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A federal judge in the United States on Friday blocked the Donald Trump administration from stripping Harvard University of its ability to enrol or retain international students, NBC News reported.
US District Judge Allison D Burroughs issued a temporary restraining order after Harvard on Friday filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to revoke the university’s certification for international students on Thursday.
The action would have otherwise prevented Harvard from admitting new international students and forced current ones to transfer to other universities or lose their legal immigrant status.
Following the judge’s decision, international students are permitted to remain enrolled at Harvard until the matter is heard again by the court on May 29, BBC reported.
In a press release on Thursday, the homeland security department claimed that the university was “being held accountable” for allegedly collaborating with the Chinese Communist Party, “fostering violence, antisemitism and pro-terrorist conduct” from students on the campus.
In its complaint, Harvard asserted that the administration’s decision to block the enrolment of international students violated the university’s constitutional rights and would severely disrupt its operations, NBC News reported.
“With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body, international students who contribute significantly to the university and its mission,” BBC quoted the institution having argued in its suit.
Harvard President Alan Garber said that “the revocation continues 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”.
In response, White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson said: “If only Harvard cared this much about ending the scourge of anti-American, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist agitators on their campus they wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with.”
After the court’s issued the restraining order on Friday, Jackson accused the judge of pursuing a “liberal agenda”, BBC reported.
According to data shared by the university, 6,793 international students were enrolled at Harvard during the academic year 2024-’25, making up about 27.2% of the student population.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a press release that it “is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enrol foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments”.
“Harvard had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing,” said Noem. “It refused. They have lost their Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification as a result of their failure to adhere to the law. Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.”
In April, the Trump administration froze more than $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts to Harvard after the institute said it would defy demands to overhaul its policies and curb activism on campus. In response, the university had filed another lawsuit to recover the funding.
The action had come hours after Harvard rejected a sweeping list of requirements from the White House ostensibly aimed at combating antisemitism and reforming university governance, admissions and hiring practices.
The US government had said that nearly $9 billion in total grants and contracts were at stake if Harvard did not comply. Trump has also expressed his intention to revoke the university’s tax-exempt status.
Among the demands were that the university should report students who are “hostile” to American values to federal authorities, ensure departments are “viewpoint diverse” and allow an external, government-approved party to audit programmes that “fuel antisemitic harassment”.
Other measures included banning face masks on campus, ending diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and withdrawing recognition from student clubs accused of promoting criminal activity, violence or harassment.
The White House has argued that universities have allowed antisemitism to flourish during protests against Israel’s war on Gaza and US support for it. “Harvard had in recent years failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment,” the administration said in a letter on April 11.
Since taking office in January, Trump has repeatedly targeted elite universities over campus protests, diversity programmes and free speech issues. Harvard is the seventh major institution whose funding was paused by his administration. The others are Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, Brown, Princeton, Cornell and Northwestern.
Also read: Trump’s attack on academia: An unsettling reminder that it’s happened in India and elsewhere before
This article first appeared on Scroll.in
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