6 days ago
International Harvard students are stunned by Trump's latest edict. One doesn't know what to say to his grandmother, who sold her farm to get from Kenya to Cambridge.
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'Singling out our institution for its enrollment of international students and its collaboration with other educational institutions around the world is yet another illegal step taken by the Administration to retaliate against Harvard,' president Alan Garber added in a message to the Harvard community.
Still, many on campus and in the broader academic world are stunned by the series of attacks from Trump, and wondering what could possibly blunt the fallout.
It's also caused aftershocks around the globe, from Austria to East Africa.
The hardest thing Magaga Enos has ever done is tell his grandmother, who sold her land and cattle in Kenya
to help pay for his education, that he now
might not be able to go to Harvard after all.
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Enos, 33, has his visa ready and his plane ticket booked. He's been planning to pursue a master's degree in education leadership, and was supposed to leave for the United States on July 4.
Enos woke up Thursday to a text from a friend sharing the news, followed by crying emojis in a WhatsApp chat of fellow international students. It took a minute for everything to sink in, and he then struggled over what to say to his grandmother, who now lives with Enos outside Nairobi, along with his wife and three children.
'I find I don't have the right words or know how to decode this, to place it in a language that she can understand,' Enos said.
Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal was in Bangkok and had just recently received the congratulatory email from Harvard Divinity School confirming his acceptance. 'I was preparing everything — including plans to schedule my visa interview in the next day or two," he said.
Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal was in Bangkok and had just received the official congratulatory email from Harvard Divinity School confirming his acceptance when he learned of the Trump administration's latest restrictions on international students at Harvard.
Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal
Harvard student body co-president Abdullah Shahid Sial, a rising junior from Pakistan, awoke in Lahore to a buzzing phone before heading to a local market to prepare for Eid al-Adha, the Muslim holiday. 'The entire situation is extremely blurry,' Sial said, as a sacrificial goat bleated in the background.
Studying at Harvard on full financial aid is 'perhaps the best thing that ever happened to me — not just me, but also my family,' he added. 'I've heard the phrase, 'It takes a village,' and for me, it was that: It took an entire village to send me, and make me capable enough, to attend Harvard from Pakistan.'
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Harvard student Abdullah Shahid Sial spoke at a rally in Cambridge in April.
Erin Clark/Globe Staff
For many of these students, getting accepted into Harvard isn't just the dream of a lifetime, or one lifetime; it's the culmination of several lifetimes of financial and emotional investment.
Enos has dedicated his life to supporting education of girls from vulnerable communities in Kenya. He was raised by a single mother who gave birth at 16 after being pulled out of seventh grade and 'forcefully married.' His mother's story is what 'strengthened my conviction to support girls' access to college education,' he said.
Enos's grandmother further bolstered that conviction with the $3,000 she put toward his tuition. It was a major sacrifice for her, yet still a fraction of the total cost of his graduate education: $101,974. To get there, Enos is also counting on $54,000 in financial aid from Harvard and a friend's commitment to cover the rest. Enos also raised around $2,200
Such sacrifices are not uncommon, said Dan Berger, an immigration lawyer in Northampton. However, that investment is now at risk as the federal government continues to find new ways to target international students:
travel to the United States from 19 countries.
'In August, will Harvard still have an active F-1 student program?,' Berger said. When students with valid visas fly into the United States, will their SEVIS records be active? 'That's what we don't know,' he said.
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The federal government has a lot of power, and 'the amount of power they have is going to be worked out in court cases over the next couple months,' he added.
Meanwhile, Trump has threatened Columbia University's accreditation, despite winning significant concessions from the school. Some observers say that suggeststhere is little chance any dispute can be settled at the bargaining table.
'There is no path to negotiation,' said financing expert and former Harvard budget officer Larry Ladd. 'The [Trump] administration is unreliable and inconsistent. Their demands are vague, and you can't be sure that what they say they will agree to, they will agree to. Columbia is Exhibit A.'
In this climate, the students themselves have little choice but to wait and worry.
Other students could decide not to come at all, said rising Harvard junior Karl Molden, who was in Vienna when he got the news.
'I think it's going to be really deterring for a lot of international students who might just be scared to get arrested at the border if they try to get into the US,' said Molden. 'Certainly I'm also scared.'
Students headed to the Harvard Kennedy School's Ash Center to learn about democracy are wondering if they should even sign a lease here. 'If you have a family and kids and want to move them here, you're reluctant to take that risk,' said Archon Fung, the center's director.
For Maya Jasanoff, a Harvard history professor whose department is — for now, at least — made up largely of students and staff from around the globe, it's upending what they believe is the university's mission.
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'It's completely baffling to me. Do we want to raise a generation of Americans who have no encounters with the outside world? Who don't learn foreign languages? Who don't engage with anything beyond the shores of this country?' said Jasanoff. 'And if so, what kind of future does that mean for the United States?'
In his message Thursday, Garber said that 'contingency plans are being developed to ensure that international students and scholars can continue to pursue their work at Harvard this summer and through the coming academic year.'
In Kenya, Enos said it's been heartening to hear from
Magaga Enos and his grandmother.
Magaga Enos
When he struggled to find the right words in his native language of Luo to explain the situation to his grandmother, those messages from Harvard helped; his wife translated and read them aloud to his grandmother, and they brought her hope.
'So I have decided to cling on to that hope that things will go well if you work hard,' he said. 'I want Americans to know that we are not just statistics or pawns in a political fight. We are future leaders, scientists, teachers, and bridge builders. And we chose Harvard.'
Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Brooke Hauser can be reached at
