8 hours ago
4
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
Fear and confusion mounted quickly on Thursday as international students, who make up more than a quarter of the university’s enrollment, sought clarity or reassurance.
May 22, 2025, 9:03 p.m. ET
Just before the Trump administration announced on Thursday that it would bar international students from Harvard, staff members from the university’s International Office met with graduating seniors at the Kennedy School of Government, congratulating them on their degrees — and on surviving the chaos of recent months.
Then, within minutes of the meeting’s end, news alerts lit up the students’ phones. Chaos was breaking out again: Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, had notified Harvard that its permission to enroll international students was revoked. With that, the degrees and futures of thousands of Harvard students — and an integral piece of the university’s identity and culture — were plunged into deep uncertainty.
“There are so many students from all over the world who came to Harvard to make it a better place and to change America and change their home countries for the better,” said Karl Molden, a student from Vienna who had just completed his sophomore year. “Now it’s all at risk of falling apart, which is breaking my heart.”
The university has faced rapid-fire aggressions since its president, Alan M. Garber, told the Trump administration in April that Harvard would not give in to demands to change its hiring and admissions practices and its curriculum. After the government froze more than $2 billion in grants, Harvard filed suit in federal court in Boston. Since then, the administration has gutted the university’s research funding, upending budgets and forcing some hard-hit programs to reimagine their scope and mission.
The end of international enrollment would transform a university where 6,800 students, more than a quarter of the total, come from other countries, a number that has grown steadily in recent decades. Graduate programs would be hit especially hard.
At the Kennedy School, 59 percent of students come from outside the United States. International students make up 40 percent of the enrollment at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health and 35 percent at the Harvard Business School.
