Date: 2025-08-21 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00028549
TRUMP CHAOS
TRUMP -V- HARVARD
WP: Higher Education ... Judge temporarily blocks effort
to ban Harvard from enrolling foreign students
TRUMP -V- HARVARD
WP: Higher Education ... Judge temporarily blocks effort
to ban Harvard from enrolling foreign students
The John Harvard statue by Daniel Chester French on the
campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
(Sergi Reboredo/VWPics/AP Images)
Original article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/05/23/harvard-lawsuit-international-students-trump-administration/
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
I was a student at Cambridge University in England at the end of the 1950s.
As I recall, the rules were pretty clear. Freedon of speech was absolutely unconstrained, but any form of physical violance absolutely 'verboten!'. But in addition, it was the university that made sure these rules were followed by the students and others associated with the university and not the local or national police.
This seemed to work pretty well.
I remember partcipating the one of the Aldermaston Marches while in college. This took place over the Easter break ... a march from the Aldermarston Nuclear Research Facility to Trafalgar Square, a distance of around 60 miles with perhaps 15,000 people participating. There was a huge police presence. Of course the British police noramally do not carry firearms and this was the case, even though the numbers of people in the crowd was huge! The goal of the march was to end the nuclear arms race ... to support CND ... the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament!
The CND symbol has subsequently been adopted as the 'Peace Symbol' and lives on more than 60 years later!
The relationship between universities ... favulty and students ... and society in general and critical institutions like the police is very different in the USA than it is in Britain. The language may be more or less the same, but the meanings and behaviors are very different!. I find the idea of using the police to supress free speech on a University campus to be quite repugnant ... but it is almost routine in the USA!
What Trump is doing to constrain 'academic freedom' is by my standards 'uncivilised'
His appearance at the West Point cemmencement just plain 'disgusting!'.
Peter Burgess
On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security had abruptly revoked the university’s ability to enroll foreign students.
May 23, 2025 at 8:39 a.m. EDTtoday at 8:39 a.m. EDT
Written by Susan Svrluga
A federal judge in Massachusetts granted Harvard University an order on Friday that temporarily prevents the Department of Homeland Security from revoking the school’s certification to enroll international students. The decision comes one day after DHS told the school that foreign students must transfer from the university or risk losing their visa status.
Harvard filed a lawsuit Friday morning against the Trump administration, challenging the abrupt federal cancellation of the school’s ability to enroll international students.
On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security revoked Harvard’s certification to enroll foreign students, escalating President Donald Trump’s pitched battle with the Ivy League school.
The revocation was the latest government action to retaliate against Harvard, university President Alan Garber said in a letter to the campus community Friday morning, “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.
“We condemn this unlawful and unwarranted action,” he wrote.
The DHS action would put about 7,000 students at immediate risk of losing their visa status.
Students who remain in the United States after their visa status is terminated are unlawfully present and may be placed in removal proceedings. The government’s action also affects international scholars with J-1 visas doing research at Harvard.
“With the stroke of a pen — and without any legal justification — the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body,” the motion for a temporary restraining order says. “Without those students, Harvard is not Harvard.”
A post-doctoral researcher who spoke on condition of anonymity out of a fear of reprisal to her visa status, said she came to Harvard Medical School to do cancer research because “Harvard is, Boston is the epicenter of medical research in the world – there’s nothing else like it. … There’s no question too big.” That will no longer be true, she added, if the Trump administration funding cuts go through; China will be the best.
More than half of the people in her lab are international students, she said, and “everyone’s very scared that at any minute they could be deported.”
For months they have been advised by Harvard not to leave the country out of concerns that re-entry would be difficult. Now international students and scholars are wondering if they must all leave – on Sunday, when a 72-hour deadline that Noem set for Harvard to produce information ends. People with mortgages, children in school, ongoing research, are all wondering if they will have to leave the country Sunday, she said. Many from countries such as China, are convinced they would not be able to return. She estimated the deadline Noem set would end about 1 p.m. Sunday. “I don’t know, does it mean at 2 p.m. on Sunday, we all need to go to the airport? We don’t know yet. And it’s thousands of people.”
Like the lawsuit, the motion was filed Friday in the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts against DHS, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, the Justice and State departments, and their leaders. The motion says the revocation of the certification is unconstitutional and that the record is clear that the action was taken “in direct retaliation against Harvard for refusing to cede control of its academic prerogatives to the government and because the government disagrees with Harvard’s perceived viewpoints.”
It might typically take extensive legal discovery to prove that, Harvard’s attorney’s wrote, but in this case, “numerous officials up to and including the President laid their retaliatory motive bare,” the motion contends. It also claims the action violates the law and governing regulations “at every turn.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem ordered the agency to terminate Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, which allows U.S. universities to admit international students. Noem said the university has allowed “anti-American, pro-terrorist” foreigners “to harass and physically assault individuals … and obstruct its once-venerable learning environment,” and she accused the university of hosting and training members of the Chinese Communist Party’s paramilitary group.
Noem gave the school three days to turn over records on international students to regain its certification before the upcoming academic year. She asked for disciplinary and electronic records, as well as video and audio footage of international students who engaged in illegal activity, violence, threats to staff members or students, or protest activity over the past five years.
“This lawsuit seeks to kneecap the President’s constitutionally vested powers under Article II,” Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in an email. “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.” She said the Trump administration is committed to “restoring common sense to our student visa system; no lawsuit, this or any other, is going to change that. We have the law, the facts, and common sense on our side.”
In the complaint, Harvard contends it complied with requests for information but was told those responses were insufficient.
“The regulations do not create any mechanism for summary withdrawal of a school’s certification after an out-of-cycle review has been conducted,” the lawsuit argues. “Instead, DHS’s authority to revoke a certification is limited both substantively and procedurally.”
Harvard sued the Trump administration last month, challenging a $2.2 billion freeze in federal funding as unlawful and unconstitutional. The administration responded with more threats, including an announcement from Education Secretary Linda McMahon that Harvard is ineligible for new federal grants. Earlier this month, Harvard replied by filing an amended complaint in its lawsuit.
Garber told international students that the university would do everything in its power to support them as it pursues legal remedies. “For those international students and scholars affected by today’s action, know that you are vital members of our community,” he wrote. “Thanks to you, we know more and understand more, and our country and our world are more enlightened and more resilient. We will support you as we do our utmost to ensure that Harvard remains open to the world.”
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What readers are saying
The comments overwhelmingly support Harvard's decision to sue the Trump administration over the revocation of its ability to enroll international students. Many commenters express disdain for the administration's actions, viewing them as an attack on higher education and a step... Show more
By Susan Svrluga Susan Svrluga is a reporter covering higher education for The Washington Post. Before that, she covered education and local news at The Post. follow on X@SusanSvrluga