The foreign minister of France said Saturday that his nation supports Harvard University’s students and faculty in the wake of former US President Donald Trump’s renewed efforts to bar international students from the esteemed American university.
Speaking during a commencement address at HEC Paris, a top business school, Jean-Noël Barrot declared France’s solidarity with academic institutions facing governmental overreach.
“We stand with universities facing the threat of government control, restriction to their funding, constraints on their curricula or research projects,” Barrot said.
Switching to English during his address, he added, “We stand with Harvard faculty and with Harvard students, facing unjustified stress and anxiety right now.”
He further assured that France would step in to assist should U.S. policies continue to threaten international academic freedom.
“Should US courts uphold decisions to ban international students, France will offer (them) a safe place to complete their degrees,” he said.
The backdrop to Barrot’s remarks is growing political and financial pressure on U.S. universities and research institutions under Trump, including threats of significant federal funding cuts.
Harvard has become a primary target of Trump’s broader campaign against elite universities, particularly after the institution refused to comply with his administration’s demands for curricular oversight, staff vetting, and what he termed “viewpoint diversity”.
A U.S. court recently issued a temporary stay on Trump’s most recent executive action aimed at barring new international students from enrolling at Harvard. The legal block followed a White House proclamation, issued a day prior, which sought to bar most new foreign students from entering the U.S. and warned that existing international enrollees could have their visas revoked.
In retaliation, the U.S. government has already cut around $3.2 billion in federal grants and contracts associated with Harvard and vowed to exclude the university from all future federal funding.
In response to the hostile climate in the U.S., France and the European Union have been taking steps to attract disillusioned researchers and academics.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced in May a €500 million ($580 million) incentives package aimed at making the EU “a magnet for researchers”.
Similarly, French President Emmanuel Macron in April outlined a national funding initiative designed to help universities and research institutions absorb the cost of bringing foreign scientists to France.
