Trump administration halts Harvard's ability to enroll international students

Ah yes, this is how we will be competitive - defunding universities, deporting the best and brightest, dismantling education, and cutting off trade.

I mean seriously, if a malicious saboteur was running things, what would the differences be?

I don't get how DHS has control over what universities foreign students can attend. Either than can attend school in the US or not. Saying they have to transfer from Harvard to another American university is total abuse of power. Surely there are lawsuits in the works over this.

A judge has already blocked the move.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/judge-blocks-tr...

> A federal judge in California has blocked the Trump administration from terminating the legal statuses of international students at universities across the U.S.

Which isn’t at all how PhD programs work. This is a supreme dick move to students are going to be forced to leave with an AbD for no other reason than Trumps ego.

This is going to burn the children of the most powerful families across the world. Monarchies, dictators, owners of international conglomerates, etc all send their kids to Harvard. Destroying their children’s education out of a fit of malice is going to haunt him, and America on top of all the other stuff America is doing to the world.

America first is rapidly becoming America alone.

> For example, getting things done with prestige connections, domestically and internationally. And the international diplomatic goodwill

What you describe is relatively recent development of US foreign policy. In 1959, John F. Kennedy purchased a copy of The Ugly American for all of his fellow US Senators. After Kennedy was elected, many foreign service programs were initiated to leverage soft power. That was JFK's legacy.

Prior to that, the US acted much in the same way as it is today. It came up with Bretton Woods, along with the UK. The people that ran the world were the Averill Harrimans and Prescott Bushes.

In 1956, the US basically told the UK it wasn't going to back the Prime Minister (Anthony Eden) with regards to the Suez Canal. That was probably a sobering indication that the UK was going to be a supplicant in the relationship. The US also returned Vietnam to France (as was policy after WW2), which of course precipitated 20 years of war in southeast asia.

The end of the WW2, and the discovery of the infiltration of Russian agents in the dead Roosevelt administration put Truman in panic mode. The iron curtain and cold war basically turned foreign policy into a huge power grab after the war to position against a perceived threat.

https://www.thehistoryreader.com/us-history/ugly-american-jf...

> Between Harvard, Yale, and possibly a few other schools, I thought they had influence throughout government.

The simple answer is that they don't. Alumni are often in powerful positions, but even they are, that is very different from the school itself exerting influence.

After these incidents, it is evident that the power networks were always in Israel.

Israelis are upset at the student protests and are influencing the university to crush them.

Universities thought they were to uphold principles but it turns out that was only cover for doing certain things that made others happy.

Strange times indeed

This is an explanation from my department chair which I've expanded. In the context of a university, there are four main power groups - the alumni, the faculty, the students, and the board of trustees. (Within each group of course are subfactions.) The actual power balance between these groups is never precisely certain (it's an unobservable "latent variable"). Whenever large events happen that involve the university, we get observations that allow us to estimate the latent variable better.

In the case of Harvard, I think the current observations are most consistent with the following: the Board of Trustees, faculty, and students have currently aligned in their goals - which we might summarize as (1) maintaining independence from the government and (2) the ability to hold/teach specific "controversial" viewpoints (benefits of diversity, anti-colonialism, potentially other "progressive" concepts). I suspect that within the factions the relative importance of these two goals is not balanced. The fact that the coalition has survived much longer than, e.g., Columbia, is somewhat surprising.

My suspicion is that the answer to your question is that the persistent "smacking around" is only in part due to the external factors other replies have mentioned. I think a major piece of the situation can be explained by a change in the power dynamic with the alumni. Under normal circumstances, the faculty presumably hope to maintain long lasting influence over their alumni, which the board of trustees leverage to bring in more money and influence to the university. The current situation suggests that the high-power/high-$$$ portion of the alumni who are in a position to leverage the public conversation about what's going on are not doing it. This implies that the strength of that edge of the power graph is much weaker than it was expected to be. I think it remains to be seen whether this is true. Further observations that would support that would be reduced donations, public complaints, etc. Conversely, increased fundraising and more public support would suggest the opposite.

The key point about the university power network is that USUALLY, the best situation is to avoid situations that actually reveal too much information. Everyone would prefer to believe they have more power than they do. Obviously the alumni are composed of factions, and presumably a large fraction of the potential participants are also members of other organizations with latent power networks and participating in this particular situation would involve expending capital in these other networks with potential reduction in power. Some alumni that have spoken up (i.e., Ackman) are clearly unaligned with the current coalition, and this MAY reflect the fact that the wealthy/powerful group of alumni that have sustained Harvard are really unhappy with the current stances of the university and would like it to shift (return?) to a different set of ideologies. But it's also possible that he represents a minority, and the rest are just nervous about getting involved.

My conclusion from this analysis is that things will persist as they have, with everyone who might be involved hoping that lawsuits will be successful in resolving the situation with the minimum of their involvement. If this approach is unsuccessful, I think we'll end up in a situation where we get a much better observation of the power balance between alumni, faculty, and board (I think the students rarely have as much power as they think they do!).

One explanation might be that the objects of their influence are nested within agencies.

Most presidents let the agencies run mostly unsupervised, it seems like. With the agencies now under heavy fire structurally, they may not be able to do what they would normally do to prevent this kind of thing.

I think the whole agency model gives the president way more power than they are meant to have. I guess this exists to serve as a form of blame laundering from the people without term limits to the guy with term limits? But if the president does not play ball, suddenly they have power over things congress would otherwise have power over. Oops.

If you've been aware of Trump at all since the 1970's he's always been vastly inferior to anyone who takes academic effort seriously. And he knows it, his whole life, a lot better than anyone else, that's way longer than the general public who didn't really become aware of it until the '70's.

Even though he went to a prestigious school himself he's not the kind to make an academic pursuit resembling anything like truly sensible Presidents. The complete opposite of the league of actual accomplished Harvard men like Bush and Obama. What a weenie, Trump is probably just jealous and hates himself and everyone else because he'll never measure up to people having average-to-above-average intellect & integrity. Completely on brand to whine like a child with the most amplified voice he's ever had. So that's what he's going to do instead of something worthwhile for the citizens.

I am not entirely sure what you mean but I will disagree with other commenters that there are no factions at war with each other. If you look at the prosecutors who went after Trump in the past few years, they were disproportionately Harvard Law grads. So that is Merrick Garland, Matthew Colangelo, Alvin Bragg, and Jack Smith. I do think that law schools in particular have cultivated a particular political view and are not independent or nonpartisan but I very much disagree with what Trump is doing.

I think there are almost certainly factions here. I personally think Trump is targeting Harvard because of the above reason. Overall I think the situation is quite bad but that isn't what you asked.

It’s less a shift in power networks and more about Trump using existing presidency tools more aggressively. Harvard didn’t lose influence, it’s being targeted because it's outspoken and symbolic. The immigration authority falls under the executive branch, so the president can act unilaterally, without needing broader support.

Under 8 U.S.C. § 1372, the SEVIS (Student and Exchange Visitor Information System) program requires schools to report data on international students including what DHS has been asking for.

Harvard may argue that DHS’s request was overly broad, lacked due process, or sought information beyond what the law permits.

8 CFR § 214.3(g) and § 214.4(b), which require schools to maintain and furnish records “as required by the Service,” including disciplinary actions and other conduct relevant to maintaining status.

8 CFR § 214.3(l)(2)(iii) allows for withdrawal of certification if a school fails to “provide requested documentation” to DHS.

Not to mention other overly broad immigration laws

But given the laws on the books, DHS has broad authority to take this action.

Not arguing one way or the other just laying out the facts. This could have happened under the prior administration if the law was applied

The actual letter explains they can regain status by ratting out their students.

It will quietly be done, although likely in a way that make it look as if Harvard hasn't.

Even more specific: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment

It’s also crazy (read: unconstitutional) to punish students who do have everything to do with these protests.

s/crazy/deliberately evil/g

They might prefer to start with certain targets, but all international students are target of opportunity [0] the same way they've attacked people with lawful residency.

[1] Though perhaps with some very particular and suspicious quasi-ethnic exceptions. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crljn5046epo

[0] Ex. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/us/immigration-green-card..., https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article304988381.html

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Has there ever been an empire that committed suicide at the height of power?

They still are, they just flipped the poles.

It's called a bill of attainder and it's prohibited by the Constitution. Courts have said this also applies to executive orders though it's not as crystal clear.

He's already done this to the Associated Press for ignoring his stupid Gulf of Mexico rename as well as to several law firms for representing democrats.

No; it’s illegal but he controls the justice department and is attempting to silence the courts. He’s singling them out because they refused to bend the knee. This is not okay. And it is not normal.

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This is quite literally the appeal to tradition or inertia fallacy. Just because they've been around for a while does not mean they are not facing an existential threat. Every structure humans create will one day collapse. This certainly looks difficult for Harvard and could be their end because there is no divine protection, only the decision that will be made by an extremely conservative Supreme Court and the willingness of authoritarian minded government employees in the trump admin to listen to the courts.

I'm glad we're testing the guardrails by making our country unappealing the best talent in the world and wasting government resources on a revenge tour.

As it’s going, probably 8 years.

or 8+ years

Trump is not the problem, he's a symptom. Don't forget he got reelected, together with a republican congress who does everything he tells them to do.

They’re trying to make an example of Harvard so they don’t need to force anyone else to tow the line. Other universities will self censor.

Most the universities will do the thing asked in order to re-instate their student visa certification. i.e. provide intel needed to deport any students that they believe have opinions that are not in the interest of national security.

Most likely Harvard will try to fight it in court and then give in if they lose. It's not likely we see the future decertification continue into the academic year.

Seems most universities don't really care as long as the money keeps flowing. They jumped quickly on the DEI bandwagon and they will quickly hop off too.

Great question, right to the heart of the matter. First higher learning, somewhere down the line, ordinary people? In my small world, I'm very clear I'm anti-trump on every issue. As an ordinary person, how long before I get on some Stalin type radar? If trump lobbies for and gets a third term, will there be an awakening to how far the abuse will go?

Can they really do this? You're telling me this is real and not one of those "just for show" things that have no real teeth and will eventually get overturned by a judge?

Yea, that’s the message they are trying to send.

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