Less than a week before
Harvard’s graduation ceremony in May, 2025, and about a month after Trump had frozen
$2.2 billion in federal funding that would have gone to Harvard and then
threatened to remove the university’s tax-exempt status, an Obama-appointed
U.S. district judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump
administration’s order that foreign students at Harvard must either transfer to
other universities or leave the United States, effective immediately. In
its complaint filed with the district court, Harvard argues that DHS Secretary
Kristi Noem violated the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal law. It requires
that a rational basis be given by the federal government, which must take administrative-law
steps before such an order can be definitively executed against a university.
Even then, a university can appeal the last administrative-law decision to federal
district court. At the very least, a university must be provided with the
alleged violation of visa law and given the chance to make corrections or defend
itself rather than be caught off-guard by a fait accompli by fiat. Less noticeable
in the midst of the brawl, it is no small matter that a director of the federal
security agency so brazenly and obviously violated administrative-procedure law.
At the very least, it is duplicitous and hypocritical for a government official
tasked with enforcing law against criminals to knowingly violate law to which
she herself is subject in her official capacity. At the very least, Noem’s
conduct should raise concerns regarding the need for greater oversight over DHS
by Congress and whether it should be easier for Congress to remove a Cabinet-level
political appointee. Perhaps it should be within the purview of a federal judge
to suspend and even dismiss a Cabinet secretary judged to have violated federal
law in an official capacity. In the context of an increasingly imperial
presidency, more checks are arguably necessary. This is not, however, the topic
at hand; instead, my thesis here is that even though Harvard should indeed
pursue its case in federal court against the Trump Administration, and the
university’s values are superior to the way in which Yale has capitulated to that
government, Harvard’s administration could improve the university by exercising
the sort of maturity that recognizes the kernels of truth in the otherwise spurious
claims. Such maturity would be two degrees of separation from the mentality of
Yale’s administration with respect to spying on student with the help of the
FBI.
The full essay is at "Harvard vs. Trump."
