US President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a new order banning visas for foreign students who are set to begin attending Harvard University, ramping up his administration’s crackdown on higher education.

In the executive order, Trump declared that it would jeopardise national security to allow Harvard to continue hosting foreign students on its campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“I have determined that the entry of the class of foreign nationals described above is detrimental to the interests of the United States because, in my judgment, Harvard’s conduct has rendered it an unsuitable destination for foreign students and researchers," the order signed by Trump read.

The move is being seen as his latest attempt to choke the Ivy League school from an international pipeline that accounts for a quarter of the student body.

It is also a further escalation in the White House’s fight with the country’s oldest and wealthiest university.

Last week, a federal court in Boston blocked the Department of Homeland Security from barring international students from Harvard.

However, Trump’s order invokes a different legal authority.

It stems from Harvard’s refusal to submit to a series of demands made by the federal government. It escalated recently after the Department of Homeland Security said Harvard refused to provide records related to misconduct by foreign students.

Harvard says it has complied with the request, but the government said the school’s response was insufficient.

The dispute has been building for months after the Trump administration demanded a series of policy and governance changes at Harvard, calling it a hotbed of liberalism and accusing it of tolerating anti-Jewish harassment.

Harvard defied the demands, saying they encroached on the University’s autonomy and represented a threat to the freedom of all US universities.

Trump has already frozen some $3 billion in federal grants to Harvard in recent weeks, leading the University to sue to restore the funding.

Harvard enrolled nearly 6,800 international students in the 2024-2025 school year, amounting to 27 per cent of its total enrollment, according to university statistics.

In 2022, Chinese nationals were the biggest group of foreign students at 1,016, university figures showed. After that were students from Canada, India, South Korea, Britain, Germany, Australia, Singapore and Japan.