By Nate Raymond
BOSTON (Reuters) -A federal judge will consider on Thursday whether to further block U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration from revoking Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, a move the Ivy League school said would impact about a quarter of its student body and devastate the school.
At a hearing in Boston, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs will weigh whether to extend a temporary order she issued on Friday that blocked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from carrying out the revocation it issued a day earlier.
The department’s move was an escalation of the Trump administration’s attack on Harvard. It has accused the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based university of bias against conservatives and of fostering antisemitism on its campus.
The school’s lawyers argued the agency’s action was part of an “unprecedented and retaliatory attack on academic freedom at Harvard,” which is pursuing a separate lawsuit challenging the administration’s decision to terminate nearly $3 billion in federal research funding.
Harvard argues the Trump administration is retaliating against it for refusing to cede to its demands to control the school’s governance, curriculum and the “ideology” of its faculty and students.
The case before Burroughs, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, was filed after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem last week revoked the school’s certification in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which gives it the ability to allow enrollment of non-U.S. students.
In announcing the decision, Noem, without providing evidence, accused the university of “fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party.”
In a letter that day, she accused the school of refusing to comply with wide-ranging requests for information on its student visa holders, including about any activity they engaged in that was illegal or violent or that would subject them to discipline.
“As I explained to you in my April letter, it is a privilege to enroll foreign students, and it is also a privilege to employ aliens on campus,” she said.
Harvard said the decision was “devastating” for the school and its student body. The university, the nation’s oldest and wealthiest, enrolled nearly 6,800 international students in its current school year, about 27% of its total enrollment.
The department’s move would prevent Harvard from enrolling new international students and require existing ones to transfer to other schools or lose their legal status.
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday that Harvard University should have a 15% cap on the number of non-U.S. students it admits. “Harvard has got to behave themselves,” he said.
Harvard argues that the revocation of its ability to enroll international students violated its free speech and due process rights under the U.S. Constitution as well as the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs agency actions.
Its lawyers say Harvard’s certification was revoked abruptly without complying with federal regulations requiring the department to provide a legitimate reason for its actions and advance notice and an opportunity to address any issues.
Under DHS regulations, the department was required to provide it at least 30 days to present evidence to challenge the agency’s allegations and provide the school an opportunity to pursue an administrative appeal, they said.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Bill Berkrot)
Comments