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Most Americans will never set foot on Harvard's campus. Seeing the name of the elite college splashed across the front page of every major newspaper at a time when so many people are struggling to afford even basic necessities doesn’t exactly invite sympathy. What’s happening in Cambridge, Massachusetts is of little consequence to the small businesses and little towns that dot the North American landscape.
Or so you might think. But the story of Harvard actually does directly affect you.
“The government is out of business with Harvard University, fully,” a senior Trump administration official told Fox News yesterday, announcing that it will claw back $100 million in federal funds that the school receives. Last week, the administration said it was banning Harvard from admitting foreign students.
International students don't just attend Ivy League schools, though — they're at state universities, community colleges, and regional campuses across America, pumping $44 billion annually into local economies and supporting 378,000 American jobs.
When international students leave, it's not just Harvard that suffers. In Ohio, foreign students at state universities spend millions on housing, food, and transportation, supporting local landlords, grocery stores, and car dealerships. In Texas, foreign engineering students at regional campuses often stay after graduation to work at American companies, filling critical shortages that keep factories running and preventing jobs from moving overseas. When these students disappear, American communities lose customers, workers, and entrepreneurs who create jobs for their neighbors.
Trump’s campaign against Harvard began in April, when the administration sent the university a list of demands to satisfy if it wished to maintain its “financial relationship with the federal government.” The demands included changes to Harvard’s hiring and admissions policies; an audit of the entire faculty for plagiarism; an end to its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; a school-wide mask ban; audits of departments and programs alleged to have practiced antisemitism; and information about students and teachers alleged to have engaged in antisemitic conduct.
When Harvard’s president said the school would not bow to the demands, claiming they violated both the First Amendment and statutes governing federal funding for universities, the Trump administration escalated: it froze billions of dollars in research grants that had been awarded to the university.
And last week, the administration said that Harvard would no longer be able to enroll foreign students. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem justified the decision by claiming that the school had allowed “anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators to harass and physically assault individuals, including many Jewish students,” and had hosted groups affiliated with the Chinese government. Harvard sued to preserve its ability to host foreign students, and a federal judge has temporarily blocked the administration’s ban.
No one is claiming that everything at Harvard is perfect — a report by the university itself documented incidents of antisemitism. But in trying to stop Harvard — and potentially other universities — from educating foreign students, the United States itself is worse off.
These aren't just tuition-paying customers. Foreign students subsidize American education by paying full fees without federal aid, while contributing to research breakthroughs that create US jobs, maintain America’s competitive edge, and spread its influence abroad.
Disrupted lives, declining sway
Harvard hosts approximately 6,800 foreign students, comprising 27% of its total enrollment, from 143 different countries. At the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, nearly half of all students hold F-1 visas. One-third of Harvard Business School students are foreign, and an overwhelming 94% of students in Harvard Law School's comparative law program come from abroad.
But the university's international student body is more than an impressive set of statistics — it embodies America's global magnetism. The foreign students contribute intellectual diversity, help drive innovation in STEM research, and enhance the educational experience for American students through cross-cultural collaboration and global perspectives.
"Their view of the world is expanded when they interact and learn from students from all over the world," Harvard University Professor Fernando Reimers says of American students learning from their foreign peers. "They can think of the world as a global laboratory from which to draw."
Harvard's role as a "global laboratory" was established by Charles Williams Eliot, the university's president who, after studying universities in Germany and France in the 1850s, decided to open the university to the world. By building graduate studies and professional schools and populating them with foreign professors and students, he transformed Harvard from a provincial university to the world-class institution it is today.
As Harvard stated in its lawsuit: "Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard."
But the implications go beyond Harvard and the foreign students currently enrolled there. The administration’s actions represent a fundamental shift away from the 80-year partnership between government and universities that has driven American innovation since World War II and been supported by both parties. This collaboration, which welcomed the world's brightest minds to American campuses, has delivered transformative breakthroughs that maintained America's technological supremacy throughout the Cold War and beyond.
From Ground News:
A federal judge blocked Trump’s attempt to revoke Harvard enrollment of foreign students — not because of campus safety concerns, but because the government failed to justify what Harvard calls political retaliation.
Depending on where you get your news, this could be seen as a necessary step to protect national security or a violation of academic freedom. With over 450 sources covering this story, Ground News is the most practical solution to exposing spin before we mistake it for fact.
If you like The Preamble, you’ll love their app and website. It pulls in every perspective on the most polarizing issues then breaks down each source’s political bias, factuality, and ownership so you understand news isn’t just reported – it’s crafted.
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The pattern is clear: from radar development at MIT during World War II to the birth of Google at Stanford, America's greatest technological leaps have emerged from universities populated with international talent. During the Cold War, as the Soviet Union restricted academic exchange, the United States gained a decisive advantage by attracting foreign scientists and students who became the backbone of American research.
Hungarian refugees fleeing communism helped develop NASA's space program. Chinese and Indian graduate students in the 1960s and ’70s later founded Silicon Valley companies that defined the digital age. Soviet defectors brought critical insights that advanced American defense technology.
This brain gain wasn't accidental — it was strategic. The 1965 Immigration Act prioritized skilled workers and students, while programs like the Fulbright exchanges positioned America as the global destination for academic excellence. Foreign students didn't just fill classrooms; they staffed laboratories, launched startups, and often stayed to become American citizens who drove decades of innovation. Over 40% of Nobel Prize winners at American universities since 2000 have been immigrants, and many first arrived as students.
Hosting foreign students has “never been politicized the way the Trump administration is doing it because it’s always had bipartisan support,” says Roger Geiger, a historian of higher education. “It’s unusual that we don’t see that support now.”
By contrast, the Soviet Union's restrictive approach to educating foreign students contributed to its decline. When countries shut their doors to smart, motivated people, they don't just lose out on new ideas — they lose the jobs and economic growth those people create. Foreign students often become the entrepreneurs who start companies that need insurance policies, manufacturing equipment, and office workers. When America turns away talent, that talent doesn't vanish — it goes to Canada, Australia, or increasingly back home to China and India, to build companies that compete against American businesses.
The Chinese students Moscow expelled in the 1960s didn't stop being brilliant; they returned home and helped China become the economic powerhouse now threatening American dominance. The foreign students studying artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and advanced manufacturing today become the innovators who keep American companies competitive tomorrow. Every foreign engineering student we turn away could become the entrepreneur who starts a company that puts American factories out of business.
China has methodically replicated and improved on America's successful Cold War strategy, hosting nearly 400,000 international students from 202 countries in 2015 — twice the size of the US program at its Cold War peak. These students learn Mandarin, study Chinese culture, and often return home with favorable views of Chinese development models.
The economic implications of banning foreign students are also profound. Higher education ranks as America's tenth-largest export. International students generated $43.8 billion for the US economy in 2023–24 while supporting 378,000 American jobs through their spending on tuition, housing, food, and transportation. According to the NAFSA Association of International Educators, every three international students either create or support one US job. When Trump forces Harvard's 6,800 international students to transfer or leave, he's not just harming one university — he's damaging a critical economic engine.
A broader assault
Harvard is just part of the story. Trump previously threatened to revoke $400 million in grants from Columbia University, coercing the school into making a slew of changes to its policies. The administration has terminated visa records for thousands of foreign students across the country, often based on dismissed charges or minor infractions like traffic violations. Government officials acknowledged in court that they ran 1.3 million foreign student names through criminal databases without cause, violating basic due process principles.
If this trajectory continues, America risks repeating the Soviet Union's strategic error on a massive scale. By prioritizing political conformity over intellectual vibrancy, the US could surrender its advantages in the technologies that will define the 21st century — artificial intelligence, clean energy, biotechnology, and quantum computing.
At precisely the moment when global competition for talent has intensified, America is disarming. The stakes extend far beyond elite universities. "The Harvard kids are going to be OK,” predicts Mike Henniger, CEO of the education consulting group Illume. “It's more about the damage to the American education brand. The view of the U.S. being a less welcoming place for international students." Universities across the globe, from Hong Kong to Europe, are actively recruiting displaced American-bound students.
Trump's war on Harvard represents a fundamental choice about America's future. History's lesson is unambiguous. Nations that embrace international intellectual collaboration become stronger and more competitive. Those that succumb to paranoia and isolationism — like the Soviet Union — decline. Restricting educational exchange doesn't enhance national security or economic competitiveness. It damages both.