The protesters join in Cambridge Common in a protest organized by the city of Cambridge asking Harvard leadership to resist interference at the university by the federal government in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA UU. (File photo) | Photo credit: Nicholas Pfosi
For all those who apparently surprise or intend to be overwhelmed by what the president of the United States, Donald Trump, better look at the 2024 campaign or read the Republican manifesto that came out in July.
One of the points said: “Short federal funds for any school that pushes the theory of critical race, radical gender ideology and other racial, sexual or political content inappropriate in our children.”
Duration The course of his Trump campaign did not make bones of the fact that he was going to “fix” higher education and conservatives have been training their weapons for a long time in the establishments of the East and West coast as bastions of liberal ideology.
“The days of subsidizing communist indoctrination at our conferences will soon end,” Trump said in an event, adding in another, “to each president of the university: to overcome the radicals and recover our campus for all normal students.”
The Trump Administration approach in higher education occurred in two ways: first on the immigration front when the application agents identified and issued packing orders to all international students who had violated their student visa status F-1 by participating in pro-palestinian demonstrations and vigils on the campus following the indignation of Gaza.
In this way, the Administration also sought to identify those who were seen as anti -Semites. The message for foreign students was simple: “You came here with a visa just to study.”
Frozen financing
The second came through another opinion: adhere to administration policies or face the federal fund cut. Starting with Columbia, the pressure tactic began to spread, but when Harvard resisted, it becomes that the remuneration could come in two ways: a rethinking the exempt of taxes of the institution and make it inligible to attract foreign students. “Maybe Harvard should lose his tax exempt from taxes and be taxed as a political entity if he continues to press political, idological and terrorist disease?” Trump in his social media site.
It is not as if the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is ready to move tomorrow, since the whole process could take months, if not years and can see a prolonged legal battle that will possibly be a country in the Apex court. But financial implications will be serious even if Harvard has an endowment of $ 50 billion.
The annual registration income, the Chamber and the Board will be subject to federal and state taxes; And donations will no longer be taxes.
A more chilling reminder came from the Department of National Security with its secretary demanding Harvard’s details about violent and illegal activities committed by foreign students in Visa. The warning was that if this information is not disclosed at the end of April, the institution would lose the certification of the student and exchanges visitors and, therefore, will not be able to admit foreign students.
Deportation threat
The squeeze of foreign students, even from India, has been quite visible since January 20, 2025, with several deportation notices for what has bone as minor infractions over an earlier period and not necessarily confined to Gaza’s protests.
Educational institutes have come to feel the possible loss in the registration of foreign students, the pinch especially in smaller schools and logic universities throughout the country, especially those who have not recovered completely from COVID weakening losses.
American educators point out that the number of international subgrade students who register decreased by 2023-24 the previous year; and has a drop of 18 percent of the 2019-20 figures. The contribution to the economy is not a small change: foreign students pump between $ 43 billion and $ 50 billion to the economy in addition to creating or supporting about 380,000 jobs.
The writer is a senior journalist who has reported Washington DC in North America and the UN.
Posted on April 18, 2025