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Harvard University has won a court order that temporarily blocks a plan by Donald Trump’s administration to bar it from enrolling international students.
US district judge Allison Burroughs issued a ruling on Friday that stops the government from going ahead with the move, which marked an escalation of the battle between the elite institution and the administration.
The university had shown that “it will sustain immediate and irreparable injury” without the temporary restraining order, the judge said in her ruling. It puts the government’s move on hold until a further hearing.
Her ruling came just hours after Harvard filed a legal complaint arguing that the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to ban the school from matriculating foreign students violated the school’s constitutional and due process rights. University president Alan Garber said in an open letter that a temporary restraining order would follow.
“It is the latest act by the government in clear retaliation for Harvard exercising its First Amendment rights to reject the government’s demands to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students,” the lawsuit read.
Secretary of homeland security Kristi Noem on Thursday sent a letter to Harvard informing the school that its incoming class of international students would be banned from attending and its existing foreign students would need to enrol elsewhere. Harvard has said it has about 7,000 current students that would be affected.
Noem accused Harvard of creating a “hostile” environment for Jewish students — an attack levelled by the administration against universities that were the scene of pro-Palestinian protests after Hamas’s October 7 2023 assault on Israel and the country’s subsequent offensive in Gaza.
Noem also claimed the school failed to comply with its request to provide all records of foreign students’ illegal, dangerous or violent activity, including instances of students making threats or disciplinary action taken against them. Garber, in his letter on Friday, argued that the school had complied with the law in requests on students sought by the department.
Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS’s assistant secretary for public affairs, said Harvard’s lawsuit aimed to undermine the president’s powers, and that the administration would remain steadfast in its effort to bar international students from the school.
“It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enrol foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments,” McLaughlin said.
“The Trump administration is committed to restoring common sense to our student visa system; no lawsuit, this or any other, is going to change that. We have the law, the facts and common sense on our side,” she added.
When asked by reporters in the Oval Office later on Friday if Trump was considering taking action to block other universities from enrolling foreign students, the president told reporters, “We’re taking a look at a lot of things.”
“We’re actually going to be doing something in the near future and make it possible for people to come into this country and come in and, you know, have a road toward citizenship, and I think it’ll be very exciting, but it’s too soon to speak.”
The action against Harvard sparked broader concern and criticism from university and academic bodies and networks representing international students, as well as some opportunistic responses. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology launched an invitation to Harvard’s current and future international students to enrol with it instead.
International students have long been an important source of tuition and other revenue to US universities, including Harvard.
The 1636 Forum of Harvard alumni estimated that international students generated more than $300mn in tuition fees for the university annually. A ban on foreign students would also threaten other revenues including more than $170mn in fees generated from the business school, it said.
Harvard’s lawsuit against the DHS is the school’s second legal action against the Trump administration. It first sued the administration last month over its demands to impose government oversight, which the school said undermined its academic freedom. The administration has also frozen more than $2.2bn in federal funding to the school.
Additional reporting from Steff Chávez in Washington