The last international at Harvard

Around two weeks ago, as thousands of students celebrated commencement at Harvard under a spring sun, Alan Garber, the university president, received a standing ovation when he spoke seemingly innocuous words: “Welcome, Members of the Class of 2025 from down the street, across the country... and around the world.” The pause before “around the world” was deliberate. The emphasis, unequivocal. “From around the world, just as it should be,” he concluded to thunderous applause. At any other commencement ceremony, these words would have gone unnoticed. But at Harvard during Trump’s second presidency, every gesture defending internationality has become an act of resistance. And I, a Spanish visiting scholar in the heart of Cambridge, Massachusetts, could well be part of the last generation of international scholars if the president manages to win his legal battle against the oldest university in the United States.

For months, I’ve been studying at Harvard how liberal democracies die not from frontal attacks, but from the perverse exploitation of worthy causes. My research at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies focuses precisely on how anti-democratic movements hijack liberal banners—feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, environmentalism—to undermine democratic institutions from within. I never imagined that my own status as an international researcher would become a real-time case study.

Trump and his administration have perfected this art of instrumentalization. Under the guise of combating antisemitism on college campuses—a genuine and necessary cause—they have launched an unprecedented attack on Harvard. The equation is diabolically simple: accuse the university of tolerating antisemitism, demand draconian changes to its academic governance, and when Harvard refuses to cede its autonomy, punish it by cutting off $3 billion in federal funding and revoking its ability to enroll international students. It’s the same pattern I’ve documented in my research on “homonationalism”: using advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights to justify xenophobic policies against “homophobic” Muslims. Or invoking feminism to ban the headscarf. Noble causes turned into Trojan horses of authoritarianism.

What’s at stake goes far beyond my J-1 visa or the 6,800 international students who represent 27% of Harvard’s student body. The United States is committing a spectacular act of academic self-sabotage. While China climbs the ranks in the Nature Index with nine of the top 10 scientific research institutions, Trump has declared war on the only American university still at the top of that list: Harvard.

The numbers are devastating. International students contribute more than $40 billion annually to the U.S. economy and support 380,000 jobs. Of the 10 largest tech companies in the country, half are run by immigrants. Elon Musk himself wouldn’t have built Tesla in the United States if Trump’s anti-foreign student policies had been in place when he arrived from South Africa. Sergei Brin wouldn’t have developed Google. Jensen Huang wouldn’t have created Nvidia.

But the damage goes beyond economic metrics. The fight against Harvard isn’t just a fight against a university; it’s against an idea. The idea that talent has no passport, that knowledge knows no boundaries, that the best minds in the world can gather in one place to push the boundaries of human knowledge.

Let me be personal. This year at Harvard has transformed my way of thinking and researching. I’ve had theoretical debates on democracy, electoral systems and polarization with the greatest experts on political behavior, but also with top-level historians and economists. I’ve refined my experimental methodology in seminars where excellence is not an aspiration but the starting point. I’ve become convinced that true research cuts across academic disciplines and the nationalities of those who practice it.

The paradox is cruel. As I investigate how political and social identities can be manipulated to erode liberal democracy, I watch how my own status as an international scholar becomes ammunition in Trump’s culture war.

For now, the courts have temporarily blocked Trump’s most draconian actions. Judge Allison Burroughs has prevented the immediate cancellation of visas while the case is litigated in the courts. But the damage has already been done. Searches for U.S. PhD programs have fallen by 25% to 40%, while those for Australian and Swiss universities have soared. Dozens of brilliant scholars who would have chosen the United States are looking elsewhere.

What we’re witnessing isn’t just an attack on Harvard or international students. It’s an assault on the very idea of knowledge as a universal enterprise, and we Europeans should recognize the pattern. Trump isn’t innovating; he’s importing. His attack on universities closely follows the playbook of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, who expelled the Central European University in Budapest, or that of Vladimir Putin, who has shut down or brought under his control dozens of independent academic institutions in Russia.

The lesson for Spain and Europe is clear: authoritarian tactics can travel. What works in Budapest or Moscow is tested in Washington, and what succeeds in Washington can be tried out in Madrid or Amsterdam. Universities are not casual targets in this global culture war. They are, along with independent media and the judiciary, the last counterweights to critical thinking and democratic resistance.

My research on the instrumentalization of noble causes to destroy liberal democracy has never been more urgent or more personal. Because now I’m not studying the phenomenon from an academic distance; I am experiencing it firsthand. And as I write these lines from my office in Cambridge, on a J-1 visa that may be one of the last that Harvard can sponsor, I understand that my generation of European scholars bears a historic responsibility.

We must document, analyze, and, above all, design protocols for democratic resistance. Because when the pursuit of truth—the “veritas” motto that adorns Harvard’s shield—becomes an enemy of the state, it’s not just a university that’s in danger. It’s one of the last remaining pillars of the edifice of liberal democracy.

Alberto López Ortega is an Associate Professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, a Ramón Areces Fellow and Visiting Scholar 2024-2025 at Harvard University.