“We need to see their lists,” Harvard says. Nearly 31% of their students are foreigners. We’re curious about the origin of those students. Do they create problems? What nations are they from, exactly? Trump addressed reporters on Wednesday at the White House. Foreign students make up 27% of Harvard’s student body, according to data from universities that enrol.
Trump argued that there should be a cap on enrollment, not 31 percent, adding that he wanted students to be able to choose “people who are going to love our country” at universities.
More control over the university’s curricula, information about foreign students, and additional steps to crack down on pro-Palestine student activism, which the Trump administration has described as anti-Semitic, have been among the demands made by the Trump administration.
“Harvard must act on their own,” says the professor. Trump addressed reporters in the Oval Office, “Harvard is treating our country with a lot of disrespect, and they’re only getting in deeper and deeper.”
The university has fought back against what it claims is an attempt to undermine its commitment to academic freedom and independence.
The Trump administration announced that it would completely revoke Harvard’s ability to enroll international students and that it had cut off grants worth billions of dollars. According to the Department of Homeland Security, Harvard “promoted violence, antisemitism, and coordinated with the Chinese Communist Party.”
The university claimed in a statement at the time that the decree was a “series of government actions” aimed at punishing Harvard for its inability to grant academic independence and to retaliate against the federal government for its illegal granting of control of our curriculum, faculty, and student body.
A judge temporarily blocked the order on Friday after the university quickly filed a legal challenge to it in court.
Trinity Washington University president Patricia McGuire claimed on Wednesday that Trump’s policies against foreign students enrolling at US universities “make no sense.”
According to McGuire, “It’s so irrational because higher education is one of the top US exports to the world and the international students who come here enrich American universities greatly and transfer their knowledge to all of their countries around the world for the improvement of their countries and their populations,” McGuire told Al Jazeera from Washington, DC.
According to McGuire, Trump’s actions are in line with “an administration that has literally snatched students off the street and taken them detention centers,” referring to Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk, who was detained by masked federal agents in broad daylight on a street near her Massachusetts home in March.
The 30-year-old Turkish doctoral student was released from the immigration and customs enforcement agency this month by a court order.
Source: Aljazeera
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