In public statements and publications on social networks, President Trump has financially threatened Harvard University, calling it “threat to democracy” and refers to its teachers as “birds”.
Now Harvard’s lawyers are trying to use the president’s words against him in their legal fight against his administration.
Thursday, lawyers for the administration of Harvard and Trump will make their first arguments in person in a federal courtroom in Boston, in a case involving the attempt to the administration of to forbid The University of Registration of international students.
The Trump administration argued that Harvard has abandoned the right to welcome international students on the campus, citing what he says to be violations of civil rights, especially in license behavior. The president of the university, Alan Mr. Garber, recognized certain problems with anti -Semitism, but indicates major measures he has taken to remedy it.
In the courtroom, Harvard’s strategy will use the president’s statements as proof that the government is on a political crusade against school. In the memories deposited in the case, lawyers argued that officials of the Trump administration have unfairly distinguished the university for sanction, violating its rights from the first amendment. He included the president’s aggressive comments as parts in his case.
David A. Super, professor at Georgetown Law, said that Harvard’s strategy – pointing to the president’s articles on his social media network, Truth Social – could work.
“The social posts of truth prove a deep hostility towards Harvard, and Harvard thinks that they also suggest that hostility is based on Harvard’s exercise of his activity of the first amendment,” said Mr. Super. “These quotes therefore help Harvard to prove his particular assertions.”
The stake is a 70 -year -old Harvard tradition to admit the best students from around the world. His former notable internationals include Benazir Bhutto, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan; Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former president of Liberia; And Masako Owada, the Empress of Japan.
A visa ban would affect 7,000 students at Harvard. This includes 5,000 current students and 2,000 others in a program that allows students to stay and work up to three years after their diploma.
The ban also affects incoming students who expected to arrive this summer and in the fall.
Kirsten Weld, a professor of Harvard who heads the chapter of the School of the American Association of University Professors, called such a ban “an event in terms of extinction”.
This could also have implications beyond Harvard-still dissuading the international interest in the study in the United States, which already refuses the efforts of the administration this year aimed at expelling international students.
Last week, one day after the administration imposed the ban, it was temporarily blocked by judge Allison D. Burroughs, who will chair Thursday’s hearing. Harvard lawyers ask Judge Burroughs to extend this order by issuing a preliminary injunction while the case moves into the justice system.
Lawyers from the Ministry of Justice did not submit any written argument in the case. But by revoking Harvard’s right to welcome international students last week, Kristi Noem, the interior security secretary, said The school had favored violence and anti -Semitism and accused it of “coordinating the Chinese Communist Party on its campus”. She also underlined Harvard’s ideology and what she called her propaganda, which she described as “anti-American”.
Jewish students complained that Harvard had failed to fight reportSettled legal affairs with Jewish students and has created new programs to combat prejudice.
Ms. Noem’s statement of claims involving collaboration with Chinese Communists was not entirely clear.
The ban followed a back and forth between Harvard and the federal government. In April, the Trump administration sent a request for information on international students from the school, including the names of the students who had been disciplined. Later, he expanded these requests, asking for images of international students involved in demonstrations.
Harvard said he had made efforts to provide certain information, although he argued that requests were well outside the normal documentation required on international students. The Trump administration officials were not satisfied, however, and Ms. Noem blamed the university’s absence to comply with the declaration requirements when she announced the prohibition.
The revocation of the law of a university to welcome international students, which is done through a federal system known as the program of students and exchange visitors, is an extraordinary measure. The government has always done so in cases involving fraud – such as diploma factories that welcome potential immigrants under the guise of providing them with education.
In court documents, Harvard lawyers declared that the administration had bypassed detailed procedures leading to a revocation which is clearly established in federal regulations. They also argue that the order last week was part of a “wider effort to retaliate against Harvard for his refusal to give up his academic independence”.
Even before he was elected to a second term, Trump had criticized Harvard and other major universities. In a video published during the campaign, he invoked Harvard while announcing a plan to tax university endowments and use money to create a free online university called the American Academy. The details of this proposal were not materialized.
Before Thursday’s hearing, Harvard lawyers specifically cited four of the president’s messages on Truth Social, dated April 15 to May 2, as proof that his decision to revoke Harvard’s right to welcome international students was reprisals for the university’s failure to acquiesce the previous requests of the administration.
They include A threat according to which Harvard is to lose its status as a tax exemption, an assertion that Harvard teachers were “radical, idiots and birds” and affirm that Harvard was an “far left institution”.
In a declaration to journalists on Wednesday, Trump repeated the request that Harvard shows the administration of his list of international students – information that the government, which issues visas, retains in its own database.
He also said that Ivy League should cap international students that it admits to 15%, introducing a new spin into the administration position. Currently, the Harvard student body is around 27% international.
“Harvard was able to behave. Harvard treats our country with a great lack of respect and all they do is becoming more and more deep,” Trump told the journalists gathered in the White House.
Ms. Noem’s announcement was the most recent action in an administration series assault On Harvard who started this year and came to the head last month, when Harvard refused to follow a series of administration requests, including the prohibition to admit students “hostile to American values”, an audit of the political ideology of the student body and teachers to determine the “diversity of the point of view” and the updates of the quarterly status of the school.
Columbia University had accessed a list of requests when threatened by the Trump administration. When Harvard refused, government officials said they would freeze $ 2.2 billion in federal research contracts and university subsidies. Harvard filed the first of his two proceedings, also pending before judge Burroughs, contesting these financing cups. The government has since announced additional funding for funding.
This is not the first time that a Trump administration objective has used the president’s comments to establish a case against his government. In May, the American district judge Beryl Howell judge Unconstitutional a stripping trigger, including federal access and security authorization, from the law firm Perkins Coie.
In her order The headquarters of the law firm, Judge Howell has repeatedly referred to Mr. Trump’s statements on social truth as proof that the cabinet, known for his work for Democratic candidates in voting rights, had been the victim of the president’s “anger”.
