‘BRING IT’: Kristi Noem warns Harvard amid blocking of school’s international enrollment

Let's go ahead now and bring in DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, the architect and author of this policy. Madam Secretary, you say it is a privilege, not a right, for American schools to be able to host Barners on their campus. Yes, that's exactly right. And this program has been in place for a very long time. These policies have been in place for a long time. And Harvard brought these consequences upon themselves. They have promoted and allowed violent activity on campus. They have allowed anti-Semitism participation with CCP and Chinese infiltration and influence on their campus. And they haven't protected their students. So we have given them multiple opportunities to share criminal activity with us, backgrounds on these students, to let us conduct the oversight into this program that is our responsibility and they have refused to do so. So today I sent them a letter that said they will no longer be allowed to participate in this student exchange visitor program. And that's up to 27% of their enrolled students. So it's significant. Any foreign student that wishes to get an education in this country that is attending Harvard and not participating in this criminal activity, they will have to find another university to go to because Harvard has chosen instead to not protect their students and to allow this kind of violent and discriminatory action continue. So, as you mentioned, 18% of Harvard's freshman class this year are foreign. They're foreigners here on student visas. What happens? Where do they go now? What do they do? Yeah, we have given Harvard multiple opportunities to give us the documentation that we've requested to conduct oversight. We've asked them for the backgrounds on students that attend their university, their criminal activity on campus, off of campus, any video or audio footage they have of this violent activity. And they have just simply not complied. This is something that they need to do in order to comply with this program as it was established. And so, unfortunately, all of their foreign students will face the consequences of Harvard's lack of protecting the individuals that go there. So 27% of their students are foreign students and they will have to find some other university to go to. And hopefully they find one that cares about them and provides a safe environment. Does that mean that the student visas of this freshman class won't be revoked? It will just be revoked for them to attend Harvard specifically? Is that right? I wanna make sure I'm understanding the particular. Yeah, the decision that's made today based on what Harvard has done is specifically applying to that university, not to the individual students. So the university will no longer be able to participate in this program. They will not be allowed to have foreign students because we have gone back to them multiple times, asked them to disclose this information, which other universities have and need to do in order to participate in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. And Harvard simply has not done it. Harvard has a history of allowing not just protests, but violent protests where students were assaulted, they were discriminated against, they were verbally abused, and they've even facilitated a training for a paramilitary group affiliated with the CCP. So it's not just pro-Hamas activities that they have allowed to have happen on their campus. They've also allowed participation with Communist China, who considers the United States one of their greatest enemies. This is something we're not gonna continue to allow to have happen. This is something I'm responsible for, is to provide this type of oversight, and we're going to ensure that every university protects every single one of their students on their campuses, whether they're from the United States or another country. They need to be safe. They don't deserve to have this kind of anti-Semitic or any other kind of discrimination that may face them based on their race going forward. So Israel's Consul General here in New York joined our air a short while ago. He really hammered home his case, which is that he says the Qataris are at fault here. They are the ones exporting anti-Israel thought and rot to colleges across the United States. How do you see that? What's your reaction to that? I think it was very interesting to listen to the Israeli ambassador to the UN this morning as well, that was doing several interviews where he talked about, he felt like a lot of the anti-Semitism that we saw across the country in the last year or two started on these college campuses. And I really do believe that what these colleges have done by facilitating an environment that allows this kind of hatred to grow and to spread and misinformation to continue to be proliferated among these students is wrong. And it's created a situation now where we have racism and violence and assaults happening. And this student program was intended for students who wanted to come here and learn in America, appreciated the wonderful opportunity that it provided. And it's morphed into this terrible situation where people are really victims, victims of the system. So we're bringing the oversight that the last administration did not bring. And we're gonna make sure that this student and exchange program provides an environment where students can learn and not be discriminated against. But do you believe Madam Secretary that the Qataris in particular are behind a lot of the antisemitism you just described? Are they providing fuel that creates this fire? You know, I'm not an expert in this area. I think that there's validity to what he has said, but I also think that we've got a lot of influences here and we've got a lot of people that have facilitated this that have a different agenda. Some of these universities have even barred law enforcement officers from coming on campus and haven't even allowed there to be basic law and order on the areas that they're responsible for. So we're gonna continue to do our investigations and make sure that what the Department of Homeland Security is responsible for, it will be done with integrity for the way that Congress laid out that programs should work and the opportunities that we have to allow people to come into this country, learn, and to be a part of a country that promotes freedom and liberty and that everybody is equal. That's not what Harvard is doing and that's not what we're seeing in some of these college campuses. Could you foresee or are you now considering similar moves with other universities like Columbia that has allowed Jewish students to be threatened and made unsafe? Absolutely. We are absolutely. This should be a warning to every other university to get your act together. Get your act together because we are coming to make sure that these programs that you are facilitating an environment where students can learn, where they're safe, and that they're not discriminated against based on their race or their religion. Anti-Semitism will not be stood for and any participation with a country or an entity or a terrorist group that hates America and perpetuates this kind of violence, we will stop it and we will not allow that to happen, especially in places where our kids need to grow up and really learn what this country's about, what the world is about, and what it means to promote freedom and liberty. There's a bit of a sort of cultural academic tradition, as you are well aware, like with these big liberal arts institutions in the United States, that law enforcement is kept off campus. They feel administrators in these places like Harvard and Columbia feel like they wanna manage poor behavior, even illegal activity on the part of students. Is that about to completely become a thing of the past? Are we watching that be eradicated in real time? You know, we've been in communication with these leaders of these universities telling them we expect them to keep their students safe. We expect them, they can use their campus police and their policies, but when they're not effective and they're not even upholding basic campus safety, we are going to intervene and they're not going to be allowed to get privileges that we have put forward as far as these types of programs. So these students too feel victimized and have been harmed for a long time under the policies of some of these colleges. And so we will take enforcement actions and they will no longer have federal support. Harvard already responding to this news, saying it's illegal. We could anticipate some kind of battle royale through the courts, but for now we wish you the best. Secretary Nome, thanks so much for joining us with this. Tell them to bring it. I'm on the side of America and they need to be too. All right, thank you. Thank you.