The war between Harvard and the President has intensified. The administration's latest salvos include asking federal agencies to cancel about $100 million in contracts with the Ivy League school. The government already canceled more than $2.6 billion in federal research grants, moved to cut off Harvard's enrollment of international students, and threatened its tax-exempt status.
Visa interviews for international students admitted to schools nationwide were halted on Tuesday, and Trump said Wednesday that Harvard should reduce its international enrollment from 25% to about 15%. But a federal judge in Boston said Thursday that she plans to issue a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from revoking the school's certification to host foreign students.
AFN spoke with Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, who claims many of those students have been troublemakers.
"A lot of those students were involved in the campus unrest, deliberate targeting of other students on campus, harassing students, denying students their ability to get their own education based on their religion," he says. "And a lot of these foreign students were involved in antisemitic activities on campus."
The FAIR spokesman likes Trump's idea of rerouting Harvard's federal grants to trade schools instead. "If they [Harvard] choose to continue these actions and allow these sorts of behaviors to take place on campus, it is going to cost them three-billion dollars," he points out. "Even for a school with an endowment as large as Harvard's, it is a substantial amount of money."
Harvard, the nation's wealthiest university, is sustained by a $53 billion endowment.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
