The Harvard sports activities groups that may very well be worn out by Trump’s visa risk | EUROtoday

Some of Harvard’s sports activities groups can be nearly worn out by a Trump administration resolution introduced on Thursday.

Donald Trump’s administration vowed to dam Harvard University from enrolling worldwide college students and is forcing presently enrolled overseas college students to depart the college or threat dropping their authorized standing within the nation.

The resolution would make the Ivy League faculty with the nation’s largest athletic program ineligible for worldwide pupil visas, throwing the way forward for a lot of its athletes into query.

Seven of the eight rowers on the lads’s heavyweight crew group that simply gained the Eastern Sprints title and is getting ready for the nationwide championships listing worldwide hometowns on the varsity’s web site.

Mick Thompson, the main scorer final season, and Jack Bar, who was a captain, are amongst a handful of Canadians on the lads’s hockey roster; 10 of the 13 members of the lads’s squash group and greater than half of the ladies’s soccer and golf rosters additionally listing overseas hometowns.

Harvard’s 42 varsity sports activities groups are essentially the most within the nation, and Sportico reported final month that 21 % of the gamers on the varsity’s rosters for the 2024-25 seasons — or 196 out of 919 athletes — had worldwide hometowns.

The web site famous that some may very well be U.S. residents or inexperienced card holders who wouldn’t want one of many worldwide visas at situation in an escalating struggle premised by the administration’s assertions that the varsity failed to guard Jewish college students from antisemitism.

The Department of Homeland Security on Thursday revoked Harvard’s skill to enroll worldwide college students, saying the varsity has created an unsafe campus atmosphere by permitting “anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators” to assault Jewish college students on campus.

The transfer may drive as many as 6,800 overseas college students on the faculty exterior of Boston — greater than 1 / 4 of its whole enrollment — to switch or go away the nation.

Harvard referred to as the motion illegal and stated it’s working to supply steerage to college students. President Alan Garber, noting that he’s himself Jewish, stated final month after submitting a lawsuit to halt a federal funding freeze that the varsity “will continue to fight hate with the urgency it demands as we fully comply with our obligations under the law. That is not only our legal responsibility. It is our moral imperative.”

Harvard athletic director Erin McDermott beforehand declined an interview request from The Associated Press on the potential impression of the visa ban. A Harvard athletics spokesperson on Thursday referred a request for remark to the varsity’s principal media info workplace, which didn’t instantly reply. The AP additionally requested remark from three Harvard coaches, who didn’t reply.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, a former Harvard hockey participant, declined to remark when contacted by the AP.

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat who performed basketball at Harvard, stated the athletes are amongst 85,000 overseas college students who come to the state to “study, conduct research, start businesses, and create jobs and innovations.”

“President Trump is punishing our students and hurting our economy, all as part of his agenda to silence anyone who disagrees with him,” she stated. “The only ones who benefit from Donald Trump’s actions are China and other countries who are already recruiting these students. It’s the exact opposite of America First.”