Harvard’s foreign students in limbo after Trump administration revokes their enrollment

LONDON/AMSTERDAM/HEMHOFEN, Germany: Thousands of foreign students at Harvard University were stuck in administrative limbo and looking for alternatives on Friday after US President Donald Trump’s administration revoked Harvard’s ability to enroll students from abroad.

Harvard currently has nearly 7,000 international students, representing about 27 percent of its total enrollment. Since taking office in January, Trump has assailed the so-called Ivy League universities, accusing them of fostering anti-American, Marxist and “radical left” ideologies.

While other universities would probably jump at the chance to get more Harvard-level students, taking in swathes of them is unlikely to be easy with only three months left until the start of the next academic year.

Michael Gritzbach, a German student who is studying for a master’s degree in public administration, described the move as a “dream turned into a nightmare”, especially for those who had saved up for years or had won scholarships.

He warned that even a court victory could not guarantee that foreign students would be able to continue to study at Harvard because “we do not know if the government will accept that, or if the whole situation will just take too long for us to react in time.”

A British student at Cambridge University who was due to start her master’s degree at Harvard’s School of Education in September did not think the Trump administration would actually go ahead with banning international students.

The student, who communicates regularly with other international students accepted into Harvard and asked not to be named to speak freely, said the main consensus was that “there is honestly nothing we can do ourselves right now”.

She said that if she were to go to Harvard as planned, she was concerned about being able to speak openly. “It’s worrying everywhere, but especially on a student campus where the exchange of ideas is supposed to be celebrated. If I do end up coming to Harvard, going on campus, I know that I’ll be watched as an international student in certain ways.”