Harvard University may lose the ability to accept foreign students if it fails to meet the demands of US President Donald Trump’s administration. Harvard President Alan Garber earlier publicly announced that he would not fulfil Washington’s demands.
On April 16, US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the cancellation of two grants for Harvard University for a total of more than $2.7 million. Noem demanded that Harvard management provide reports on foreign student visa holders by April 30.
If the requirements are not met, Harvard will have its certification for the Student and Exchange Visitor Programme revoked, Noem said in a statement. Revoking the certificate will prevent the university from accepting students from abroad.
The university has received a letter from the Secretary of Homeland Security, a spokesman for the institution told the agency. He recalled that earlier the President of Harvard said that he was ready to comply with all legal requirements, but would not “give up his independence and constitutional rights.”
On April 15, Trump said that Harvard University should be deprived of federal funding. He criticised the institution’s leadership for hiring “radical leftists, idiots and empty-headed people who are only capable of teaching failure to students and so-called future leaders.”
According to The Wall Street Journal, the US Treasury Department has asked the Internal Revenue Service officials to strip Harvard of its status as a non-profit organisation exempt from federal taxes. However, as the newspaper points out, how exactly the procedure will be implemented is still unclear. US tax law prohibits the president and other high-ranking officials from directly or indirectly requesting investigations of specific taxpayers.
The occasion for the conflict between the Trump administration and the leadership of Harvard University became the events of 2023 and 2024, when the campus held protests condemning Israel’s military operation in Gaza. A group of Jewish students at Harvard sued the university over a spike in anti-Semitism among other students. Claudine Gay, who was then Harvard’s president, resigned.
Meanwhile, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of France Unbowed (LFI), wrote on X:
“A new obscurantism is developing. In the name of religion or politics, people allow themselves to interfere in the affairs of universities. They determine subjects, research, publication topics. In France, a minister wanted to persecute Islamo-leftist views in universities. Mr Trump wants to cut funding to Harvard University because he dared to use freedom of thought.”
