Trump administration halts Harvard's ability to enroll international students

> For example, getting things done with prestige connections, domestically and internationally. And the international diplomatic goodwill

What you describe is relatively recent development of US foreign policy. In 1959, John F. Kennedy purchased a copy of The Ugly American for all of his fellow US Senators. After Kennedy was elected, many foreign service programs were initiated to leverage soft power. That was JFK's legacy.

Prior to that, the US acted much in the same way as it is today. It came up with Bretton Woods, along with the UK. The people that ran the world were the Averill Harrimans and Prescott Bushes.

In 1956, the US basically told the UK it wasn't going to back the Prime Minister (Anthony Eden) with regards to the Suez Canal. That was probably a sobering indication that the UK was going to be a supplicant in the relationship. The US also returned Vietnam to France (as was policy after WW2), which of course precipitated 20 years of war in southeast asia.

The end of the WW2, and the discovery of the infiltration of Russian agents in the dead Roosevelt administration put Truman in panic mode. The iron curtain and cold war basically turned foreign policy into a huge power grab after the war to position against a perceived threat.

https://www.thehistoryreader.com/us-history/ugly-american-jf...

> Between Harvard, Yale, and possibly a few other schools, I thought they had influence throughout government.

The simple answer is that they don't. Alumni are often in powerful positions, but even they are, that is very different from the school itself exerting influence.

This is an explanation from my department chair which I've expanded. In the context of a university, there are four main power groups - the alumni, the faculty, the students, and the board of trustees. (Within each group of course are subfactions.) The actual power balance between these groups is never precisely certain (it's an unobservable "latent variable"). Whenever large events happen that involve the university, we get observations that allow us to estimate the latent variable better.

In the case of Harvard, I think the current observations are most consistent with the following: the Board of Trustees, faculty, and students have currently aligned in their goals - which we might summarize as (1) maintaining independence from the government and (2) the ability to hold/teach specific "controversial" viewpoints (benefits of diversity, anti-colonialism, potentially other "progressive" concepts). I suspect that within the factions the relative importance of these two goals is not balanced. The fact that the coalition has survived much longer than, e.g., Columbia, is somewhat surprising.

My suspicion is that the answer to your question is that the persistent "smacking around" is only in part due to the external factors other replies have mentioned. I think a major piece of the situation can be explained by a change in the power dynamic with the alumni. Under normal circumstances, the faculty presumably hope to maintain long lasting influence over their alumni, which the board of trustees leverage to bring in more money and influence to the university. The current situation suggests that the high-power/high-$$$ portion of the alumni who are in a position to leverage the public conversation about what's going on are not doing it. This implies that the strength of that edge of the power graph is much weaker than it was expected to be. I think it remains to be seen whether this is true. Further observations that would support that would be reduced donations, public complaints, etc. Conversely, increased fundraising and more public support would suggest the opposite.

The key point about the university power network is that USUALLY, the best situation is to avoid situations that actually reveal too much information. Everyone would prefer to believe they have more power than they do. Obviously the alumni are composed of factions, and presumably a large fraction of the potential participants are also members of other organizations with latent power networks and participating in this particular situation would involve expending capital in these other networks with potential reduction in power. Some alumni that have spoken up (i.e., Ackman) are clearly unaligned with the current coalition, and this MAY reflect the fact that the wealthy/powerful group of alumni that have sustained Harvard are really unhappy with the current stances of the university and would like it to shift (return?) to a different set of ideologies. But it's also possible that he represents a minority, and the rest are just nervous about getting involved.

My conclusion from this analysis is that things will persist as they have, with everyone who might be involved hoping that lawsuits will be successful in resolving the situation with the minimum of their involvement. If this approach is unsuccessful, I think we'll end up in a situation where we get a much better observation of the power balance between alumni, faculty, and board (I think the students rarely have as much power as they think they do!).

One explanation might be that the objects of their influence are nested within agencies.

Most presidents let the agencies run mostly unsupervised, it seems like. With the agencies now under heavy fire structurally, they may not be able to do what they would normally do to prevent this kind of thing.

I think the whole agency model gives the president way more power than they are meant to have. I guess this exists to serve as a form of blame laundering from the people without term limits to the guy with term limits? But if the president does not play ball, suddenly they have power over things congress would otherwise have power over. Oops.

I am not entirely sure what you mean but I will disagree with other commenters that there are no factions at war with each other. If you look at the prosecutors who went after Trump in the past few years, they were disproportionately Harvard Law grads. So that is Merrick Garland, Matthew Colangelo, Alvin Bragg, and Jack Smith. I do think that law schools in particular have cultivated a particular political view and are not independent or nonpartisan but I very much disagree with what Trump is doing.

I think there are almost certainly factions here. I personally think Trump is targeting Harvard because of the above reason. Overall I think the situation is quite bad but that isn't what you asked.

It’s less a shift in power networks and more about Trump using existing presidency tools more aggressively. Harvard didn’t lose influence, it’s being targeted because it's outspoken and symbolic. The immigration authority falls under the executive branch, so the president can act unilaterally, without needing broader support.

After these incidents, it is evident that the power networks were always in Israel.

Israelis are upset at the student protests and are influencing the university to crush them.

Universities thought they were to uphold principles but it turns out that was only cover for doing certain things that made others happy.

Strange times indeed

Isn't a lot of the appeal of Trump that he does not owe anything to these power networks? Others in the Republican party may do so, but Trump has the Republican party well under control, and so doesn't have to listen to anyone. Trump has drained the previous swamp and erected a new one, and Harvard never got an invitation.

You're overthinking this. The university is vocal about keeping its independence. That's enough to warrant retaliation from this president.

> Can someone elucidate the power networks involved here?

Major players, regarding the Gaza/Hamas issue:

- Harvard itself. The administration, not the faculty or students.

- The US Eastern Establishment, the Ivy League and its graduates. They once ran the US, and still run finance, but are less influential politically than a few decades ago.

- The Netanyahu faction in Israel. Understanding this requires more info about Israeli politics than is worth posting here. Wikipedia has a summary.[1] There are a huge number of factions. Netanyahu leads a coalition. The coalition seems to need an enemy to hold it together.

- MAGA. "Project 2025" is the MAGA playbook. Despite some denials, the Trump administration has mostly been following that playbook.

- Israel's lobby in the US, starting with AIPAC. American Jews as a group average left of center, but the Israel lobby is hard-right.

- Major donors to Harvard. Some are closely associated with the Israel lobby and vocal about it. Others aren't.

- The US courts. Anyone can bring a case to court, and courts have to do something about it.

- Trump.

Minor players:

- Fox News. 23 of Trump's appointees came from Fox News. The MAGA base listens to Fox News.

- The United Nations. Provides some aid, but hasn't been able to do more than that.

- US Congress. Has the real power, but is too divided to do anything with it.

- Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. They're the ones most affected, but lack any real power at this point. It's not even suggested that they be represented in international meetings.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Israel

> Between Harvard, Yale, and possibly a few other schools, I thought they had influence throughout government.

Harvard and Yale didn't hire the right lobbyists [0][1][2]

The other universities like Dartmouth, MIT, and public university systems did.

One of the side effect of being large endowment private universities meant Harvard and Yale remained extremely insular and concentrated on donor relations over government relations.

For example, MIT across town remained much more integrated with public-private projects compared to Harvard, and ime Harvard would try to leverage their alumni network where possible, but the Harvard alumni network just isn't as strong as it was 20 or 30 years ago.

Also, don't underestimate the Israel-Palestine culture war's impact on campus alumni relationships. Both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli campus orgs have continued to bombard me and other alumni to fight political battles against Harvard leadership for their side. Benefits of signing up to both Islamic orgs and Chabad to broaden my horizons back in the day I guess. Alumni from orgs on both sides are fine targeting the entire university, because fundamentally, Harvard is a very isolated experience where loyalty is to your house, a couple clubs, or your grad program - not Harvard as a whole.

And because Harvard has a lot of HNW alumni, they always try to meddle in some shape or form - Wen Jiabao's best friend funds the Fairbank Center, Kraft funds and hosts events at Chabad, some al Saud branches fund a couple Islamic clubs, a bunch of alt-right leaning Catholic traditionalists fund the Abigail Adams Institute, etc. It's just inter-elite fratricide at this point because no one truly gives a poo about Harvard.

Honestly, Harvard should prevent alumni from funding campus orgs, but they won't do so because donor relations.

[0] - https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/19/trump-is-bombarding...

[1] - https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/09/small-colleges-trum...

[2] - https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-influence/2024...

Edit: I am extremely pro-academic freedom. This move is a HORRIBLE affront to free speech and campus autonomy. My cynicism and disillusionment may sound like I support the move by the administration, but it is the complete opposite.

I think its a few reasons/things here...(some already noted in some way by others)

* Trump does not care or maybe lacks the understanding of the concept of a network and influence with entities outside the U.s.

* Trump probably figures that he can use this as sort of leverage against negotiations with non-U.s. entities...but using a blunt instrument instead of nuance, or backchannels.

* Trump is foolishly following the guidelines from the architects of project 2025...whether those folks are educated enough to understand value of schools of higher educatioin, or worse, these architects fear having an educated population - regardless if that population are U.S. citizens or folks outside of U.S.

* Trump is behaving like a child having a tantrum, and is demolishing the "swamp" of current political arenas, and re-building it for himself/his party...and Harvard and other entities (that typically might be invited) are not invited in the upcoming new world order.

* Trump has little desire in any/all of this, and this is simply another stab at pushing the envelope of what the U.s. Executive branch can/can not do...much like a child who pushes boundaries to see how far they can get...and if no one pushes back/challenges (at least in meaningful ways), then they will keep pushing until greater power has been obtained.

...of course, it could be a combination of many of the above at the same time as well...and could be other stuff that i didn't note above too. In other words, welcome to the modern U.S. tyranny. ;-)

> Between Harvard, Yale, and possibly a few other schools, I thought they had influence throughout government.

Turns out the "deep state" is just some made up bullshit to make people distrustful, angry, and easier to manipulate.

> Is some other faction at work now, or is it the same people as before? Are the power networks changing?

Nope, it's always been this dynamic. It's made of people after all. But that doesn't work as well to get people lapping up Trumpty Dumpty propaganda.

The Project 2025 people and the Yarvinists agree that elite universities like Harvard are spreading the “woke mind virus” and must be destroyed. They consider their movements a revolution, not an iteration on the status quo.

I see more than a hundred comments in this discussion already but no mention of Israel. Is everybody trying to avoid saying it?

The DHS letter to Harvard specifically says that this is because Harvard's campus has been "hostile to Jews" and "promotes pro-Hamas sympathies".

In other words, this is the Zionist Trump administration attacking Harvard because Harvard allows their students to speak out against the genocide Israel is waging against Palestine. Clearly Trump is Israel First.

The best source I've seen for understanding the underlying power dynamics at play is the DHS's Press Release: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/05/22/harvard-university-loses...

Here's the beginning:

WASHINGTON – Today, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ordered DHS to terminate the Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification.

This means Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status.

Harvard’s leadership has created an unsafe campus environment by permitting anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators to harass and physically assault individuals, including many Jewish students, and otherwise obstruct its once-venerable learning environment. Many of these agitators are foreign students. Harvard’s leadership further facilitated, and engaged in coordinated activity with the CCP, including hosting and training members of a CCP paramilitary group complicit in the Uyghur genocide.

“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” said Secretary Noem. “It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments. Harvard had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing. It refused. They have lost their Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification as a result of their failure to adhere to the law. Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.”

On April 16, 2025, Secretary Noem demanded Harvard provide information about the criminality and misconduct of foreign students on its campus. Secretary Noem warned refusal to comply with this lawful order would result in SEVP termination.

This action comes after DHS terminated $2.7 million in DHS grants for Harvard last month.

Harvard University brazenly refused to provide the required information requested and ignored a follow up request from the Department’s Office of General Council. Secretary Noem is following through on her promise to protect students and prohibit terrorist sympathizers from receiving benefits from the U.S. government.

I think a fair answer might be that this immediate action is primarily about Israel, and Harvard's toleration and apparent support of organizations that the US government considers to be terrorists. Harvard has quite consciously taken an antagonistic approach here, and the government feels it is responding in kind.

Secondarily, it's about the way that elite schools have aligned themselves with the progressive politics associated with the Democratic party. Harvard is the target here because they are strongest, not necessarily because they are the most liberal. If the government can humble Harvard, they expect that all the weaker institutions will fold without a fight.

If you speak out against the government, the government will retaliate. Simple as that.

Many people associated with the University are pretty happy about it getting smacked down.

Shameless, wrong, and overtly illegal discrimination on the basis of race, sex, and creed, suppression of free speech, even the compelling of speech have all been de rigeur for Harvard for the past decade.

I just wish they would use a scalpel rather than a sledge hammer.

I don't get how DHS has control over what universities foreign students can attend. Either than can attend school in the US or not. Saying they have to transfer from Harvard to another American university is total abuse of power. Surely there are lawsuits in the works over this.

Which isn’t at all how PhD programs work. This is a supreme dick move to students are going to be forced to leave with an AbD for no other reason than Trumps ego.

This is going to burn the children of the most powerful families across the world. Monarchies, dictators, owners of international conglomerates, etc all send their kids to Harvard. Destroying their children’s education out of a fit of malice is going to haunt him, and America on top of all the other stuff America is doing to the world.

America first is rapidly becoming America alone.

A judge has already blocked the move.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/judge-blocks-tr...

> A federal judge in California has blocked the Trump administration from terminating the legal statuses of international students at universities across the U.S.

Under 8 U.S.C. § 1372, the SEVIS (Student and Exchange Visitor Information System) program requires schools to report data on international students including what DHS has been asking for.

Harvard may argue that DHS’s request was overly broad, lacked due process, or sought information beyond what the law permits.

8 CFR § 214.3(g) and § 214.4(b), which require schools to maintain and furnish records “as required by the Service,” including disciplinary actions and other conduct relevant to maintaining status.

8 CFR § 214.3(l)(2)(iii) allows for withdrawal of certification if a school fails to “provide requested documentation” to DHS.

Not to mention other overly broad immigration laws

But given the laws on the books, DHS has broad authority to take this action.

Not arguing one way or the other just laying out the facts. This could have happened under the prior administration if the law was applied

The actual letter explains they can regain status by ratting out their students.

It will quietly be done, although likely in a way that make it look as if Harvard hasn't.

Even more specific: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment

It’s also crazy (read: unconstitutional) to punish students who do have everything to do with these protests.

s/crazy/deliberately evil/g

They might prefer to start with certain targets, but all international students are target of opportunity [0] the same way they've attacked people with lawful residency.

[1] Though perhaps with some very particular and suspicious quasi-ethnic exceptions. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crljn5046epo

[0] Ex. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/us/immigration-green-card..., https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article304988381.html

Has there ever been an empire that committed suicide at the height of power?

They still are, they just flipped the poles.

It's called a bill of attainder and it's prohibited by the Constitution. Courts have said this also applies to executive orders though it's not as crystal clear.

He's already done this to the Associated Press for ignoring his stupid Gulf of Mexico rename as well as to several law firms for representing democrats.

No; it’s illegal but he controls the justice department and is attempting to silence the courts. He’s singling them out because they refused to bend the knee. This is not okay. And it is not normal.

This is quite literally the appeal to tradition or inertia fallacy. Just because they've been around for a while does not mean they are not facing an existential threat. Every structure humans create will one day collapse. This certainly looks difficult for Harvard and could be their end because there is no divine protection, only the decision that will be made by an extremely conservative Supreme Court and the willingness of authoritarian minded government employees in the trump admin to listen to the courts.

I'm glad we're testing the guardrails by making our country unappealing the best talent in the world and wasting government resources on a revenge tour.

As it’s going, probably 8 years.

or 8+ years

Trump is not the problem, he's a symptom. Don't forget he got reelected, together with a republican congress who does everything he tells them to do.

They’re trying to make an example of Harvard so they don’t need to force anyone else to tow the line. Other universities will self censor.

Most the universities will do the thing asked in order to re-instate their student visa certification. i.e. provide intel needed to deport any students that they believe have opinions that are not in the interest of national security.

Most likely Harvard will try to fight it in court and then give in if they lose. It's not likely we see the future decertification continue into the academic year.

Seems most universities don't really care as long as the money keeps flowing. They jumped quickly on the DEI bandwagon and they will quickly hop off too.

Great question, right to the heart of the matter. First higher learning, somewhere down the line, ordinary people? In my small world, I'm very clear I'm anti-trump on every issue. As an ordinary person, how long before I get on some Stalin type radar? If trump lobbies for and gets a third term, will there be an awakening to how far the abuse will go?

Can they really do this? You're telling me this is real and not one of those "just for show" things that have no real teeth and will eventually get overturned by a judge?

Yea, that’s the message they are trying to send.

It's likely foreign heads of state can obtain a different visa for their children, if they are even on student visas to begin with.

They will be accommodated.

> It's education now, but it will be lawyers and judges next

It already is this. Their attack on the judicial branch is the most frightening IMO, since it is directly attacking checks and balances.

To illustrate your point, three of the current justices on the Supreme Court earned their law degree from Harvard: Jackson, Gorsuch, and (Chief Justice) Roberts.

It's already been lawyers and judges, not going great...

I heard University of Illinois bought a policy to protect against losing cash tuitions from Chinese grad students. Perhaps other universities have done the same.

They didn't revoke the visas. They revoked Harvard's ability to enroll foreign students.

I mean ... it's still nuts, but slightly different.

Instead of breaking the "keys" (visas) that unlock the doors to Harvard, they're just putting glue in the locks.

"To my friends, everything; to my enemies, the law"

Yeah this seems like it'll follow the script of the AP and Perkins Coïe.

They can (try and) transfer to another college / university.

But, I suspect, if suddenly all international students transferred to MIT, the administration would simply do the same to MIT. So it would become one big game of whack-a-mole, and the smaller players would just bend over to the rules.

International students are cash cows for some institutions. They wouldn't dare to have that cow put down.

That's what "conservatives" mean by "law and order". You obey them so they can put you in your place. They want to impose upon the rest of us, not be imposed upon.

It could be Gaza protesters sure but it could be anyone. Previously legal residents were deported for minor traffic violations.

They’re trying to hit some targets for deportation numbers and shipping home “criminal” foreign students is an easy win.

Sure, but do you think that if nothing had ever happened in Gaza, the Trump administration wouldn't have found some other pretext to go after higher education, and foreign students in particular? They're defunding research programs all across the board and are sending people to gulags for having tattoos.

We basically get two chances if you want to follow the normal procedure. Swing congress during the midterms and lock him up for the remainder of his term and or elect a democrat in four years who will tear up the stack of executive orders and make the rounds apologizing to everyone.

Oh please

No :) The 3 issues are

1. Racism

2. Racism

3. Racism

The action by itself comes as a punishment which imply that this is indeed great resource but because Harvard was a naughty boy means that can't have it.

I want to note that when Brexit happened EU citizens had about 2 years period to move to UK and just like that get their full rights there and those with enough years of stay had the right to obtain British citizenship. Streamlined process through scanning your id using an app, little to no hassle.

IIRC half of the EU citizens left despite having all those rights and streamlined bureaucracy. My observation was that those desperate or those who ware having their perfect life stayed, those who had other options left UK because it wasn't worth the stress and you future being bargaining chips for politicians.

I bet you, if this continues for some more time USA will no longer receive the best and the brightest. Those have options and their parents will prefer the options where their golden kids don't risk being subject to life changing actions or even abuse.

Yeah, getting the worlds top brainiancs and enticing them with a good education and having some of them build their lives here is one of our greatest imports.

Waterloo, McGill, and U of Toronto admissions offices should be spending the entire day tomorrow calling the full international Harvard roster ASAP.

This is essentially cultural revolution from the right.

Education is obsolete thanks to AI. US is just ahead of the curve as usual.

(/s in case it wasn't obvious)

> Let’s throw that all away because learning is liberal.

Makes me think of:

"Reality has a well known liberal bias" - Stephen Colbert

The amount of "burn it all down because I don't like the people that like this thing" is depressing.

It's not even clear that higher education produces liberals. Half of Trump-land went to Ivy Leagues.

What is taught matters a lot. Suppose a foreign adversary were able to infiltrate key US higher education institutions and subtly change the curriculum to be pro-communism and avoid STEM subjects.

Because he's not either of those things. He's a self serving tyrant. He has no philosophy of governing the state because he doesn't care about governing the state.

There is no coherent ideology. Only what he thinks is good for him at the present moment, which may in some cases be influenced by the most recent person he spoke with.

He doesn't conform to a political ideology, everything he does is for personal benefit/gratification and punishing his enemies. In this case Harvard didn't capitulate to his oversight demands.

Trump honest to God thought the literal letters "MS13" were tattooed on that guy's hands and Terry Morgan was gaslighting him..

I don't think Trump is really running the show here.

> We’d be much better off with a president Vance.

Vance literally defended the eating cats and dogs lie during the debate. The entire fucking point of this platform is to fuck the immigrants, legal or otherwise.

Or is this actually a surprise to anyone with half a brain?

If you are a Republican, you DID sign up for this. None of this has been kept secret.

I used to think that the Republican officials just put on a mask and perform kabuki for their Dear Leader. But the signalgate texts proved otherwise. This kind of thinking has penetrated deep into the party. It's not going away. Not with Vance.

The probability of impeachment succeeding at this time is effectively zero.

Most Republicans around me are extremely happy with this.

Republicans signed up for this. Some of them want plausible deniality, but that is about it.

People need to write their representatives. Volume of responses is what Congresscritters respond to.

Party doesn't matter. Ds need to inform their R Congresscritters every bit as much as any other combination.

For what it's worth, Republican constituents overwhelmingly voted for Trump in the R primary. Any number of candidates would have provided boilerplate Republican policies, but that wasn't what they wanted.

What Trump is doing is what these voters want.

And there's no limit. It's become an illiberal pro-authoritarian movement. It's in-progress.

Pick something you care about and defend it. It can't be everything all at once at all times, no one can do that.

What is the better path forward? Republican voters led by their representative Trump were unhappy about certain policies and events at Ivy league institutions. Voters have the right to feel this way and elect representatives to carry out their views even if this is not how you feel as a feature of democracy. Proxies of the representatives of the voters reached out to a few institutions requesting changes to be made or else face consequences. The institutions said "we are unwilling to make all of the changes that you would like to see because we think they are not reasonable". The administration's response is now to try and hurt these institutions (Harvard for now) by going after their pocketbook.

As someone with some "right-leaning" views I am indeed very sad that the US is losing our edge as an international destination for higher education but I do want to see major reforms at elite institutions. I don't see a good way to accomplish these reforms without being willing to go after institutions in the only way they really care about (hurting the budget). I think we would reach a better place if we could agree to compromises where the universities concede on the "less important points" (e.g. make an earnest effort to drop everything the right calls DEI and reduce the administration to student ratio back to ~1980 levels) while the right agrees to leave funding and privileges in place but if we cannot compromise then we unfortunately end up in a position that is worse for everyone. I suspect most of the left will blame the right for being unable to compromise while most of the right will blame the right but this is kind of the same theme for every major party-aligned disagreement.

The problems at Harvard and other high ed organizations are real. They've become pretty unhinged and concentrated, they really need to work on getting back to "open forum for discussing all ideas" rather than the "Open forum for discussing all correct ideas" that they have drifted into. I can see it first hand through my mother, who works at a major school.

That being said, republicans decided to chose an M1 Abrams tank to kill the pesky mice in the system.

As if the powers that be at YCombinator wouldn't roll over for Trump like all the other tech quislings.

YC has been funding and mentoring foriegn startups for a long time.

During the pandemic, the remote first model lead to a number of fairly successful early stage investments such as Orange Health and BharatX

The HN crowd here? A mixture of 'I told you so' posts, some fascists posting with glee that their perceived enemies are getting kicked in the knees and probably a few centrists desperately still trying to find a way to spin it in a positive manner.

The people running Y Combinator? They'll donate a few million to the Trump fund, maybe donate a jet or two and hope that gets him to stop for a little bit while claiming this 'isn't what we stand for' and 'i can't believe this happened (to us)'.

Make no mistake, they have no problem with these decisions until it has direct and material impact on them. That's why they invite the people directly responsible for this to their AI Startup school and give them privileged speaking opportunities. They don't care nor do they think that far into the future. Hell, you can go to the AI startup school page now and see them sharing the AI Ghibli shit [1]

[1] https://events.ycombinator.com/ai-sus

Why would you want a valid argument for holding a voter responsible for the actions of representatives? Arguments have nothing to do with it. Just hold them responsible, or not, for any reason. It makes no difference.

Voters don't really choose a representative. They are given choices. Two choices, of which, let's face it, most people will just pick whichever one is on "their side". Those choices are created by outside forces. And those choices, once chosen, will do... whatever the hell they want. There's no consequence to them doing whatever the hell they want. So it doesn't really matter what the choice is to begin with. You're as likely to get what you want by praying to the Flying Spaghetti Monster as by voting. The "choices" are just gonna do whatever the hell they want anyway. Whether you get what you want or not is incidental.

But let's assume you do hold somebody responsible for choosing something they have no control over. What does that mean to "hold them responsible" ? You gonna actually do something? Throw them in jail? Kill them? Probably not. You're probably just gonna say nasty things about them on Facebook. Which you could do at any time, for any reason. So who gives a shit what the argument is? It makes no difference to anything at all. You might as well ask for a valid argument for why the sky is blue. Ain't gonna change the sky.

Voters face the consequence for their voting. So, in that meaning, they are responsible for the actions of the representatives.

In what way would you like to hold them responsible? If there are reprisals for voting, do we live in a liberal democracy?

Edit: If by "hold responsible" you mean "be mad at them" then yes, of course you can, I can't read a comment section that isn't mostly that, and you knew that before making this comment.

Exactly what “consequence” are you talking about? Voting by design is protected from retribution.

Most people don't think hard or carefully about politics, and their political views are a very tiny fraction of what they give to the world (this is true even for most people who do think hard and carefully about politics, by the way). Their vote is never pivotal, and their views do not shape any major institutions.

Are they not?

> I still haven't found a valid argument for why a voter isn't held responsible for the actions of representatives. Especially if the actions would be likely to occur.

Does that apply to Gaza as well? Or is it just when people you don't like vote?

There is a reason we don't do this, why we didn't punish everyone who voted for Hitler etc.

I'm a bit confused what you're suggesting here. In what way should people be "held responsible for the actions of representatives"?

Careful what you wish for, the last change to the US flag appears to have been accomplished through an executive order. If isn't a red field with a gold T in the middle come July, I'll be moderately surprised.

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/proclamation-3351-...

The problem is your argument expects them to be arguing in good faith. Which they are not doing.

If laws were broken the DOJ can get a warrant for the evidence, if they believe it exists. Blanket requests for all information about students is unconstitutional and should be resisted.

> student records that can be used to determine if a student visa holder has violated their visa

What do they need from Harvard to determine if an individual has violated their visa? Does the administration not have a list of students on a visa? (Surely they do, given that's their job.) Do they not have evidence of a crime? (Surely they do, otherwise there's no problem. But also apparently not, because they'd just use that.) What's missing?

Can't DHS just look at local court records for this sort of thing? I imagine Harvard turns over evidence to the police and the courts when there's suspicion of a crime.