As the clash between the world’s richest university and the world's most powerful man escalates, Harvard University remains, so far, the most prominent institution to stand up to US President Donald Trump and his administration.

On April 11, the Trump administration sent Harvard a list of demands, including "shuttering all diversity, equity, and inclusion" programs and having a government-approved external body audit the student and staff for "viewpoint diversity."

Some demands were particularly targeted at Harvard's handling of international students. They included reforming the admissions process to "prevent admitting students hostile to the American values" and having Harvard report foreign students who commit a conduct violation to federal authorities like the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department.

Although the government swiftly retaliated with a $2.2 billion (€1.9 billion) federal funding freeze, Harvard's defiance marks a key moment in the ongoing battle between the government and private US universities as the Trump administration pushes to assert more ideological control over higher education.

The government has cited pro-Palestinian protests erupting across universities in 2024 as a reason to punish universities for what it deems as allowing antisemitism and failing to keep Jewish students safe.

One group has emerged particularly vulnerable as Trump targets universities: international students. Many worry the crackdown not only threatens US universities’ status as centers of academic freedom but also as destinations for the world's best and brightest.

'I thought we were in the Land of the Free'

One foreign student from American University, a private university in Washington, DC, who spoke to DW anonymously over concerns that speaking out could threaten his visa, said he thinks targeting universities is a means of shutting down debate and the free flow of ideas.

"I'm a freshman who came to the US expecting opportunities and challenges, challenges that would not compromise my liberties as an individual and as my freedom of thinking. I thought that we were in the so-called 'Land of the Free,'" he said.

A student journalist, he said he now feels the need to self-censor, especially after receiving a letter from university officials warning him against criticizing the Trump administration's policies.

"In [my country], being a journalist is not safe. Now I feel that I felt safer in [my country] than in the US writing. It's difficult actually to express in words," he said.

Fear of travel

And it's not just freedom of expression that foreign students see curtailed. Rohan Kapur, vice president of the International Student Association at George Washington University in Washington, DC, said his group has been organizing informational events for students who wish to stay in the US for school or a job safely. 

He told DW that many international students are afraid to travel freely out of fear of having their visas suddenly revoked.

"I know a lot more students in the international student body in general are not going home this summer, they're staying here just because they don't want to risk it."

Kapur said many want to "play it safe, and so a lot more people are staying."

Risk of revoked visas

On March 27, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked how many student visas the government revoked in the course of its crackdown, especially on pro-Palestinian protesters.

"Maybe more than 300 at this point," he said. "We do it every day, every time I find one of these lunatics."

NAFSA, a DC-based nonprofit focused on international education and exchange, has been monitoring student visa revocations.

From mid-March to mid-April, it counted nearly 1,300 reports of international students and scholars having their visas revoked or their records deleted on SEVIS, a government database documenting information about nonimmigrant students and exchange visitors in the US.

"There is still no transparency on the grounds for these revocations, nor is there any clear process for determining what the charges are against the students," an article on the organization's website reads.

And the risks are not limited to visa revocations. A few high-profile cases of foreign students detained have emerged.

These cases include Mahmoud Khalil, a student activist at Columbia University in New York City who organized pro-Palestinian demonstrations, as well as Rumeysa Ozturk, a Ph.D. student at Tufts University in Massachusetts, who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents for writing an op-ed in her student newspaper criticizing her university's response to human rights violations in Gaza.

The pro-Palestinian protests erupting across universities in summer 2024 have been cited by the government as a reason to punish universities for what it deems as allowing antisemitism, and to demand changes to how the institutions teach and operate.

Calls to organize

The Trump administration's attack on universities has sparked concern beyond the higher education community.

Joining a recently held student protest in Washington, DC, on April 4, former Democratic Representative Jamaal Bowman told DW that the Trump administration's attitude towards education and international scholars appears to represent its broader political strategy.

"The more miseducated people are, the more they can be controlled," Bowman said. "The Trump administration and the Project 2025 initiative ... want to control what we read, how we think, how we engage because it gives them more power, and it takes our power away."

When DW requested a response from the White House to Bowman's assertions, the press office sent only a picture of a fire alarm, referring to an instance in 2023 in which the former representative pulled a fire alarm before a House of Representatives vote on a funding bill. When pressed for a follow-up, the White House responded, "Bowman is not a serious person. He does not warrant a serious response."

Bowman encouraged students to take to the streets and hold those in power accountable.

"We need our young people to organize across the country," Bowman said. "We see young people being snatched off the streets and disappeared simply because they exercise their First Amendment rights. That's unacceptable. And we need everyone to fight back with every fiber of our being because our democracy and our humanity is under attack."

Janelle Dumalaon contributed to this report.

Edited by: M. Cavanagh and Davis VanOpdorp