As the White House continues to escalate its crusade against the nation’s higher education institutions, President Donald Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he doesn’t know how the administration’s monthslong confrontation with Harvard will come to an end.
“I don’t know,” Trump said. “Harvard has got to behave themselves. Harvard is treating our country with great disrespect. And all they’re doing is getting deeper and deeper and deeper. They’ve got to behave themselves.”
Harvard, the nation’s oldest university, has been in the administration’s crosshairs since the early days of the Trump administration over its handling of pro-Palestine protests and Trump’s broader pushback of “woke” college campuses. While Harvard has fought back and often won in court, the White House has shown no signs of backing down.
Recently, the Trump administration has zeroed in on the university’s international student population, suggesting the university may be admitting dangerous people. In April, the administration demanded a list of international students who had been expelled. In a post to Truth Social May 25, Trump said he wanted “names and countries” for Harvard’s international students.
“Harvard has to show us their lists,” Trump said Wednesday. “They have foreign students, 31% of their students are foreign-based — almost 31%,” he said. “We want to know where those students are from. Are they troublemakers?”
Last week, the administration attempted to freeze international students from attending the university entirely, a decision that was blocked by a judge. The State Department then paused all new student visa interviews at embassies across the globe as it weighs whether or not to vet social media accounts as part of the visa process.
“I want to make sure that the foreign students are people that can love our country,” Trump said. “We don’t want to see shopping centers exploding.”
Trump also said he thinks Harvard’s international student admissions should be capped at 15% — currently, international students make up 27.2% of the student population, according to the university.
In an interview with NPR this week, Harvard University President Alan Garber acknowledged that the university had “issues” it needed to address, emphasizing speech issues in particular.
“I don’t know fully what the motivations are, but I do know that there are people who are fighting a cultural battle. I don’t know if that is what is driving the administration,” he said. “They don’t like what’s happened to campuses, and sometimes they don’t like what we represent.”
The administration has already revoked billions of dollars in research and grant funding to Harvard. The administration has mulled revoking Harvard’s tax-exempt status. On Tuesday, the White House directed the federal government to sever all contracting work with the institution, another blow to the university’s funding stream.
“Harvard has to understand — the last thing I want to do is hurt them,” Trump said. “They’re hurting themselves, they’re fighting.”
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Violet Jira is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.