The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Thursday revoked Harvard University’s ability to enroll foreign students, prompting the school to immediately file a lawsuit on Friday. Within just hours, like clockwork, a far-left district judge blocked DHS’s action.
U.S. District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs, an appointee of former President Barack Obama serving in Massachusetts, wrote in a two-page motion granting a temporary restraining order that Harvard “will sustain immediate and irreparable injury before there is an opportunity to hear from all parties.”
Burroughs set a hearing for May 29 to consider DHS’s revocation of its Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification. DHS not only withdrew Harvard’s authorization to enroll new foreign students but also indicated that foreign students who are currently enrolled (more than 27 percent of its current student population) will need to transfer schools or lose their legal status in the United States.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said, “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.”
Harvard immediately filed suit, and school President Alan Garber called DHS’s move part of a “series of government actions to retaliate against Harvard for our refusal to surrender our academic independence and to submit to the federal government’s illegal assertion of control over our curriculum, our faculty, and our student body.” Harvard has 6,793 foreign students, and the school claims that without those students, “Harvard is not Harvard.”
DHS said that the decision to stop Harvard’s foreign student program was made after Noem asked the school to provide “information about the criminality and misconduct of foreign students on its campus,” which Harvard has “brazenly refused to provide,” according to DHS. Garber claims to have complied.
The Trump administration has been highly critical of Harvard’s inability to respond to race discrimination, assaults, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology, and a host of other issues for some time.
The school had been rejecting compliance with the federal government, claiming it would not “relinquish its constitutional rights” and would maintain “freedom of thought.” The Department of Education revoked over $2 billion in grants from the school, and weeks later Education Secretary Linda McMahon told the institution not to seek federal grant money, as “none will be provided.”
McMahon cited even more issues with the school and its failing academic offerings in her letter to Harvard, and the university has also been in the Trump administration’s crosshairs for failing to report foreign funding as required by law.
According to an Open the Books report from April, the school had received $1.1 billion from sources outside the United States since 2017, and the Department of Education initiated a records request from the school “after discovering inaccurate foreign financial disclosures.”
“As a recipient of federal funding, Harvard University must be transparent about its relations with foreign sources and governments. Unfortunately, our review indicated that Harvard has not been fully transparent or complete in its disclosures, which is both unacceptable and unlawful,” McMahon said in a press release. “This records request is the Trump Administration’s first step to ensure Harvard is not being manipulated by, or doing the bidding of, foreign entities, which include actors who are hostile to the interests of the United States and American students. We hope Harvard will respect its own motto and be truthful in its federal filings and foreign relationships.”
DHS also cited foreign funding in its SEVP revocation.
Breccan F. Thies is a correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
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