“Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard,” says Harvard University’s lawsuit against the federal government’s demand that it comply with the nation’s civil rights laws.
The Harvard lawsuit was filed Friday morning, just a day after the Department of Homeland Security notified Harvard that it had lost visa privileges for foreign students. The privileges were withdrawn after it refused to provide evidence that the University complies with the nation’s policies and laws against discrimination, passivity towards violence on campus, and cooperation with foreign dictatorships.
The Harvard lawsuit says:
Yesterday, the government abruptly revoked that certification without process or cause, to immediate and devastating effect for Harvard and more than 7,000 [foreign] visa holders.
…
With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body, international students who contribute significantly to the University and its mission … Effective immediately, most of Harvard’s thousands of enrolled [foreign] F-1 and J-1 visa students (and their more than 300 dependents) will have little choice but to secure transfer to another school or risk being rendered without lawful status in the United States … Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard.
“If only Harvard cared this much about ending the scourge of anti-American, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist agitators on their campus they wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with,” the White House said in response. “Harvard should spend their time and resources on creating a safe campus environment instead of filing frivolous lawsuits.”
Roughly one-quarter of Harvard’s students are foreigners, most of whom hope to convert their university connections into careers in the United States via the work permits provided by the federal Optional Practical Training (OPT) program.
“To watch my dream and those of my international peers be turned into a nightmare is one of the hardest experiences of my life,” Ella Ricketts, a Canadian, told the New York Times on Thursday. “The thought of leaving the Harvard community — the place where I feel most at home — remains almost impossible to consider.”
“There are so many students from all over the world who came to Harvard to make it a better place and to change America and change their home countries for the better,” a perhaps overconfident Austrian student, Karl Molden, told the newspaper. “Now it’s all at risk of falling apart, which is breaking my heart.”
“Without its international students and without its ability to bring in the best people from around the world, Harvard is not going to be Harvard anymore,” Leo Gerden told the New York Times, echoing the university’s lawsuit.
Harvard’s rising share of foreigners excludes many thousands of young Americans from elite connections and career prospects — but establishment groups favor Harvard’s global ambitions and visa enrollments.
Trump’s “nativism is one hell of a drug,” complained Bill Kristol at TheBulwark. He added:
Foreigners studying and working here are not damaging the United States. A virulently nativist administration is what’s damaging the United States. It’s doing so in ways from which it will be difficult to recover. Just as important, it’s doing so in ways that will be a permanent stain on this nation’s history.
The OPT program is facing growing political pressure, in part because it was created by President George W. Bush, not Congress, yet annually puts at least 300,000 tax-exempt foreigners into the resume-building white-collar jobs needed by American graduates.
The universities’ ability to place foreigners into American jobs through OPT helps earn them more than $30 billion in tuition fees each year.
Harvard’s lawsuit admits:
Harvard sponsors approximately 2,000 recent graduates who are working in jobs across the country on F-1 visas as part of the Optional Practical Training (OPT) and STEM OPT programs. And Harvard also hosts several hundred individuals who hold J-1 visas.
Harvard’s researchers get large science grants from the federal government, and they use the J-1 students to accelerate work in the laboratories. Many of the foreign students stay in the United States, but many return home, taking their knowledge, skills, and future patents with them.
Harvard asked the government to empathize with their privileged foreign students’ desires to take jobs in the United States:
Students make major life and professional decisions based on their educational plans, including to pursue a program on the understanding that they will be able to access pre- and post-graduate pathways to employment like the Optional Practical Training and Curricular Practical Training Visas. They transplant themselves, and often their families, too, to come to Cambridge and Boston to study
Business groups and pro-migration advocates are aligning themselves with Harvard as they try to defend the OPT program from reforms.
“This is unprecedented,” said Andrea Flores, who is a top lobbyist for the West Coast consumer-economy investors at FWD.us who backed the mass migration under President Joe Biden. “D.H.S. has never tried to reshape the student body of a university by revoking access to its vetting systems, and it is unique to target one institution over hundreds that it certifies every year.”
Since the mid-1990s, American graduates have been losing opportunities, careers, and income to the rising inflow of foreign visa workers. The damage accelerated rapidly under President Joe Biden, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently reported, “The labor market for recent college graduates deteriorated noticeably in the first quarter of 2025. The unemployment rate jumped to 5.8 percent—the highest reading since 2021—and the underemployment rate rose sharply to 41.2 percent.”
The unemployment rate for high-tech graduates was higher than average, according to the report. For example, the unemployment rate for “computer engineering” graduates was 7.5 percent, and for “computer science” graduates was 6.1 percent.
“Something strange, and potentially alarming, is happening to the job market for young, educated workers,” the Atlantic magazine reported in April. “Even newly minted M.B.A.s from elite programs are struggling to find work,”
‘The damage to Americans [from OPT] far outweighs any minor benefit to employers, which is strictly financial,” said Jessica Vaughan, the policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies.
She added:
There are Americans who could do these jobs. It’s not like we’re denying [companies] talent. It’s just the elimination OPT would be denying them cheaper talent. [It] operates without any oversight whatsoever, whether on salaries or fair competition for the jobs, or discrimination … It was created out of thin air and without a statutory basis [from the Congress].
On Thursday, the administration explained its shutdown of Harvard’s foreign inflow.
“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” a statement from Kristi Noem, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said.
She continued:
It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments. Harvard had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing. It refused. They have lost their Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification as a result of their failure to adhere to the law.
“Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country,” the DHS letter said.
