Some presidents stroll softly and carry an enormous stick. Some presidents bigfoot round, shouting “WE’RE ABOUT TO DO SOME CRAZY ILLEGAL SHIT!” and telegraphing each punch. These presidents get injunctions in file time.
Yesterday, Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem introduced that Harvard College could be barred from admitting college students underneath the Pupil and Alternate Customer Program (SEVP). This is able to have the impact of revoking the visas for greater than 1 / 4 of the scholar physique, together with these already enrolled for summer season faculty and the 2025-2026 educational 12 months.
The transfer was not unanticipated. Trump has been shouting about revoking Harvard’s tax exempt standing for months, and rasslin’ impresario Linda McMahon, who’s someway Secretary of Training, has been making bizarre noises in regards to the college not “vetting professors that they’re hiring to be sure that they’re not instructing ideologies.” Regardless of the hell which means.
Noem and her goons have been stomping round demanding not simply visa information, which they’re entitled to underneath the SEVP’s information protecting requirement, but in addition “info relating to misconduct and different offenses that will render international college students inadmissible or detachable.” First she mentioned that failure to conform would represent a “voluntary withdrawal” from this system. Then, when Harvard did comply, she demanded much more details about disciplinary information of international college students.
Harvard’s attorneys are not any dummies — the college’s counsel contains legal professional’s from Lehotsky Keller Cohn, Jenner & Block, Quinn Emanuel, and King & Spalding. They took care to construct a voluminous file of compliance, realizing effectively what was coming.
And yesterday, it got here, in a letter from Noem asserting the college’s decertification:
On account of your refusal to adjust to a number of requests to offer the Division of Homeland Safety pertinent info whereas perpetuating an unsafe campus setting that’s hostile to Jewish college students, promotes pro-Hamas sympathies, and employs racist “range, fairness, and inclusion” insurance policies, you will have misplaced this privilege.
Noem then headed to Fox Information to make sure that everybody would know this was pure retaliation for disfavored speech, not as a result of the varsity violated SEVP requirements.
Inside hours, Harvard filed a 72-page complaint with 28 displays alleging First Modification retaliation and viewpoint discrimination, together with due course of and statutory violations. They designated the case as associated to the pending suit over the administration arbitrarily yanking funds from the varsity to punish it for amorphous thought crimes, and, having efficiently gotten themselves a berth on Decide Allison Burroughs’s docket, filed an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order.
“Revoking Harvard’s certification is illegal many occasions over,” they wrote, noting that there’s a course of for revoking SEVP certification, and it entails extra than simply yelling about antisemitism and “unlawful” DEI.
“The 1000’s of worldwide college students who have been scheduled to reach on campus for the upcoming summer season and fall phrases will not be capable to enter the nation,” they argued, including, “The consequences on Harvard’s college students—all of its college students—will probably be devastating. With out its worldwide college students, Harvard is just not Harvard.”
And Decide Burroughs agreed. Earlier than lunch, she issued a TRO barring the federal government from “Implementing, instituting, sustaining, or giving impact to the revocation of Plaintiff’s SEVP certification” or “Giving any drive or impact to the Division of Homeland Safety’s Might 22, 2025 Revocation Discover.”
Kristi Noem barely acquired a full information cycle out of the factor. And due to her fixed shouting that she’s reducing grants and revoking the “privilege” of SEVP to punish the varsity for exceeding the WOKE restrict, she’s not going to win one other cycle any time quickly.
A listening to is scheduled for Wednesday at 10:30am. Let’s see which DOJ lawyer will get to point out up and argue that it’s completely fantastic to cancel summer season faculty as a result of Harvard is instructing anti-American ideologies.
President and Fellows of Harvard College v. United States Department of Homeland Security [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore the place she produces the Regulation and Chaos substack and podcast.
