For 23-year-old Matthew, thinking about his future after graduating from Harvard University later this week feels like “walking along one of those really rickety old rope bridges from Indiana Jones”.
The humanities student, who hails from the UK, explained: “You can’t really see the other side but you know it’s going to get somewhere . . . you don’t really know if it’s stable and you can trust it.”
That sense of uncertainty hit many international students last Thursday, when the US Department of Homeland Security moved to ban them from attending Harvard. The plan — temporarily blocked by a court order a day later — marked a serious escalation in a months-long battle between President Donald Trump’s administration and the Ivy League college.