New legal battle for the Trump government, which is pressing for schools and universities to reopen in September despite the pandemic. The universities of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) asked, Wednesday, July 8, a federal court to block the decision of the American president to revoke the visas for the foreign students whose courses will be made online at the start of the school year.
The federal immigration and customs police (ICE) announced on Monday that foreign students would not be allowed to stay in the United States if their universities chose, because of a pandemic, to teach only online at the start of the academic year – as Harvard recently decided. The decision had caused an outcry from organizations representing universities.
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An "arbitrary and capricious" decision
On Wednesday, as the pandemic continued to progress in the United States – the most mourning country with more than 131,000 deaths from Covid-19 and 3 million infections detected -, Harvard and MIT, two of the most famous universities in the world , filed a civil lawsuit in Boston Federal Court against the Department of Homeland Security and the ICE.
They accuse the Trump government's decision to be "Arbitrary and capricious" and to constitute "An attempt to force universities to resume face-to-face teaching", regardless of the health risks involved. They are asking the court to prevent it from coming into force.
Officials from the two universities, which together have some 9,000 foreigners out of a total of nearly 35,000 students, explain that the surprise decision announced by the ICE had them "Plunged, like all American higher education institutions, into chaos". She was taken "Without taking into account the health of students, teachers, administrative staff and their environment" and leave "Hundreds of thousands of foreign students unable to study in the United States", they write.
"Cruelty" and "imprudence"
"We will defend this case with determination in order to allow our foreign students – and foreign students from all universities in the country – to continue their studies without risking expulsion", Harvard President Lawrence Bacow said in a tweet. "The decision fell without warning – his cruelty only exceeds his carelessness", he added.
In order for them to stay legally, the Trump government is asking students to transfer to institutions that will resume classroom teaching, "But a few weeks before the start of the school year, most students cannot", Harvard and MIT again point out.
For weeks, Donald Trump, who has been eager to see the economy start to move closer to the presidential election in November, has advocated the reopening of educational establishments.
Threat to cut subsidies
Again on Wednesday, the Republican President tweeted several times to this effect. He said to himself "Disagree with the very hard and expensive instructions" disseminated by disease prevention centers to reopen schools, indicating that he was going to " meet ". He cited the example of several European countries which have "Open schools without problems" and threatened elected Democrats, whom he accuses of wanting to keep schools closed for political reasons, to cut their federal grants if they do not reopen them.
Many schools and universities have yet to make a final decision on how they will teach at the end of the summer. Many are preparing a hybrid system, with a few face-to-face courses and the rest of the teaching provided online, in order to be able to divide students into small groups and respect the rules of distance.
The mayor of New York said he was ready Wednesday to welcome his 1.1 million students to public schools – closed since March 16 – for three days a week only. Governor Andrew Cuomo, however, said he was refusing to endorse the plan for the time being, saying he would not make any decisions on reopening the schools until early August.
