Harvard University was told by President Donald Trump’s administration that it needed to stop discriminating and protect its Jewish students from rampant anti-Semitism. It decided that the right to hate people, particularly Jews, was more important than mollifying not just our elected government by the voters who elect the people that send their taxpayer money to elite institutions like Harvard.

This has worked out quite predictably: Because of the university’s open defiance of the federal government and anti-discrimination laws in education, it’s lost billions of dollars in federal funding and the ability to enroll foreign students. (The latter sanction came after the university refused to participate in vetting programs designed to keep bad actors and extremists away from American colleges.)

Both of these may get sorted out through the courts in Harvard’s favor, or maybe not — but the blow to the university will be significant either way.

So, now, in court documents that amended its original lawsuit, Harvard has taken a new tack: It now claims, after declaring to the Trump administration that it’s above the law, that the administration has a “vendetta” against it.

According to Fox News, a new court filing by Harvard states that the administration is still blocking the school from enrolling foreign students under the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, despite the fact that the government said the university has provided incomplete information on the student population.

“There is no lawful justification for the government’s unprecedented actions,” the filing on Thursday read.

Harvard said that blocking the students who hold F-1 or J-1 visas which allow them to study, teach, and research at the school, doesn’t block a “class of aliens” and that they’ve submitted all the legally required information to the government.

Therefore, Trump’s proclamation that the school may not enroll foreign students “lacks any lawful basis” and constitutes a “government vendetta.”

“Nonimmigrants may enter the country unabated, as long as they do not attend Harvard,” the complaint said.

Should Trump keep up the pressure on Harvard?

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“Both the President’s proclamation and the DHS Secretary’s revocation violate the First Amendment,” Harvard’s legal team added, according to The Hill.

“Each is part of a concerted and escalating campaign of retaliation by the government in clear retribution for Harvard’s exercising its First Amendment rights to reject the government’s demands to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students.”

The government said in a response that Harvard was looking to use the courts to hobble Trump’s constitutional authority.

“This lawsuit seeks to kneecap the President’s constitutionally vested powers under Article II,” said assistant DHS secretary Tricia McLaughlin in a statement.

“It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments. The Trump administration is committed to restoring common sense to our student visa system; no lawsuit, this or any other, is going to change that. We have the law, the facts, and common sense on our side.”

As for the university’s claim that it has provided all necessary information about foreign students, the administration countered that it hadn’t provided sufficient data regarding “foreign students’ known illegal or dangerous activities, reporting deficient data on only three students.”

There are several issues with the lawsuit, starting with the fact that it’s being filed by Harvard.

No matter how much stock you put in the “vibes shift” theory after the 2024 election, Harvard is basically the face of everything most of America hates about elite establishment institutions. Pro wrestling heels are more popular, and at least they’re faking it.

As Bill Maher rather effectively pointed out on his May 30 show, the university has effectively become an “a*****e factory” that churns out anti-Semites and other sundry extremists. And the ones who aren’t radical Hamas supporters are radical technocrats, believing that only under their steady, guiding hand can the unwashed American rabblement prosper. It’s a bit hard to feel sympathy for the devil, especially when it has a losing hand no matter how much it wins in lower court battles.

The second problem is that the lack of complete information under the SEVP isn’t just relevant to anti-Semitic extremists. Consider the recent arrests of two individuals who were caught sneaking a deadly, crop-destroying fungus in from China to study at the University of Michigan in an indictment announced this past week.

FBI Director Kash Patel noted in a social media post that electronics from the arrested Chinese nationals showed close links to the Chinese Communist Party, warning that it was “a sobering reminder that the CCP is working around the clock to deploy operatives and researchers to infiltrate American institutions and target our food supply, which would have grave consequences.”

New… I can confirm that the FBI arrested a Chinese national within the United States who allegedly smuggled a dangerous biological pathogen into the country.

The individual, Yunqing Jian, is alleged to have smuggled a dangerous fungus called “Fusarium graminearum,” which is an…

— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) June 3, 2025

The fact that Harvard only feels the need to comply with what it thinks it should comply with indicates why it shouldn’t be a research hub in the first place — but it also raises the question of just what they thought would happen when they took on a new administration that was insistent that the excesses of the Biden era were brought to an end.

The university said no, and its officials were shocked to find out that these actions had consequences. More’s the pity.

Contributor, Commentary

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C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.

C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).

Birthplace

Morristown, New Jersey

Education

Catholic University of America

Languages Spoken

English, Spanish

Topics of Expertise

American Politics, World Politics, Culture

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