Global Deans Condemn Move Denying International Students to Harvard

Leaders of business schools worldwide chose their words carefully as they responded to the Trump administration’s attempt to block Harvard University from enrolling international students. But even as Harvard’s legal challenge has temporarily halted the administration’s action, fears about long-term and widespread damage are running high.

The move, announced Thursday afternoon by the Department of Homeland Security, threatens to undermine not just Harvard, but higher education across the US, said David Bach, dean of IMD business school in Lausanne, Switzerland. “The history is really clear—you can’t build a world-class academic institution by drawing only on one country. You build a world-class academic institution by attracting the best and brightest from all around the world and by benefiting from the diversity of perspectives, of insights, of backgrounds that makes that possible,” he told Bloomberg. US colleges and universities are the envy of the world, he said, because “they have, better than any others around the world, really succeeded in attracting such students.”