The Trump vendetta against Harvard

The government isn't acting on national security interests. It looks like an attempt to further punish Harvard for actions protected by law.

By Stephen Richer

The Trump administration is trying to ban international students from coming to Havard and revoke the visas of Harvard’s approximately 7,000 international students and researchers. Though I’m sympathetic to the idea of Making Harvard (more) American Again, that doesn’t seem to be the administration’s goal.

International students make up about 27% of Harvard’s student body. At the Kennedy School of Government (where I am), over 50% of the students are international.

A June 4 executive order aims to “restrict the entry of foreign nationals” to Harvard. The university immediately sued. And the latest chapter in the legal battle took place Monday, when Judge Allison D. Burroughs heard oral arguments on Harvard’s requested injunction against the government.

Six attorneys sat at the counsel’s bench for Harvard. Ian Heath Gershengorn, former acting U.S. solicitor general and current partner at Jenner & Block, argued on behalf of Harvard.

The government had only one attorney present: Tiberius Davis. Davis, who graduated from college in 2017, did a nice job under challenging circumstances, but I found it curious that the government dropped such a big, emotional, high-profile case in the lap of one attorney who might not yet be 30 years old.

Burroughs concluded the hearing by extending the existing temporary restraining order to Monday. She promised she would rule next week on a longer-lasting preliminary injunction against the Trump administration’s planned actions.

The government claims it has a national security interest in acting against Harvard’s international students.

Throughout its opposition brief, the government cited its broad authority to “suspend or restrict the entry of aliens,” and to regulate the “exclusion of aliens” that would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

But here the government isn’t excluding aliens. These international students can enter the United States. They can go to the University of Alabama. They can go to Duke (bleh). They can even go to Columbia University.

They just can’t go to Harvard.

This makes no sense if it is the entrance of the “aliens” that poses national security concerns.

And it is inconsistent with examples the government cited in its brief. On page 18 of its brief, the government noted that it had previously lawfully barred Belarussians and Iranians.

But, again, these bans were predicated on the nationality of the alien, not the endpoint American destination (Harvard).

The government tries to square this round peg by alleging that Harvard “is particularly derelict at monitoring and disciplining foreign students” and that “the entry of certain foreign nationals to study at Harvard presents specific harms, including security risks related to data deficiencies, a breakdown in institutional oversight of visa holders, and increased threats of campus violence.”

But it offers scant information on how it reached these conclusions. And the claims look highly suspicious when, again, Harvard is the only school that these international students cannot attend.

Instead, what it looks like is an attempt to further punish Harvard for various protected-by-law reasons: because Harvard has a lot of liberals, because Harvard didn’t hand over certain information relating to students, because Harvard doesn’t want to quiz all students and faculty on their political affiliations, and because, worst of all, Harvard has defied President Donald Trump.

Here, the evidence here is plentiful. In just 10 days in April, Trump made the following statements:

• April 15: “Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’”

• April 16: “Everyone knows that Harvard has ‘lost its way.’ They hired, from New York (Bill D) and Chicago (Lori L), at ridiculously high salaries/fees, two of the WORST and MOST INCOMPETENT mayors in the history of our Country, to ‘teach’ municipal management and government. These two Radical Left fools left behind two cities that will take years to recover from their incompetence and evil. Harvard has been hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’ who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students and so-called ‘future leaders.’ Many others, like these Leftist dopes, are teaching at Harvard, and because of that, Harvard can no longer be considered even a decent place of learning, and should not be considered on any list of the World’s Great Universities or Colleges. Harvard is a JOKE, teaches Hate and Stupidity.”

• April 24: “The place is a Liberal mess, allowing a certain group of crazed lunatics to enter and exit the classroom and spew fake ANGER AND HATE. It is truly horrific!”

Not only are these statements inconsistent with the president’s past remarks (here’s a post from March 24 in which he brags that his endorsed candidate graduated from Harvard), but they also present a body of evidence that will make the government’s case harder.

It might be why the government only sent one young attorney to the oral argument. It knows it’s going to lose this argument because the writing is on the wall: This isn’t about national security. This is about punishing Harvard.

Stephen Richer, a Republican, is the former elected Maricopa County recorder, responsible for that county's elections. He is chief executive of Republic Affairs, a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Ash Center, and a board member of Democracy Defenders Fund.

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