Ex-Harvard president slams Trump’s foreign-student ban as ‘stuff of tyranny’

Former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers blasted the Trump administration’s decision to

block Harvard University

from enrolling international students, calling on the institution to fight back. 

“This is vicious, it is illegal, it is unwise, and it is very damaging,” Mr Summers, who is president emeritus of Harvard University, told Bloomberg TV.

“Why does it make any sense at all to stop 6,000 enormously talented young people who want to come to the United States to study from having that opportunity?”

“Harvard must start by resisting,” he said. “This is the stuff of tyranny.”

Mr Trump’s team has blocked Harvard University from enrolling international students, citing an

“unsafe campus environment”

and alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Existing international students must transfer or lose their legal status, the US Department of Homeland Security said on May 22. 

Mr Summers said that cutting off exchange opportunities for foreign students would damage the US economy and national security, and goes against the principles of a democratic country like the US.

“I am just appalled that we would have an administration that would contemplate actions of this kind,” he said. “If I had been a member of an administration where such unlawful orders had come from the White House, I would have resigned immediately.”

Mr Summers, who is also a paid contributor to Bloomberg TV, said he hopes that legal action will be taken to enable foreign students to remain at the elite Ivy League university.

He said it was unfair to target US-loving, international students – “many of whom dreamed for their whole lives” of having the opportunity to study at Harvard. “They saw Harvard as a symbol of what was the best of America,” he said.

Mr Trump’s actions were also a gift to other countries around the world who are also targeting the lucrative market that overseas students present. “We are doing our very best as a country to help British higher education, Australian higher education, New Zealand higher education,” he said. 

The US is taking “the pride of our country” and we are destroying it, Mr Summers said. “It is a devastating, self-inflicted wound.” BLOOMBERG