U.S. President Donald Trump has suspended the entry of international students and exchange participants to Harvard University for an initial six months, citing national security concerns in an escalating dispute with the Ivy League school.
According to Reuters, Trump’s proclamation on Wednesday bars foreign nationals from entering the United States to study or participate in exchange programmes at the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based university.
Harvard called Trump’s proclamation “yet another illegal retaliatory step taken by the Administration in violation of Harvard’s First Amendment rights.”
“Harvard will continue to protect its international students,” the university added in a statement.
The suspension can be extended beyond six months. Trump’s proclamation also directs the U.S. State Department to consider revoking academic or exchange visas of any current Harvard students who meet his proclamation’s criteria.
Wednesday’s directive came a week after a federal judge in Boston announced she would issue a broad injunction blocking the administration from revoking Harvard’s ability to enrol international students, who make up about a quarter of its student body.
The administration has launched a multifront attack on the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university, freezing billions of dollars in grants and other funding and proposing to end its tax-exempt status, prompting a series of legal challenges.
Harvard argues the administration is retaliating against it for refusing to accede to its demands to control the school’s governance, curriculum and the ideology of its faculty and students.
BusinessDay