A judge has extended a temporary injunction blocking Donald Trump's ban on the admission and accommodation of foreign students at Harvard, as part of the US president's escalating campaign against the elite university, AFP reported.

Trump has tried a number of different tactics to block international students from enrolling and studying at the prestigious university.

These included attempts to remove Harvard from the electronic student immigration registry and instruct foreign embassies to deny visas to students wishing to study at the Massachusetts university.

Harvard filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies to block these efforts, arguing that they were illegal and unconstitutional.

The university had previously obtained a temporary injunction against the government, which Federal Judge Allison Burroughs extended at a hearing in Boston.

Foreign students make up 27% of the total number of students enrolled at Harvard for the 2024-2025 academic year and are a major source of revenue.

"The court is considering the matter. The current temporary restraining order will remain in effect until June 23," the court clerk wrote in the electronic case registry.

The suspension of the Trump administration's crackdown on foreign students at Harvard will remain in effect until Burroughs decides whether to extend it with a preliminary injunction.

In court documents, Harvard argues that Trump's actions are "part of a coordinated and escalating campaign of retaliation by the government in clear response to Harvard's exercise of its First Amendment rights to reject the government's demands to control the administration, curriculum, and the 'ideology' of its faculty and students."

Along with the campaign against foreign students at Harvard, the Trump administration also cut about $3.2 billion in federal grants and contracts to the university and promised to exclude it from all future federal funding.

Harvard has been at the forefront of Trump's campaign against leading universities after refusing to comply with his calls to comply with oversight of its curriculum, staffing, student recruitment, and "diversity of viewpoints."

Trump and his allies believe that Harvard and other prestigious universities are unaccountable bastions of liberal, anti-conservative attitudes and anti-Semitism. |BGNES