Hello and welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service. We're coming to you live from London. I'm James Menendez.

It seems as if barely a week goes by without another broadside from the Trump administration against some of the US's most prestigious universities, which it regards as hotbeds of anti-Semitism and left-wing ideology.

There's the threat to remove hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding from several

leading institutions, Brown, Cornell and Northwestern among them. Then a move to stop Harvard

University, a particular focus of the White House is animus from enrolling international students, a major source of

income. And now this week, an order from the State Department to U.S. embassies around the world

to suspend new appointments for student visas ahead of new guidance on social media vetting.

Here's the State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce speaking on Tuesday.

We use every tool in our tool chest to vet anyone coming in who wants to come into this country

and in order to do so, it has to apply for a visa to gain access to our nation.

So every sovereign country has a right to know who's trying to come in, why they want to come in, who they are, what they've been doing, and at least hopefully within that framework, determine what they will be doing while they're here. So that's nothing new. And we will continue to use every tool we can to assess who it is that's coming here, whether they are students or

otherwise. Responding to the move, China's called on the U.S. to protect international students.

Here's Beijing's foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning.

We have noted the relevant developments.

China has consistently held the position that normal educational cooperation and academic exchange should not be disrupted.

We urge the U.S. side to earnestly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of international students, including those from China.

Thousands of foreign students are already in administrative limbo after the decisions

to revoke Harvard's ability to enroll students from abroad. Here's Yu Suan Lin, who's from Taiwan.

The path towards my dream is actually harder and tougher than I expected. There are so many

uncertainties and that's why I feel kind of anxious. But I really couldn't do much. Just wait

and see. And another Taiwanese student, Vince, said he was trying to stay positive.

The problem that me and a lot of our peers were studying in the Ivy League or in other universities,

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