Judge blocks Trump move to ban Harvard from admitting foreign students

The TOI correspondent from Washington: A US federal judge extended a temporary block on the Trump administration’s attempt to bar international students from enrolling at Harvard in yet another judicial setback to the MAGA supremo on Wednesday.

Judge Allison Burroughs allowed a temporary restraining order she issued last week to remain in place until a preliminary injunction is issued, saying she wants to maintain the status quo pending a final ruling.

“People are terrified,” the judge observed, echoing the submission made by Harvard's lawyers.

The University said thousands of foreign students -- including some 800 students from India -- are in distress, with many seeking transfers to other institutions and some new students deferring enrollment.

Foreign students are also reporting visa denials and revocations amid an open ban on students from China by the Trump administration and directions to Harvard to limit foreign student intake to 15 per cent.

Judge Burrough's decision came even as 9,000 graduating students were gathered in Harvard Yard to receive their degrees. Harvard's President Alan Garber received a standing ovation when he said, "To the class of 2025, from down the street, across the country and around the world," a oblique affirmation of Harvard keeping its doors open to foreign students.

The battle is far from over with the Trump administration doubling down on universities deemed as liberal and woke, setting up punitive moves against storied schools like Columbia and Harvard.

Ahead of the ruling by Judge Burroughs, an Obama appointee, the Department of Homeland Security sent a notice to Harvard giving the university a 30 day reprieve to contest its plans to revoke its certification under a federal program allowing it to enroll foreign students. Harvard's lawyers and the judge said at the hearing that they were still processing the last-minute notice and assessing its impact on the lawsuit filed by the University.

The lawsuit had become a test case for the US academia's resistance to the Trump administration's effort to corral them and bring them in line with the MAGA dispensation's political and ideological preferences, moves the liberal academia sees as infringing on free speech.

The MAGA dispensation sees it differently, arguing that an institution as wealthy as Harvard, with a $ 51 billion endowment, cannot take tax-payer money from the government and disregard rules that the administration seeks to enforce.