When Harvard denied Trump and Homeland Security open access to information regarding its foreign student population, he invoked an executive order whereby the federal government would fully control the number and identity of those foreigners admitted to the university. Two weeks later, on June 5, District Court Judge Allison Burroughs of Massachusetts put a temporary restraining order on the Trump initiative. It remains for the judiciary to decide whether the president’s executive order was in fact constitutional.
In 2024, Harvard hosted 6,800 foreign students, approximately 700 of whom were from Canada. A May 28 article in my local newspaper, The Hamilton Spectator, cited the distress of Canadians who had already completed a year or two of their education there while having no idea of what awaits them down the road. Trump’s disdain for illegal aliens, it seems, has infected his approach to all foreigners, and he appears intent on seriously decreasing the number of them admitted to institutions such as Harvard. Or is his MAGA obsession simply an aspect of that Chauvinism that many Canadians see as integral to the American personality?
I have no problem with Trump’s desire to Make America Great Again by ridding it of some of the inanities championed by the Neo-Marxist Left. The D.E.I. criteria endorsed by institutions such as Harvard are absurd. Denying admission to a White Male whose marks are significantly better than others simply because of his Gender or the Colour of his skin, is absurd. But so also is Trump’s seeming bias against those not born in the U.S.! It is but a variation of the Identity Politics that ignores the truly significant Moral/Intellectual aspects of our species out of deference to some truly superficial categorizations.