US Bans Harvard From Enrolling Foreigners, Forcing Transfers
By Hadriana Lowenkron, Janet Lorin, and Brooke Sutherland | May 22, 2025 at 2:02 PM EDT
The Trump administration blocked Harvard University from enrolling international students, delivering a major blow to the school and escalating its fight with elite colleges to unprecedented levels.
The US revoked Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, meaning foreign students can no longer attend the university. Existing international students must transfer or lose their legal status, the Department of Homeland Security said Thursday.
“Harvard’s leadership has created an unsafe campus environment by permitting anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators to harass and physically assault individuals, including many Jewish students, and otherwise obstruct its once-venerable learning environment,” according to a statement.
The blockade on international student enrollment will compound the financial pressures for Harvard. The Trump administration has frozen more than $2.6 billion of Harvard’s funding and cut off future grants in an increasingly contentious standoff over the school’s handling of alleged antisemitism on campus and government demands for more oversight.
Trump has also called for the institution to lose its tax-exempt status, a move that the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based school has cautioned would have “grave consequences for the future of higher education in America.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, in a letter to Harvard, said it could regain the Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification 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 said Harvard had to provide the information within 72 hours.
Harvard called the government’s block on foreign students unlawful.
“We are fully committed to maintaining Harvard’s ability to host international students and scholars, who hail from more than 140 countries and enrich the University — and this nation — immeasurably,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “We are working quickly to provide guidance and support to members of our community.”
The school has sued several US agencies for blocking federal funds after the government demanded it remake its governance, transform admissions and faculty hiring, stop admitting international students hostile to US values and enforce viewpoint diversity.
Noem in April demanded Harvard submit records of any violent or illegal activity by foreign students by April 30 or immediately lose certification under the federal government’s student visa program. At Harvard almost 6,800 students – 27% of the entire student body — come from other countries, up from 19.6% in 2006, according to the university’s data.
The department said in the statement that many of the “agitators” are foreign students and also accused Harvard’s leadership of co-ordinating with the Chinese Communist Party. Earlier this week, lawmakers in Congress sent a letter to Harvard President Alan Garber demanding information about the school’s links to the country’s government and its military.
The lawmakers alleged that the university hosted and trained members of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. XPCC is a state-affiliated organization that was sanctioned in 2020 by the US for alleged human-rights abuses including detention of members of the country’s ethnic Uyghur Muslim minority. Beijing denies the accusations.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said at a regular press briefing in Beijing on Friday that her nation opposed “politicizing educational cooperation and the unfounded attack and smear.”
She repeated China’s view that the sanctions are “illegal” and that the US should lift them.
On Thursday, Noem said the administration “is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus.”
“It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments,” she said.
Appearing on Fox News, she also said the administration is considering blocking international enrollment at other universities.
“This should be a warning to every other university to get your act together,” Noem said.
Largest Endowment
Harvard has a $53 billion endowment, but much of that money is earmarked for specific purposes such as financial aid. The university, along with other elite institutions including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale, also faces a steep tax on its endowment under legislation that passed the US House of Representatives on Thursday.
Harvard’s Garber has appealed directly to alumni to make donations to special funds that give the president’s office the ability to plug spending gaps as they arise and protect the school’s core teaching and research functions.
A wide array of projects are getting caught in the middle of what’s poised to be a protracted political and legal fight, including research on tuberculosis, early detection of Lou Gehrig’s disease, or ALS, and methods for reducing the side effects of radiation. Harvard is funneling $250 million of its own money to help sustain some projects.
In addition to Harvard itself, a ban on international enrollment also threatens to have sweeping implications for the broader Massachusetts economy and a regional ecosystem that thrives off the university’s existence.
International students don’t just pay tuition to Harvard; they also spend money on restaurants and other activities and many of them stay in the area to work at the state’s prestigious hospitals, research institutions and biotechnology companies.
Harvard and other elite schools became a lightning rod for criticism after pro-Palestinian student protests broke out in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel and the Jewish state’s retaliatory response in Gaza. While the Trump administration has said it’s trying to root out antisemitism, it has broadened its attacks to diversity initiatives and left-leaning biases.
Harvard’s Garber, who’s Jewish, has long maintained that Harvard would work with the government to combat antisemitism — something he acknowledges is a problem on campus — but that the White House demands threaten academic freedom.
This action continues the Trump Administration’s assault on free speech and university autonomy, said Robert Shireman, a former deputy undersecretary of education in the Obama administration, who’s now a senior fellow at the Century Foundation.
“International scholars bring enormous benefits to America,” Shireman said. “This is a malicious attempt to chill the exchange of ideas, instead imposing centralized control of scientific and historical study.”
The New York Times first reported the government’s action on foreign students.
Originally published on Bloomberg on May 22, 2025
Updated on May 23, 2025 at 4:08 AM EDT