The Trump Administration told Harvard University it can’t enroll international students, delivering a major blow to the school after the government froze billions of dollars of federal funding and escalating its fight with elite colleges to unprecedented levels. 

The US revoked Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, meaning the school can no longer enroll foreign students. Existing international students must transfer or lose their legal status, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Thursday.  

“Harvard’s leadership has created an unsafe campus environment by permitting anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators to harass and physically assault individuals, including many Jewish students, and otherwise obstruct its once-venerable learning environment,” the statement said. The department also accused Harvard’s leadership of co-ordinating with the Chinese Communist Party. 

Harvard responded by calling the government’s action unlawful. 

“We are fully committed to maintaining Harvard’s ability to host international students and scholars, who hail from more than 140 countries and enrich the University – and this nation – immeasurably,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “We are working quickly to provide guidance and support to members of our community.” 

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in April demanded Harvard submit records of any violent or illegal activity by foreign students by April 30 or immediately lose certification under the federal government’s student visa program. At Harvard almost 6,800 students – 27% of the entire student body — come from other countries, up from 19.6% in 2006, according to the university’s data.

“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” Noem said Thursday. “It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments.”

The blockade on international student enrollment will compound the financial pressures for Harvard. While the Trump administration has curtailed research funding and criticized diversity efforts at other schools, no university has been as hard hit by its push to remake higher education as Harvard. 

The school has sued several US agencies for blocking federal funds after the government demanded it remake its governance, transform admissions and faculty hiring, stop admitting international students hostile to US values and enforce viewpoint diversity. 

Trump has also called for the institution to lose its tax-exempt status, a move that the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based school has cautioned would have “grave consequences for the future of higher education in America.”

Harvard, the oldest and richest US college, emerged as a target for the White House as the government pursues a campaign to fundamentally remake the nation’s elite universities. The schools have become a lightning rod for criticism after pro-Palestinian student protests broke out in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel and the Jewish state’s retaliatory response in Gaza. While the Trump administration has said its trying to root out antisemitism, its broadened its attacks to diversity initiatives and left-leaning biases. 

Harvard President Alan Garber has pushed back saying it won’t “surrender its independence or its constitutional rights.” Garber, who’s Jewish, has long maintained that Harvard would work with the government to combat antisemitism — something he acknowledges is a problem on campus — but that the White House demands threaten academic freedom.

The New York Times first reported the government’s action on foreign students. 

This action continues the Trump Administration’s assault on free speech and university autonomy, said Robert Shireman, a former deputy undersecretary of education in the Obama administration, who’s now a senior fellow at the Century Foundation.

“International scholars bring enormous benefits to America,” Shireman said. “This is a malicious attempt to chill the exchange of ideas, instead imposing centralized control of scientific and historical study.”