US Varsities on Edge Amid Govt's Bid to Block Foreign Students

Trump's Move Against Harvard Looms as Larger Threat Against Academic Autonomy

- Laurel Rosenhall, Isabelle Taft, Steven Rich and Stephanie Saul

If it happened to Harvard University, could it happen anywhere? The Trump administration's surprising bid to end Harvard's international enrollment put the higher education world on edge this past week, looming as a larger threat against academic autonomy.

Well beyond the halls of Harvard, college leaders were shocked that one swift move by the federal government could eliminate their ability to serve students from abroad, a growing population that has infused their campuses with cachet and wealth.

"This is a grave moment," Professor Sally Kornbluth, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in a message to her campus.

More than 8,000km away, University of Hawaii president Wendy Hensel said that it was "reverberating across higher education".

US President Donald Trump has unnerved universities in 2025 by launching investigations, freezing grants, demanding changes in campus practices and attempting to deport international students.

He has justified his punitive approach as a means to combat what he considers anti-Semitism. But he and his allies also have long resented a perceived liberal bias and racial diversity efforts at prestigious colleges.

The Trump administration said on May 22 that it had revoked Harvard's international student certification because the university had failed to meet its demands, including a request for records of student protest activity dating back five years.

To many academics, that was a clear signal that Mr Trump was prepared to use any federal mechanism as leverage if he did not get what he wanted.

"While Harvard is the victim of the moment, it's a warning and an unprecedented attempt of a hostile federal government to erode the autonomy of all major universities in the US," said Dr John Aubrey Douglass, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley.