U.S. Department of Homeland Security Revokes Harvard's Ability to Enroll Foreign Students

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security press release states:

Harvard University Loses Student and Exchange Visitor Program Certification for Pro-Terrorist Conduct

Harvard is being held accountable for collaboration with the CCP, fostering violence, antisemitism, and pro-terrorist conduct from students on its campus.

WASHINGTON – Today, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ordered DHS to terminate the Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification.

This means Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status.

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. Many of these agitators are foreign students. Harvard’s leadership further facilitated, and engaged in coordinated activity with the CCP, including hosting and training members of a CCP paramilitary group complicit in the Uyghur genocide.

“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” said Secretary Noem. “It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments. Harvard had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing. It refused. They have lost their Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification as a result of their failure to adhere to the law. Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.”

On April 16, 2025, Secretary Noem demanded Harvard provide information about the criminality and misconduct of foreign students on its campus. Secretary Noem warned refusal to comply with this lawful order would result in SEVP termination.

This action comes after DHS terminated $2.7 million in DHS grants for Harvard last month.

Harvard University brazenly refused to provide the required information requested and ignored a follow up request from the Department’s Office of General Council. Secretary Noem is following through on her promise to protect students and prohibit terrorist sympathizers from receiving benefits from the U.S. government.

Facts about Harvard’s toxic campus climate:

• A joint-government task force found that Harvard has failed to confront pervasive race discrimination and anti-Semitic harassment plaguing its campus.
• Jewish students on campus were subject to pervasive insults, physical assault, and intimidation, with no meaningful response from Harvard’s leadership.
• A protester charged for his role in the assault of a Jewish student on campus was chosen by the Harvard Divinity School to be the Class Marshal for commencement.
• Harvard’s own 2025 internal study on anti-Semitism revealed that almost 60% of Jewish students reported experiencing “discrimination, stereotyping, or negative bias on campus due to [their] views on current events.”
• In one instance, a Jewish student speaker at a conference had planned to tell the story of his Holocaust survivor grandfather finding refuge in Israel. Organizers told the student the story was not “tasteful” and laughed at him when he expressed his confusion. They said the story would have justified oppression.
• Meanwhile, Pro-Hamas student groups that promoted antisemitism after the October 7 attacks remained recognized and funded.

Instead of protecting its students, Harvard has let crime rates skyrocket, enacted racist DEI practices, and accepted boatloads of cash from foreign governments and donors.

• Crime rates at Harvard increased by 55% from 2022 to 2023.

o   From 2022 to 2023 aggravated assaults increased 295% and robberies increased 560%

• Harvard has adopted race-conscious hiring policies, potentially in violation of civil rights law.
• Harvard Received $151 Million From Foreign Governments Since January 2020 — making up more than 13 percent of the total $1.1 billion received from foreign donors over the same period.
• Harvard hosted and trained members of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), a CCP paramilitary group complicit in the Uyghur genocide, even after its 2020 designation on the U.S. Treasury’s Specially Designated Nationals List, with engagements continuing as recently as 2024.
• Harvard researchers collaborated with China-based academics on projects funded by an Iranian government agent and partnered with Chinese universities tied to military advancements, including aerospace and optics research, using U.S. Department of Defense funds.
• Harvard partnered with individuals linked to China’s defense-industrial base, including conducting robotics research with military applications.

Steve Blank Sounds Warning for U.S. Academic Research Decline

The very talented Steve Blank has laid out a case for why U.S. academic research is in serious trouble based on recent U.S. policy changes.  As he states, once you lose your advantage it's unlikely to be regained.  My guess is that there's a certain point at which the lead is lost and is too difficult to regain.  A March 2025 Nature article reports on a poll which indicates that of 1,600 scientists surveyed around 75% are contemplating moving with Canada or Europe as top destinations. I wonder what unintended consequences--particularly those that are beneficial for the United States--may exist in distributing U.S. researchers around the world. Could they be lured back in three years and seven months?  And, what could be some unintended negative consequences?  Do we really want to lose our best researchers during a military build-up around the world?  Gee whiz, it seems like almost everything is a national security issue and all technology is dual use.  Steve Blank's blog post is available, here.  

Bad Timing: Starving the University Technology Transfer System

A group of over 1000 scientists who are elected members of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has released a letter expressing concern with the Trump Administration’s handling of research funding.  The letter states, in part:

If our country’s research enterprise is dismantled, we will lose our scientific edge. Other countries will lead the development of novel disease treatments, clean energy sources, and the new technologies of the future. Their populations will be healthier, and their economies will surpass us in business, defense, intelligence gathering, and monitoring our planet’s health. The damage to our nation’s scientific enterprise could take decades to reverse. 

The AUTM, the Association of University Technology Managers, noted that the Great Recession would have been much worse if it had not been for university technology transfer.  Harming the engine that’s been creating innovation and new business may not be such a good thing right now.  Besides pushing us into a recession, I do wonder what the political fallout will be of the increased removal of research funding from universities.  Not only do universities spin-off companies to varying degrees of success but there are universities located in many, many congressional districts--and those universities are major regional employers.  The full letter is available, here.  The Scientific American discusses the full letter, here. 

Microsoft Threat Intelligence Report on Cybersecurity Attacks Against Universities

On January 17, 2024, Microsoft released a threat intelligence report concerning cybersecurity attacks against certain university researchers across the West and other countries.  The threat report states, in part:

Since November 2023, Microsoft has observed a distinct subset of Mint Sandstorm (PHOSPHORUS) targeting high-profile individuals working on Middle Eastern affairs at universities and research organizations in Belgium, France, Gaza, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In this campaign, Mint Sandstorm used bespoke phishing lures in an attempt to socially engineer targets into downloading malicious files. In a handful of cases, Microsoft observed new post-intrusion tradecraft including the use of a new, custom backdoor called MediaPl.

Operators associated with this subgroup of Mint Sandstorm are patient and highly skilled social engineers whose tradecraft lacks many of the hallmarks that allow users to quickly identify phishing emails. In some instances of this campaign, this subgroup also used legitimate but compromised accounts to send phishing lures. Additionally, Mint Sandstorm continues to improve and modify the tooling used in targets’ environments, activity that might help the group persist in a compromised environment and better evade detection.

The report is available, here. 

Who Benefits from the Fruit of Research from Human Cells? Civil Rights Attorney Representing Henrietta Lacks Family

In a fascinating turn of events, Ben Crump, the prominent civil rights attorney who represented the family of Treyvon Martin and Breonna Taylor, is representing the family of Henrietta Lacks, a deceased African-American woman.  Ms. Lacks’ cells were used without her consent to develop a cell line at Johns Hopkins Hospital (extracted from her in 1951).  There is a book and movie concerning her story.  According to Johns Hopkins Medicine’s website honoring Ms. Lacks:

Today, these incredible cells— nicknamed "HeLa" cells, from the first two letters of her first and last names — are used to study the effects of toxins, drugs, hormones and viruses on the growth of cancer cells without experimenting on humans. They have been used to test the effects of radiation and poisons, to study the human genome, to learn more about how viruses work, and played a crucial role in the development of the polio vaccine.

. . . Over the past several decades, this cell line has contributed to many medical breakthroughs, from research on the effects of zero gravity in outer space and the development of the polio vaccine, to the study of leukemia, the AIDS virus and cancer worldwide.

The website also states:

In 2013, Johns Hopkins worked with members of the family and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to help broker an agreement that requires scientists to receive permission to use Henrietta Lacks’ genetic blueprint, or to use HeLa cells in NIH funded research.

The committee tasked with deciding who can use HeLa cells now includes two members of the Lacks family. The medical research community has also made significant strides in improving research practices, in part thanks to the lessons learned from Henrietta Lacks’ story.

Moreover, the legal area and practices have developed since 1951, including the development of informed consent laws.  The website also notes that John Hopkins was one of the few hospitals that accepted poor African Americans as patients in 1951. 

The likely defendants will include pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies as well as John Hopkins.  This case—assuming it survives many legal challenges and is not settled relatively early (those are big “ifs”)—could result in some very interesting law on the merits that may be challenging to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. 

In 1990, the California Supreme Court basically decided in Moore v. Regents of the University of California that a patient did not retain a property interest in tissue extracted from him.  Notably, his cells were also used to develop a cell line.  The majority’s decision was influenced by prudential concerns, including expressed fear about impeding the development of the promising biotechnology industry.  Importantly, the case was decided when the biotechnology industry was arguably quite young and the reasoning in that case was based on some factors that may not hold true today—due to changes in the law, the development of technology, and changing expectations and practices.  Other courts in the United States, in deciding similar issues, have basically stated that equity (unjust enrichment) may provide hope for some compensation to the party whose cells have been utilized by researchers.  A rejection of Moore would have interesting implications for the field and the preservation and protection of human dignity. 

The timing of the filing of the lawsuits is interesting because my guess is that public opinion of the pharmaceutical/biotechnology industry is relatively high in the United States given the development of the vaccines for COVID-19.  However, the continuing disaster of the failure to get enough vaccines to the Global South and other parts of the world will result in additional human death and suffering, including the proliferation of variants which may evade vaccines.  This could turn the tide of public opinion in the United States—along with high pharmaceutical prices—and result in additional pressure to settle. 

Balancing Security Concerning University Research and Anti-Asian Sentiment in the United States: U.S. Senate Hearings

On April 22, 2021, the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held hearings on “Protecting U.S. Biomedical Research:  Efforts to Prevent Undue Foreign Influence.”  The Committee heard testimony from representatives from various governmental entities, including the National Institutes of Health [NIH] and the Government Accounting Office.  In written testimony, Dr. Michael Lauer, Deputy Director for Extramural Research at the NIH, explored the tension between balancing security and very serious anti-Asian sentiment in the United States.  The context involves the attempts by governments to take advantage of the open collaboration amongst international researchers in attempting to address biomedical crises.  Notably, Dr. Lauer pointed to three issues confronted by the NIH concerning security and biomedical research:

1) failure by some researchers at NIH‐funded institutions to disclose substantial contributions of resources from other organizations, including foreign governments and businesses, which threatens to distort decisions about the appropriate use of NIH funds and accurate evaluation of commitment of effort to US‐supported research; 2) diversion of proprietary information included in grant applications or produced by NIH‐ supported biomedical research to other entities, including other countries; and 3) failure by some peer reviewers to keep information in grant applications confidential; including, in some instances, disclosure to foreign entities or other attempts to influence funding decisions.

Dr. Lauer raises attempts by the NIH to address these issues, including cybersecurity measures.  Importantly, he states that the NIH has contacted over 90 awardee institutions and over 900 scientists raising potential serious concerns.  Dr. Lauer also raised potential actions that can be taken by the NIH:

Terminations or suspensions of scientists who have engaged in egregious violations of NIH grant terms and conditions and institutional policies. · Interventions to address previously un‐reported affiliations with foreign institutions. · Relinquishment or refund of NIH funds.· Prohibition of certain individuals from serving as investigators on NIH grants. · Outreach to FBI for assistance. · Discovery (through acquisition of certain foreign grants and contracts) of overlapping or duplicative work, or conflicts in stating committed effort to research projects. This discovery has led to NIH suspensions of active grants as appropriate. · Efforts to raise awareness among institutional faculty about government and institutional policies dealing with foreign affiliations and relationships (see, for example, the Penn State web site).

In addressing concerns with anti-Asian violence in the United States, Dr. Lauer states, in part:

We must ensure that our responses to this issue do not create a hostile environment for colleagues who are deeply dedicated to advancing human health through scientific inquiry. We cannot afford to reject brilliant minds working honestly and collaboratively to provide hope and healing to millions around the world.

Dr. Lauer’s testimony can be found, here.  The difficulty, of course, is maintaining security while at the same time fostering an open and collaborative environment wherein research can continue to flourish.  It will be interesting to see how this develops.  The COVID-19 global pandemic has decreased human movement throughout the world likely increasing the transfer of information through digital networks and resulting in even greater importance of the security of networks.  At the same time, as COVID-19 eases eventually (and hopefully), how will the United States ensure that foreign researchers and entrepreneurs, particularly from China, will feel welcome attending university and working in the United States.  Notably, the U.S. Senate recently passed legislation, almost unanimously (94-1 – only Senator Josh Hawley voting against it), addressing anti-Asian hate crimes.