View the full article collection here.
International students are our classmates and friends, the people with whom we share dorms, lunch, and bylines. They enrich our classrooms and shape our communities. They also sustain the university’s promise of Veritas — truth — a principle that all of us strive to uphold as the hallmark of American higher education.
That principle was recently called into question. On Jun. 4, 2025, President Trump signed a directive prohibiting future international students from attending Harvard. While a U.S. District Court judge later blocked the executive order, the presumption that their presence is conditional and less legitimate remains. Our peers continue to be scapegoated and reduced to legal pawns. For some students, that meant questioning whether they would be able to return to their dorms at the start of this term.
The fight to belong at this university is both political and deeply personal. More than a quarter of Harvard’s entire student body holds international status. Each of these students, collectively from more than 140 nations, has had to navigate not only the academic pressures of this institution but also a system that continues to question their right to be here.
There is truth in presence — in being here, learning here, and existing in a country that too often treats scholars from abroad as temporary or transactional. This pursuit of truth, whether through opportunity or academic freedom, almost always occurs in the face of some kind of adversity.
In that same spirit of truth, the Harvard Political Review’s Culture section compiled this collection of narratives to lift the voices and experiences of our peers, affirming their presence at our university. Through this initiative, international students are centered not through the standard policy analysis or political defense typically found in our publication, but with something equally essential: their words, their presence, and their truths. Through these pieces, you will hear international students’ truths in their own words.
Ethics Bureau Director, Senior Culture Editor
Associate Managing Editor
Managing Editor
