On Thursday afternoon, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem delivered an ultimatum to Harvard University. She was going to eliminate the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) at Harvard due to their refusal to help DHS vet the foreign students who are currently enrolled.

Noem warned Harvard that they had 72 hours to comply, or the loss would be permanent.

“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” said DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. “It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments. Harvard had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing. It refused. They have lost their Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification as a result of their failure to adhere to the law. Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.”

Harvard may no longer enroll foreign students in the 2025-2026 school year, and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status to reside in the U.S. before the next academic year begins.

“As a result of your brazen refusal to comply with multiple requests to provide the Department of Homeland Security pertinent information while perpetuating an unsafe campus environment that is hostile to Jewish students, promotes pro-Hamas rhetoric, and employs racist ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ policies, you have lost this privilege,” Noem wrote in a letter to Maureen Martin, the university’s director of immigration services.

Noem offered Harvard 72 hours to provide the information requested for an opportunity to regain its visa program for the next school year.

She called the move the “direct result of Harvard’s epic failure to comply with simple reporting requirements.”

Noem said last month she had requested records related to visa-holding students enrolled in the university and Harvard’s counsel did not provide adequate information to meet the demand. After the DHS general counsel asked again for the information, Harvard provided an “insufficient, incomplete and unacceptable response,” she said.

“Consequences must follow to send a clear signal to Harvard and all universities that want to enjoy the privilege of enrolling foreign students, that the Trump administration will enforce the law and root out the evils of antisemitism in society and campuses,” said Noem.

Requested records also include footage or documentation of illegal, dangerous or violent activity by student visa holders, any records of threats or the deprivation of rights of other students or university personnel.

If this revocation of the student visa program stands, not only would Harvard lose a lot of money now, but also be unable to accept those students in the future – which means that they would receive a reputational hit as well. Naturally, the university immediately found a judge who was willing to block the order, and is also suing the Trump administration in response.

Boston US District Judge Allison Burroughs granted Harvard’s request for a temporary restraining order against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for trying to boot the 6,793 foreign students enrolled for the 2024-25 academic year.

Harvard’s lawyers had filed a federal complaint earlier Friday denouncing the removal of international students as “a blatant violation of the First Amendment, the Due Process Clause, and the Administrative Procedure Act.”

“With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body, international students who contribute significantly to the University and its mission,” the lawyers stated in the 71-page filing.

Burroughs set an initial hearing in the case, the second of its kind brought by the university against the Trump administration, for May 29.

Those lacking legal status to study at Harvard under DHS’ Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) would have had to transfer to another university or leave the US without the judge’s order blocking the move.

“It imperils the futures of thousands of students and scholars across Harvard and serves as a warning to countless others at colleges and universities throughout the country who have come to America to pursue their education and fulfill their dreams,” Harvard President Alan Garber had said.

There’s a good reason why Harvard wants this resolved immediately in their favor.

27% of Harvard’s student body is international. This is brutal for them. Everyone involved should feel immense pressure to resolve this quickly. pic.twitter.com/LitZZlngBa

— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) May 23, 2025

No one is disputing that DHS has control of the SEVP; Harvard is claiming that this is illegal on other grounds. And yes, there is a LOT of money at stake.

The Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), which manages foreign students and exchange visitors to the United States, is run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

But Garber wrote in his letter that the government’s claim that it took action based on Harvard’s failure to comply with requests for information is untrue. “In fact, Harvard did respond to the Department’s requests as required by law.” The complaint filed Friday morning states that Harvard provided records as initially requested by Noem on April 30, and then, in response to a further request from the government, provided additional documents on May 14. The move to revoke Harvard’s certification subsequently came without explanation or the citation of “any regulation with which Harvard failed to comply,” according to the complaint filed by the Unversity.

There were 6,793 international students enrolled at Harvard during the 2024-2025 academic year, representing 27.3 percent of the student body. The tuition and other student charges they pay are an important source of income for the University. In fiscal year 2024, student-related income (such as tuition, room, and board fees, minus University-provided financial aid) was about $1.4 billion, representing approximately 21 percent of Harvard’s total operating revenue. International students typically pay closer to the full cost of a Harvard education than students from the United States.

Will Harvard prevail in the courts? It’s a fair question, especially as Eugene Volokh points out that Harvard does have a case here.

Perhaps I’m mistaken, but it seems to me that the targeting of Harvard here has more to do with Harvard’s ideological stances, including its opposition to past Administration demands, than with an evenhanded, content-neutral enforcement of reporting requirements, antidiscrimination rules, and the like.

In any event, I hope Harvard fights this, quite likely with a request for a preliminary injunction. The court will at that point presumably have more facts on what exactly Harvard allegedly did wrong, and why the Administration actually targeted Harvard; I look forward to seeing what is disclosed in that process.

The anti-Semitism report from Harvard is indeed a damning indictment of how wretchedly the administration and faculty of the university failed Jewish students. The evidence shown should be used in Title VI proceedings, but is it enough to revoke Harvard’s ability to admit student visa holders? It does matter who the United States is allowing to come into the country to pursue an education – which is why the tack taken by Secretary of State Marco Rubio is, in the long term, the more effective one. As he so rightly pointed out this week, no one is entitled to a student visa, and if visa holders are here to undermine American interests by promoting support for terror groups like Hamas, then those visas will be revoked.

Pramila Jayapal: You revoked her student visa!

Marco Rubio: Yes, proudly and we will continue to revoke student visas for people who come here to stir up trouble. We’re going to do more. pic.twitter.com/3XZVj5KEof

— Bad Hombre (@joma_gc) May 21, 2025

Thousands of visas have probably been revoked by the State Department since President Donald Trump took office, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during a Senate subcommittee hearing on Tuesday.

“I don’t know the latest count, but we probably have more to do,” the former Senator said. “We’re going to continue to revoke the visas of people who are here as guests and are disrupting our higher education facilities.”

The estimate marks a significant increase from late March, when Rubio said student visa cancellations stood at 300.

“A visa is not a right, it’s a privilege,” he said on Tuesday.

As we have learned so painfully and horribly this week, we have enough murderous domestic terrorists without needing to import those who espouse the same ideas on college campuses. Better screening by the State Department is likely to yield a more lasting impact than simply punishing Harvard. Not that Harvard isn’t in need of a massive rebuke – it should lose federal money for its Title VI violations, it should have to deal with and settle lawsuits from students, and it should have to get its donors to pay up instead of getting federal money.

But academia as a whole needs an exorcism, and there needs to be some serious screening about which countries get to send their citizens into the United States for an education. Screening those students who apply, and also considering the countries from which they originate, is a much more practical and legally sound approach. A wholesale ban on Harvard’s ability to use the SEVP is probably not going to stand legal muster in court (I am not a lawyer, and I anticipate this going up the food chain on appeals), but student visa holders should remember that they are guests in our country. If you violate the rules, then you do not have legal rights to stay here – and the universities should not get to keep foreign students who break laws just because they want that sweet, sweet cash.

Featured image via Ingfbruno on Wikimedia Commons, cropped, Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0 DEED)