Trump has found a way to strike at the heart of Harvard as he opens front against Ivy League colleges

WASHINGTON, DC: Donald Trump is out for Ivy League blood, and Harvard’s feeling the heat.

The president launched a sweeping attack on America’s oldest university - barring international students from attending Harvard and yanking the rug out from under their world-famous research machine.

Harvard in Trump's crosshairs

American higher education writer and policy analyst Kevin Carey wrote in a piece for Vox that Trump's plan is to hit Harvard where it really hurts - their students, their prestige, and most of all, their massive federal funding.

Initially, the White House thought Harvard might fold like Columbia did, playing ball when pressure came from the top. But Harvard chose to fight back, and that’s when Trump doubled down.

Though a federal judge put a quick stay on the move, the message was loud and clear. Even if the ban doesn’t stick, the effect is already real. Harvard may be elite, but a big chunk of its population — over 25% of 25,000 students — are international, and most of those are in graduate and professional schools.

That stat is not new. The percentage of international students at Harvard has ballooned by 38% since 2006. But now, with the threat of deportation or imprisonment hanging over their heads, the global pipeline that fuels top US academia appears to be on life support.

It’s not just about Harvard. Carey insists that if these students stop coming, the entire American higher-ed ecosystem could take a nosedive — not to mention the country’s research and innovation sector.

Is this a war on American higher education?

There’s a growing sense that Trump’s ban isn’t just a petty fight with Harvard — it’s part of a bigger playbook aimed at tearing down the very idea of elite higher education.

The big question is whether this is simply the next round in Trump’s “apocalyptic campaign” against the Ivies — or the opening volley in a massive "America First" overhaul of one of the country’s top exports: higher learning.

According to Yahoo! Finance columnist Rick Newman, the surge of international students attending US colleges in the 21st century was a win-win for global cooperation and American prestige. But for the isolationists in Trump’s camp, it’s just more globalism to squash. Nothing fires up his base like the sight of “woke” college kids shouting about Gaza.

After the 2023 Hamas terror attacks and Israel's subsequent response, anti-Israel protests erupted on campuses across the country — and that made elite schools even bigger targets.

But buried under the cultural brawling are real questions about whether the US government coddles colleges while leaving non-college Americans in the dust. Love him or hate him, Trump knows how to exploit that resentment like no one else, Newman notes.

Trump wants trade schools — but only if it harms Harvard

Newman insists that Trump’s got a point when he says America needs to invest more in working-class folks. Millions of Americans are drowning in student debt, and yet they’re told college is the only path to success.

There’s some bipartisan agreement here—the US should absolutely pour more into trade schools and vocational training, especially with labor shortages in carpentry, welding, and electrical work. McKinsey estimates we’re missing hundreds of thousands of skilled workers. Federal funding to fill those jobs would be a smart policy.

But it seems Trump doesn’t actually care about trade schools — at least, not for their own sake. What he really wants is to divert Harvard’s money. According to Newman, “Trump hasn’t proposed any kind of rational plan to boost the kind of worker training the US economy needs.”

“He only wants to direct new funding toward trade schools because that would be $3 billion in federal grants he would block Harvard from receiving,” Newman added.

In other words, trade schools may just be a pawn in Trump’s game to kneecap elite universities.

Trump's plan: Canceling contracts, taxing endowments, and slashing grants

Trump’s overall war plan against Harvard isn’t stopping with visas. He’s coming for their money next — and it’s not pocket change.

The administration has moved to cancel $3.2 billion in federal grants, most of it for medical research, plus another $100 million in federal contracts. On top of that, the GOP-controlled House has greenlit a proposal to sharply hike the tax on investment income from universities with the biggest endowments — including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford.

If the Senate goes along, it could cut deep into schools’ biggest sources of wealth and leave them scrambling to protect their portfolios.

Harvard’s already lawyering up and heading to court.

“Courts, so far, have overturned many of his executive actions,” Newman said of Trump's executive orders. Still, the threat alone has cast a long shadow over the future of higher education in America.

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