A federal judge on Monday indefinitely blocked a recent attempt by President Donald Trump to deprive Harvard University of its ability to bring thousands of international students to its campus.
Judge Allison Burroughs of the US District Court in Massachusetts decided Trump’s recent presidential proclamation was a violation of the university’s constitutional protections, and part of a retaliatory campaign the Trump administration has waged.
The White House said the proclamation against international students coming to the US to study at Harvard was for national security purposes, because Harvard wasn’t properly vetting incoming scholars from other countries.
But Burroughs took the opportunity to outline her reaction to the administration’s repeated attempts to cut into Harvard’s student body and approach to teaching.
“This case is about core constitutional rights that must be safeguarded: freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and freedom of speech, each of which is a pillar of a functioning democracy and an essential hedge against authoritarianism,” Burroughs wrote in a 44-page opinion Monday.
“Here, the government’s efforts to control a reputable academic institution and squelch diverse viewpoints, seemingly because they are, in some instances, opposed to this Administration‘s own views, threaten these rights. To make matters worse, the government attempts to accomplish this, at least in part, on the backs of international students,” she wrote.
The judge previously indefinitely blocked an attempt by the Trump Homeland Security and State departments to revoke Harvard’s student visa program, which would have affected nearly a quarter of its student body and prompted students to leave the country or transfer.
Her decision on Monday dealt with a follow-up Trump administration action toward stopping international students from getting visas to study at Harvard.
Burroughs, an Obama appointee sitting in a jurisdiction with no Trump-appointed judges at the trial or appellate level, is also set to decide this summer on a major legal challenge from Harvard against the Trump administration’s decision to cut its federal grants. Various federal agencies have frozen more than $2 billion in funding for Harvard programs, largely for medical and scientific research.
The elite, wealthy private university is now at the center of Trump administration pushback against intellectual and cultural institutions that have been perceived as too liberal by the conservative administration. It is the most prominent American university to sue in response to Trump administration decisions that the university says could potentially cause major damage to it as an institution.
The administration has in some instances argued its various recent actions arose because Harvard hasn’t complied with the priorities of the president, such as anti-diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and scrutiny of the handling of campus protests around the war in Gaza and Israel.
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