（来源：《环球时报》，2025-06-05）

People walk in Harvard Yard at Harvard University on April 15, 2025, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Photo: AFP

The latest move by the US government to suspend entry of international students studying at Harvard will damage US' image and international credibility, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said on Thursday.

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday suspended for an initial six months the entry into the US of foreign nationals seeking to study or participate in exchange programs at Harvard University, amid an escalating dispute with the Ivy League school, Reuters reported.

Trump's proclamation cited national security concerns as a justification for barring international students from entering the US to pursue studies at the university.

When asked to comment on the proclamation, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said on Thursday that China-US education cooperation benefits both sides.

Lin said China opposes politicizing education cooperation. What the US did will damage its own image and reputation. "We will firmly defend the legitimate and lawful rights and interests of Chinese students and scholars," he said.

The proclamation temporarily blocks the entry of nearly all new Harvard students as nonimmigrants into the US under visas most international students use to study at universities or participate in academic exchange programs in the country, CNN said.

It also directs the Secretary of State "to consider revoking" those visas - known as F, M and J visas - for current Harvard students who meet the proclamation's "criteria," according to the US media report.

The order claimed Harvard "is no longer a trustworthy steward of international student and exchange visitor programs," accusing the school of failing to report students' disciplinary records to the federal government and criticizing it for ties to researchers based in China, CBS News said.

Some Chinese experts said that for international students who have already been admitted to Harvard but have not yet enrolled, this move is a significant blow.

A netizen who claimed to be a PhD student at Harvard shared in a post on Xiaohongshu on Thursday that he arrived in the US from Canada on Wednesday evening, and learned about the ban on arrival. At first, he was very nervous at the customs checkpoint, but was still allowed to enter.

Whether in the short or long term, the number of international students pursuing studies in the US is likely to decline in certain areas, and America's attractiveness to global talent will further diminish, which will, in the long run, impact the quality of its higher education and its science and technology policies, Wu Xinbo, director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University, told the Global Times on Thursday.

Harvard and the US government have been locked in conflict for months as the administration demands the university make changes to campus programming, policies, hiring and admissions to root out on-campus antisemitism and eliminate what it calls "racist 'diversity, equity and inclusion' practices," CNN said.

For the US President and the Republican Party, targeting Harvard is, to some extent, a strategic move aimed at weakening the Democratic Party's influence over intellectual discourse and elite circles, Li noted. "By doing so, Republicans seek to strengthen their dominance across education, politics, society, and even the economy, in hopes of reshaping American social structures to align with their own ideological vision," Li Haidong, a professor at China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Thursday.

The massive changes in US research brought about by the new administration are causing many scientists in the country to rethink their lives and careers, according to a recent survey conducted by Nature.

More than 1,200 scientists who responded to the Nature poll — three-quarters of the total respondents — are considering leaving the US following the disruptions. Europe and Canada were among the top choices for relocation, according to the survey.

In the latest response, Harvard called the US President's proclamation "yet another illegal retaliatory step taken by the Administration in violation of Harvard's First Amendment rights, vowing to continue to protect its international students, according to media reports.