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Seven more Harvard affiliates — including four current students and three recent graduates — have had their student visas revoked, bringing the total number of affected affiliates to 12, according to a Thursday email from the Harvard International Office.
The revocations come as the State Department has reportedly revoked the student visas for hundreds of students, including three students and two alumni at Harvard last week, according to a Sunday email from the HIO.
Harvard has not named any of the students or alumni whose visas have been revoked. The HIO confirmed on Tuesday that they are checking the status of students’ visas on a daily basis through the Service and Exchange Visitor Information System.
Like other universities where students have been targeted, Harvard has not been notified of the revocations, instead discovering them through SEVIS checks.
“We are not aware of the details of the revocations or the reasons for them, but we understand these actions continue to take place at other institutions across the country,” the HIO wrote on Thursday.
A University spokesperson declined to comment.
Students whose visas are terminated lose their authorization to work in the United States and may not reenter the country.
As of Thursday, more than 600 international students have had their visa status changed under the Trump administration, according to a tracker maintained by Inside Higher Education. Schools near Harvard — including MIT, Boston University, Northeastern University, and Emerson College — have seen dozens of students and alumni lose their visas in recent weeks.
Student visas have been revoked for a variety of reasons — many publicly undisclosed, and some related to minor crimes — but the State Department has zeroed in on some students for pro-Palestine statements. On March 25, Tufts University Ph.D. student Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish student who had penned a pro-Palestine op-ed, had her visa revoked after being arrested by ICE officials outside her apartment in Somerville.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Ozturk was accused of engaging in “activities in support of Hamas,” but did not specify the alleged activities.
Harvard has tried to ramp up support for international students in the wake of the revocations, including scheduling additional “Know Your Rights” sessions. At a session last week, Harvard staff advised international students to carry copies of paperwork, think carefully about travel outside the U.S., and assess risks if they had engaged in pro-Palestine speech or scholarship.
Penny S. Pritzker ’81, the senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation — the University’s highest governing body — said Harvard is working to support students whose visas had been revoked.
“The department that handles that is all over it, and that they care very much about these students and are trying to help them,” Pritzker said when approached by a Crimson reporter on Tuesday.
But Harvard spokespeople have declined to say whether the University would take legal action over changes to students’ visa status.
—Staff writer Samuel A. Church can be reached at samuel.church@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @samuelachurch.
—Staff writer Cam N. Srivastava can be reached at cam.srivastava@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @camsrivastava.
