In a sharply worded rebuke from the federal bench, a Boston judge has halted the Trump administration’s latest volley in its escalating feud with Harvard University—this time over international students.
U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs said she would extend a court order shielding Harvard from a federal move to revoke its ability to enroll non-U.S. students, calling for a full injunction as legal battles play out. It was a timely intervention: just five miles from the courthouse, Harvard’s graduates walked across the commencement stage—some wearing mortarboards with pro-international messages, others clutching uncertain futures.
President Donald Trump’s administration has waged an aggressive campaign against the Ivy League titan, freezing research funding, launching discrimination probes, and now, targeting its international student pipeline—a group that makes up over a quarter of Harvard’s total enrollment and nearly 60% of students at its prestigious Kennedy School.
The timing was anything but subtle.
A day earlier, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the administration would begin a wide-scale visa crackdown targeting Chinese students—particularly those with supposed ties to the Chinese Communist Party or working in “critical” but undefined academic fields. More than 275,000 Chinese students study in the U.S., bringing both talent and tuition revenue, and the decision sparked outrage and anxiety across campuses nationwide.
In court, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) tried to backpedal, telling Harvard it now had 30 days to respond to the threat of decertification—softening its original position that the revocation would be immediate. Government lawyers argued that the delay rendered court action unnecessary. Judge Burroughs wasn’t buying it.
“Aren’t we still going to end up back here at the same place?” she asked, skeptical that due process would change the administration’s trajectory. She also pressed the government on whether it had fully complied with her earlier restraining order, after Harvard revealed that incoming students had already seen their visas yanked.
The Trump administration has accused Harvard of fostering antisemitism, promoting violence, and colluding with foreign powers—claims made without public evidence. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem insisted the school refused to provide student visa data and framed the move as a national security measure.
Harvard, for its part, has characterized the administration’s actions as an unprecedented, retaliatory assault on academic freedom—punishment, it argues, for resisting pressure to politicize its curriculum and campus culture. A separate lawsuit over the loss of $3 billion in federal research funding is also underway.
While the courtroom skirmish continues, one thing is clear: the fight between the White House and one of America’s oldest universities has become more than a policy dispute—it’s a clash over who gets to define the values of higher education in the U.S. And for now, at least, Judge Burroughs has placed a legal firewall between Harvard and the administration’s fire.
