White House bars Harvard from enrolling foreign students
Harvard University has an issue with anti-Semitism and has defied President Donald Trump’s demands that it change policies to crack down on student protests, have better admissions and hiring practices and submit to government audits.
The cost, so far, has been about $2.7 billion in federal grants that have been withdrawn from the university. And officials have suggested it might lose its tax exemption.
Officials there may or may not be concerned about that, but they have started funding some of the projects previously paid for with tax dollars themselves.
Besides, they know they have a $53 billion endowment locked up for them.
Now, however, a new move by the Trump administration would hit both at the school’s finances, and significantly, at its prestige.
A new wire report explains that the administration has revoked the school’s permission to enroll international students.
And the determination includes orders that thousands of current students must transfer to other schools.
The Department of Homeland Security said Thursday that Harvard has created “an unsafe campus environment” by allowing “anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators” to assault Jewish students on campus, the report said.
“It also accused Harvard of coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party, saying it hosted and trained members of a Chinese paramilitary group as recently as 2024,” the report said.
More than a quarter of the 6,800 students at the campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, now are foreigners, often in graduate level courses.
The report explained, “Many of Harvard’s punishments have come through a federal anti-Semitism task force that says the university failed to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence amid a nationwide wave of pro-Palestinian protests.”
In fact, Homeland Security reports have confirmed how Jewish students report discrimination and bias on 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. Harvard had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing. It refused. They have lost their Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification as a result of their failure to adhere to the law. Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.”
The report said about a quarter of Harvard’s students are foreigners, and besides the high fees they pay, they help the school “gain international influence.”
The report noted a government task force concluded Harvard has failed to confront pervasive race discrimination and anti-Semitic harassment.
The school itself said almost 60% of Jewish students documented “discrimination, stereotyping, or negative bias.”
Further, it has “let crime rates skyrocket, enacted racist DEI practices, and accepted boatloads of cash from foreign governments and donors,” the report said.