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EEUU. President Donald Trump said on May 28 that Harvard University should implement a 15 percent cap on the number of foreign students it admits to ensure that the Ivy League school remains accessible to U.S. students.
Trump told reporters at the Oval Office that Harvard must share with the federal government a list of all of its currently enrolled international students.
“They have foreign students, almost 31 percent of their students,” Trump said. “We want to know where those students come from. Are they troublemakers? What countries do they come [from]?”
The president said that Harvard is “taking people from areas of the world that are very radicalized,” noting that his administration does not “want them making trouble in [the] country.”
“We don’t want to see shopping centers exploding,” he said. “I think they should have a cap of maybe around 15 percent, not 31 percent. We have people [who] want to go to Harvard and other schools. They can’t get in because we have foreign students there.
“I want to make sure that the foreign students are people that can love our country.”
Harvard currently has nearly 7,000 international students, representing about 27 percent of its total enrollment, according to its website.
The comments are the latest in Trump’s ongoing clash with the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university over its handling of alleged anti-Semitism on campus and its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
In March, the school said in a statement that it has devoted “considerable effort to addressing antisemitism” over the past 15 months and has strengthened its rules and its approach to disciplining those who violate them.
On May 27, the administration asked federal agencies to cancel about $100 million worth of contracts with the university based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The government has already canceled about $2.2 billion in federal grants to the school, while Trump has said that his administration is seeking to end Harvard’s tax-exempt status.
“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status,” he wrote on Truth Social in May. “It’s what they deserve!”
Last week, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) also moved to cut off Harvard’s enrollment of international students by revoking certification of its foreign student admissions program.
The move affects students who would typically enroll at the university through its Student and Exchange Visitor Program.
In a May 22 statement, the DHS said that Harvard’s leadership has “created an unsafe campus environment by permitting anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators to harass and physically assault individuals, including many Jewish students, and otherwise obstruct its once-venerable learning environment.”
The department stated that Harvard’s leadership “further facilitated, and engaged in coordinated activity” with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), including by “hosting and training members of a CCP paramilitary group complicit in the Uyghur genocide.”
Harvard stated that the latest move by the Trump administration “continues a series of government actions to retaliate against Harvard for [its] refusal to surrender … academic independence and to submit to the federal government’s illegal assertion of control over [its] curriculum, [its] faculty, and [its] student body.”
The Ivy League school stated that it responded to requests for information from DHS as required by law.
District Judge Allison Burroughs of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts will consider on May 29 whether to extend a temporary order blocking the federal government from revoking the school’s ability to host international students.
Asked by reporters at the Oval Office how his “confrontation” with Harvard will end, Trump said it remains unclear.
“Harvard’s got to behave themselves,” he said. “Harvard is treating our country with great disrespect, and all they’re doing is getting in deeper and deeper and deeper.
“I want Harvard to do well, I want Harvard to be great again.”
The Epoch Times has contacted a Harvard University spokesperson for comment.
Theepochtimes.com
