The Trump Administration recently escalated its targeting of higher education by pausing new visa appointments for international students recently admitted to colleges nationwide. The May 27 move was announced a day before the State Department said the United States would begin revoking visas for some Chinese students, and came within a week of a May 22 freeze on Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students. Though the freeze was halted a day later by an emergency court order, it remains the subject of an ongoing legal battle. Those developments overshadow a prolonged dispute between top universities and the federal government over the suspension of billions of dollars in research grant funding — most publicly displayed in the legal dispute between Harvard and the government over nearly $9 billion.
Though the Trump administration claims its Harvard funding suspension is because the university failed to address anti-semitism and diversity issues, the mandate which Harvard refused to comply with that prompted the grant freeze included demands that the university eliminate DEI programs and implement changes to its hiring and admissions practices. Harvard President Alan Garber said in an interview with NPR that he was “perplexed” because the government’s means are unrelated to problems it says it wants to resolve. The government said its freeze on Harvard’s international enrollment was enacted in response to the university’s refusal to turn over some information about its students. The State Department claims its suspension on visa application appointments is to implement a plan to screen international applicants’ social media accounts.
“I think that what ties a lot of these different suits together is the supposition that they are not really specifically targeted at — or likely to solve — the particular concerns alleged by the government,” said College President Alison Byerly in a May 27 interview. “They represent a kind of broader effort to generally control operations, curricula [and] practices at colleges and universities.”
“[Carleton’s] International Student Life (ISL) [office] has been working with incoming students to help them obtain their visas,” Carleton Immigration Task Force co-chair and Vice President and Chief of Staff Elise Eslinger wrote in a May 28 statement to The Carletonian. “Some countries have more drawn-out processes, but so far only one student has encountered a denial, and we are working with that student to re-apply. We are actively monitoring the situation and will continue to offer logistical support and verification of student status, as students navigate the requirements in their home countries.”
“We are also aware of the temporary hold on international student visa appointments, which was announced on [May 27],” she wrote. “More than half of the international students in the Class of 2029 have already obtained their F-1 visas.”
The bulk of most government action has applied to specific universities, said Byerly, and there is no specific reason to believe Carleton would be targeted individually. As far as the college stands, she said, “Carleton continues to operate within the bounds of established federal law.” Still, “[the government] seem[s] to be setting a precedent, and it’s hard to know whether they’re going to continue to target individual colleges and universities, or whether at some point it just becomes a global mandate.”
“I believe there are a number of other colleges and universities that are offering to provide some support to international students over the summer,” said Eslinger. “The type of support varies by institution, but I don’t know a lot about the details of these other programs.”
“Many colleges and universities, including Carleton, work hard to recruit students from other countries because we recognize how much the community benefits by having a breadth of experiences and backgrounds represented in the student body,” said Byerly. “It’s not only… the case that we like the idea of making a Carleton education accessible to a wide range of students from all over the world, but we also feel that the Carleton community really benefits from that breadth of backgrounds and experiences.”
Byerly said that she believes the government chose to implement particularly harsh measures on Harvard because of its “‘symbolic value.’”
“It’s a recognition that Harvard has always been a kind of symbolic leader in higher education,” she said, “and that in attempting to focus on Harvard, I think they are making a symbolic point as well as having an impact on that particular university.”
In terms of the various Harvard litigation, Byerly said it is too early to tell how cases may proceed. But “I think that many in higher education feel that there is a strong legal basis for opposing these actions,” she said. “Respect for the academic freedom and independence of colleges and universities has been a pretty longstanding principle that has been upheld on other occasions within the American legal system.”
“There’s a lot of uncertainty and we’re doing our best to stay on top of information and provide what we think is helpful to the community,” said Byerly, who also encouraged Carleton international students to reach out to ISL for advice and help when needed. “ISL continues to be the best resource for students on these issues, and… they work very hard to stay abreast of the best, current information.”
“If you are concerned about what is happening with federal actions impacting immigrants, please reach out to your legislators to make your feelings known,” said Eslinger. “There are a number of websites that can help you connect to these lawmakers and identify talking points, if needed. NAFSA is one; NAICU and ACE are others.”
