The Trump administration’s attempt to prevent Harvard University from enrolling international students spells the president’s “most serious attack on the university to date,” a former leader of Harvard and frequent critic of the school said.
“It would be devastating if it was allowed to go into effect, not just for the university but for the image of the United States in the world, where our universities in general, and Harvard in particular, have been a beacon,” Former Harvard President Larry Summers said in an interview Friday with Politico.
More than a quarter of Harvard’s student body is international.
A federal judge on Friday blocked the administration from revoking a key certification that allows Harvard to enroll those students, one of a litany of actions the government has taken to exert control over the prestigious school.
Read more: Here’s everything Trump has stripped from Harvard so far — and what is threatened
Summers argued that the loss of international students would diminish entrepreneurship on one of the nation’s leading campuses, the school that produced numerous scientific leaders who were born abroad.
“It would make us less secure. After all, World War II was won by scientific innovation done by immigrants to American universities,” Summers said.
“It’s hard to imagine a greater strategic gift to China than for the United States to sacrifice its role as a beacon to the world,” he added.
The Trump administration had given Harvard an April deadline to submit detailed records about foreign students or lose the certification to enroll them.
Harvard President Alan Garber said in a Friday letter to the school community that it had responded to the request as required by law. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose department sought the records, said the school’s response was unsatisfactory.
The federal government has pinpointed campus antisemitism as the reason for the escalating attacks on Harvard, though legal scholars and higher education community members have disagreed, claiming it is instead going after Harvard as a symbol of higher education.
Summers, an economist and former Treasury Secretary who led Harvard from 2001 to 2006, has been a frequent critic of the university.
Yet he said the Trump administration has pursued a “punitive vendetta” against the university and clearly violated Harvard’s right to due process and protections under the First Amendment.
“I’m certainly someone who has been critical of Harvard on antisemitism, on excessive identity politics, on lack of political diversity, on the need to more vigorously support American national security,” he told Politico. “But the merits of this case are overwhelming, and Harvard needs to point them out as vigorously as it can, both in the court of law and in the court of public opinion.”
