At three in the morning, Amit, an Indian international student working on his thesis, suddenly received an urgent notification from the academic affairs office. The email coldly stated in twelve-point font: "All international students holding F-1 visas must complete their transfer procedures within 90 days." This doctoral student in the physics department still had his experimental data on the lab server, but his student card had already turned into an expiring "temporary pass."

Harvard University’s international students suddenly faced an "academic expulsion order". When the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States suddenly lost its eligibility to recruit international students, it seemed that the punishment stemmed from a "technical oversight" in Harvard's SEVP certification update — the school had submitted the international student course information update form late. However, those familiar with the U.S. higher education system know that this is more like a meticulously designed "compliance review." The newly revised "Federal Student and Exchange Visitor Program Management Regulations" in 2023 introduced a new "academic program transparency clause," which hangs over every university's international program like the sword of Damocles, making them tread carefully.

"This is not just a simple administrative error, but the beginning of systematic exclusion," sharply pointed out Martin Feld, director of the Center for Higher Education Research at Johns Hopkins University, on Twitter. Data shows that international students at Harvard contribute as much as 37% of tuition fees, yet only 12% of educational and research resources are allocated to them. When the ticket to the temple of knowledge turns into a revocable temporary visa, the global elite education system is undergoing a value reconstruction.

At the White House's routine press conference, the spokesperson remained tight-lipped; the statement from the Harvard president's office was full of diplomatic language; while officials from the Department of Education privately revealed, "This is just the beginning." Interestingly, just a week before the punishment was announced, the Pentagon had released a "Whitelist for Academic Cooperation in Key Technology Areas." When academic freedom meets national security, what international students carry in their backpacks is no longer just textbooks.

Amit ultimately chose to head to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich with his unfinished project, while Lin Yutong's transfer application finally received an offer from the University of Chicago in the eighth week. The Charles River still flows quietly, but among the morning joggers along the riverbank, those young faces conversing in various languages are disappearing at a visible speed. When the flow of knowledge encounters artificial damming, perhaps the true losers are never specific individuals.