Yesterday a federal judge in Massachusetts again blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to ban international students at Harvard University.

Stephanie Saul wrote in The New York Times:

For the second time in less than a week, a federal judge in Boston rejected efforts by the Trump administration to bar international students at Harvard, blocking a presidential proclamation that would prevent new students from abroad from enrolling at the school.

President Trump had sought to bar the students using a law designed to safeguard national security. In a strongly worded ruling on Monday, Judge Allison D. Burroughs sided with lawyers for Harvard who had argued that such presidential power was intended to be used against foreign enemies, not international students.

The judge’s order temporarily stops the presidential proclamation from going into effect. Judge Burroughs, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, issued a similar decision on Friday. In that ruling, she temporarily blocked another effort by the Trump administration to keep international students out of Harvard through other means.

In her ruling on Monday, Judge Burroughs noted that the issues at stake involved “core constitutional rights that must be safeguarded — freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and freedom of speech” and that free speech, particularly in the academic arena, “must be zealously defended and not taken for granted.”

She continued: “The government’s misplaced efforts to control a reputable academic institution and squelch diverse viewpoints seemingly because they are, in some instances, opposed to this administration’s own views, threaten these rights.”

Trump initially demanded that Harvard exclude all of its international students, now. About one-quarter of its students come from other countries.

The Trump Administration is making it harder for international students to study in the U.S. If it could, the Trump regime would ban all foreign students from enrolling in American colleges and universities.

Marco Rubio announced that the State Department would scour the social media accounts of students who apply for a visa. What would the State Department look for? Any comment critical of Trump? Is it legal to deny visas to foreign students who have expressed opinions critical of Trump?

Judge Burroughs previously enjoined Trump’s order to Harvard to transfer out all of its foreign students. This is nuts. Foreign students are a net plus for American higher education. They typically pay for their own tuition and expenses, paid by their families or their government.

The New York Times posted a list of the institutions with the most international students.

The share of international students studying at these colleges and across the United States has been growing for the past two decades as rising incomes in countries like China and India have produced more families looking to educate their children in America.

Domestic forces have played a role, too: Public research universities in particular have turned to international students, who commonly pay full price for tuition, to help compensate for declines in state funding for education.

“We have all this debate about trade deficits with China right now,” said Gaurav Khanna, an economist at the University of California, San Diego, who has studied these shifts in higher education. “That’s a deficit in goods. But when you think of services — like higher ed services — we have a big surplus.”