The Trump administration’s ongoing battle with universities continues, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio temporarily halted student visa interviews at US embassies and consulates around the world on Tuesday as the White House weighs new changes to vetting procedures that would include social media screening. On the same day, the General Services Administration issued guidance to all federal agencies asking them to “identify any contracts with Harvard, and whether they can be canceled or redirected elsewhere.”
While the Trump administration has taken an aggressive posture against many universities over alleged conflicts with White House policy, Harvard, the nation’s oldest university, has been targeted more than others. After threatening to revoke billions in federal funding for the school over political considerations, the White House tried to revoke its Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, a move which has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge. The particularly aggressive posture towards the Ivy League school has led some to ask: is the president’s conflict with Harvard linked to his son getting rejected from that school?
The rumor that this explained the White House’s hardline stance took off on social media at the end of April, with posts on Facebook, TikTok, and other networks getting a lot of attention, some even breaking a million views. Even Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse dipped his feet in the conversation, musing on X that he “can’t help but wonder how many Trumps got rejected by Harvard.”
As much interest as this narrative has attracted, according to a statement from the First Lady’s office to USA Today, the answer is no. “Barron did not apply to Harvard, and any assertion that he, or that anyone on his behalf, applied is completely false,” Melania Trump’s spokesperson Nick Clemens said in an email. According to the fact-checking outfit Snopes, Clemens did not respond to inquiries about whether Barron had been rejected by Stanford or Columbia, as many on social media also claimed, and neither did the schools.
Barron will be entering his sophomore year at NYU Stern School of Business next fall, being the first of Trump’s children not to attend either University of Pennsylvania (the president’s alma mater) or Georgetown University. Snopes’ report also notes that these institutions have not been spared in Trump’s conflict with higher education, with University of Pennsylvania losing federal funds over its policy on transgender athletes, while Georgetown has faced other forms of retaliation, including a hiring freeze from the DC US Attorney for being a “locus of […] anti-Republican activity.”
