- Friday, May 23, 2025
The foreign students currently studying at Harvard will have to transfer to other schools or lose their legal status
By: India Weekly
IN a dramatic escalation of the fight against Harvard University, the Trump administration on Thursday (22) revoked its ability to enroll international students.
The foreign students at Harvard will have to transfer to other schools or lose their legal status.
Harvard enrolled nearly 6,800 international students in the 2024-2025 school year, amounting to 27 per cent of its total enrollment, according to university statistics.
In 2022, Chinese nationals were the biggest group of foreign students at 1,016, university figures showed.
After that were students from Canada, India, South Korea, Britain, Germany, Australia, Singapore and Japan.
According to statistics on the website of Harvard International Office, there are 788 students and scholars from India at all schools under Harvard University for the 2024-25 academic year.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ordered the department to terminate Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification effective for the 2025-2026 school year, the department said in a statement.
“This means Harvard can no longer enrol foreign students and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status,” the federal agency said.
The move came after Harvard refused to provide information that Noem demanded about some foreign student visa holders at the university, the department said.
“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,” Noem said in a statement.
In a letter to the university, Noem gave Harvard “the opportunity” to regain its certification by turning over within 72 hours a raft of records about foreign students, including any video or audio of their protest activity in the past five years.
“As a result of your refusal to comply with multiple requests to provide the Department of Homeland Security pertinent information while perpetuating an unsafe campus environment that is hostile to Jewish students, promotes pro-Hamas sympathies, and employs racist ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ policies, you have lost this privilege.”
The Trump administration wants to revoke student visas and green cards of foreign students who participated in pro-Palestinian protests in various US campuses.
He has undertaken an extraordinary effort to revamp private colleges and schools across the US, claiming they foster anti-American, Marxist and “radical left” ideologies.
He has criticized Harvard, which has produced 162 Nobel prize winners, for hiring prominent Democrats for teaching or leadership positions.
The elite Ivy League university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has slammed the move as “unlawful” and said it was “fully committed” to educating foreign students.
“This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission,” the university said in a statement.
Leaders of the Harvard chapter of the American Association of University Professors called the move “the latest in a string of nakedly authoritarian and retaliatory moves against America’s oldest institution of higher education.”
“The Trump administration is unlawfully seeking to destroy higher education in the United States. It now demands that we sacrifice our international students in the process. Universities cannot acquiesce to such extortion,” it said.
Trump has already frozen some $3 billion in federal grants to Harvard in recent weeks, leading the university to sue to restore the funding.
In a separate lawsuit related to Trump’s efforts to terminate the legal status of hundreds of foreign students across the US, a federal judge ruled on Thursday that the administration could not end their status without following proper regulatory procedures.
It was not immediately clear how that ruling would affect the action against Harvard.
Harvard is not the only school in the crosshairs of Trump administration.
During an interview with Fox News, Noem was asked if she was considering similar moves at other universities, including Columbia University in New York.
“Absolutely, we are,” Noem said. “This should be a warning to every other university to get your act together.”
Ajay Bhutoria, former advisor to President Joe Biden, told PTI that Indian students contribute over $9 billion annually to the US economy and strengthen the cultural and economic ties between the two nations.
“This policy directly threatens Indian students at Harvard, forcing them to transfer or leave the US before the next academic year begins. These students, who represent the brightest minds from cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru, have invested their dreams, finances and futures in a Harvard education—only to have their aspirations shattered by a politically motivated attack,” Bhutoria said.
He added that the additional demand by the Department of Homeland Security for protest footage and disciplinary records is a “blatant attempt” to intimidate and silence students, particularly those engaged in activism.
“This is not the America we stand for—an America that should be a beacon of opportunity, not a place of fear for young scholars,” Bhutoria said.
He added that the termination of Harvard’s SEVP certification sends a “chilling message” to Indian students and the broader South Asian diaspora that “your contributions are not valued.”
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, a pro-immigration advocacy group, said the action against Harvard’s student visa program “needlessly punishes thousands of innocent students.”
“None of them have done anything wrong, they’re just collateral damage to Trump,” he said on the social media site Bluesky.
A prominent South Asian student group at Harvard has “strongly condemned” the Trump administration’s decision and urged the university’s administration to maintain steadfast support for its international student community.
The Harvard South Asian Association (SAA) said it “strongly condemns” the US Department of Homeland Security’s recent decision to revoke Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Programme (SEVP) certification, barring future enrollment of international students and forcing current international students to transfer.
“Amid this unwarranted and flagrant attack,” SAA expressed its “unwavering support for our international community.
SAA called on Harvard’s administration, faculty and students to maintain “steadfast support for its international student body in these turbulent times. To all international students: you belong at Harvard and we will stand for you.”
“We stand with our South Asian peers and community members who have been adversely impacted,” the organisation said in a post on Instagram.
It added that international students bring integral and immeasurable value to both SAA and the entire Harvard community.
Founded in 1986, SAA is one of the largest and most active student groups on campus with hundreds of members. It was built as a communal space for South Asians of all backgrounds, “most importantly, immigrants, international students and first-generation Americans.
“Our members come from nations across the entire South Asian diaspora, and we strive to affirm their belonging and importance on campus,” it said.
“If this decision by the current federal administration is actualized, Harvard will lose some of its greatest minds and kindest souls, and SAA will irrevocably lose its community,” it added.
