As Donald Trump battles Harvard University, Australian students and graduates face fallout

Australia Broadcast Center

28-05-2025

The group chat for the Australia-New Zealand student club at Harvard is typically used to organise picnics and pub nights.
But in the past week, it's been blowing up with talk about the US's sudden decision to effectively ban the students from attending the prestigious university.
The Trump administration's move to revoke Harvard's ability to teach foreign students, announced last Thursday, local time, has thrown thousands of promising futures into limbo.
"It's been kind of amazing, honestly, to see how much everyone has pulled together and how much we're all supporting each other," club co-president Sarah Davis told the ABC.
"[For] the Australian community here, the fact that we all were close friends before this news has really become helpful for all of us."
The students are at risk of becoming collateral damage in an intense pressure campaign against Harvard, which has been waged by the White House since the university refused to comply with a string of demands in April.
The ban — if it survives a court battle — will impact three categories of Australian students: those preparing to begin their study at Harvard, those currently enrolled, and recent graduates whose work authorisation in the US is tied to the university.
Some are graduating this week as Harvard's spring semester ends. Ms Davis, a Master of Public Administration student, is in that group. She has a job offer in the US, but no longer knows if she can take it.
"For the vast majority of students who are graduating or who have already graduated, most of us are staying in the United States and are completely reliant on Harvard University's continued sponsorship of our working rights," she said.
"So it's very up in the air."
The Trump administration's April letter to Harvard outlined 10 conditions it had to meet for ongoing funding.
They included "merit-based" hiring and admissions reforms, tougher screening of international students "hostile [to] American values", the immediate closure of diversity programs, and specific steps to punish pro-Palestinian protesters.
The university refused to comply, accusing the government of demanding "improper control over the university".
In response, the government has frozen well over $US2 billion in grants and funding — most of it for health research.
It's part of a bigger series of measures taken against higher education and research institutions in the US, which Donald Trump has accused of promoting left-wing ideals and "woke" ideology.
It's seen major cuts to medical and scientific research across the US. But Harvard has been hit hardest.
"It's quite sad," said James Bailie, an Australian PhD student in statistics who is also graduating from Harvard this week.
"It seems to me deliberately destructive and therefore kind of wasteful — and wasteful is probably too light of a word in terms of how much disruption it's had on people's lives."
After five years at Harvard, Mr Bailie had planned to stay on to continue post-doctorate research on a project using AI and satellite imagery to track poverty in Africa.
But as science funding in the US dries up, he's been forced to move to Sweden to do the work at a university that had partnered with Harvard.
"That's relatively lucky, in terms of the impacts on this research program," he said.
"I know many others that have been cut short or stopped mid-study, which is terrible for science, but also ethically difficult when you're studying people and you have to cut that study in the middle."
Harvard has almost 7,000 international students — a quarter of its student body.
The university's public data suggests close to 200 are from Australia and New Zealand — not including graduates now working in the US with Harvard sponsorship.
All now face having their visas cancelled and possible deportation. The government says students currently enrolled at Harvard should transfer to other US universities, but that could be impossible for many of them.
The foreign student ban followed Harvard's rejection of a list of new demands from the government — including that it provide video or audio of international students involved in any campus protests in the past five years.
On Wednesday, Mr Trump called Harvard a "disaster" and "totally antisemitic", and said it had too many foreign students.
"Harvard has to understand, the last thing I want to do is hurt them," he said.
"They're hurting themselves … But Harvard wants to fight. They want to show how smart they are, and they're getting their ass kicked."
The president also suggested Harvard should cut foreign student numbers and take more American applicants.
"They can't get in because we have foreign students there," he said.
"But I want to make sure that the foreign students are people that can love our country."
In a separate move, the US government has also ordered its embassies and consulates around the world to pause scheduling new student visa appointments.
US media, citing an internal memo, is reporting it's part of a shift towards increased social media vetting for student and foreign exchange visas.
At Harvard, the fate of the foreign students now rests with the courts.
A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration's foreign student ban, but it's set to return to court on Thursday, local time.
Harvard argues the move is unconstitutional and "clear retaliation" after it rejected demands "to control Harvard's governance, curriculum and the 'ideology' of its faculty and students".
"Effective immediately, countless academic programs, research laboratories, clinics and courses supported by Harvard's international students have been thrown into disarray," the university's court complaint says.
"Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard."
The Australian embassy in Washington has sought more information from the US government.
"The embassy is engaging directly with Australian students on this matter," a spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said.