Excellent move — now do Columbia

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Trump admin yanks Harvard’s international student program, kicking out thousands in latest escalation

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem terminated certification for Harvard University’s exchange program for foreign nationals on Thursday, kicking out thousands of students.

Noem fired off a letter to Maureen Martin, the university’s director of immigration services, before announcing the cancellation of the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, accusing Harvard’s leaders of “perpetuating an unsafe campus environment.”

The Department of Homeland Security is eliminating Harvard’s student visa program over “pro-terrorist conduct” at protests on campus.AFP via Getty Images

“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” Noem said in a statement. “It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments.”

“Harvard had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing. It refused,” she added. “Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.”

The student program allowed up to 6,793 internationals to come to Harvard in the 2024-25 school year.

There are currently 1.1 million foreign students at U.S. colleges and universities, and because the majority of those students come from wealthy families that can pay full-freight+ tuition, they are beloved and cherished cash cows for those institutions.

Here’s how Google’s AI answered the prompt, “do colleges charge foreign students full tuition?” . I trust this particular response because (a) it provides links to the supporting facts, and (b) it’s exactly what I’ve read for years.

Yes, in most cases, colleges in the US charge international students the full cost of tuition and fees, often including extra fees for support services and government-required tracking. Public universities typically charge international students out-of-state tuition, which is usually higher than in-state tuition. Private universities generally have the same tuition for all students, but international students may not qualify for the same need-based financial aid as domestic students. 

Here's a more detailed breakdown:

  • Public Universities:

    International students at public universities are usually charged out-of-state tuition rates, which can be significantly higher than in-state tuition. 

  • Private Universities:

    While private universities often have a flat tuition rate for all students, international students may not be eligible for the same need-based financial aid as domestic students. 

  • Additional Fees:

    Some colleges charge additional fees to international students to cover expenses like student programming, support services, and government-required tracking. 

  • Financial Aid:

    While international students may be able to qualify for scholarships or grants, they generally do not qualify for the same need-based financial aid as domestic students, which is often tied to federal and state funding. 

  • Exceptions:

    Some public universities and private colleges offer full-ride scholarships or other forms of financial assistance to international students, but these are not the norm. 

More on modern journalism UPDATE. One of the links _ Schlichter’s — is back up over at X

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And more from Ed Driscoll. (Links to X aren’t working now — I suspect another DNS attack is going on, because links have been spotty the past few days, but these pictures sum it up pretty well.)

UPDATE: Try it, see if it works for you.

From the History Department

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Ed Driscoll’s got an entertaining post on InstaPundit about Politico’s current entanglement with false AI-generated “news” reporting and its own journalists and editors distorting and lying about the Biden years during those years, and then presents this lagniappe from the past:

Politico illustrates story about race and the modern GOP with a picture of Democrat George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door. Even more amusingly, it’s labeled “History Dept.”

Repeat that: George Wallace, like Sheriff Bull Connor and Strom Thurmond, was a Democrat.

One is just weather, the other is irrefutable proof of global warming; the trouble comes in figuring which is which

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Actual photograph, absolutely not AI-generated; my word as a Biden

Nor'easter brings coldest weather on this date in Connecticut in 100 years.

“Thursday's high temperature is likely to top out around 50 degrees, with many towns staying in the 40s all day. Bradley International Airport will be within a few degrees of breaking its record low maximum (AKA coolest high temperature) of 49 degrees for May 22, which was set back in 1909. On this date last year, we nearly set a record high temperature by reaching 93 degrees”.

Havemeyer bidding war

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20 Old Wagon Road, $1.199, went immediately to contract, multiple bids, so we can assume it’s selling for more than (originally) asked. I’m guessing that it’s destined to be a land sale, and if so, the new roof installed in 2024 was a waste of money. Of course, if you’re living in a house with rain pouring in, a future sale is probably irrelevant. Besides, it appears that the winning bid will be high enough to make up whatever was spent on those asphalt shingles.

Geeze, you mean the pictures it comes up with for me may not be real? Uh-oh.

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Multiple newspapers publish “summer reading list" without realizing that 10 of the 15 books are fake and generated by AI

[T]he article was "partially" written by AI, according to the author.

I'm guessing the 2/3 of it that were just completely made up out of whole cloth were AI.

But do we actually think whatever bozo compiled a summer reading list using AI has actually even read any of these books?

Or any books?

The list has no byline. But writer Marco Buscaglia has claimed responsibility for it and says it was partly generated by Artificial Intelligence, as first reported by the website 404 Media. In an email to NPR, Buscaglia writes, 'Huge mistake on my part and has nothing to do with the Sun-Times. They trust that the content they purchase is accurate and I betrayed that trust. It's on me 100 percent.'

I mean, yeah, it's on you 100%. Sure.

But also, did these newspapers not even give a quick glance at the list to make sure that the books were real?


But can it ride a Segway?

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OPTIMUS: Musk's 'Biggest Product of All Time' Will Do Your Dishes

A new humanoid robot demo just dropped — and the most impressive part is how boring it is. Following verbal, natural-language instructions, Tesla's battery-powered Optimus can take out the trash, sweep up a mess, and even tear a single paper towel off the roll with eerily human precision.

Tesla engineer Milan Kovac said Tuesday, "One of our goals is to have Optimus learn straight from internet videos of humans doing tasks," and that the company had recently had a "breakthrough" along those lines. He said that Optimus "can now transfer a big chunk of the learning directly from human videos to the bots."

Impressive, sure — but Tesla still lags Boston Dynamics and Agility Robotics in sheer physical capability. That hasn’t stopped Tesla chief Elon Musk from declaring that Optimus will be "the biggest product of all time by far."

At the expected retail price of “$20,000 — $30,000” I’ll do my own dishes, thank you.

And of course, there are still some kinks to be worked out, just like the last “revolutionary”gadget, the now defunct Segway scooter.

The company was bought by the British self-made millionaire Jimi Heselden in 2009.

Ten months later, the 62-year-old died after the Segway he was riding careered off a 9m (30ft) cliff near his country estate in West Yorkshire.

Here’s a competitor’s experimental robot experiencing a few growing pains: