President Donald Trump on Monday continued his holiday weekend airing of grievances against America’s oldest and most prestigious university by complaining that the government has not been provided with data that it already has.
Writing on his Truth Social platform, Trump said his administration is “still waiting” for “foreign student lists” from Harvard University, which he said are needed to “determine ... how many radicalized lunatics, troublemakers all, should not be let back into our Country.”
He groused that the Cambridge, Massachusetts based institution has been “very slow in the presentation of these documents, and probably for good reason,” while accusing it of having “shopped around and found the absolute best Judge” to hear a series of lawsuits challenging his administration’s multiple attacks on the university, which he has accused of fostering a climate of anti-semitism on campus by permitting protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.
The president’s latest broadside against Harvard came roughly eight hours after he suggested it was somehow hiding the fact that “almost 31% of their students are from FOREIGN LANDS” and complained that those students’ home nations “pay NOTHING toward their student’s education, nor do they ever intend to.” He also demanded that the institution turn over data on “those names and countries” to the government.
While data made public by Harvard on its own website states that the enrolment of foreign students represents 27 percent of it’s total student population — not the 31 percent claimed by Trump — it’s unclear why they would need to provide the government with information on the identities of foreign students attending the university.
Data made public by Harvard on its own website states that foreign students make up just 27 percent of its total population, not the 31 percent claimed by Trump.
It is also unclear why Harvard would need to provide the government with information on the identities of foreign students, given student visas must be processed and approved by the government before they can enter the country to begin or continue their studies.
Last week, the Trump administration attempted to revoke Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign students, while forcing foreign students to leave the university of risk their legal status in the country.
In announcing the move, the Department of Homeland Security claimed Harvard had “created an unsafe campus environment by permitting anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators to harass and physically assault individuals, including many Jewish students, and otherwise obstruct its once-venerable learning environment.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also accused the university of “fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party.”
On Friday, a federal judge in Massachusetts entered a temporary restraining order blocking the government from carrying out that action, which U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs called the order a “blatant violation of the Constitution” during a brief hearing.
Burroughs said Harvard’s attorneys had shown that the move would do “immediate and irreparable injury” to the institution.
The same judge is also hearing a separate lawsuit Harvard has filed against the government for attempting to revoke billions in grants for scientific research in which the university argues that the Trump administration simultaneously “exploiting” and ignoring federal law and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which forbids discrimination at federally funded institutions, in an effort to force the school to reshape campus life to fit the president’s ideological preferences.
Trump and administration officials had demanded that the university act to to eliminate diversity programs, cooperate with immigration enforcement, dissolve pro-Palestine demonstrations and submit to a “viewpoint diversity” audit or risk losing all federal funds.
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