A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on the Trump administration’s ban on Harvard’s ability to enroll international students. Now that ban would impact nearly a quarter of the student body at Harvard. The administration says it’s because of Harvard’s handling of anti-Semitism on campus, and that enrolling international students is a privilege, not a right.
Harvard calls it, quote, clear retaliation for refusing to bow to the white House demands. I want to turn to CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig, who is going to explain in English what exactly this means. First of all, the the what we just heard from the judge and broadly what the actual case you think both the administration and Harvard have here.
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Yeah. So, Dina, this ruling just came out minutes ago. It is a big win for Harvard. Temporary but very significant. What this says is the court is blocking the Trump administration from blocking Harvard, from bringing in international students. In other words, as of this moment, it’s back to the status quo.
Harvard may continue to bring in international students. Now, the way this case came about is the Trump administration sent a letter about a month ago in April to Harvard saying, essentially, we want the following information on every one of your 7000 international students. We want disciplinary records. We want records of any obstruct active behavior by any of them, any dangerous behavior by any of them.
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Harvard tried to comply to the extent they could. Some of those terms are very general. But Harvard sent back documents to the Trump administration. The Trump administration said, no, we’re not satisfied, and therefore you can no longer accept these students. Now, the court today said, I’m putting that on hold.
The judge said, I’m putting that on hold because to block these international students would cause irreparable harm both to the students, some of whom are currently enrolled at Harvard. Suddenly their status was in question. Can they go back and they attend the summer semester? And to Harvard itself, which, as you said, about a quarter of its entire student body.
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Are these international students. So for the moment, Harvard is free to continue admitting these students. But the larger issue still has to play out in the courts. And what legal basis does the Trump administration have for its actions here? So it’s not exactly clear to me. It seems like the Trump administration’s legal position here is we’re the executive branch.
We control these student visa programs, F-1 and J-1 student visa programs. And if we want to revoke them, we can revoke them. And by the way, we’re doing this all to prevent antisemitism on campus. However, Harvard’s response to that in their brief that they put in yesterday is, first of all, it violates our First Amendment rights.
It’s not up to the government, the federal government, to micromanage speech and ideology on campus. And then Harvard’s second argument is, even if the administration had the right to do this, they have to comply with something called the Administrative Procedures Act, basically saying they have to go through a process.
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We’re entitled to a hearing, we’re entitled to an appeal. And none of that has been done yet. And I think that’s part of the reason we saw today’s ruling as well. It seems to me, on the face of it, Harvard has a much stronger legal argument. Ellie, thank you so much for helping break that down for us.
Appreciate it. Good to see you. And here at the table, I’m joined by an amazing group of reporters today, CNN’s Jamie Gangel. It’s all on keynote. Youngs at The New York Times, CNN’s Alaina Treen and Tia Mitchell of the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Happy Friday, everybody. Friday of a holiday weekend.
Jamie, put this in perspective. So as Ellie said, this is a big win for Harvard. But there is still uncertainty about how this is going to play out. Imagine if you’re a student and you’re wondering, you know, will I really be able to go to class in the fall? it’s it’s also not just international students at Harvard who are panicked about this.
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Every university is watching this. Every business is watching this, wondering, are we next? And just big picture. This is you were discussing this earlier. This is a real problem for our country right now because, we are seeing this throughout. We’re seeing it at law firms, we’re seeing at universities.
We’re seeing, you know, Tim Cook at Apple was told you’re going to get a 25% tariff. both Democrats and Republicans have said to me, this is what authoritarian capture looks like. And so what the administration is sort of going in with and what they started to go in with at other schools. But Harvard in particular has been, you didn’t handle the very raw, very real anti-Semitism that made Jewish students feel uncomfortable and unsafe.
for a long time, particularly after October 7th. Well, and so we are going to punish you. What the administration did with their threats is went far beyond
