Harvard granted temporary reprieve from Trump's ban on enrolling international students

Globe and Mail

24-05-2025

Harvard University won a temporary injunction Friday to block a Trump administration decision to revoke its ability to enroll international students, a move the university said is retaliation for its refusal to surrender its academic independence.
The temporary injunction, granted by a U.S. district court judge, is a reprieve for as many as 7,000 international students at Harvard, including hundreds of Canadians, who will now be closely watching as the matter is argued in court.
On Thursday, the Trump administration announced that foreign students at Harvard would have to either transfer schools or lose their legal status after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) revoked the university's certification under the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), which manages foreign students' entry into the U.S.
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Harvard president Alan Garber condemned the government's actions, which he called 'unlawful and unwarranted,' in a statement posted to the university website Friday.
'The revocation continues a series of government actions to retaliate against Harvard for our refusal to surrender our academic independence and to submit to the federal government's illegal assertion of control over our curriculum, our faculty and our student body,' Dr. Garber said.
In its complaint filed in Massachusetts District Court, Harvard said the government's move had a 'devastating' effect on its students.
'With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard's student body,' the complaint states. 'Countless academic programs, research laboratories, clinics, and courses supported by Harvard's international students have been thrown into disarray. The government's actions come just days before graduation. Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard.'
Ella Ricketts, a Harvard undergraduate from the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, completed her first year of studies last month. She was volunteering at a B.C. food bank on Thursday when her phone lit up with news alerts and messages from concerned friends. She said she felt shocked and upset as the implications sank in.
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'Harvard has been my dream for a long time, and it's a place where I really feel at home and connected to an incredible community. So it's been difficult knowing that might get taken away.'
She's hopeful that Harvard's legal response to the Trump administration will help her return to school in the fall, but she has also begun to prepare for what she called 'the worst-case scenario,' that she won't be allowed back.
'You really just have to brace yourself,' she said. 'You don't know what's going to happen.'
She said that, if necessary, she would consider transferring to another school in the U.S. But this news has come so late in the year, she said, that she would likely lose a semester as she waits for her application to be processed. She would also consider returning to Canada to study at a Canadian university, she said.
Kirsten Weld, a Canadian-born professor of history at Harvard, said she felt like the air had gone out of her lungs when she heard the news on Thursday.
'It was truly just horrifying in the degree of escalation and the capriciousness of it. It's unbelievable to see elected officials treat people so cruelly and callously,' Prof. Weld said.
According to one university website, approximately 500 to 800 Canadian students and scholars study at Harvard in a given year, part of the contingent of roughly 7,000 foreign students and scholars at the university, who make up 20 to 25 per cent of its student body.
Prof. Weld said the Trump administration's actions should be seen as a warning to other institutions.
'This is the price of speaking up,' Prof. Weld said. 'Harvard has said we're not going to let ourselves be totally dominated by the federal government and have our independence and our academic freedom and our constitutional protections shredded. So the federal government's response is, 'Okay, anybody else who wants to step up, this is what's going to happen to you.' '
She said her students immediately began sending her messages asking what they should do. She said professors are telling students to stay calm and keep working and they will try to devise workarounds if the situation worsens.
'We're telling students to try and focus on their work,' she said. 'I think there are all kinds of arrangements being made right now on the fly to try and ensure the continuity of students' academic programs.'
The DHS in its Thursday press release accused Harvard of creating an unsafe campus environment by allowing 'anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators' to assault Jewish students on campus. It also accused Harvard of co-ordinating with the Chinese Communist Party, contending that the school had played host to and trained members of a Chinese paramilitary group as recently as 2024.
The threat to Harvard's international enrolment stems from an April 16 request from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who demanded that Harvard provide information about foreign students that might implicate them in violence or protests that could lead to their deportation.
Harvard says it provided 'thousands of data points' in response to Ms. Noem's April 16 demand. Her letter on Thursday said Harvard failed to satisfy her request, but the school said she failed to provide any further explanation.
With a report from the Associated Press