When I heard about the red-brick gates of Harvard University as a student aspirant nearly a decade ago, I remember how impossibly wide the world felt.
The way my friends describe it, its where ideas flowed across accents, passports, and perspectives like the Charles River.
The whole point of going to an Ivy is to argue, protest, question power, and defend principles. But we also sharing chai recipes, decoding Melville, and mourning homes from across oceans. That mosaic — untidy, electric, global — was the whole point.
Today, that door has been slammed shut for thousands of international students who dreamt of walking through those same gates.
In an extraordinary and dangerous move, the Trump administration has revoked Harvard University's ability to enrol international students.
Citing alleged links to “anti-American” protests, claims of antisemitism, and unsubstantiated accusations of collaboration with China’s Communist Party, the Department of Homeland Security has effectively frozen Harvard’s access to the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP).
Nearly 6,800 foreign students — over a quarter of Harvard's population — are now facing forced transfers or potential deportation. Is this a democracy? Is this what the ‘free world’ stands for?
Let that sink in: the United States has weaponised its immigration and education systems to punish a university for ideological dissent.
Forget for a moment about the university. It is a target for its student body. Especially, it’s most vulnerable. One wonders — if it’s just racism covered in a death-shroud of law and order.
This is not just an attack on Harvard. It is a calculated strike in a broader war — a war against diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), and the foundational idea of the global university.
For Indian students, for whom Harvard — and the US education system at large — has symbolised opportunity, this signals a profound shift. The American Dream, it seems, has been quarantined behind borders and political vendetta.
A chilling message to Indian students
In India, Harvard represents something more than prestige — it is aspiration materialised.
It is the beacon that draws students from Tier 2 and 3 cities who toil in SAT coaching centres, scrape together tuition with education loans, and win fellowships against impossible odds.
It is where India’s best go to learn not just business or bioethics, but how to be citizens of a world that’s bigger than any single ideology.
To these students, the message from Trump’s Washington is brutally clear: “You are expendable. You are a suspect. You are not welcome. You are criminals.”
The cruel irony is that many Indian students — myself included — want to arrive at institutions like Harvard filled with admiration for the American system.
To see that very system turn its regulatory machinery into a surveillance state — to demand lists, videos, and dossiers on student protestors—is a betrayal of those ideals.
This isn’t about security. It’s about silencing.
Dismantling DEI, one campus at a time
The Trump administration has been methodically undoing decades of progress in diversity and international inclusion.
Since his return to power, President Trump has targeted Title IX protections, cut DEI offices off at the knees, and defunded universities accused of liberal leanings.
The goal is transparent: remake the university in the image of white, conservative grievance politics.
The latest salvo came via Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who issued a chilling 72-hour ultimatum to Harvard to turn over surveillance records of its foreign students, under threat of losing its SEVP status permanently.
This isn’t governance. This is blackmail. This is a breach of every conduct of human right ever written.
Let’s not be naïve: this will not stop with Harvard. The template is set. Today, it’s Harvard. Tomorrow, it could be Yale, Stanford, or any school that resists state pressure to monitor and discipline dissenters.
The death of the global university
What is being eroded is not just a visa programme — it is the idea of the global university as a refuge for the curious and the courageous.
American higher education, for all its contradictions, has long been a magnet for the world’s intellectual capital. That magnet is losing its charge.
Students in Delhi and Bangalore are watching closely. Already, we are seeing a surge in interest toward Canada, the UK, and Australia.
And why wouldn’t we? Why spend Rs 1 crore and uproot your life for a country that may turn you into a political pawn overnight?
For Indian parents, this development will feel like a heartbreak.
They will see the years of planning, saving, and sacrificing come up against an administration that views international students as threats rather than assets.
For students, it’s a wake-up call: America is no longer the sanctuary it once was.
The illusion of neutrality
Some will say this is a legal issue, not a political one. That Harvard should have complied with “simple reporting requirements.”
But the selective and aggressive application of those requirements tells another story. Let’s be honest — had it been a conservative campus hosting anti-abortion rallies or pro-Israel events, this crackdown would never have materialised.
What the Trump administration resents is not antisemitism —mit’s resistance. Not to democracy, but to itself.
And international students, by virtue of their very presence and perspectives, represent resistance to insularity.
A moment of reckoning
In the short term, a federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order, pausing the administration’s move.
But the writing is on the wall. Higher education is no longer immune to America’s culture wars.
Indian students must now grapple with more than just GRE scores and scholarship deadlines — they must ask whether the land of the First Amendment still has room for their voices.
Universities must ask whether they will fight for their global students or capitulate in fear.
And the rest of us must decide whether we still believe that the classroom should remain one of the last truly free spaces in a closing world.
I remember a teacher once telling me: “A university’s power lies not in its endowment, but in its defiance.”
May Harvard — and the students who still dream of studying there — never forget that.
(Tarun Tapan Bhuyan is a student studying in SAI International School. Views expressed are his own.)
