US President Donald Trump’s administration has blocked Harvard University’s ability to enrol international students, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
In a post on X on Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the Trump administration was “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 enrol foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments,” she said. “Harvard had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing. It refused.”
In a letter to the university’s administration, Noem said the university’s Student Exchange Visitor Program certification has been revoked. The programme is overseen by the US Homeland Security Investigations unit, which falls under the agency Noem leads.
The move means that not only will Harvard not be able to accept foreign students on its campus, but current students will need to “transfer to another university in order to maintain their non-immigrant status”, the letter said.
In a statement, Harvard called the move “unlawful” and a “retaliatory action”.
“We are fully committed to maintaining Harvard’s ability to host our international students and scholars, who hail from more than 140 countries and enrich the university – and this nation – immeasurably,” the university said.
The action marks an escalation amid a wider standoff between the university – which has refused to agree to a list of demands related to its diversity programmes and response to pro-Palestine protests – and the Trump administration.
The administration has responded with three rounds of federal funding and grant cuts, totalling more than $2.6bn. The most recent was on Monday. Harvard is currently pursuing a lawsuit accusing the administration of defying the US Constitution in its actions.
Earlier this week, Harvard President Alan Garber called on alumni to throw their support – and donations – behind the university.
“The institution entrusted to us now faces challenges unlike any others in our long history,” Garber wrote in an email, in which he launched the Presidential Priorities Fund and the Presidential Fund for Research. Both funds are meant to address gaps left by the funding cuts.
According to immigration lawyer Leon Fresco, the move by the Trump administration would be a financial blow for the school and a “major problem” for the students.
“If the foreign students cannot attend the university, they get their tuition payments back that they’ve already paid to the university for this upcoming semester,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that Harvard was relying on that money for the coming year.
Fresco noted that there is a clear legal recourse to fight against the revocation of its foreign exchange programme.
“The revocation regulation is very specific – there has to be a notice of intention to revoke that is given. There has to be reasons related to non-compliance with the student exchange visitor program,” he said. “It can’t be a politically ideologically based revocation, that doesn’t exist in the regulations.”
Earlier threat
Noem, in April, first threatened to revoke Harvard’s Student Exchange Visitor Program certification, which is required by educational institutions to host students on several visa types.
She gave the university administration an April 30 deadline to provide detailed records on what she called the “illegal and violent activities” of foreign students on campus, pointing to a federal law that requires disclosures of academics, enrolment and disciplinary action.
The university later said it had provided the requested information to the agency, the Harvard Crimson reported, although it did not reveal further details.
The threat came amid a wider crackdown by the Trump administration on pro-Palestine protests at universities across the US, which federal officials have broadly portrayed as “anti-Semitic”, a label rejected by organisers, Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett reported.
“The Trump administration has been clamping down hard on Harvard and other colleges, including Columbia University, over what the administration says is ‘anti-Semitism’ that exists on the campuses, and that really seems to be the spark that kind of ignited this,” Halkett reported from Washington, DC.
“The president put in place a joint task force at the start of his administration to address this, but opponents say this task force evolved to include everything from clamping down on hiring practices to curriculum changes at universities,” she said. “Trump himself has accused universities of fomenting ‘anti-Trump’ ideology.”
There were 7,417 total schools approved for the Student Exchange Visitor Program in the US in 2023, according to federal data. The agency maintains that under federal law, it can review approved schools at any time.
