Nigeria, July 24 -- The messy scrap between the Trump administration and Harvard University was always more than a touch bizarre. On June 4, President Donald Trump issued a proclamation claiming that the university was "no longer a trustworthy steward of international student and exchange visitor programs." It had not pursued the Student Exchange Visa Program (SEVP) in good faith and with transparency, nor adhered "to the relevant regulatory frameworks." The university had failed to furnish the government with sufficient information "to identify and address misconduct", thereby presenting "an unacceptable risk to our Nation's security".

The nature of that misconduct lay in foreign students supposedly engaged in any number of scurrilous a...