Trump Administration: Harvard Must Provide Info on Foreign Students’ Misconduct or All Will Be Barred

The Trump administration announced Wednesday that Harvard University must provide information on misconduct involving foreign students by April 30, or else it will lose the ability to enroll them at all.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said in a press statement that she was canceling $2.7 million in grants awarded by her department — one that had produced a study disparaging conservatives as a security risk, and another that she said had promoted “public health propaganda” about the coronavirus pandemic.

In addition, Noem said:

The Secretary also wrote a scathing letter demanding detailed records on Harvard’s foreign student visa holders’ illegal and violent activities by April 30, 2025, or face immediate loss of Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification.

“Harvard bending the knee to antisemitism — driven by its spineless leadership — fuels a cesspool of extremist riots and threatens our national security,” said Secretary Noem. “With anti-American, pro-Hamas ideology poisoning its campus and classrooms, Harvard’s position as a top institution of higher learning is a distant memory. America demands more from universities entrusted with taxpayer dollars.”

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Since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Harvard’s foreign visa-holding rioters and faculty have spewed antisemitic hate, targeting Jewish students. With a $53.2 billion endowment, Harvard can fund its own chaos—DHS won’t. And if Harvard cannot verify it is in full compliance with its reporting requirements, the university will lose the privilege of enrolling foreign students.

Harvard has struggled with anti-Israel “encampments” and antisemitic protests since the October 7 terror attack by Hamas, which dozens of Harvard student organizations blamed on Israel in a signed statement.

More than one in four students at Harvard is an international student, with 27.2% of the entire student body, graduate and undergraduate — some 6,793 students — from abroad, according to the university’ own data.

There is a correlation between elite, expensive colleges and the likelihood of anti-Israel “encampments.”

The high presence of foreign students at more elite institutions may be one explanation for that phenomenon.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the U.S. has already deported hundreds of foreign students who were involved in radical protests in the past 18 months, which have brought antisemitism to many campuses.

Harvard has vowed to fight the Trump administration’s directives on fighting antisemitism, among other changes, though some $9 billion in federal grants are at stake, $2.2 billion of which have been suspended.

CNN reported Wednesday that the Trump administration has also ordered the Internal Revenue Service to prepare to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status, which has allowed it to amass a $53 billion endowment.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.