The administration of United States President Donald Trump has restored Harvard student visa processing, ordering U.S. embassies worldwide to comply with the latest directive.
This order reverses a previous decision that halted visa approvals for international students and exchange visitors bound for Harvard University.
The directive for the resumption of Harvard student visa processing was contained in a circular issued by Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday, June 6, 2025.
The directive also comes after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to restrict international students from attending the prestigious institution.
The new guidance, signed by Rubio, mandated that consular sections immediately resume “standard processing” of Harvard University students and exchange visitor visas (F, M, and J categories) and explicitly states that “no such applications should be refused” based on the now-halted presidential proclamation.
“Effective immediately, consular sections must resume processing of Harvard University students and exchange visitor visas,” the circular reads in part.
Recall that the U.S. State Department had ordered U.S. embassies worldwide to reject Harvard visa applications.
The directive came as part of Trump’s crackdown on Harvard, revoking its Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification on May 22, 2025, over allegations of fostering “anti-American, pro-terrorist” activities.
Trump accused Harvard of failing to provide sufficient information to the DHS about “foreign students’ known illegal or dangerous activities” and reported “deficient data on only three students”.
Before the proclamation on foreign student visas at Harvard, Trump’s administration had frozen billions of dollars of federal funding and accused the institution of failing to root out antisemitism on campus.
Pan-Atlantic Kompass also reported that the decision came after several international students, including Fatou Wurie, a Sierra Leonean doctoral candidate at Harvard University, faced an uncertain future due to Trump’s visa policies on international students.
Wurie’s dream of completing her PhD and advancing women’s health research in Sierra Leone hangs in the balance after spending over $200,000 to fund her studies on the impact of uterine fibroids on Sierra Leonean women.
