Harvard’s Foreign Students Are Stunned and Devastated by Trump’s Ban

By Francesca Maglione and Claire Ballentine | May 22, 2025 at 11:23 PM EDT

Marie Chantel Montas, a third-year Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University from the Dominican Republic, was on a road trip with her husband when she got the news: The Trump administration had blocked her school from enrolling international students, while current ones would have to transfer.

With two more years before she gets her degree in population health sciences, Montas has no idea what her future holds.

“I’ve been crying a lot,” she said. “My program is extremely specific. I don’t know if I can find another university that would take me.”

The government’s decision to revoke Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification Thursday has thrust thousands of international students into limbo. Both the suddenness and timing of the move — after acceptance letters for the fall term have been sent out and transfer applications to other schools are closed — left current and future attendees struggling to figure out what to do next.

The Trump administration’s action is also seen as dealing a blow to the US’s standing in business — and handing an advantage to elite rival colleges across the English-speaking world. Harvard sued to block the ban Friday in Massachusetts federal court.

The action against Harvard sparked anxiety, anger and tears as it rippled through the school’s Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus and beyond.

Christopher Rim, a college counselor based in New York, said he had four calls from families within the hour of the announcement. Harvard senior Jada Pierre spent two hours on a call with about 20 other students hammering out the language for a statement urging the university to stand up to the move. Fangzhou Jiang, a Chinese student pursuing a master’s degree in public administration, said his group chats have been blowing up.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty,” said Jiang, who had recently been figuring out living arrangements with his wife for the next school year. “How am I going to plan my, our, lives?”

The move represents a sharp escalation of President Donald Trump’s attack on elite universities, and Harvard in particular. The administration has frozen more than $2.6 billion of the university’s funding and cut off future grants in an increasingly contentious standoff over the school’s handling of antisemitism on campus and government demands for more oversight.

Harvard has resisted the administration’s demands and sued several US agencies for blocking federal funds. The school called the action against international students on Thursday unlawful.

US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, in a letter to Harvard, said it could regain its certification for enrolling foreign students before the upcoming academic year if the university provides information including disciplinary records, video footage of protest activity and records relating to illegal activity by students over the past five years. She gave Harvard a 72-hour deadline.

Fanta Aw, the executive director of the nonprofit NAFSA: Association of International Educators, said removing foreign students will have long-term consequences for the US and its pipeline of talent.

“Losing international students’ contributions will negatively impact domestic students’ understanding of the world and have dire consequences for the country’s economic strength, security, and global competitiveness,” Aw said in a statement. “These outcomes run counter to the administration’s stated goal of making America safer, stronger, and more prosperous.”

Life-Defining Mission

For students across the globe, getting into Harvard is the culmination of years of hard work. It’s arguably the most prestigious US college, with cutthroat competition for acceptance. With that in mind, many students won’t simply give up and transfer, said Jamie Beaton, who co-founded the college consulting company Crimson Education with Jiang.

“Going to Harvard is obviously a world-changing, life-defining mission they’ve been focused on for their whole life since they were young,” Beaton said. “They’re going to have a lot of willpower to stick around because they’ve worked so hard to get into the school.”

Almost 6,800 students at Harvard — 27% of the entire student body — come from other countries, up from 19.6% in 2006, according to the university’s data.

That includes Shreya Reddy, originally from India, who has almost completed her executive leadership program at Harvard Business School, with only a few credits needed to graduate. She was planning to return to campus in July.

The 33-year-old works for Visa Inc. as a program manager in Austin and has already spent $86,000 on her MBA studies, including the classes she planned to take this summer. Now, she’s worried she won’t be able to graduate and have access to the extensive alumni and networking that a Harvard diploma provides, not to mention the lost money.

“It’s really difficult to process,” she said. “I’ve already paid my fees, my plane tickets are already booked. I’m not sure what this means for me and other international students.”

Pierre, the Harvard senior, says she co-wrote a statement from a group called Students for Freedom, which it then shared with campus organizations seeking their backing. It urged the university to use its resources to resist the administration’s demands and lobby elected officials to push back on the attacks.

“No matter how we feel about certain issues, we can come together and realize this is anti-American, this is anti-Democratic,” said Pierre, who is from the Boston area. “You’re attacking a community that is so fundamental to Harvard.”

Abdullah Shahid Sial, a rising junior from Lahore, Pakistan, and the co-president of the Harvard Undergraduate Association, was sleeping on a plane en route to a conference in Japan when the letter from Noem became public. He saw the news when he landed.

“This is something all of us expected,” he said. “What is different is we didn’t expect it to happen this soon.”

Weeks ago, student leaders began pressing the university to come up with a contingency plan in case federal officials barred international students at Harvard, according to Sial. They have urged university administrators to take an active role in facilitating transfers, assisting students with their applications and reaching out to other schools rather than merely uploading academic transcripts.

Sial said he knows people abroad who have already decided to avoid US universities. He has acquaintances who decided to go to law school in the UK rather than more prestigious American schools that admitted them because of the perceived risks, he said.

“Even if Trump fully stops right now, I think it will take years and years to rebuild the trust that American higher education has lost over these past few months,” Sial said.

Originally published on Bloomberg on May 22, 2025
Updated on May 23, 2025 at 9:40 AM EDT