Harvard Community Protests Trump’s Policy on International Students
Harvard University students, professors and supporters protested President Donald Trump’s policies regarding the university and its international students.
BOSTON – A federal judge on June 23 blocked the Trump administration from implementing a plan that would ban foreigners from entering the United States to study at Harvard University.
Boston US District Judge Alison Burrows has issued an injunction banning the Trump administration from carrying out the latest bids to reduce its ability to host international students amid a fierce battle to attack President Donald Trump against the prestigious Ivy League schools.
The interim injunction extended the temporary order issued on June 5th, thereby preventing the administration from enforcing the declaration Trump previously signed.
The declaration bans foreigners from studying at Harvard University or taking part in the six-month exchange visitor program, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio directed them to consider whether to cancel the visa for international students already enrolled at Harvard.
Burrows said, “To its roots, this case concerns the core constitutional rights that must be protected, freedom of thinking, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, each of which is a pillar of democracy in which it functions, an essential hedge against authoritarianism.”
“Here it appears to suppress a variety of perspectives as it threatens these rights if it opposes the government’s misguided efforts to control reputable academic institutions and the government’s own views,” she wrote. “What’s worse, the government is trying to achieve this, at least in part, in the context of international students.
Almost 6,800 international students participated in Harvard in recent grades, making up about 27% of the Massachusetts-based school’s prestigious Cambridge student population.
Trump signed the declaration after his administration frozen billions of dollars in funding for already oldest and wealthy US universities, threatened Harvard’s tax-free status, and launched several investigations into the school.
On June 20, Trump said his administration could announce his contract with Harvard “next week or so.”
Harvard University argues that Trump is retaliating for violating his right to free speech under the first amendment to the US Constitution for his refusal to reject the administration’s request to control the governance of schools, curriculum, and the ideology of its faculty and students.
Harvard, Trump administration’s legal battle
The university is filing two separate lawsuits before Burrows doesn’t take out about $2.5 billion in funding, asking the administration to prevent international students from blocking their ability to attend university.
The latter case comes after Homeland Security Secretary Christie Norm announced on May 22 that her department would soon revoke the accreditation of Harvard Student and Exchange Visitors Program.
Without providing evidence, Noem denounced the university of “promoting violence, anti-Semitism and coordination with the Chinese Communist Party.”
Her actions were blocked temporarily by Burrows almost immediately. The Department of Homeland Security has since moved to challenging Harvard’s accreditation through a month-long administrative process, but at a May 29 hearing, Burrows said it plans to issue an injunction to maintain the status quo she officially went on June 20th.
A week after the hearing, Trump signed the declaration. He cited the fact that this was a concern about accepting foreign funds from China and its inadequate response to schools’ requests for information about foreign students.
His administration accused Harvard of creating a dangerous environment for Jewish students and allowing anti-Semitism to fester on campus. The protests against us who dealt with Palestinians during the war in Gaza have disrupted the campuses of many universities, including Harvard.
Rights advocates have focused on the rise in anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in the United States due to the war. The Trump administration has not previously announced actions against anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hatred. Harvard’s own anti-Semitism and Islamophobia task force discovered widespread fear and bias at the university in a report released in late April.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond of Boston and Kanishka Singh of Washington, edited by Alexia Garamfalbai, Bill Belcrott and Lincoln Feast.)
