By Bianca Licitra
On January 20, AAU and 22 other higher education organizations (led by the American Council on Education) submitted a friend-of-the-court brief urging the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold a lower court’s decision to block President Trump’s effort to prevent Harvard University from enrolling international students.
Last May, the Department of Homeland Security revoked Harvard’s certification for the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP). The certification allows universities to enroll international students; DHS claimed that it was revoking Harvard’s SEVP certification because the university had not complied with a records request pertaining to its international students.
Withdrawal of the SEVP certification would have forced the university’s international students to transfer to another school or to leave the country. Harvard immediately sued DHS and was granted a preliminary injunction from the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The injunction allowed Harvard’s international students to remain at the university while the case makes its way through the courts and while a more formal withdrawal-of-certification process is ongoing.
Shortly thereafter, President Trump issued a proclamation, “Enhancing National Security by Addressing Risks at Harvard University,” suspending the entry of Harvard’s international students on F, M, or J visas into the country. The same district court issued another preliminary injunction blocking the proclamation from taking effect. In June, the administration appealed the case to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
In their amicus brief, the associations argue that “the Administration’s actions against Harvard threaten the autonomy of institutions throughout American higher education and impose unacceptable costs on society as a whole.” The associations also assert that the case presents a vital test for the principles of free speech and the protection of diversity of thought on college campuses.
“Over the last year, the current Administration has engaged in an unprecedented effort to coerce institutions of higher education to behave in a manner that reflects the Administration’s preferred ideology, including by reshaping their faculty, curriculum, and student body,” the brief notes, continuing: “When Harvard resisted the Administration’s unlawful demands, the Administration retaliated with extreme sanctions, including the Proclamation at issue in this appeal.”
The brief further explains that, though higher education institutions are not beyond reproach or above the law, the executive branch must use administrative processes already in place to examine university actions, regardless of differences in ideology.
“The Administration’s actions at issue in this case are directed at Harvard, but they reverberate throughout every state in the nation. If the federal government may punish a university for its perceived ideology or that of its students, then the marketplace of ideas collapses into a monopoly of dogma. That is the antithesis of America’s constitutional values, and it jeopardizes the richness of the spectrum of higher education that has long been one of our country’s greatest strengths,” the brief says.
For these reasons, the brief urges the circuit court to affirm the district court’s judgment.
The relevant case is President and Fellows of Harvard College v. United States Department of Homeland Security (25-1627). AAU previously issued a statement in support of Harvard after the university’s SEVP certification was withdrawn and joined ACE and 26 other higher education organizations in another amicus brief when Harvard’s federal funding was frozen.
Bianca Licitra is editorial and communications assistant at AAU.