Harvard President Declares School Will Not Be a “Sanctuary Campus”

With President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration a little more than a month away, many liberals have been worried about what measures he will take to back up his campaign promise to be tough on illegal immigration.

For example, a professor at Harvard University recently proposed designating the liberal campus a “sanctuary” for those of its students in the country illegally.

But in a meeting on Tuesday afternoon, President Drew G. Faust rejected the proposition, arguing that the term “sanctuary campus” had no legal significance, The Harvard Crimson reported.

History professor Walter Johnson had raised the issue during a recent meeting, asking what steps the university would take to protect its undocumented students who, in his opinion, were “threatened” by Trump’s proposed policies.

“Given the importance of the word ‘sanctuary’ in the national discussion, the opportunity that Harvard has to take up moral leadership in that discussion, and the immense importance of the word to our students, specifically to their sense that the university is willing to stand … by their side, why not use it?” Johnson said, according to Town & Country.

Faust, however, refused to do so, and instead noted other initiatives Harvard has undertaken to support any student who may be in the country illegally.

“Sanctuary campus status has no legal significance or even clear definition. It offers no actual protection to our students. I worry that in fact it offers false and misleading assurance,” Faust said.

Although the university has taken a progressive approach to illegal students on campus — such as the campus police department deciding not to ask about the immigration status of Harvard affiliates or enforcing federal immigration laws — at least the school’s president recognizes the non-legality of a “sanctuary campus.”

Other Ivy League schools have taken a similar approach.

Princeton University President Christopher L. Eisgruber also recently determined that the term “sanctuary campus” had “no basis in law, and that colleges and universities have no authority to exempt any part of their campuses from the nation’s immigration laws,” according to The Daily Caller.

The president of Brown University, Christina Paxson, also reportedly declined to adopt the label, The Crimson reported.

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