Compiled by SUSAN JONES
Summer break has started at most universities, but that hasn’t brought any pause from the Trump administration in new actions directed at higher education.
Once again, Harvard University has been the key target of the administration, which has moved in the past two weeks to ban the school from enrolling international students and to cut all of its federal grants.
Nationwide, international students are feeling pressure as the State Department halts the scheduling of new visa interviews for students.
May 19
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The Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the organization that accredits medical schools, voted to eliminate diversity programs and partnerships as criteria when it grades the performance of medical schools that confer “MD” degrees to students, according to USA Today.
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The National Science Foundation implemented restrictions for any new grants or any funding amendments to current grants that say NSF won’t award grants to universities that promote “diversity, equity and inclusion … in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws” — or that academically boycott Israel or boycott companies doing business with Israel. They appear in a new Grant General Conditions document, which has a paragraph specifying which Israel-related boycotts are prohibited but doesn’t define what DEI is.
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The Justice Department announced a new task force that will investigate claims of antisemitism as possible violations of the False Claims Act, as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion programs that the administration argues are discriminatory, CNN reported.
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The Department of Health and Human Services terminated another $60 million of Harvard University’s grants, claiming the Ivy League institution hasn’t done enough to protect students from antisemitism and prevent what it describes as racial discrimination. Harvard recently put up $250 million of its own funding to help sustain research impacted by the recent federal funding cuts and freezes, which top $2.6 billion.
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The University System of Maryland’s board of regents unanimously passed a resolution that will allow its 12 institutions to consider furloughs or temporary salary reductions amid budgetary troubles. The University of Maryland, Baltimore, says its laying off 30 full-time employees, eliminating another roughly 30 open positions and will likely institute modest salary reductions for 1,000 employees.
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The Catholic University of America, a private institution in Washington, D.C., laid off over five dozen staff members — about 7% of its workforce — in response to a $30 million deficit, The Pillar reported. The university is also reducing retirement benefits, offering buyouts to faculty, lowering planned raises and hoping to bring in additional revenue through new academic offerings.
May 20: The federal government is seeking to revisit several immigration cases involving college students previously detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for alleged involvement in pro-Palestinian activism on university campuses, Scripps News reported. Officials have begun contacting various court systems to explore possible appeals in cases where students were released from ICE custody. Among them are several high-profile scholars who remain under scrutiny despite rulings in their favor.
May 22
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U.S. District Judge Myong Joun temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s order to close the Education Department “to the maximum extent possible” and called for the agency to reinstate the more than 2,000 workers it laid off en masse in March.
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The Trump administration cut off Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, though a federal judge paused the decision a day later and on May 29 extended that pause while Harvard’s lawsuit against the administration moves forward.
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MIT plans to enroll fewer graduate students in the upcoming academic year due to anticipated declines in federal grant funding, Bloomberg reported. MIT will have about 100 fewer graduate students, representing an 8% year-over-year decline.
May 27
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said that he may prevent federally funded scientists from publishing in leading medical journals and launch in-house journals instead. “We’re probably going to stop publishing in the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA and those other journals because they’re all corrupt,” he said on the Ultimate Human podcast, The Washington Post and other outlets reported. Kennedy suggested, without evidence, that those journals are under the control of pharmaceutical companies.
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The State Department has halted the scheduling of new visa interviews for foreign students hoping to study in the U.S. while it prepares to expand the screening of their activity on social media, officials said. A U.S. official said the suspension is intended to be temporary and does not apply to applicants who already had scheduled their visa interviews, according to the Associated Press.
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A top official at the U.S. General Services Administration advises all federal departments to review their contracts with Harvard and cancel those that fail to meet agency standards. The same day, Leo Terrell, the head of the Department of Justice’s antisemitism task force, tells a Fox News anchor that the Trump administration is prepared to take Harvard’s lawsuits all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
May 28
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The Trump administration will begin to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students,” according to a short announcement from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. At the president’s behest, the U.S. departments of State and Homeland Security will also make unspecified changes to the criteria for student visas and increase scrutiny of applications from students from China and Hong Kong. Rubio called out Chinese students “with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields,” though he didn’t specify what those disciplines are.
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Sixteen states, but not Pennsylvania, sued the National Science Foundation over the agency’s cap on funding for research overhead and its mass termination of grants related to diversity, equity and other topics that the Trump administration opposes.
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Eastern Michigan University is ending engineering teaching partnerships with two Chinese universities — Guangxi University and Beibu Gulf University — after a pair of prominent Republican lawmakers raised national security concerns.
May 29: The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology has invited international undergraduate and postgraduate students currently enrolled at Harvard, as well as those holding confirmed offers for Harvard degree programs, to continue their studies in Hong Kong.
May 30: The Trump administration wants to lower the maximum Pell Grant by $1,685 for the 2026–27 academic year as the program faces an estimated $2.7 billion shortfall, according to Inside Higher Education. The proposed cut, detailed in budget documents released May 30, would drop the maximum Pell Grant to $5,710, reversing more than a decade of efforts to steadily boost the award, which helps low-income students attend college.
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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