Trump against Harvard; judges against Trump
Here we go again.
Trump issued an order “revoking Harvard’s participation in F-1 and J-1 visa programs, under which foreign students attend Harvard.” The administration had asked Harvard to provide information on its foreign students’ participation in “illegal and violent activities,” and Harvard’s reply was not considered adequate. Harvard sued, and an injunction was issued against the administration.
John Hinderaker, who wrote the post I just linked, believes that the administration will lose this particular case, and even that they probably expect to lose it because they have arbitrarily dispensed with certain statutory requirements. He considers this particular action against Harvard to be more political than legal.
On the other hand – as pointed out at Legal Insurrection:
The judge made the ruling without a Trump lawyer present. As I stated in my blog yesterday and today, DHS gave Harvard 72 hours to respond to requests.
As Margot Cleveland pointed out, there is “no reason the court couldn’t have set [an] afternoon hearing.”
I suppose this one may end up going to SCOTUS as well.
One particularly interesting aspect of this case is how it highlights the extreme dependence a university such as Harvard has on foreign students. They pay full tuition for the most part, unlike many of Harvard’s regular students. The percentage of foreign students is twenty-seven percent of Harvard’s enrollment.
John Hinderaker is very legal minded, I think there is much beyond the legal shenanigans going on here, and Harvard has much to lose even if they “win”. They won’t be the same whatever goes down.
I think of Cambridge and Boston as the Barony of Harvard. Harvard says jump, and the police, politicians, and courts ask how high. I first noticed that attending a court proceeding for a protester back in 1968. Yeah, I’m slow 🙂
They’re not dependent on their foreign students. They are merely post-American. They have an abnormally large endowment income stream and they could reconfigure their admissions policies to recruit competent domestic applicants who can pay full freight. Please note, schools like Harvard reject > 90% of all applicants.
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If we had sensible public policies regarding inter-state and international recruitment, price discrimination could be practiced only one way: offering discounts on a uniform tuition charge and uniform room-and-board charge. Schools would also be required to make audited disclosures of date about their matriculants, such as the median board and achievement test scores of various demographic segments, the mean discount on tuition and room-and-board, and the share of the student body receiving discounts. Also, if we had sensible policy, visas for students, teachers, and their dependents would be distributed by via multiple price auction. The number of visas offered for auction each semester would be a function of the total population of temporary residents in the United States and the quantum of time on visas tossed into a secondary market exchange when their recipients left before their visa expired. Schools would have to purchase a visas or secondary market time sufficient to cover the time they sought to enroll or employ the beneficiary. One shot, know renewals or supplementary purchases. Columbia and Harvard want to recruit foreigners, they’d have to pay for it. Were we sensible.
If you are promoting a globalized narrative or agenda, I suppose you really do need a globalized student body to make it work.
Presumably the main concern with this judge supported lawfare is if the appeals take so long that not enough is done by the 2026 midterms, we may not prevail a year from now. I hope I am proven wrong, but right now I don’t sense that that Trump’s and other MAGA republican’s arguments that this is all the Democrats doing and fault are yet having the impact and effect that we need to retain (and increase) the R’s in the Congress after the midterms.
If you read the statement issued by harvards temporary president, he claims they complied “fully” with the government’s requests. He then says trump is acting “unconstitutionally” and “illegally” in getting rid of these students as if there was a section in the constitution concerning the country’s obligation to admit foreign students to American colleges
Obviously trump is going to lose this one once again, as Harvard, and especially Harvard-educated judges, are the smartest and most powerful people in the world—the true elites, and our true Betters
@ Deprastic > “Obviously trump is going to lose this one once again, as Harvard, and especially Harvard-educated judges, are the smartest and most powerful people in the world—the true elites, and our true Betters”
… and its alumni have 4 out of the 9 SCOTUS seats (Gorsuch, Jackson, Kagan, Roberts). Four more came from Yale (Alito, Kavanaugh, Sotomayor, Thomas), which isn’t making the news as much but is in the same situation as Harvard.
https://www.ctinsider.com/news/education/article/student-visas-revoked-trump-uconn-yale-ct-20269550.php
Barrett is from Notre Dame.
Where are her clerks coming from gorsuch or kavanaughs for that matter
https://x.com/johnddavidson/status/1926114472189460666
A common refrain the entire 40 years I was employed at that small New England college was “As goes Harvard, so goes the rest of academia.” The Trump administration is smart in targeting Harvard, and the rest of higher ed are taking notice. The new president of my former employer just signed on to a statement of solidarity with Harvard joined by over 400 other presidents. Interestingly enough the ”statement” never even hints at the issue of antisemitism and instead focuses on the attack on higher ed by the administration.
I have no idea on anything concerning the law. It’s too complicated and obscure for me, so I have no clue what will happen with all this. But, I totally applaud the attacks trump is making on higher ed. It’s been needed for a long time and will just draw more of the public’s attention to the corruption of morals that exist there.
https://www.aacu.org/newsroom/a-call-for-constructive-engagement
Piled higher and Deeper are the Ivies.
“As goes Harvard, so goes the rest of academia.”
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You’d think the professoriate would be less other-directed than people in other occupations, but the opposite is the case.
Trump is going to win on every issue because the constitution and the public is on his side. The fed courts are so far out of their lane, the snap back is going to give them whiplash. SCOTUS and the rest of fed courts are burning their credibility and their power to the ground.
The next step is arrests for civil rights violations.
“You’d think the professoriate would be less other-directed than people in other occupations, but the opposite is the case.”
LOL…you would think! There’s a reason leftism is so entrenched in the faculty…they basically are all followers despite their claim that they are courageous challengers to authority. Actually, pre 9/11 there was a lot of classic liberal thinking in the faculty, post 9/11 they all became sheep.
Harvard and the other top universities are not dependent on foreign students, but as you go lower in the rankings the dependence becomes more serious, especially at state universities.
Harvard does depend on Federal grants, like any university where real research happens the university skims 30-50% and uses that to subsidize deanlets and grievance studies programs.
I, too, pointed out that the judge issued the TRO without hearing from the United States.
Harvard’s 14 lawyers had spent some time writing that adjective-filed Complaint and they filed it on a Friday before a holiday weekend. Very high handed.
The issue is not that letting foreign students’ study at our universities is bad. The issue is that the universities have a duty to protect the rights of all students. The Ivies and others aren’t doing that job. They are favoring rabble rousing foreign students.
IMO, there should be a law passed directing that any foreign student that engages in illegal protests (violent, threatening, interfering with others’ rights, etc.) has forfeited the right to be here as a student.
This book, “HARVARD HATES AMERICA,” by John LeBoutillier
was written in 1978. He was a bit ahead of Allan Bloom and “The Closing of the American Mind.”
Forty-seven years of anti-American thought and actions by academics.
Like prostate cancer it has been slow growing but has now metastasized. Trump is right to push to try to stop it before it kills the nation. He has tools. Congress can pass laws, he can use the Sate Department, and DHS to control foreign student activity, and he can withhold money. May God help him and guide him
Stephen P. Lehotsky is the main lawyer for Harvard is a Harvard Law alum and former law clerk to Justice Scalia.
His law firm has only one non-white employee and more men than women. Under DEI rules, this firm should NOT have been hired by Harvard.
Epic hypocrites.
Widburg makes some good points supporting the contentions in the video by Mike Benz at miguel’s link to John Davidson’s tweet.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/05/the_new_york_times_concedes_that_harvard_can_t_fight_trump.html
Note: Hubert has a comment about Benz in re Jews and anti-Semitism, but I don’t know if that affects how Benz characterizes Harvard.
I don’t know anything about him or his ideological commitments except what I read on the internet.
https://thenewneo.com/2025/05/23/lies-beget-murder-blood-on-their-hands/#comment-2803454