The Administration Suspends Visa Interviews of Foreign Students Pending Vetting Rules of Their Social Media Posts to Ensure Ideological Conformity

Donald Trump’s war on Harvard—most recently, canceling $100 million of contracts—includes trying to ban them from sponsoring international students. That was blocked by a federal judge. But now, in the name of fighting antisemitism and anti-American sentiment on college campuses, the administration is suspending visa interviews for all international students till it works out new rules to vet their social media posts.

The New York Times reports:

The State Department is temporarily halting interviews abroad with foreign citizens applying for student and exchange visas as it expands scrutiny of applicants’ social media posts.

Mr. Trump this month said the U.S. government would no longer grant Harvard the right to enroll international students. On Friday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking Mr. Trump from moving forward with the action against Harvard and foreign students.

Many universities in the United States rely on foreign students to pay full tuition. Those students are responsible for a substantial portion of the annual revenues of many American universities. On some campuses, foreign students make up the majority of researchers in certain disciplines, mainly in the sciences.

Combined with previous canceling of funds for scientific research, the administration’s actions are a war on universities as such. This is an open attempt to punish those with ideological views different from MAGA orthodoxy, of course. But it is also an escalation of the war on higher ed. An authoritarian cannot tolerate any competing centers of knowledge, status, and influence. He has to either bring them to heel or to destroy them altogether.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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