The Trump administration announced on Thursday that it is rescinding Harvard University's ability to enroll international students, increasing pressure on the school to fall in line with the president's agenda. In a letter obtained by The New York Times, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told the university: "I am writing to inform you that, effective immediately, Harvard University's Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification is revoked."
Without this certification, Harvard can no longer enroll international students, and the roughly 6,800 international students currently enrolled must transfer or lose their legal status. A Department of Homeland Security news release called Harvard's campus climate "toxic," accusing the university of "creating an unsafe campus by permitting anti-American pro-terrorist agitators to harass and physically assault individuals, including Jewish students, and otherwise obstructing its once-venerable learning environment." The department claims that many of these "agitators" are foreign students.
The move is yet another escalation in the ongoing feud between President Donald Trump and the nation's oldest university. Since taking office, Trump has attempted to pressure both public and private colleges and universities to change a wide range of policies across governance, discipline, hiring, and admissions. Some of his demands have been rather sweeping: Noem's letter, for example, says that to regain the certification, the school must hand over "all audio or video footage, in the possession of Harvard University, of any protest activity involving a nonimmigrant student on a Harvard University campus in the last five years." Notably, this request does not specify that the protest be violent or illegal.
