President Trump on Sunday expressed new frustrations with Harvard, arguing the school should turn over the names of foreign students and that U.S. students are not getting to go to Harvard because places are being taken by students from other countries.
“I don’t have a problem with foreign students. But it shouldn’t be 31 percent. It’s too much, because we have Americans who want to go there, and to other places, and they can’t go there because there’s 31 percent foreigners,” Trump said from the tarmac in Morristown, N.J., where he was preparing to take off for Washington, D.C.
The number of foreign students at Harvard is actually 27 percent of its total enrollment.
Foreign students to Harvard and other schools tend to pay full tuition, providing an economic boost to the U.S. and effectively subsidizing costs for U.S. students.
Trump has threatened to cut off federal grants to Harvard over fights related to his efforts to end all diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs as well as battles about campus pro-Palestinian demonstrations, which the Trump administration has blamed in part on foreign radicals.
Much of the administration’s focus has seemed to be centered on getting specific information on foreign students.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has targeted foreign students who have been involved in campus protests or even merely written letters to the editor in support of the people of Gaza, moving to deport them. In some cases, government agents have been videotaped taking people off the streets, a fact that has underscored concerns on campuses across the country.
Trump on Sunday put some of his focus on the issue of needing information on international students while also airing grievances about U.S. students losing spots at Harvard to people from other countries.
“Look, part of the problem with Harvard is that, they are about 31 percent, almost 31 percent of foreigners coming to Harvard. We give them billions of dollars, which is ridiculous. We do grants, which we’re probably not going to be doing much grants anymore to Harvard, but they’re 31 percent, but they refuse to tell us who the people are. We want to know the people.”
Trump claimed that with regard to many of the foreign students, “we wouldn’t have a problem” with them.
Harvard on Friday sued the Trump administration after DHS revoked it certification to admit foreign students.
In the suit, Harvard said international students were a critical part of the university’s community and that failing to admit them would cause irrevocable hard.
“Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard,” the complaint from Harvard reads.
Harvad President Alan Garber characterized the government’s actions as an effort to lash out at Harvard over its “refusal to surrender our academic independence and to submit to the federal government’s illegal assertion of control over our curriculum, our faculty and our student body.”
“With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body, international students who contribute significantly to the University and its mission,” the lawsuit read.
