The University joined seven other Boston-area universities in signing a Feb. 3 amici curiae brief in the Boston U.S. District Court opposing President Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order banning travel from seven countries with large Muslim populations.

The ban was reversed one day later on Feb. 4 through State Department actions, after a Washington Judge halted the order, according to a Seattle Times article from the same day.

In the brief, the universities — which also included Tufts University, Boston College, Boston University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Northeastern University and Worcester Polytechnic Institute — asserted that the ban undermined academic exchange.

Under the ban, travel was restricted from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. However, the executive order also spelled uncertainty for those traveling under work or student visas, and many were left stranded abroad or unable to travel home while the ban was in place.

These consequences undermined the schools’ commitment to serving the world through innovative teaching and research, the brief asserts.

“That effort depends on maintaining a consistent pipeline of the most talented students and scholars from around the world, who bring with them unique skills and perspectives that inure to the benefit of their classmates, colleagues, and society as a whole,” the brief reads. “And after receiving first-class educations in the United States, the benefits flow in the opposite direction, as those students and scholars take back to their countries the lessons and values they learned here.”

—Abby Patkin