Harvard Prof Tells MSNBC He Warned Potential Student to Go Somewhere Else Because of Trump

Harvard University’s Jeremy Faust on Friday said that the clash between universities and the administration of President Donald Trump is so severe that he recently warned a potential grad student to go to school somewhere else because “that’s how many question marks we have” now.

Dr. Faust, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Harvard, appeared on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House Friday to discuss the Harvard lawsuit against the Trump administration and the news that a federal judge temporarily blocked a Department of Homeland Security decision to prevent Harvard from enrolling students from overseas.

Faust initially told host Nicolle Wallace how detrimental it would be to prevent foreign enrollment, because so much talent that would have come to U.S. schools would stay abroad, and subsequently develop new theories and ideas overseas as well.

However, a few minutes later, he admitted that he himself has recently advised a potential grad student to enroll overseas, which was something he said he “never even thought I would consider telling somebody to do” before.

Wallace asked Faust about conversations he has with colleagues or “with international students or prospective students” as a result of Trump’s actions.

Faust first replied that “we’re fighting.”

“We’re really fighting for this. We believe in this,” he said. “So I do tell students that they have to think ahead.”

He then related the story of advising a grad student on finding a program overseas, eliciting a “wow” from Wallace.

“I did hear the words come out of my mouth recently for the first time that said, to a student thinking about going into graduate school for the sciences, well, you should look overseas,” he said. “I never even thought I would consider telling somebody to do that. But that’s how many question marks we have.

WALLACE: Dr. Faust, what is it like for you to have conversations with your colleagues or with international students or prospective students that you’d like to bring to Harvard? How do you talk about or explain or what assurances can you even give them about the two pieces that you just mentioned: either the guarantees for federal funding from NIH, or two, the protections in terms of visas and enrollment for foreign students.

FAUST: Well, I can speak to the first one very clearly, which is that we’re fighting. We’re really fighting for this. We believe in this and we want to make the case to everybody that we are actually fighting for something that matters, not to some eggheads in the ivory tower, but to people who just are alive because of a chemotherapy breakthrough or because of a vaccine that was invented here.

So I do tell students that they have to think ahead. I did hear the words come out of my mouth recently for the first time that said, to a student thinking about going into graduate school for the sciences, well, you should look overseas. I never thought I’d say that.

WALLACE: Wow.

FAUST: But I did say those words, that they should consider that. Now, I’m not saying that everyone should, but, I never even thought I would consider telling somebody to do that. But that’s how many question marks we have.

Watch the clip above via MSNBC.