No Foreigners at Harvard!

[Celerity]

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2025-05-22-no-foreigners-at-harvard/



On a day already jam-packed with seriously bad news, Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s Department of Homeland Security opted to compound the calamities this afternoon by telling Harvard it no longer had the legal right to accept students from foreign countries. This pronunciamento was something of a two-fer: It both reduced the income Harvard receives from the tuition that foreign students must pay, and it kept foreigners out of the country. Actually, a three-fer: anti-elitist, anti-foreigner, and anti-knowledge. As for that third, never forget that the ‑ism that Trumpworld most fears and hates is empiricism.

It’s highly doubtful that the federal government can legally intervene in a university’s admissions policy, but we know that legalities are not something that the current administration considers or heeds. Conservative critics of federal overreach should be perturbed by this; whether they are, of course, is a different question. One foreign-born empiricist—specifically, economist—whom Harvard has long employed is Bengali-born Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate. One foreign student who received his master’s in public administration from Harvard was Ban Ki-moon, a former secretary-general of the United Nations.

Then again, the MAGA folks never liked the U.N., and the kind of humanistic economics in which Sen’s work was groundbreaking was way too egalitarian for them. You get the picture. The breakthroughs that came from foreigners working at America’s elite universities have played a key role in establishing American dominance in a host of disciplines and in creating many of the technologies and advances that Americans depend on and enjoy. (See, e.g., the works of Fermi, Szilard, Wigner, von Karman, von Neumann, Bethe, Pei, Galbraith, or if you prefer, von Mises, etc., etc.)

Of course, the administration’s ban also includes Israelis, and I’m obliged to report that while a young Bibi Netanyahu was a student at MIT, he also took some courses at Harvard. As of today’s Homeland Security diktat, however, it may require Bill Ackman’s millions to sneak the next generation of Bibis through Harvard’s back door. Then again, given Trump’s brand of identity politics, Afrikaners and far-right Israelis may be exempt from this ban, along with the occasional AfD member and blood kin of Nigel Farage. Watch this space for any forthcoming details.

snip

[Bettie]

1. Isn't it a private institution?

I doubt they can actually do this, of course, does it even matter anymore what is legal?

[kelly1mm]

7. They can admit all the foreign students they want. However the State Department will not issue the students

visas. Pretty hard to study at Harvard if you can't enter the USA.

[JohnSJ]

2. Harvard is private. This isn't legal.

[DetroitLegalBeagle]

3. Its legal-ish

Harvard has to comply with the Student and Exchange Vistor Program requirements in order to enroll foreign students with student visas. If they do not, then their participation in the program can be revoked.

There is likely a set procedure that needs to be followed to revoke Harvards certification under the program, so it remains to be seen if Noem followed that procedure or not.

[kelly1mm]

8. Harvard can admit them. The State Department does not have to give them a visa. nt

[Johonny]

4. Harvard should open a Canadian campus branch

Just to stick it to Trump.

[serbbral]

5. I like that!

[spanone]

6. This must be some kind of personal vendetta.

He's Mad.

Soon, no one will want anything to do with America.

[cachukis]

9. The hatred of intelligence is astonishing.

[FloridaBlues]

10. Administration sending notice to all universities by doing this to Harvard

It’s all about total control.

[stillcool]

11. wow...1/4 of Harvard's student population

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/trump-administration-bars-harvard-from-enrolling-foreign-students-including-current-ones
Harvard enrolls almost 6,800 foreign students at its campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, accounting for more than a quarter of its student body. Most are graduate students, coming from more than 100 countries.
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Noem said Harvard can regain its ability to host foreign students if it produces a trove of records on foreign students within 72 hours. Her updated request demands all records, including audio or video footage, of foreign students participating in protests or dangerous activity on campus.

“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” Noem said in a statement.

Every day I read something that brings on a reaction that I used to get when I watched cable news. It's scary to be triggered like this. I wonder if it's just me?