In yet another blow to the waning prestige of a once-great university, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has revoked certification for Harvard’s international students’ program.
The revocation means that Harvard cannot enroll foreign students for the 2025-26 school year. No more will the far-left university be able to import anti-American lunatics who spew hatred and threaten violence.
The university claims the move is “unlawful.” But that dubious opinion aside, the revocation follows the loss of federal funding and the denunciation of the university by a top doctor in its school of public health. Far-left ideology — notably diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) — have “totally corrupted” the university, he said.
Noem’s Letter
In a letter to the international programs director, Maureen Martin, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said the university had refused to comply with DHS demands for records on international students.
“As I explained to you in my April letter, it is a privilege to enroll foreign students, and it is also a privilege to employ aliens on campus,” she wrote:
All universities must comply with Department of Homeland Security requirements, including reporting requirements under the Student and Exchange Visitor Program regulations, to maintain this privilege. As a result of your refusal to comply with multiple requests to provide the Department of Homeland Security pertinent information while perpetuating an unsafe campus environment that is hostile to Jewish students, promotes pro-Hamas sympathies, and employs racist “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies, you have lost this privilege.
Thus ends the ability of Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program to enroll aliens with F-1 or J-1 visas. F-1 visas permit foreigners to study at American universities. J-1 visas permit foreigners to participate in exchange programs. The Harvard Crimson reported that the campus teems with about 6,000 aliens, many here on those visas.
Now, any aliens at Harvard on those visas “must transfer to another university in order to maintain their nonimmigrant status,” Noem explained.
Noem wrote that the university should not be surprised by the notice.
“On April 16, 2025, I requested records pertaining to nonimmigrant students enrolled at Harvard University, including information regarding misconduct and other offenses that would render foreign students inadmissible or removable,” the DHS chieftain wrote:
On April 30, 2025, Harvard’s counsel provided information that he represented as responsive to my request. It was not.
As a courtesy that Harvard was not legally entitled to, the Acting DHS General Counsel responded on my behalf and afforded Harvard another opportunity to comply. Harvard again provided an insufficient response.
Consequences must follow to send a clear signal to Harvard and all universities that want to enjoy the privilege of enrolling foreign students, that the Trump Administration will enforce the law and root out the evils of anti-Americanism and antisemitism in society and campuses.
Harvard can regain certification by providing the following records, including video, on nonimmigrant students, on campus or not, for the last five years, within 72 hours:
- “Illegal activity”;
- “Dangerous or violent activity”;
- “Threats to other students or university personnel”;
- “Deprivation of rights of other classmates or university personnel”;
- “Disciplinary records”;
- “Protest activity.”
“Harvard spokesperson Jason A. Newton called the DHS’s move ‘unlawful’ and wrote that Harvard was ‘fully committed’ to maintaining Harvard’s ability to enroll international students,” the Crimson reported:
“This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission,” he wrote in a statement.
Leftist Enclave
Noem’s is the second recent unwelcome missive from the Trump administration. On May 7, Education Secretary Linda McMahon told university President Alan Garber that Harvard would no longer receive federal subsidies. The university also called that move unlawful.
“Harvard will cease to be a publicly funded institution, and can instead operate as a privately-funded institution, drawing on its colossal endowment, and raising money from its large base of wealthy alumni,” McMahon wrote. “You have an approximately $53 Billion head start, much of which was made possible by the fact that you are living within the walls of, and benefiting from, the prosperity secured by the United States of America and its free-market system you teach your students to despise.”
For about the past year, Harvard has suffered one wound after another to its reputation. It was once considered among the top universities in the nation. No longer.
Plagiarism & DEI
Multiple cases of plagiarism among university officials showed that the university’s stubborn insistence on permitting DEI ideology to guide its hiring has wrecked its process for vetting academic credentials. Among the academic fraudsters is former President Claudine Gay, who was forced to resign her post. Somehow, though, she remains employed as the “Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government and of African and African-American Studies.” Other plagiarists are also still employed, its website shows. So DEI has also eviscerated the once-respected university’s honor code.
In the last week, two damning reports have shown that the university is a cesspool of anti-white, DEI hatred and activism.
The City Journal’s Christopher Rufo revealed internal documents that contained directives to discriminate against white men in hiring. “Behind the scenes, the university’s discrimination machine continues to operate at full capacity,” Rufo wrote.
“Harvard has strayed from its foundational mission of unbiased truth-seeking and has become ideologically driven, too often resembling a secular church or a partisan think tank,” Omar Sultan Haque told Rufo:
The university’s culture and practices prioritize ideological conformity over open inquiry and debate, suppressing dissenting viewpoints and compromising academic freedom. This shift undermines the core values of a secular university and poses a threat to the integrity of academia and broader society.
As well, the university pushes “progressive viewpoints to the detriment of open inquiry, especially on social, moral, and political topics in teaching and research,” Haque said.
