Harvard under fire:
The Trump administration has bought Harvard University from employees and graduate students. Nearly 6,800 students from across the world now face the prospect of losing their legal.
Graduate student from Harvard “We’re all panicking. We’re all overwhelmed. A time of uncertainty. Literally, like it’s never experienced before.”
A federal judge has temporarily halted the ban after Harvard filed an emergency petition calling the move not just unlawful, but a direct threat to its mission and to its students’ future. At the center of this crisis is a letter from the U.S. Women’s Security Secretary.
In it, the Trump administration accuses Harvard of fostering anti-Semitism, violent unrest, even coordinating with Chinese Communist Party, an extraordinary claim made without public evidence or investigation. The Department of Homeland Security has canceled the SEDP, Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification for the Harvard University, which means that the university will now be barred from admitting international students for the 2025-26 category.
SEDP is the backbone of international education in the U.S. It enables universities to sponsor foreign students. Without it, they can’t legally enroll them or retain them. SEDP means no visa paperwork, no new enrollments, no legal status for existing international students, and those already enrolled are left with few choices, transfer or face deportation.
Harvard Graduate Student “I have a dear friend who is Russian and has not felt safe to go back to Russia for years now. And so for this, for him, it creates, I think, an existential question almost, because he has no real foreign stability where the United States was that source for him.”
Harvard now has 72 hours to meet the sweeping needs of demand from the U.S. government.
Tensions with Howard escalated since pro-Palestinian protests over Israel’s war in Gaza erupted in the U.S. campus last year. The administration branded the protests as pro-Palestinian activism, accusing Howard of tolerating anti-Semitic speech. It also targeted the university’s diversity and inclusion policies, calling them biased.
Then came broad claims of ties to Chinese institutions. Again, no public evidence, but enough to demand censored student data. When Howard pushed back, the government throw $2.3 billion in public funding. Now comes a visa ban. Howard currently hosts 6,800 international students from 1.6 countries, India, China, Canada, New England.
Now what do they pay?
Their tuition fee alone is over $59,000 a year. Add room, board, and other fees, that’s another $27,600. So the total cost per student is nearly $87,000 a year. International students formed a $43.8 billion economy last year, supporting universities, housing markets, and local economies in states like California, New York, Texas, and Massachusetts. Howard isn’t backing down. It has called the visa ban unlawful, repressive, and dangerous. It has sued the Trump administration, refusing to surrender its academic autonomy. The U.S. government claims this is about national security, but it looks more like a crackdown on dissent, on protests, on universities themselves.
But when did protests become grounds for exile?
Why are students paying the price for a political battle they didn’t choose?
The big question is, is this the end of them?
Take I Believe Green, or just your wake-up call, that even the most elite institutions aren’t immune when education gets caught in the crossfire of politics and power.
Howard now has 72 hours to meet the sweeping needs of demand from the U.S. government. Tensions with Howard escalated since pro-Palestinian protests over Israel’s war in Gaza erupted in the U.S. campus last year. The administration branded the protests as pro-Palestinian activism, accusing Howard of tolerating anti-Semitic speech. It also targeted the university’s diversity and inclusion policies, calling them biased.
