For Harvard University’s admirable standing up to the Trump administration’s attempts to dictate its campus policies, the White House is now trying to punish the school by revoking the Ivy League university’s ability to enroll international students through the Student and Exchange Visitor Information Program that enables foreign students to utilize their visas.

That program has specific rules around when certifications can be revoked, and noncompliance with the president’s political agenda is not one of them. A federal judge has now issued a temporary restraining order to block the action after Harvard swiftly sued.

This is yet another example of the Trump administration’s firm belief that every aspect of the federal government is there for them to use at will to explicitly advance an ideological agenda. There is no administrative independence, there are no limitations, there are no regulatory constraints in this government‘s view, only tools to be used as necessary.

To its credit, Harvard has demonstrated the correct response to this onslaught, which — unlike its Ivy peer Columbia — is not wide-ranging and immediate capitulation in the hopes that Trump and his team will leave them alone.

Columbia shamefully surrendered to Trump’s demands and for its base and cowardly action Trump has only increased his attacks against the uptown school, as any bully does when the victim doesn’t fight back.

Trump and his henchmen and henchwomen are not going to stop; they will continue to find avenues to try to subjugate institutions of higher learning and turn them into subservient organizations that at the very least don’t cause trouble, and at worst become active participants in the government’s designs.

This effort to weaponize SEVIS against Harvard would probably have read as unimaginable or wildly far-fetched just a couple of months ago. Practically every single one of the administration’s efforts to target universities would have. Yet happen they did, and it should shake all of those who care about our world-class academic sector, one of this country’s undisputed global strengths, out of any lingering complacency we might have, as well as the clearly misguided belief that appeasement is possible.

That the plainly illegal move was expeditiously blocked by a judge is both good and predictable, but it doesn’t mean that no damage is done. It is one more in a long list of circumstances that will have the litany of international students who every year consider where to bring their money and talents wondering if the United States — long the biggest draw — is worth the trouble.

Whatever people like White House aide Stephen Miller — the anti-immigrant zealot — may think, these relationships are symbiotic. The loss of the students — not just the current crop, but the many who will opt to instead go to Canada or Australia or Europe or Latin America or China or wherever over the next few years — will be an enormous loss for the United States as a whole.

Trump and his team are fine with all this destruction for one reason only: they believe that these institutions are creating free thinkers that can oppose their agenda. They are correct, and they must be stopped.

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