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Harvard University has sued Donald Trump’s administration for barring it from enrolling international students, an escalation of the battle between the elite institution and the administration.
Harvard’s legal complaint filed on Friday argued that the Department of Homeland Security’s revocation of its student and exchange visitor programme certification violated the school’s rights to free speech and due process. University president Alan Garber said in an open letter that a temporary restraining order would follow.
“It is the latest act by the government in clear retaliation for Harvard exercising its First Amendment rights to reject the government’s demands to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students,” the lawsuit read.
The DHS’s ban, announced on Thursday, sparked shock across higher education and concern from Harvard’s incoming class of international students as well as its existing 7,000 foreign pupils who were told they would need to enrol elsewhere.
Garber called the move “unlawful and unwarranted” and said it was linked to the university’s “refusal to surrender our academic independence and to submit to the federal government’s illegal assertion of control over our curriculum, our faculty and our student body”.
Secretary of homeland security Kristi Noem had claimed Harvard failed to comply with its request to provide all records of foreign students’ illegal, dangerous or violent activity, including instances of students making threats or disciplinary action taken against them. Garber, in his letter on Friday, argued that the school had complied with the law in requests on students sought by the department.
Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS’s assistant secretary for public affairs, said Harvard’s lawsuit aimed to undermine the president’s powers, and that the administration would remain steadfast in its effort to bar international students from the school.
“It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enrol foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments,” McLaughlin said.
“The Trump administration is committed to restoring common sense to our student visa system; no lawsuit, this or any other, is going to change that. We have the law, the facts and common sense on our side,” she added.
The action against Harvard sparked broader concern and criticism from university and academic bodies and networks representing international students, as well as some opportunistic responses. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology launched an invitation to Harvard’s current and future international students to enrol with it instead.
International students have long been an important source of tuition and other revenue to US universities, including Harvard.
The 1636 Forum of Harvard alumni estimated that international students generated more than $300mn in tuition fees for university annually. A ban on foreign students would also threaten other revenues including more than $170mn in fees generated from the business school, it said.
Harvard’s lawsuit against the DHS is the school’s second legal action against the Trump administration. It first sued the Trump administration last month over its demands to impose government oversight, which the school said undermined its academic freedom. The administration has also frozen more than $2.2bn in federal funding to the school.
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