President Donald Trump vowed to make Harvard ‘great again’ by capping the number of foreign students who can attend the elite university.
He suggested 15% is a good number. In the 2024-2025 academic year, Harvard University had international students representing about 27% of the total student enrollment.
‘I think they should have a cap of maybe around 15%,’ Trump said in the Oval Office on Wednesday. ‘We have people who want to go to Harvard and other schools. They can’t get in because we have foreign students there.’
He argued his plan would make Harvard ‘great again’ – playing off of his campaign theme of Make America Great Again.
‘I’m looking out for the country, and for Harvard, I want Harvard to do well, to be great again,’ he said.
President Donald Trump said he wants to make Harvard ‘great again’
Trump also suggested the university stop fighting his administration in court.
‘The last thing I want to do is hurt them. They are hurting themselves. They are fighting,’ he said.
The president has cut billions in federal funding from Harvard in addition to pushing it to bar foreign students. The university is fighting back with lawsuits in federal court.
‘Harvard has to behave themselves. Harvard is treating our country with grace disrespect an all they are doing is getting in deeper and deeper and deeper. They have got to behave themselves,’ Trump said.
The president also accused the university of accepting students who come from radical countries.
Trump has railed against Harvard and other schools for not stopping pro-Palestine protests that popped up in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel in October.
‘We want to know where those students come from. Are they troublemakers? If somebody is coming from a certain country and they are fine, I hope most of them are, but many won’t be,’ he said. ‘They are taking people from areas of the world that are very radicalized and we don’t want them making trouble in our country.’
He added: ‘But I want to make sure that the foreign students are people that can love our country. We don’t want to see shopping centers exploding. We don’t want to see the kind of riots that you had.’
President Trump has waged war on elite universities, accusing them of antisemitism and blasting their ‘woke’ ideology. He claims the top schools in the country are controlled by ‘Marxist maniacs and lunatics.’
Trump has demanded Harvard eliminate its diversity, equity, and inclusion program; cut the power of its professors; refuse foreign students; and ban masks at campus protests.
‘They are totally anti-semitic at Harvard as you know, and some other colleges, too, in all fairness to them,’ Trump said Wednesday.
The administration claims Harvard failed to adequately act against antisemitism during protests following the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel by not taking steps against pro-Palestine protesters.
Harvard is fighting back just as hard, filing lawsuits in federal court to counter the administration.
A lawsuit Harvard filed last month seeks the restoration of more than $3 billion in federal funding. Another filed last week asked a federal court to reinstate its right to enroll international students.
Last week a federal judge temporarily reinstated Harvard’s right to enroll international students. There will be a hearing on Thursday to determine whether that order should be extended.
Harvard University has fought back against President Trump
On Tuesday, Trump cut the federal government’s remaining contracts with Harvard University, worth about $100 million.
The administration has frozen about $3.2 billion in grants and contracts with Harvard.
And he vowed to look for more ways to punish the university.
‘Every time they fight they lose another $250 million. Yesterday we found another $100 million. And they have, you know, they have a fund, an endowment, $52 billion, all right? They have got a lot of that from the United States. And I think it’s ridiculous,’ he said.
He is targeting the university’s endowment for tax purposes, using Republicans on Capitol Hill to help him.
The House approved a provision in Trump’s federal budget that will allow increased taxes on the investment returns of university endowments. It still needs Senate approval.
But, if approved, it would cost Harvard, which has an endowment of $53 billion, an estimated $850 million a year.
