France says supports Harvard, welcomes foreign students

PARIS: France’s foreign minister on Saturday said his country supported students and staff at Harvard, after President Donald Trump tried to ban foreign students from the prestigious US university.

“We stand with universities facing the threat of government control, restriction to their funding, constraints on their curricula or research projects,” Jean-Noel Barrot said during a commencement address at the high-profile HEC business school in Paris.

“We stand with Harvard faculty, with Harvard students, facing unjustified stress and anxiety right now,” he added in English.

“Should US courts uphold decisions to ban international students, France will offer (them) a safe place to complete their degrees,” he said.

Universities and research facilities in the United States have come under increasing political and financial pressure under Trump, including with threats of massive federal funding cuts.

Harvard has been at the forefront of Trump’s campaign against top American universities after it defied his calls to submit to oversight of its curriculum, staffing, student recruitment and “viewpoint diversity”.

A US court last week put a temporary stay on Trump’s latest effort to stop foreign students from enrolling at Harvard.

A White House proclamation a day earlier had sought to bar most new international students at Harvard from entering the country, and said existing foreign enrollees risked having their visas terminated.

The US government has already cut around $3.2 billion of federal grants and contracts benefiting Harvard and pledged to exclude the institution from any future federal funding.

France and the European Union are seeking to encourage disgruntled researchers to relocate from the United States to Europe.

European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen said last month that the EU would launch a new incentives package worth 500 million euros ($580 million) to make the 27-nation bloc “a magnet for researchers”.

French President Emmanuel Macron in April unveiled plans for a funding programme to help national universities and other research bodies cover the cost of bringing foreign scientists to the country.