Trump moves to block foreigners from study at Harvard

Perth Now

a day ago

Nearly all foreign students will be blocked from entering the US to attend Harvard University, in Donald Trump's latest attempt to choke the Ivy League school from an international pipeline that accounts for a quarter of the student body.
In an executive order signed Wednesday, Trump declared that it would jeopardise national security to allow Harvard to continue hosting foreign students on its campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
"I have determined that the entry of the class of foreign nationals described above is detrimental to the interests of the United States because, in my judgement, Harvard's conduct has rendered it an unsuitable destination for foreign students and researchers," Trump wrote in the order.
It's a further escalation in the White House's fight with the nation's oldest and wealthiest university. A federal court in Boston blocked the Department of Homeland Security from barring international students at Harvard last week. Trump's order invokes a different legal authority.
It stems from Harvard's refusal to submit to a series of demands made by the federal government. It has escalated recently after the Department of Homeland Security said Harvard refused to provide records related to misconduct by foreign students.
Harvard says it has complied with the request, but the government said the school's response was insufficient.
Meanwhile, the US Department of Education has notified a university accreditation body that it believes Columbia University violated federal anti-discrimination laws by an alleged failure to protect Jewish students on its campus.
The alleged violation means that Columbia has not met the standards of accreditation set by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, the department said.
"Accreditors have an enormous public responsibility as gatekeepers of federal student aid. They determine which institutions are eligible for federal student loans and Pell Grants," US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement.
A spokesperson for Columbia, which has been under pressure from the Trump administration for months, said in a statement that the school addressed the department's concerns directly with the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and is continuing to work with the federal government to address anti-semitism.
Columbia has been the epicentre of a pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel student protest movement that has roiled US campuses over the last year and a half as Israel's war in Gaza raged.
The Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services said last month an investigation found that the university had acted with "deliberate indifference" toward the harassment of Jewish students during campus protests.
Columbia had previously said it would work with the government to address antisemitism, harassment and discrimination.
with Reuters