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On April 11, the Trump administration sent Harvard University a sweeping set of demands—among them that the university report international students to the federal government for violation of student conduct policies—ostensibly to curb antisemitism on campus. Three days later, Harvard president Alan Garber announced that the school would “continue to follow the law”; Harvard, he said, would not comply with Trump’s demands. The administration promptly froze $2.2 billion in federal funding to the university.
The backlash didn’t stop there. On Tuesday, Trump proposed revoking Harvard’s tax-exempt status for “pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting Sickness,” following similar threats leveled at other prominent universities. And on Wednesday, Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem sent Harvard yet another letter: On top of actualizing earlier threats to withdraw federal funds—$2.7 million dollars in her agency’s grants, she announced, would be paused—Noem now threatened to revoke Harvard’s eligibility to host any international students, describing the institution as “a cesspool of extremist riots…with anti-American, pro-Hamas ideology poisoning its campus and classrooms” and international students as “foreign visa-holding rioters.”
If Harvard did not comply by April 30, Noem said, Immigration and Customs Enforcement would remove the university from its Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP). “The withdrawal will not be subject to appeal,” she wrote. (An ICE website updated in mid-March says that students whose schools are removed from SEVP must seek to transfer to another institution, change their status, or depart the United States.)
Wednesday’s letter sent Harvard’s international student community into a panic. A group of students organized a rally the following day, pushing for Harvard to stand firm in its refusal to “allow itself to be taken over by the federal government,” as lawyers for Harvard President Alan Garber put it. “Harvard will not accept the government’s terms,” the lawyers wrote—terms which included providing the names and records of international students disciplined “as a result of participating in protests” or for “obstruction of the school learning environment.”
More than 500 people showed up to Thursday’s rally—but only two international students were prepared to speak publicly.
Abdullah Shahid Sial, a 20-year-old sophomore from Pakistan, was one of them. Sial, who is the incoming co-president of Harvard’s undergraduate student body, considered it a duty to speak on behalf of Harvard’s 6,700 international students, who comprise over a quarter of the school’s total population. But he understood why few international students were joining him.
“Speaking out comes at a very high personal risk,” Sial admitted. “I don’t want to get sent back home on a free flight…but I’ve made peace with that worst-case scenario. I would probably be sent back home in a very undignified manner, first to Louisiana and maybe somewhere else.” Some of his fellow students, he said, are considering preemptively leaving the country: “They don’t want to get ICE involved.”
“People are scared. I’ve seen so many texts, so many calls about whether it’s wise to, you know, book a flight home,” Sial said. “International students are being played as poker chips, as negotiating tools…being disrespected and dehumanized.”
Harvard is only one of dozens of educational institutions nationwide where students are getting letters out of the blue saying their visas have been withdrawn. More than 1,550 students nationwide have had their visas revoked by the State Department since mid-March, according to Inside Higher Ed—often for arbitrary or unclear reasons.
Harvard, however, is the first school to be threatened with wholesale visa revocation for its entire international student body.
Leo Gerdén, a 22-year-old Harvard undergraduate from Sweden, is set to get his degree this spring. “The risk [of speaking] is somewhat more acceptable for me,” Gerdén said; he plans to leave the country after graduation.
“There is no Harvard without the international community. And what Trump is trying to do right now is divide us,” Gerdén said. “He’s telling us to point fingers and turn in the names of our friends so that we can keep our own student visas. And that is what we have to stand up against.”
If the university sends in the names of student protesters now, Gerdén and Sial said, there’s still no guarantee that the Trump administration won’t demand more. Last month, Columbia University caved to a series of Trump administration demands for more campus private security, a ban on face masks, and an external overseer for its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Africana Studies department. Two weeks later, undeterred, a Senate committee led by Louisiana Republican Bill Cassidy renewed demands for extensive information on student protesters at Columbia, and on campus groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine.
“Trump wants us to turn on each other,” said Sial. “But even if we comply now, there will be a new demand letter next week.”
