Thousands of Harvard students in crimson-trimmed gowns celebrated their graduation Thursday, even as a federal judge moved to temporarily halt President Donald Trump’s attempt to bar the university from admitting international scholars.
Trump has made Harvard a focal point in his crusade against elite U.S. universities, threatening to freeze funding and crack down on foreign students over what he claims is liberal bias and antisemitism.
In Boston, a federal judge said she would issue an order providing “some protection” for international students while courts weigh the legality of Trump’s proposed restrictions.
“We want to make sure there’s no more shenanigans between now and then,” said Harvard’s lawyer, Ian Gershengorn.
“Our students are terrified, and we’re already having people transfer to other universities,” he said.
In an eleventh-hour filing ahead of the hearing, the Trump administration issued a formal notice of intent to withdraw Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign students – kick-starting the process.
The filing gave Harvard 30 days to produce evidence showing why it should not be blocked from hosting and enrolling international students.
Judge Allison Burroughs had already temporarily paused the policy affecting about 27% of Harvard’s student body. She extended that pause Thursday.
She said she would seek to determine “whether they were terminated for a retaliatory motive.”
A law professor present in the packed courtroom said the Trump administration was prolonging the suffering of international students.
“Harvard is in this purgatory. What is an international student to do?” said the Harvard Law School graduate, who declined to be named.
There also remained “this specter of other actions” the government could take to block Harvard from enrolling international students, she added.
The Ivy League institution has continually drawn Trump’s ire while publicly rejecting his administration’s repeated demands to cede control over recruitment, curriculum and research choices.
“Harvard is treating our country with great disrespect, and all they’re doing is getting in deeper and deeper,” Trump said Wednesday.
Harvard President Alan Garber received a huge cheer Thursday when he mentioned international students attending the graduation with their families, saying it was “as it should be” – though he did not mention the Trump dispute directly.
He received a standing ovation, which one student told The Associated Press (AP) was “revealing of the community’s pride and approval.”
Garber has led the legal pushback in U.S. academia after Trump targeted several prestigious universities, including Columbia, which made sweeping concessions to the administration in an effort to restore $400 million in withdrawn federal grants.
He has acknowledged that Harvard faces issues with antisemitism and that it has struggled to ensure a variety of views can be safely heard on campus.
Ahead of the ceremony, members of the Harvard band, wearing distinctive crimson blazers and carrying their instruments, marched through the narrow streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts – home to the elite school and the country’s oldest university.
In front of a large stage, hundreds of students gathered to hear speeches, including one entirely in Latin, in a grassy precinct closed to the public for security reasons.
Many students from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government carried inflatable plastic globes during the ceremony to symbolize the school’s international student body.
“In the last two months, it’s been very difficult. I’ve been feeling a lot of vulnerability,” said Lorena Mejia, 36, who graduated with a master’s in public administration and wore robes marking her as Colombian.
