Trump suspends Harvard University's foreign student visa program for 'undermining' national security
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President Donald Trump has banned foreign nationals from studying at Harvard University in the latest escalation on his clash with the Ivy League institution.
The president issued an executive order Wednesday entitled Enhancing National Security by Addressing Risks at Harvard University, which suspends the Ivy League's student visa program - declaring that is a 'privilege granted by our government, not a guarantee.'
He also doubled down on his claims that the school violated federal law, and argued it is important to limit international students for national security as he also restricted travel from a dozen countries.
'The Federal Bureau of Investigation has long warned that foreign adversaries and competitors take advantage of easy access to American higher education to, among other things, steal technical information and products, exploit expensive research and development to advance their own ambitions and spread false information for political or other reasons,' the executive order states.
'Our adversaries, including the People's Republic of China try to take advantage of American higher education by exploiting the student visa program for improper purposes and by using visiting students to collect information at elite universities in the United States.'
Harvard has nearly 6,800 international students, who made up more than 27 percent of its enrollment in the past academic year, according to the BBC.
About one-third of those international students are from China, and Trump has previously accused the Ivy League school of 'coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party.'
In his executive order on Wednesday - one of several that he issued - Trump further claims that Harvard failed 'to identify and address misconduct by those foreign students' amid his crackdown on universities that allowed antisemitic protests on campus.
'In my judgment, it presents an unacceptable risk to our nation's security for an academic institution to refuse to provide sufficient information, when asked, about known instances of misconduct and criminality committed by its students,' he wrote, claiming that crime rates at the Massachusetts campus have 'drastically risen.'
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
