A federal judge blocked on Friday the attempt of the government of US President Donald Trump to prohibit the registration of foreign students in Harvard, a measure that the Ivy League school considers unconstitutional retaliation for opposing the political demands of the White House.
In a lawsuit filed on Friday morning in a Federal Court in Boston, Harvard indicated that the government measure violates the first amendment of the Constitution and will have an “immediate and devastating effect for Harvard and more than 7,000 visas holders”.
“With a simple stroke, the government has tried to erase a quarter of the Harvard student body, foreign students who contribute considerably to the university and its mission,” Harvard said in his demand. “Without your foreign students, Harvard is not Harvard.”
The ruling of the Federal District Judge Allison Burroughs suspends the sanction against Harvard, waiting for the outcome of the lawsuit.
The attempt of the Trump government has plunged the campus in chaos days before graduation, Harvard added in the lawsuit. Foreign students who run laboratories, teach courses, help teachers and participate in Harvard sports now are faced with the decision to transfer to another school or risk losing their legal status to remain in the country, according to the document.
The impact would be stronger at the postgraduate level, such as that of the Kennedy Faculty of Harvard, where approximately half of the student body comes from abroad, and in the University School of Business, in which foreigners represent approximately one third. In addition to the impact on current students, the measure would block the arrival of thousands of students who planned to go to classes in summer and autumn.
Harvard said that immediately puts the school at a disadvantage while competing for attracting the best students in the world. Even if you recover the ability to receive students, “future applicants can avoid running for fear of more government reprisals,” reads demand.
If the government’s action is maintained, Harvard said, the university could not admit new international students for at least the next two academic years. The schools to which the federal government has withdrawn this certification are not eligible to request it again until a year later, the university added.
Harvard enrolls almost 6,800 foreign students on their Cambridge campus, Massachusetts. Most are postgraduate students and come from more than 100 countries.
The National Security Department announced the action on Thursday, accusing Harvard of creating an insecure environment on the campus by allowing “antiestadounidenses and proterrorist agitators,” they add to Jewish students. He also accused the school of coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party, claiming that Harvard had welcomed and trained members of a Chinese paramilitary group in 2024.
The president of Harvard, Alan Garber, declared this month that the university has made changes in its form of government during the last year and a half, which include a broad strategy to combat anti -Semitism. He added that Harvard would not give in his “fundamental principles, legally protected” for fear of reprisals. The University has said that it will later respond to the accusations raised for the first time by the Republicans of the House of Representatives about coordination with the Chinese Communist Party.
Lawrence Summers, a former Harvard president and secretary secretary, wrote in the social network X that the decision would mean losing key people, “a small fraction of which they will become prime ministers of countries who have now been converted into enemies of the United States.” He said the government’s action “is crazy.”
The threat to the registration of international students in Harvard is derived from a request submitted on April 16 by the Secretary of National Security, Kristi Noem, who demanded that the university provide information about foreign students who could involve them in acts of violence or protests, which at the same time could derive in their deportation.
Harvard says he provided “thousands of individual data” in response to Noem’s demand. In her letter sent on Thursday, the official said that Harvard did not comply with her application, but the school replied that she did not provide any additional explanation.
“Makes generalized statements about the environment of the campus and the ‘anti -state feeling’, again without articulating any rational link between those statements and the decision to retaliate against international students,” reads the lawsuit.
The demand also indicates that the government violated its own regulations to withdraw the certification of a school.
The Government can and in fact withdrawing universities from the Student and Exchange Visitors program, making them inevitable to receive foreign students on their campus. However, it is usually due to administrative reasons that have been specified in the law, such as not maintaining accreditation, lacking adequate facilities for classes or not using qualified professional personnel.
Noem indicated that Harvard can recover their ability to receive foreign students if you deliver a large number of records on foreign students in 72 hours. Your updated application requires all records, including audio or video recordings, of foreign students who have participated in dangerous protests or activities on the campus.
The demand is independent of the one presented above, in which the federal cuts challenges for more than 2,000 million dollars imposed by the Republican government.
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