President Donald Trump wants to know who exactly Harvard’s international students are—and why the countries they hail from aren’t paying up.
Trump claimed the Ivy League university has not been forthcoming about how much of its student body international students make up in an early-morning screed on Sunday.
“Why isn’t Harvard saying that almost 31% of their students are from FOREIGN LANDS, and yet those countries, some not at all friendly to the United States, pay NOTHING toward their student’s [sic] education, nor do they ever intend to,“ Trump wrote.
The Truth Social post came days after the Trump administration moved to block Harvard’s ability to admit foreign students, though a federal court temporarily blocked the move. International students generally pay their own tuition and are a major source of revenue for the university.
”Nobody told us that! We want to know who those foreign students are, a reasonable request since we give Harvard BILLIONS OF DOLLARS, but Harvard isn’t exactly forthcoming. We want those names and countries,” Trump added.
Harvard had 6,793 international students for the 2024-2025 academic year, or 27.2 percent of its student body, according to the university.
The White House did not respond to an immediate request for comment. Harvard also did not respond to an immediate request for comment.
The Trump administration and Harvard have sparred since March after the administration’s antisemitism task force said it would review the school’s federal funds, a continuation of the Republican Party’s war with top universities after GOP leaders said they were not doing enough to combat antisemitism on campus. The administration has halted nearly $2.7 billion in federal grants to the university since March, most recently blocking $450 million in grants earlier this month.
Critics have said the effort is a proxy fight for Republicans to root out left-wing ideology from higher education.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem revoked Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification on Thursday, she wrote in a letter to Harvard. SEVP allows the university to enroll non-immigrant, foreign students.
Trump claimed the move was warranted because some of the students needed “remedial math.”
“The students can’t add two and two, and they go to Harvard… now, wait a minute. So why would they get in?” he said, referencing Harvard’s new introductory math course.
It followed Harvard’s refusal to comply with Noem’s sweeping records request last month, which demanded the names of student visa-holders, their course of study, and whether any had been engaged in illegal activity. The university said in an April 30 letter that it would provide information “required by law” but that it sought to maintain its status in the SEVP.
“Our thousands of international students who hail from more than 140 countries enrich the University community—and this nation—immeasurably with their presence and contributions,” Harvard’s executive vice president, Meredith Weenick, wrote.
The university slammed Noem’s move last week. “This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission,” it said in a statement.
A federal court issued a temporary restraining order to block Noem’s certification revocation on Friday after Harvard sued to block the administration’s “arbitrary, capricious, unlawful, and unconstitutional” move.
Harvard had already sued the Trump administration last month for its barrage of attacks on the university and claimed it violated the university’s First Amendment rights.
The post Trump Demands Harvard Students’ Info: ‘We Want Those Names’ appeared first on The Daily Beast.
