The Trump administration is ramping up its attack on Harvard University. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced Wednesday that it would subpoena the university for information regarding its Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), a program that certifies schools to enroll international students.
Since April, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has made sweeping demands that Harvard provide information on its over 10,000 foreign students in the name of combating antisemitism on the school’s campus. In May, Noem attempted to terminate the university’s SEVP—and put substantially more of the school’s revenue at risk—for “insufficient[ly]” complying with her demands, despite Harvard’s claims that it turned over the information requested by the DHS. But the move was quickly blocked by a U.S. district court judge, allowing international students to continue enrollment until litigation over the issue has been resolved.
“We tried to do things the easy way with Harvard. Now, through their refusal to cooperate, we have to do things the hard way,” said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin in response to the school’s repeated refusal to comply with “past non-coercive requests to hand over the required information” voluntarily. ”Harvard, like other universities, has allowed foreign students to abuse their visa privileges and advocate for violence and terrorism on campus,” she continued. “If Harvard won’t defend the interests of its students, then we will.”
The university told CBS News in a statement that Harvard is “committed to following the law, and while the government’s subpoenas are unwarranted, the university will continue to cooperate with lawful requests and obligations.”
Meanwhile, two other federal agencies—the Education Department and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—notified the university’s accrediting agency of the school’s noncompliance with federal law on Wednesday. This follows a June 30 letter from the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism—a task force created by Trump’s executive order to, in part, fight antisemitism on campuses—alerting Harvard’s president that the university was found to be in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin.
This threat to Harvard’s accreditation resembles a similar move by the administration against Columbia University in June, in which Education Secretary Linda McMahon asserted that noncompliance with federal laws makes the school ineligible for accreditation.
“By allowing antisemitic harassment and discrimination to persist unchecked on its campus, Harvard University has failed in its obligation to students, educators, and American taxpayers,” McMahon said in a statement on Wednesday. “When an institution—no matter how prestigious—abandons its mission and fails to protect its students, it forfeits the legitimacy that accreditation is designed to uphold,” added HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Ultimately, the accreditation organization (in Harvard’s case, the New England Commission of Higher Education) has the final say on whether a university’s accreditation will be revoked. But the threat of losing accreditation is significant given its potential to massively disrupt an institution’s ability to operate. Consequences include students’ academic credits becoming ineligible for transfer, disqualifying degrees from meeting many graduate schools’ admission criteria, and losing eligibility for federal student loans and Pell Grants.
“The administration’s ongoing retaliatory actions come as Harvard continues to defend itself and its students, faculty, and staff against harmful government overreach aimed at dictating whom private universities can admit and hire, and what they can teach,” Harvard told CBS News in a statement. “Harvard remains unwavering in its efforts to protect its community and its core principles against unfounded retribution by the federal government.”
Although the administration’s aggressive actions could put a deal with Harvard at risk, Trump is confident they won’t. When asked by reporters shortly after the DHS announcement whether he was optimistic about still reaching a deal with the university, Trump replied, “Oh yeah, I think so. Harvard’s been very bad, totally antisemitic….They’ll absolutely reach a deal.”
