In this article, to protect the identities of the interviewees, the authors have decided to use numbered pseudonyms instead of their full names. 

On Thursday, Kristi Noem, the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, announced that the Trump Administration has removed Harvard University’s privileges to the SEVP (Student and Exchange Visitor Program)—barring current and future international students from enrolling at the University—effective immediately. Now, international students at Harvard are speaking out against the decision.

The Trump administration’s revocation of Harvard University’s authorization to enroll international students is an unprecedented federal act that instantly affects almost 7,000 current international students, another move in the administration’s months-long campaign against one of America’s oldest institutions.

An order by Kristi Noem from the DHS on Thursday revoked Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, keeping all new foreign students from enrolling in the University for the 2025-2026 academic year. Currently, international students, making up over a quarter of Harvard’s undergraduate class, must now choose—find a new school, change their immigration status, or leave the country.

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem fails to define “habeas corpus” in a recent Senate hearing.

Monumental Impact

Both Harvard and the broader Massachusetts economy will be impacted. Harvard University has 6,793 international students, who comprise around 27 percent of its student population and often pay a higher tuition price. This decision will not only decrease the endowment of the university, but also nearby businesses, state healthcare, and the research industry long term.

In addition to making up a large portion of Harvard’s student body, international students sit at the forefront of research advancement at the institution. In 2023, 46.9 percent of Harvard’s publications had international co-authors, according to public data released by the University.

Harvard’s research is renowned for its credibility among academics and its consistency in quality output. This spring, Times Higher Education ranked the University first in the world for “academic reputation and prestige globally” for the fourteenth consecutive year. In the last five years, Harvard has also led the United States with the highest research production: 64,061 publications. With the visas of over a quarter of their student body revoked, Harvard will certainly struggle to maintain this level of output.

“I, myself, am a very Trump-critical person, but even I didn't think that this would be the kind of escalation that would occur,” Student #4, a freshman at Harvard College, reports. “Definitely by the spring term, when we saw the Trump administration giving out the letter to Alan Garber and the Harvard administration, there started to be more fears. I would chat with my roommates, and we would start to discuss the possibility of all of us losing our visas. But when the election occurred, that was not something that I thought would happen.”

One of the primary points of attack the Trump Administration has used on Harvard is the notion that the University uses “higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowment,” as claimed by Secretary Noem. While Harvard’s international students pay $79,450 on average in annual tuition compared to domestic students’ $54,269, these tuition dollars are a significant source of funding for Harvard’s research projects—initiatives that in recent months have been slashed of federal funding by this same administration.

Economic Landscape 

Student #1, also a freshman at Harvard College, remarked on the importance of a Harvard education beyond the namesake. “At the end of the day, I think a lot of people treat going to Harvard as a status symbol, but it's also about having the educational resources to make change at the end of the day—that's what is so important about attending Harvard.”

The economic effects of the order fall far outside Harvard’s campus. According to NAFSA, international students annually contribute around $40 billion to the U.S. economy and contribute to 378,175 jobs. 

Foreign talent is valuable to the Massachusetts economy, representing about 17 percent of the workforce. International students are more likely to have founded unicorns, equating to $591 billion, where 25 of these founders are Massachusettsian college graduates. Around 18 percent of United States graduate students are international, where four out of five students pursue the STEM fields. 

Alex Bronzini-Vender, a correspondent with The Guardian who recently transferred from Columbia to Harvard, believes that anti-Chinese rhetoric is a sign of the growing deglobalization under the Trump Administration.

“Chinese students are wildly overrepresented in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Columbia. Many Chinese students in the United States are not (broadly speaking) here to be historians. They are here to be STEM researchers,” said Bronzini-Vender. “This is also at a time when science is an institution with figures like RFK Jr. is diminishing in its clout and in its ability to serve as a bulwark against attacks like this, whereas a previous generation of even American hawks might have said, ‘we still want to be able to discover the next vaccine, right?’”

The 72-hour ultimatum Harvard faces brings due process into question. Usually, changes made to SEVP certification take a thorough review, an appeals process, and phased, gradual implementation to protect current international students. Harvard’s extremely rushed timeline and aggressive demands, including footage of protests, are a sharp turn from what is standard and thus expected.

This starkly different approach also raises constitutional questions. The Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause calls for adequate notice and, more importantly, ample response time before government sanctions. The First Amendment protects universities’ academic freedom and students’ right to protest, two additional issues that have come up as a result of the order.

“I'm quite familiar with his rhetoric and his anti-immigration stance. I just never thought that international students were going to be a target. I've only been in the States legally. I've always gone through the due process to get my visa; I've always done what's legal, what's right,” Student #3, another Harvard freshman, emphasized. 

“I never thought that international students were going to be his target, especially at universities such as Harvard, where getting into [them] requires a lot of hard work, and I think that is what I thought he wanted from people coming into the country.”

Leaning on the Harvard Community

Student #4 has some tactical advice for current Harvard international students afraid of what’s next.

“I think the general consensus is that international students should try to stay on campus. I'm very lucky, because I did plan to stay on campus this summer to do research work with one of the labs here—but some international students are overseas at the moment visiting families. It's really troublesome on their end because they're not sure if they can come back to the US without being stopped at the border.”

She recommends that international students apply for summer housing on Harvard’s campus and remain at the university as much as possible.

“The opportunities that you get out of Harvard are just amazing. The opportunities that you have at your fingertips, I think you can engage in a bunch of amazing extracurricular clubs that you probably won't find anywhere else, especially clubs,” Student #3 said. “There's not a single university in my home country who has those opportunities that Harvard was able to offer me, and that is something that I will definitely miss a lot and I think will definitely impact my career in the future—but also my development as a person, as a human being, and as a scholar.”

He also mentioned the tight-knit residential community that is also rare in his home country, in addition to access to professors who have a wide breadth of knowledge in their respective fields.

“I think it's important that they also recognize how irrational and absurd targeting one specific institution because it doesn't meet all your political demands is, and I would hope that they recognize that allowing this to happen would be a very slippery slope,” Student #1 said. “This would not only threaten Harvard and its ability to function as an educational institution, but would affect academia as a whole and the cultivation of knowledge and human capital as a whole in the United States.”

Noem, in a recent statement published on X, blames Harvard for “fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party.” Student opinion on the reasoning behind Thursday’s decision vastly differs, however. 

Calls for a Stand

“It's no longer about antisemitism, which Trump was initially targeting the university for, as many international students are actually Jewish themselves. So it would make absolutely no sense for this to be the reason why he's targeting the university and especially the international students. I think this is a blatant attack on higher education, and I think policymakers should see through this and stand for not only international students, but also for higher education and the education of the country in general,” said Student #2, another current freshman at the College.

“I think universities need to very forcefully reject the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Certain readings of it could effectively ban all kinds of Palestinian activism on campus, including the very vague wording around the double standards,” said Bronzini-Vender.

However, Bronzini-Vender predicts that the school in question would submit as they had in the past. He also recommends that Harvard tap into their endowment to help fight future legal battles on behalf of their students.

“I would hope that legislators on Capitol Hill underscore the value of rule of law and keep that in mind, regardless of what their political allegiances might be. And I think it's important that they also recognize how irrational and absurd targeting one specific institution is because it doesn't meet all [their] political demands.”

To Student #1, educational liberty is paramount for democracy, and the current administration’s interventions jeopardize this Constitutional freedom. 

“I would hope that they recognize that allowing this to happen would be a very slippery slope and would not only threaten Harvard and its ability to function as an educational institution, but would affect academia as a whole and the cultivation of knowledge and human capital as a whole in the United States.”