The Trump administration on Thursday revoked Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, delivering a sharp punishment to the elite institution for refusing to bow to the administration’s policy demands.
“Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status,” the US Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.
The bombshell move comes as students from around the world were preparing to attend Harvard, the oldest university in the US and one of the nation’s most prestigious. One would-be incoming freshman from New Zealand described hearing the news as a “heart drop” moment.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said she ordered her department to terminate Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification, citing the university’s refusal to turn over the conduct records of foreign students requested by the DHS last month.
The decision could impact more than a quarter of Harvard’s heavily international student body, who have been flung into anxiety and confusion by the announcement. Professors warn a mass exodus of foreign students threatens to stifle the academic prowess of the institution even as it battles against the administration for its ideological autonomy.
The White House said Thursday that “enrolling foreign students is a privilege, not a right” and accused Harvard leadership of turning “their once-great institution into a hot-bed of anti-American, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist agitators.”
“They have repeatedly failed to take action to address the widespread problems negatively impacting American students and now they must face the consequences of their actions,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement to CNN.
Harvard and Trump officials have been locked in conflict for months as the administration demands the university make changes to campus programming, policies, hiring and admissions to root out on-campus antisemitism and eliminate what it calls “racist ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ practices.” The administration has homed in on foreign students and staff it believes participated in contentious campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war.
But the university’s leadership argues many of the requests, including an “audit” of the “viewpoint” of its students and staff, go far beyond the role of the federal government and may violate Harvard’s constitutional rights.
Noem said Harvard can regain its ability to enroll international students if it submits five years’ worth of records related international students’ conduct “within 72 hours,” according to the letter she sent the university Thursday and posted on social media.
DHS is demanding all records of international students participating in activities deemed “illegal,” “dangerous or violent” or threatening over the past five years, Noem’s letter says, pointing especially to audio or video footage of “any protest activity” involving foreign students on campus.
Harvard is among dozens of US universities facing harsh demands from the Trump administration, but it has emerged as the fiercest defender of its academic independence.
The university swiftly condemned the SEVP revocation as “unlawful,” saying in a statement it is “fully committed to maintaining Harvard’s ability to host international students and scholars, who hail from more than 140 countries and enrich the University – and this nation – immeasurably.”
“We are working quickly to provide guidance and support to members of our community. This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission,” university spokesperson Jason Newton said.
The university has an enormous foreign student population that could be impacted. It says it has 9,970 people in its international academic population, and data shows 6,793 international students comprise 27.2% of its enrollment in the 2024-25 academic year.
Like many other colleges and universities, Harvard drew intense criticism last year for its handling of pro-Palestinian protests and encampments following the start of the Israel-Hamas war, as well as complaints from Jewish alumni and students about antisemitism on campus.
Reports released by two Harvard task forces last month concluded that both Jewish and Muslim students feared for their safety during the 2023-24 academic year and had deep feelings of alienation and academic censorship on campus. They included broad recommendations and policy changes as remedies, some of which Harvard has already made.
Harvard has also implemented some changes to comply with the Trump administration’s requests, including changing the name of its Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging to Community and Campus Life.
But Noem, in a letter to Harvard on Thursday, accused the university of “perpetuating an unsafe campus environment that is hostile to Jewish students, promotes-pro-Hamas sympathies, and employs racist “diversity, equity and inclusion’ practices.” She did not mention Muslim or Arab students.
The administration has slapped Harvard with severe retaliatory measures, including freezing $2.2 billion in federal funds – a move the university is fighting in court. The Internal Revenue Service is also making plans to rescind Harvard’s tax-exempt status, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
The Trump administration appears poised to make an example of Harvard as it threatens similar punishment to other institutions if they don’t cooperate.
“This should be a warning to every other university to get your act together,” Noem said on Fox News.
Students and staff are horrified
Some of Harvard’s students and staff were stunned by the announcement, which has left thousands of international students in limbo as they mourn their connection to a university that many of them fought tooth and nail to attend.
“People who dreamed of coming to the United States to study, to absorb American traditions, to advance science … are now having their lives wrecked,” Larry Summers, President Emeritus at Harvard and former Treasury secretary, told CNN.
Summers said the Trump administration’s latest round of “attacks” come “without due process, without any indication of what specifically the problem is” and that the consequences “are mostly going to fall on peoples whose fault this surely isn’t.”
Jared, an 18-year-old in New Zealand, told CNN it was a “heart drop” moment when he learned he may not be able to start his undergraduate degree at the Ivy League school this fall.
“To me, it’s one of, if not the best school in the world,” Jared said, contrasting the news with the “really special moment” for him and his family when he learned in March he’d been accepted to Harvard to study Sociology.
Jared was in the process of applying for his student visa and preparing to move the 9,000 miles to Boston when he learned of the Trump administration’s announcement.
Now he’s in limbo and looking at other resources the university may offer, such as online learning.
“There’s really no use for me getting too worked up over something that I can’t control, you know. I’m just focused on doing what I can control,” he said.
Existing international students at Harvard are likewise faced with an uncertain future. Rising junior Karl Molden, from Austria, is traveling abroad and says he’s terrified he won’t be allowed to return to campus. International students have been nervously messaging each other, he said.
“Many of us have worked our entire lives to get to a university like Harvard, and now we need to wait around and see if we might have to transfer out and face difficulties with visas,” Molden said.
The Austrian junior said other international students he’s been in touch with are wondering if they will be able to complete summer internships – others worry they won’t get the same generous financial aid Harvard offers from another college.
Molden said international students are being used as a “play ball in this larger fight between democracy and authoritarianism.”
“Coming from Austria, I’m a little bit more familiar … with the authoritarian playbook and how authoritarians can kill democracies,” he said. “What I’ve been seeing in the US in the past few months is that.”
Some Harvard staff worry draining the university of its foreign students would debilitate the academic power of both the institution and, potentially, American academia as a whole.
Harvard economics professor and former Obama administration official Jason Furman called the measure “horrendous on every level.”
“It is impossible to imagine Harvard without our amazing international students. They are a huge benefit to everyone here, to innovation and the United States more broadly,” Furman said. “Higher education is one of America’s great exports and a key source of our soft power. I hope this is stopped quickly before the damage gets any worse.”
Another professor familiar with the situation told CNN that if the policy goes into effect, he fears “many labs will empty out.”
Australia’s ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, said the move “will be distressing for Harvard’s many Australian students” and is offering them consular advice as they closely monitor the situation.
Harvard’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors said in a statement it “condemns in the strongest possible terms the Trump administration’s unconstitutional assault on our international students.”
The group of professors said the decision “expands the Trump administration’s terrorizing assault on international students and scholars in the United States.”
“International students are essential members of the Harvard community,” the statement continued.
CNN’s Andy Rose, Matt Egan, Julianna Bragg and Meg Tirrell contributed to this report.
