- The Trump administration suspended Harvard's certificate to enroll foreign students on May 22.
- International students like David Gayle were left uncertain about their status.
- A temporary stay is in place, but Gayle, a Kennedy Memorial Trust scholar, says his future is unclear.
Harvard student David Gayle, a 29-year-old policy advisor from London and a Kennedy Memorial Trust scholar, is unsure if he can finish his graduate degree.Courtesy of David Gayle
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I remember exactly where I was when I saw the news. Finals for my first year in my master's in public policy program had just ended, and I was on a bus going from Boston to New York City. I was excited about a weekend away with my friends and feeling free for the first time in many days.
That's when I saw the alert on my phone: The Trump administration had suspended Harvard's certificate to enroll foreign students, period. In that moment, I could not go back to the university I'd worked so hard to get into.
Suddenly, my NYC vacation weekend turned into me being an illegal alien in the US, over 3,000 miles from home, a stranger in an already threatening country where there are more guns than people.
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My mind was thrown into this flux of "What am I going to do next? Where am I right now? Where should I be?"
Everything is up in the air
I've been at Harvard since August 2024 on a Kennedy Memorial Trust scholarship, which provides full funding, health insurance, and a generous stipend to British students pursuing graduate programs at Harvard or MIT.
When the news broke, my phone started blowing up with messages from family and friends from the UK, my fellow students at the Harvard Kennedy School, lawyer friends, and LinkedIn acquaintances. All of us trying — as we have had to do multiple times in recent years — to make sense of an unprecedented event.
It wasn't that we weren't expecting it. The whole idea of potentially suspending the International Enrollee Certificate has been floated for a while, but no one ever thought it would happen.
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On one hand, I felt like, "Oh, the inevitable's happened." I'm still shocked that it wasn't just rhetoric anymore. We're just people who want to do our studies and contribute to the US, and we're not able to do that.
It was a big realization of my privilege that I'm not normally worried about these things
Even the soft power norms of my scholarship — a diplomatic scholarship that was set up between the US and the UK after the assassination of John F. Kennedy — didn't protect me.
The cancellation of the Enrollee Certificate is paused for now by a temporary stay that will hopefully get extended after a court hearing on May 29. Even if the Trump administration repeals the order altogether, though, what it means for us is a question mark.
If our status is protected, does that mean we won't face hostile treatment in the US or difficulties at the border? We don't know. There are now all these gray areas between what's possible and not.
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If I do get to go back to school, I'll still have to come to terms with the possibility that while the people at Harvard have made me feel at home and created a community of global scholars who are like a family to me, the government may not want me there at all.
I may not be able to complete my summer internship
From talking with other peers and friends, I'm seeing there's a lot of distrust among international students of a government that we thought represented democracy, of a country that is — for better or worse — the leader of the free world.
When the news broke, I'd already booked tickets to return to the UK for summer break. The word around campus among the students was to stay put, but I was afraid that if I stayed, things might escalate, and I could lose my status for some other reason. Some of my friends chose to stay, but for me, going home felt safer.
I have a ticket to return to the US in July when I'm supposed to begin an internship with Gov. Wes Moore in Maryland. Now, I'm not sure if I'll be able to do it.
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I have no plan B if I don't get to go back
Any plans for my future were all contingent on me finishing my master's degree on my hard-won scholarship at one of the best public policy schools in the world. There are some things I never thought I'd need to plan for — like an alien invasion of Harvard, or the US canceling international student visas.
Situations like this are why we need people to do the right thing in public policy. This highlights the importance of good governance and consensus-building — things possibly viewed as outdated centrist values, but they matter.
I will continue to pursue public service regardless
Even though I don't know if my career in public policy will continue in the US, last week's events have only inspired me to serve my community and pursue public service.
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I think of the work that I'm supposed to do for Gov. Moore and multiply it by about 7,000 of some of the world's brightest minds and their future careers. That's what America will lose. It's all of the research, internship work, investment, career time, and diplomacy. The loss would be substantial.
When you throw something valuable out of the house to make room, you only realize its value in the long term. Humans don't account for interconnectivity very well; what we're dealing with right now is shortsightedness about the value of the students now unable to study in the US.
If it can happen at Harvard, which is widely recognized as one of the world's leading universities, the feeling in the academic community is that it can happen anywhere.
