On May 23, a judge granted Harvard University a temporary restraining order against the federal government following the Trump administration’s attempt to end the university’s ability to enroll international students. This is the latest update in President Donald Trump’s crusade against Harvard — but it certainly won’t be the last.
This comes after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem attempted to pull the plug on Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), which allows the university to admit students from outside the United States. On May 22, Noem announced the change in a letter stating that Harvard had “fail[ed] to adhere to the law,” but gave no further explanation as to what the university actually did. However, Harvard filed a lawsuit against the Trump admin, which resulted in the judge’s ruling.
In case you’re just now tuning into the ongoing battle between Trump and Harvard, here’s the rundown: Harvard and the Trump administration have been clashing relentlessly for more than a month. In April, the Trump administration revoked $2.2 billion in Harvard’s federal funding for failing to eliminate its DEI programs. Following the April 15 order to do so, Noem demanded that Harvard hand over the disciplinary, academic, and legal records of its international students. If the university didn’t comply with Noem’s request, SEVP would be have to go, thus threatening the legal status of more than one in four of Harvard’s students.
Harvard ultimately agreed to send over a limited amount of information on its international students, but in its response to the Trump administration, the university’s lawyers claimed that they were not required by law to include disciplinary records. The DHS was not satisfied with this response, and continued to threaten SEVP unless more information was provided. After Harvard complied with the department’s further requests, Noem still decided to revoke the university’s SEVIS certification, which is the main component in allowing schools to enroll international students — thus, halting Harvard’s SEVP.Â
Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard. https://t.co/V8uvTNaL64
— Harvard University (@Harvard) May 23, 2025
That’s when Harvard sued, and the Trump administration’s efforts to end international enrollment at Harvard have since been temporarily frozen by the aforementioned judge’s ruling. The case will be reevaluated after the two sides meet at a hearing on May 29. Until then, international students at Harvard are stuck in the limbo of not knowing whether they can return to their school in the fall, and countless academic programs at the university are in turmoil. (FWIW, multiple universities in Hong Kong have invited international Harvard students to join their institutions amid uncertainty about their future in the States.)
Despite their setback, the Trump administration managed to escalate the tug-of-war with Harvard on May 27, when the administration moved to cut all federal government contracts with the university, which are worth a reported $100 million, citing racial discrimination in admissions and campus life and national interest as its reasoning. This action would effectively cut all remaining ties between Harvard and the federal government.Â
The implications of the Trump administration’s persistent action against Harvard reach further than just the university’s future. “The government has casually discarded core First Amendment protections, the protections of procedural due process, and DHS’s own regulations to immediate and devastating effect for Harvard and its community,” Harvard lawyers wrote in the university’s lawsuit against the Trump administration.
It’s still unclear what the outcome of this ongoing struggle will be — but it’s clear that for Harvard and the thousands of students caught in the crossfire, the battle is expected to have many casualties.