Harvard and MIT Suing Trump Administration Over New Student Visa Policy
“came down without notice—its cruelty surpassed only by its recklessness”
Under this new policy, foreign students taking only online classes, are supposed to return to their home countries. Naturally, the left is outraged about this.
Campus Reform reports:
Harvard, MIT sue Trump admin over new student visa policy
Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology filed a lawsuit Wednesday in response to ICE restrictions regarding virtual college instruction. The lawsuit, filed against the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, DHS acting director Chad Wolf, and ICE acting director Matthew Albence, asks for “a temporary restraining order and preliminary and permanent injunctive relief” against ICE sub-agency policy.
This policy, announced Tuesday, requires foreign students attending online-only classes at American universities during the fall 2020 semester to either return home or transfer under the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP). According to a Wednesday statement from Harvard President Lawrence Bacow, ICE’s order “came down without notice—its cruelty surpassed only by its recklessness.”
Harvard also published a webpage summarizing the university’s contentions with the SEVP policy. On it, Harvard explains that the “rule change regarding SEVP did not consider the extraordinary circumstances COVID-19 has created for international students” and mentions the “immediate and severe” nature of the July 6 order.
On Tuesday, Harvard announced that it would only be inviting 40 percent of its undergraduate students back to campus due to concerns about the transmission of the coronavirus. Its policy was one of the most restrictive of the nation’s leading universities.
On Tuesday night, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos explained to Fox News’s Tucker Carlson that the Trump administration is “very seriously” considering the withholding of federal dollars from schools that do not reopen in the fall. Referring to an earlier roundtable hosted by Trump, DeVos said there is an “expectation that kids have got to continue their learning,” adding “there is no reason to withhold full-time education.”
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Comments
Time to end federal student loans so universities and colleges feel the market effects of their insane tuitions. If that’s to draconian then evaluate the likely value of different fields of studies and limit the value of student loans based on it. Hopefully, this would end degree programs that have no value to society and hurt the universities and colleges.
Not so simple. Money to schools—particularly schools like MIT—isn’t just free cash thrown to whoever wants to catch it. It is sometimes a (relatively) economical way for government to get cheap, high-quality grad student semi-slave labor on medical or scientific research. For a brief period I was a recipient of such funding myself. That doesn’t necessarily make it good, but it means it’s not all money thrown directly down some liberal rathole.
I was also one of these “slave laborers”. I can tell you that the compensation has changed quite a bit and become cushy. Now, benefits are included with insurance and a high stipend (and there are still complaints). I went into debt during my years just to cover my health care and other expenses despite getting paid a meager stipend. At some point, this slush fund train has to end because it’s only heading downhill.
It’s not just a job, it’s an indenture.
I’m in higher ed but I strongly disagree with the notion that reducing funding to schools that don’t reopen is somehow punitive. It costs much less to operate a school remotely, unless you attempt to bubble away the hard cuts to positions that are no longer necessary.
Otherwise, you have people cleaning empty, unused rooms. Curators attending to empty libraries. Diversity officers doing…well what they normally do. Etc.
Unfortunately, the current president of MIT is a social climber of the type that wants to assure you he is Woker than you are. He can afford to indulge in this full-time, having successfully investigated and exonerated himself for the offense of approving the receipt of dirty money from Jeff Epstein, a donor who at the time was already on MIT’s prohibited donors list. The document he signed is a true profile in courage, explaining that it was all right to take the money as long as nobody was allowed to say where it came from, including the donor. MIT as an institution is quickly squandering a 150-year-old reputation.