We are sort of connoisseurs, around these parts, of the press release language emanating from the Trump administration. While Pete Hegseth and his Department of Warfighters has established itself as masters of a genre, and Lee Zeldin and his deregulatory fervor offer a firehose of EPA Opposite Day braggadocio, Kristi Noem and the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday offered up what may be the pinnacle of Trump-era press release insanity. Well, at least so far.
The press release in question is titled “Harvard University Loses Student and Exchange Visitor Program Certification for Pro-Terrorist Conduct.” The policy it announces is, obviously, destructive, profoundly anti-intellectual, racist, and petty — in an obvious response to Harvard showing some spine in dealing with administration bullying, the DHS is now making it so literally no foreign student can exist at the school. That includes the 6,800 or so who attended this year, making up more than a quarter of all students, who will have to either go home or transfer, or risk losing their legal visa status. And the reasons Noem and DHS gave are absurd.
“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” Noem said in the press release. Usually with something like this, we might throw in an [emphasis added] to explain the bold font — only it was not added, and is literally bolded in the release. After claiming that many “agitators” allowed to run amok on Harvard’s campus are foreign students, the DHS claims: “Harvard’s leadership further facilitated, and engaged in coordinated activity with the CCP, including hosting and training members of a CCP paramilitary group complicit in the Uyghur genocide.”
Whew! It goes on to offer “Facts [emphasis, again, not added] about Harvard’s toxic campus climate,” in which it wields the now-familiar and infuriating cudgel of “fighting anti-semitism” as a reason to ban all foreign students, which, just for the record, includes 80 from Israel. It cites rising crime rates as well, with no attempt to even mildly link crime on campus with the international students it is trying to send home. It says Harvard has “accepted boatloads of cash from foreign governments and donors,” which is surely worse than planeloads.
While the language used and arguments made are gut-churning and bizarre, the move itself is indeed dark. Foreign students often pay bigger portions of tuition costs, helping subsidize others who can’t afford to. And it is of course just another shot across the bow of the entire research enterprise in the US, which has been built up in part by a century of collaborations with students and faculty around the world. The order will undoubtedly be challenged in court immediately, but its chilling effect is likely already taking hold — if you were a foreign student hoping to study at Harvard or elsewhere in the US next year or beyond… would you still?
The most chilling bit of all might be Noem’s last words in the release:
“Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.”
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