After freezing $ 2.2 billion in funds, the Trump administration has also indicated Harvard in other key ways: he threatened the non -profit state of the university and their ability to house international students and teachers, who include approximately a quarter of the student body and helped feed research in each part of the school.
Some teachers expressed concern that Harvard can no longer attract superior talent. “This is what the United States tells the best and most brilliant minds in the world that you are not welcome,” said Tarek Masoud, a professor of democracy and governance at the Harvard Kennedy school.
Abdullah Shahid Sial, the co -chair of the undergraduate student body, arrived in Cambridge from Lahore, Pakistan, hoping to work with the “best teachers in the world.” Now, he has written an opinion article to run at the Harvard Crimson if he is deported to speak. “If at any time they want to leave, I would prefer to go in a much more dignified way,” he said.
A Harvard scientist was arrested and at least another 11 people affiliated with the university have lost their visas in recent weeks, although some were restored by the Government on Friday.
In an interview on Wednesday, two days after the university filed a lawsuit to try to recover its federal funds, Harvard president Alan Garber, met the decision of the school to take a position.
“It’s bigger than Harvard,” Garber told “NBC Nightly News” Lester Holt. “We are defending what I think is one of the most important successes of the American economy and way of life: our universities.”
Harrison Fields, spokesman for the White House, criticized the University’s response. “The universities are hooked to federal cash, and the public outbreak of Mr. Garber only feeds the impulse to close the money of the taxpayer that supports his institution,” he said.
With the final exams and the graduation that are now coming, many are preparing for a prolonged battle that could have reverberations in the coming years.
Steven Pinker, a well -known psychology professor, co -founded the Council of Academic Freedom at Harvard to promote “free research, intellectual diversity and civil discourse.” He agrees with the criticism that Harvard needs more diversity of points of view, but believes that the government’s demands go too far, he said.
Harvard told, among other demands in a letter of April 11, that the diversity of views between teachers and students (subject to government approval) increases, present their hiring to a federal audit for more than three years and use an ideological test on admissions for international students.
“I just don’t think Donald Trump has the legal power to force his vision of diversity of points of view in private universities,” Pinker said. “Could that mean that we have to have Anti-Vaxxers in the School of Medicine? Does it mean that we have to ‘stop theorists in the Department of History? Maga theorists in political science programs? You just don’t want to give the government the power to make those decisions.”
When Harvard refused to fulfill, the Trump administration doubled. In a letter sent on April 16, the United States National Security Department demanded that Harvard provide the names of all international students who have “participated in protests” and their “disciplinary records”, with a deadline of April 30, after which he threatened to revoke Harvard’s ability to organize international students.
“Harvard values the rule of law and expects all members of our community to comply with university policies and applicable legal standards,” said Jason Newton, Harvard spokesman, in a statement. “If federal measures are taken against a member of our community, we hope that it is based on clear evidence, follow the established legal procedures and respect the constitutional rights granted to all persons.”
Some international students feel trapped in the crossfire between Harvard and the Trump administration.
“We are using poker chips in a battle with the White House,” said Leo Gerdén, a last year student of Stockholm, Sweden. “None of us wanted to take this fight.”
Sial, the co -chair of the student body, is now working with the administrators to guarantee summer housing on the campus for the largest number of international students who plan bunker in Cambridge for fear that they are prevented from returning to the country.
Several other international students talked about anonymity to avoid threatening their student’s visa. They described this moment in Harvard as a doubly difficult: already threatened to lose their visas, as more than 1,800 international students and recent graduates, according to reports, before the reversal of the administration this week, they are also in the school that Trump is more examining.
An international law student said he will not walk near the protests, knocked down his social media profiles or has made them deprived and sought to finish his title abroad. Keeps the numbers of the direct emergency line and its passport with it at all times in case it approaches.
“I have no disciplinary record. I have no criminal record. I have nothing. And I am a good student,” he said. “And, of course, I care things, but that’s why you come to the Faculty of Law.”
An International Student of Environmental Studies He said they now plan to leave the country once they finish their title.
“I am only trying to protect the rivers, the river routes and the environment,” they said, “and I do not feel particularly sought here.”
They regularly have to visit different states to conduct surveys, but say that they are now afraid to travel.
“Simply have the label of international Harvard students,” they told me, “it makes me much more anxious to be close to airports or be close to security.”
An international undergraduate student who attended the Harvard camp last year and was done with his pro-Palestinian activism said they moved from the campus and stopped attending classes in person for two weeks, caused by the arrest of the graduate student of the University of Tufts Rumeya Ozturb. They have canceled an academic trip to Europe and jumped to Iftars during Ramadan, communal meals where Muslims break their fast during the Holy Islamic month, worried that ice could point to such meetings.
“I don’t feel safe at all about being close to protests and voices, which actually kills me from the inside, because I want to go there, and I want to express my opinion,” they said.
Although some students applauded Harvard’s position against Trump, others have feelings found about the school’s response so far.
Three students said the University had already accepted to some extent, even before the April 11 letter. They pointed to the The dismissal of the heads of the Faculty of the Center for Studies of the Middle East, suspending the initiative of religion, conflict and peace of the Harvard Divinity School, and stopping the research association of the School of Public Health with a Palestinian University.
Harvard did not answer the questions about these concerns. But Masoud, from the Harvard Kennedy school, said he thought that these changes would have happened even if Trump had not been chosen.
