatened that Harvard University will no longer be able to host international students if the Ivy League School did not provide information on foreign student illegal and violent activities, the department announced on Wednesday, and canceled $2.7 million in grants to the university on top of the Joint Task Force to combat antisemitism’s freeze of $2.2 billion in grants and over $255 million in contracts.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem wrote a “scathing” letter issuing the demand for the information on foreign students by April 30, threatening to immediately revoke its Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification.
SVEP, according a 2015 DHS explanation on its website, monitors student visa holders while in the US and certifies schools to allow them to enroll international students. Foreign students in the US “can only attend an SEVP-certified school,” explained the DHS website.
“If Harvard cannot verify it is in full compliance with its reporting requirements, the university will lose the privilege of enrolling foreign students,” said the DHS.
The DHS cut two grants, the $800,303 Implementation Science for Targeted Violence Prevention grant and The $1,934,902 Blue Campaign Program Evaluation and Violence Advisement grant. The government agency asserted that the violence prevention program had “branded conservatives as far-right dissidents in a shockingly skewed study” and the blue program “funded Harvard’s public health propaganda.”
“Both undermine America’s values and security,” said the DHS. “Since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Harvard’s foreign visa-holding rioters and faculty have spewed antisemitic hate, targeting Jewish students. With a $53.2 billion endowment, Harvard can fund its own chaos — DHS won’t.”
Th DHS noted that the grant cuts came after the Monday Antisemitism Task Force decision to cut grants and contracts after Harvard had rejected the terms of a Friday letter updating the federal government’s antisemitism and radicalism reform demands at the university.
“Harvard bending the knee to antisemitism — driven by its spineless leadership — fuels a cesspool of extremist riots and threatens our national security,” Noem said in the statement. “With anti-American, pro-Hamas ideology poisoning its campus and classrooms, Harvard’s position as a top institution of higher learning is a distant memory. America demands more from universities entrusted with taxpayer dollars.”
Trump threatened Harvard’s tax-exempt status
President Donald Trump threatened Harvard University’s tax-exempt status on Truth Social on Tuesday, arguing that the university promoted of radical ideologies and politics and tax exempt status was based on acting in the public interest. When asked to clarify on the matter, the White House explained that the president wished for the university to follow federal law and apologize for campus antisemitism.
“When it comes to Harvard, as I said, the president has been quite clear, they must follow federal law,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a press briefing. “He also wants to see Harvard apologize, and Harvard should apologize for the egregious antisemitism that took place on their college campus against Jewish American students.”
Harvard University President Alan Garber warned on Monday that the cancelled grants and contracts paid for work that led to innovations in medical, engineering, and scientific fields have made the country safer and healthier. The threats of ending financial relationships between the government and Harvard indicated that the task force was not interested in working cooperatively against antisemitism, argued Garber.
Garber explained that the university has rejected the terms, which replaced an April 3 proposal, because they have unprecedented control of the university to the government.
The proposed reforms included ending Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programming, requiring merit-based hiring and admissions and audits of hiring and admissions practices. There would have also been audits of faculty viewpoints and plagiarism. The federal government had also demanded the banning of certain radical student groups, more disciplinary procedures and investigations into specific incidents.
The tensions between the federal government and Harvard occur amid a crackdown by the Trump administration on campus radicalism and antisemitism, deporting student activists and placing the grants and contracts of institutions such as Columbia University under review pending agreements.
Last week, the Harvard International Office revealed that the visas of three Harvard students and two recent Harvard graduates had been revoked. The university reportedly learned of the revocations during a routine records review and subsequently notified the students and referred them to legal assistance.
In January, Trump issued an executive order threatening to revoke the visas of students who participated in pro-Palestinian protests during the Israel-Hamas War.
Harvard stated that it was not aware of “the details of the revocations or the reasons for them, but we understand that comparable numbers of students and scholars in institutions across the country have experienced similar status changes in roughly the same timeframe.”
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