Judge blocks Trump administration’s foreign student ban at Harvard

Here we go:

Harvard University sued the Trump administration on Friday, less than 24 hours after the Department of Homeland Security said it would block international students from attending the nation’s oldest university and one of its most prestigious.

Later Friday morning, at the university’s request, a federal judge in Boston moved swiftly to block implementation of the federal government’s order.

The judge, Allison D. Burroughs issued a temporary restraining order against the federal edict, agreeing that Harvard had shown that its implementation would cause “immediate and irreparable injury” to the university.

The administration action, and Harvard’s response, signified a dramatic escalation of the battle between the administration and Harvard. And the university’s forceful and almost immediate response served as evidence that stopping the flow of international students to Harvard, which draws some of the world’s top scholars, would destabilize Harvard’s very existence.

If the Supreme Court was anything like a Court of law the university could be pretty confident that a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments this flagrant — the administration isn’t even really trying to conceal that this is just straightforward coercion trying to get Harvard to favor some viewpoints and reject others — would never be allowed to go into effect. With the one we have, who knows.

But at least Harvard is going to fight for itself, unlike some Ivy League schools I could name.