A federal judge temporarily halted the Trump administration\u2019s ban on Friday, after the nation\u2019s oldest and wealthiest college filed a suit in federal court. Harvard argued revocation of its certification in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program was \u201cclear retaliation\u201d for its refusal of the government\u2019s ideologically rooted policy demands. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re literally like, teenagers, thousands of miles away from their hometowns having to deal with this situation, which lawyers often fear to engage in,\u201d said Sial, who is currently traveling overseas after exams and is uncertain if he\u2019ll be able to return to campus. <\/p>\n
About 27% of Harvard\u2019s student body is international, with 6,793 international undergraduates and grad students hailing from nearly every country in the world. <\/p>\n
Sial said the university and deans have been helpful in supporting international students at a time of uncertainty and \u201cpure panic,\u201d which is happening days after final exams ended and just one week before graduation. <\/p>\n
As student body president, he says he is working to encourage the university to assist international students who want to transfer to other colleges and pushing for students\u2019 financial aid packages to transfer, as well. But the window to transfer to other universities for the fall semester is already closed at most colleges, Sial said. <\/p>\n
\u201cMany of us have worked our entire lives to get to a university like Harvard, and now we need to wait around and see if we might have to transfer out and face difficulties with visas,\u201d says rising junior Karl Molden, from Austria. <\/p>\n
Molden, who is also traveling abroad and concerned he won\u2019t be allowed to return to campus, said he feels international students are being used as a \u201cball in this larger fight between democracy and authoritarianism.\u201d <\/p>\n
Harvard and Trump officials have been locked in conflict for months as the administration demands the university make changes to campus programming, policies, hiring and admissions to root out what the White House has called antisemitism and \u201cracist\u201d practices. <\/p>\n
Like many other colleges and universities, Harvard drew intense criticism last year for its handling of pro-Palestinian protests and encampments following the start of the Israel-Hamas war, as well as complaints from Jewish alumni and students about antisemitism on campus. <\/p>\n
Harvard has acknowledged antisemitism on its campus, particularly during the previous academic year, and said it has begun taking concrete action to address it. <\/p>\n
An Israeli postdoctoral student studying at Harvard said she feels like Jewish students are \u201cbeing used as pawns\u201d by the Trump administration, which has accused the university of perpetuating an unsafe campus environment that is \u201chostile to Jewish students\u201d and \u201cemploys racist diversity, equity and inclusion practices.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Israeli student, who did not want to be named in fear of being denied reentry to the United States, said she believed the Trump administration was \u201cusing\u201d the university to \u201chave this battle with academia that is much bigger than Harvard.\u201d <\/p>\n
She said the government was clamping down on ideas that \u201cdon\u2019t always align with the administration, rather than (having) an actual concern for the safety of Jewish students, Israeli students.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cSo, I do feel like we\u2019re being used,\u201d she said, adding that she thinks university leadership is <\/strong>taking the issue of antisemitism on campus seriously. \u201cI don\u2019t want to diminish anyone\u2019s experience at the university. I know people have had tough experiences, but I do feel like I have, personally, 100% trust and faith in our leadership.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cAs a graduate student, we are just fully occupied with our research work, which I would say I spend 80 to 100 hours on each week,\u201d said the Australian student, adding that the showdown between the Trump administration and Harvard will likely lead to researchers leaving the country. \u201cIf things really hit the fan, (I) would probably be trying to transfer to a school in the UK.\u201d <\/p>\n Other graduate students said they are also feeling fear and uncertainty, with concerns for their research work, their future careers and their loved ones. <\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s the ramifications for their family, you know, spouses, their children, their enrollment, their work status, their rent, housing, everything,\u201d said Fangzhou Jiang, 30, from China. He is a Harvard Kennedy School student going into his second year of a master\u2019s program. \u201cYou just don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen.\u201d <\/p>\n For some international students, like those from countries at war or experiencing political turmoil, the stakes are even higher. <\/p>\n Maria Kuznetsova, a former spokesperson for OVD-Info, a Russian independent human rights monitoring group, is currently a graduate student at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She\u2019s graduating in a week and had planned to work on a Harvard-sponsored visa that had already been granted, but she fears it may be canceled now. <\/p>\n \u201cFrom what I see, people are still in a state of panic \u2013 everyone\u2019s waiting for the court\u2019s decision,\u201d Kuznetsova said. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not just me from Russia here \u2013 there are also many Ukrainians, a lot of political students from Venezuela, and people from Afghanistan and Palestine. I even have a classmate from North Korea. These are people who, quite literally, cannot return to their home countries,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n Ivan Bogantsev, also from Russia, was planning to stay in the US after completing his program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His wife, currently in Russia and also on a Harvard-sponsored visa, is due to arrive for his graduation, but he\u2019s unsure whether she\u2019ll be allowed entry. <\/p>\n But he said going back to Russia is not an option he is considering. <\/p>\n \u201cI was detained at rallies (in Russia), and let\u2019s just say the atmosphere was growing increasingly tense. And secondly, most of my friends are essentially labeled (in Russia) as criminals, traitors or foreign agents.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI was looking forward to celebrating commencement next week, but now, you know, I might leave this place and it will not look the same next semester, because without these international students and its international researchers, the Harvard campus will not be the same,\u201d Gerd\u00e9n said. <\/p>\n \u201cWe are being used essentially as poker chips in a battle between the White House and Harvard, and it feels honestly very dehumanizing.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A federal judge temporarily halted the Trump administration\u2019s ban on Friday, after the nation\u2019s oldest and wealthiest college filed a suit in federal court. Harvard argued revocation of its certification in the Student and Exchange…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8086,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Young researchers say they will leave US<\/h2>\n
Facing deportation from the US, and retribution at home<\/h2>\n
\u2018Harvard campus will not be the same\u2019<\/h2>\n