President Donald Trump defended his decision on Sunday, currently being challenged in court, to ban foreign students from enrolling at Harvard University because he believes the US government has the right to investigate these students and believes their countries of origin are not contributing to their education.
“I wonder why Harvard doesn’t account for the fact that nearly 31 percent of its students come from foreign lands and that those countries, some of which are not at all friendly to the United States, do not pay anything for their students’ education, nor do they intend to,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Trump insisted that the government “wants to know who these foreign students are” — his administration has denounced the universities as breeding grounds for anti-Semitic groups and Palestinian militia propagandists — before adding that it is “a reasonable request because Harvard receives billions of dollars.”
However, the president has accused the university of not having behaved “precisely with much transparency.”
Harvard ultimately filed a lawsuit and a motion to stay the White House order on Friday, just hours after Trump announced his decision.
After asserting that it has always responded to Washington’s requests “as required by law,” the university ultimately asked a Massachusetts district court to declare the Trump administration’s order unconstitutional, violating the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause.
Justice Allison Burroughs ultimately ruled in favor of the university.
