AAUP-HFC Executive Committee statement
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – 22 May 2025
AAUP-Harvard Faculty Chapter Executive Committee Condemns Trump Administration’s Termination of Harvard’s SEVP Certification
The executive committee of the Harvard Faculty Chapter of the American Association of University Professors condemns in the strongest possible terms the Trump administration’s unconstitutional assault on our international students. The decision to terminate Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, making it impossible for Harvard to host the thousands of international students currently admitted or about to enroll, is the latest in a string of nakedly authoritarian and retaliatory moves against America’s oldest institution of higher education. It expands the Trump administration’s terrorizing assault on international students and scholars in the United States, including those who have been unlawfully detained for months, without criminal charges, on the basis of their constitutionally protected speech.
International students are essential members of the Harvard community. As teachers at Harvard, we have made a moral commitment to educate these students from the day they accepted their offer of admission to the day they receive their degrees.
That commitment has not changed, and cannot change.
In fulfillment of that commitment, we call on our university leadership and on the faculties of our university to take the following steps:
University leaders should seek immediate judicial intervention to reverse the Trump administration’s unconstitutional, authoritarian, and retaliatory course of action.
All Harvard faculties and university leaders should ensure that every Harvard student who has completed the requirements for receiving a degree is awarded that degree, independent of their visa status or ability to be present in the United States.
Each of Harvard’s schools should make every effort possible to ensure the continued education and uninterrupted progress toward a degree in every student’s course of study, including, where possible, remote education for international students who desire such modes of instruction.
In an appeal for solidarity across institutions of higher education in this moment of existential threat to academic freedom and core First Amendment rights, we also call upon our fellow institutions of higher education in the United States to declare their willingness to facilitate the immediate co-enrollment of Harvard’s international students, including formal acceptance of transfer for immigration purposes. To that end, we call upon Harvard’s leadership to:
Commit to helping any institution of higher education accept the co-enrollment and transfer of our international students and to defray the costs of such actions, including a commitment to help maintain all levels of scholarship, financial aid, and other financial support currently available to our affected students.
Commit to affording any affected student the privileges of enrollment at Harvard University—including issuance of student ID cards, library access, physical access to campus, and the ability to co-enroll and participate in all curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular activities—to the full extent permitted by the immigration laws passed by the Congress of the United States.
The Trump administration is unlawfully seeking to destroy higher education in the United States. It now demands that we sacrifice our international students in the process. Universities cannot acquiesce to such extortion.