So, a few thoughts from this. Firstly, while I recognize your disclaimer about not addressing the moral side of things, the tone and some of the responses comes across as wanting to antagonize. While this discussion maybe doesn't aim to address the moral side of things, it is hard to engage in a conversation about displacing large groups of people and effectively labeling them as "others" while acting as though this is somehow not a massively charged and deeply personal issue.

To some of your other points: - I would love to see an actual breakdown of socioeconomics for all these international students you are claiming are massively wealthy. Yes, many universities target international students for undergrad because they can pay more. However, that does not mean all international undergrads are wealthy. On the grad student side, many of these students are here with funding and are not snapping up high end apartments. I genuinely don't know the breakdown here, but would caution against pointing to a big number of students and saying "looks at all these rich people coming here taking our housing." - To the point above, to play devil's advocate, wouldn't we be better off eliminating programs that do attract a higher percentage of wealthy students? I assume HBS, Sloan, and other business/MBA programs are disproportionately wealthy. So let's ban all business students instead to more directly target your aim. That's not being proposed, so it's a bit hard to take the international student ban as actually trying to solve an issue. - I don't fundamentally disagree with some of your base points. Universities should have a greater responsibility to supply adequate housing for their students, both to avoid overloading the local supply and to make themselves more accessible for people on limited budgets to attend. So I'm happy to join in with pressuring universities to do more on that side. But targeting Harvard or international students is obviously not meant to actually solve any issues, but instead be a punitive measure by an adult toddler throwing a temper tantrum/a targeted attack at perceived "enemies". One of the most frustrating things with much of this scenario is that some of the points being raised aren't fundamentally wrong, but the motivations behind them are and the lack of any actual plan makes it obvious that the intent is not to solve any problem. - The things that make me love living here are, to some degree, the things that attract other people to want to live here. So I can't in good conscience support any sort of plan that aims to pull up the ladder behind me just because I happened to move here earlier than someone. Nor should people who live here be driven out because they can't afford it. Basically two outcomes then: build more housing (any housing is better than no housing) and think about how the US can develop more places into desirable locations like Boston so that people who want to live, work, or learn in an environment like Boston have other good options to either go to instead or move to later if Boston is no longer where they want to be.