President Donald Trump is playing with fire by escalating his war against Harvard, the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board warned in an analysis published on Friday evening.
The president has done everything in his power to try to bring Harvard to heel after the prestigious Boston-area Ivy League university refused to kowtow to his demands for eliminating diversity policies and cracking down on student protests, or to turn over confidential records of foreign students. He revoked billions of dollars in scientific research funding at Harvard and moved to revoke the university's tax-exempt status, and this week, he upped the ante further by revoking Harvard's ability to accept international students altogether — a measure already blocked in federal court.
It's that last step in particular, the board warned, that will sabotage America's future viability as a place for scientific innovation.
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"That’s 6,800 students, or a quarter of Harvard’s student body, whose futures are suddenly in disarray. It’s also a short-sighted attack on one of America’s great competitive strengths: Its ability to attract the world’s best and brightest," wrote the board. It's likely Harvard will prevail in its lawsuit, they continued, but regardless, "This will be terribly damaging to America’s ability to attract talented young people who bring their enterprise and intellectual capital to the U.S. Non-citizens accounted for more than half of doctoral degrees in AI-related fields in 2022. Many have gone to work at U.S. companies like Nvidia or started their own."
"The National Foundation for American Policy finds that 'immigrants have founded or cofounded nearly two-thirds (65% or 28 of 43) of the top AI companies in the United States, and 70% of full-time graduate students in fields related to artificial intelligence are international students,'" wrote the board. "Immigrants have also started more than half of America’s privately-held startups valued at $1 billion or more."
And Trump's attack on Harvard signals to future international students that they should choose other countries instead. This "assault on immigrant talent," the board continued, simply isn't worth the pain it will cause.
"Like most of U.S. higher education, Harvard needed a jolt to return to its mission of educating open minds," the board concluded. "But that requires reform. The Trump Administration seems to think it needs to destroy Harvard to save it. This is the opposite of making America great."