Education Secretary Linda McMahon noted progress in universities addressing Trump’s demands for transparency on international students. She emphasised the need for vetting to combat antisemitism and advocated for merit-based admissions over DEI programs.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon said that she is seeing "progress" from institutions regarding the Trump administration's demands.
Trump in an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz had said that, “We want to have foreign students come. We're very honoured by it, but we want to see their list." She echoed the same sentiments.
“Harvard didn't want to give us the list. They're going to be giving us the list now. I think they're starting to behave, actually, if you want to know the truth,” the president added.
In May, the Trump administration sent a letter to Harvard University, stating that if Harvard wants the opportunity of regaining Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification before the upcoming academic school year back, they should provide the "information required" within "72 hours".
The information included the list of students who had participated in pro-Palestine protests.
McMahon defended the attacks on universities such as Harvard and Columbia and said, “I have seen progress. And you know why I think we're seeing progress? Because we are putting these measures in place, and we're saying we're putting teeth behind what we're looking at,” in an interview to NBC News.
She added that there still is a long way to go to eradicate antisemitism on campus and vet international students. “It's very important that we are making sure that the students who are coming in and being on these campuses aren't activists, that they're not causing these activities,” McMahon said.
The Education Secretary said that students who come on campus should not be afraid to be there and should not feel unsafe.
“I'm really happy to see what Harvard did, but I wonder if maybe they didn't get a little spur from our action, because they talk a lot about it, but I think we really started to see a lot of their actions once we were taking action,” she acknowledged.
She gave Trump the credit for pushing the universities to take steps to combat antisemitism on campus.
This comes after Trump signed a proclamation that aims to deny foreign students from studying at Harvard. In May, a federal judge had blocked Trump's ability to enrol foreign students.
Answering if international students will have to leave Harvard, if already enrolled, she said, “Well, that's actually more up to the State Department than it is to Department of Education", and added, "we have to do more careful vetting.”
Amid accusations on Harvard and Columbia of fomenting antisemitism, Trump had cancelled $2 billion in grants to Harvard and $400 million in grants to Columbia.
McMahon added that there was an imbalance in diversity on Campus because, “only 3% of [Harvard's] faculty were conservatives.”
“Do you think that's a diversity of viewpoint on campus? Because those — you can't possibly believe that,” she added. “And I do think that that's one of the things that Harvard and Columbia and other universities are taking a serious look at, is, what is that balance?”
She said that Harvard and other universities "need to do a better job" in that.
McMahon also defended Trump's efforts to eliminate DEI programs on college campuses and said that she favoured merit-based admissions instead.
“What we found when we admit students through merit and meritocracy and, and their studies, that diversity comes on campuses by itself,” McMahon said. “You don't need to have a particular program that says we have to have diversity, equity, inclusion.”
