Confusion, concern and in some cases, fear, spread across the Harvard University campus after the Trump administration blocked the school’s ability to enroll international students on Thursday. The 7,000 international students already enrolled at the university were told to transfer or lose their legal status.
The next morning, Harvard sued the Trump administration on the grounds that the change violates the school’s First Amendment rights. Hours later, a federal judge in Boston blocked the Trump administration’s order, protecting students’ status for now.
Prior to the court intervention, GBH News spent hours on campus to talk to students. Nearly 40 students said they didn’t feel comfortable talking about the Trump action out of fear it would bring unwanted attention towards them.
One Harvard first-year on a student visa from Australia studying mechanical engineering requested his name and hometown be kept anonymous because of his immigration status.
“It’s just stressful. It was just fairly surprising,” the student said. “You sort of just heard it.”
For him, one of the problems was not really knowing what’s true.
“I guess at the moment by the sounds of it, our international visas are no longer valid,” he said. “We’ve been told to either transfer or get out of the country, but those are really like the only options have been given.”
“Shock, disbelief, sadness,” said a Harvard postdoctoral fellow from India, who also requested anonymity. “I feel like there’s a lot of uncertainty. No one really knows what’s gonna happen — how this is gonna unfold — and people are just keeping their eye out for updates and more information.”
“I don’t know whether to be more sad or more angry,” said Aeden Marcus, a student in Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The Canadian-born U.S. citizen said the thousands of international students at Harvard enrich the education at the elite school.
“They bring so much from wherever they’re from and help us understand the world better, because they have different perspectives,” Marcus said.
Caught in the crosshairs of the apparent standoff between Harvard and the Trump administration are the international students on the cusp of graduating or planning to return next fall.
“We’re essentially being used as poker chips in a battle between the White House and Harvard because Trump essentially wants to install himself as the provost of this university,” Leo Gerdén, an international student from Sweden, told Boston Public Radio on Friday. He’s set to graduate from Harvard next week with a degree in economics and government.
“[President Trump] wants to dictate what classes we can take, what students can be admitted, what professors should be fired,” he said. “And the result is that people’s dream of studying at this institution and staying in America is just shattered. I think it’s extremely tragic.”
The news also came as a shock to Abdullah Shahid Sial, a student body co-president from Pakistan who’s studying applied mathematics and economics. Sial, who still has two years left to get her undergraduate degree, only learned about the news when he got off a 30-hour flight and was bombarded with texts from friends.
“It has caused a state of pure havoc for so many of these 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds who are here alone, have no family members in this country,” Sial said.
Many students agreed that part of what makes Harvard great is its ability attract some of the best students from across the globe.
“I doubt Harvard will be able to retain its image and its excellence if it is restricted in terms of where it can accept students from,” Sial said. “I’d advise someone even within the U.S., that if you have to choose between Harvard or another place, I would ask them to think about it very cautiously given these circumstances.”
