The Wall Street Journal slammed President Trump’s administration for delivering a “short-sighted attack” on Harvard University after banning the Ivy League institution from enrolling international students this week.
The editorial board wrote that the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) decision to rescind Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification on Thursday has thrown all of the school’s foreign students’ futures “in disarray.”
“It’s also a short-sighted attack on one of America’s great competitive strengths: Its ability to attract the world’s best and brightest,” the board wrote in an editorial on Friday.
“Most of Harvard’s foreign students are enrolled in graduate programs. Many assist with scientific research and teaching undergraduate courses,” the editorial board added. “Driving them out of Harvard will disrupt research projects and might cause some professors in the sciences to leave for other universities. This seems to be a goal of freezing Harvard’s research grants.”
The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment.
This week, Trump further escalated his ongoing fight with Harvard by blocking the U.S.’s oldest university from being able to enroll international students. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said the administration was holding the elite school accountable for “fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus.”
Pulling the SEVP certification would result in international students already at Harvard to have to transfer somewhere else or risk losing their legal status, Noem said on Thursday.
Harvard fired back, calling the administration’s decision “unlawful” and sued in court Friday morning. Hours later, a federal judge temporarily blocked the administration’s decision to revoke the school’s SEVP certification.
U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) until she can hear more arguments. A May 29 hearing was set to debate whether a longer pause is necessary.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the American people elected Trump, “not random local judges with their own liberal agenda – to run the country.”
“These unelected judges have no right to stop the Trump Administration from exercising their rightful control over immigration policy and national security policy,” Jackson added in response to the order.
The Journal’s editorial board, which has criticized the president on a range of issues, including his tariff agenda and pardoning of Jan. 6 defendants, said the university will likely prevail “on the law,” but “until courts settle the merits, thousands of students who have done nothing wrong will be in legal limbo. Some of them no doubt opposed the anti-Israel protests and may even hail from Israel. Why punish them?”
The board argued that the administration’s decision will ultimately damage the country’s ability to attract “talented young people who bring their enterprise and intellectual capital to the U.S.”
“Non-citizens accounted for more than half of doctoral degrees in AI-related fields in 2022. Many have gone to work at U.S. companies like Nvidia or started their own,” the board added.
Harvard has fought back against the Trump administration’s pressure campaign, which has included the termination of research grants and threats to its tax status, for months.
