"Pawns, Poker Chips": Foreign Students At Harvard Panic Amid Trump Battle

International students at Harvard University are in panic after being caught in the middle of an unprecedented standoff between the country's oldest educational institution and the President Donald Trump-led administration.

The uncertainty stems from the Trump administration's decision to ban Harvard from enrolling international students.

Leo Gerdén, a Swedish who is supposed to graduate next week, told CNN, "We are being used essentially as poker chips in a battle between the White House and Harvard, and it honestly feels very dehumanising."

The Trump administration has accused Harvard of maintaining an unsafe campus culture that gives unfair treatment to Jewish people. The government wants to change the way the university works, in terms of campus events, staff hiring and students' admission.

A postdoctoral Israeli student said the US government was using Jewish students as a tool to attack and push a larger fight against Harvard. She said, "Jewish students are being used as pawns."

Instead of genuinely caring for the safety of Jewish and Israeli students, she said that the White House was cracking down on opinions that didn't always align with the administration.

An Australian graduate student said it was unfair that students were being punished for protests and activism on campus, reported CNN.

Harvard student body co-president Abdullah Shahid Sial, from Pakistan's Lahore, told CNN that thousands of students were afraid of losing their current legal status. He said, "They're literally like, teenagers, thousands of miles away from their hometowns having to deal with this situation, which lawyers often fear to engage in."

Mr Sial said that Harvard was special because it attracted the smartest people from all over the world and not just from the US. The country also benefits a lot when the students come to study there, but now these students are being treated unfairly and disrespectfully, he said.

Karl Molden, a student from Austria, said many have worked very hard to enter Harvard, the nation's oldest and wealthiest college, and now they have to wait and deal with visa problems. 

International students make up about 27 per cent of Harvard's student body. On Friday, a federal judge temporarily halted the Trump administration's ban after Harvard took the matter to the court.