CAMBRIDGE, MA — A federal judge has overturned the Trump administration’s ban on international students at Harvard, issuing a ruling filled with legal reasoning, emotional honesty, and the lingering ache of a woman who once fell hard for a Danish man named Rasmus Frederiksen.
“This case is about freedom,” wrote Judge Meredith Klein. “The freedom to study, to dream, and to be gently picked up off the floor by a man who toasts rye bread shirtless and makes you feel like you’re the only woman who’s ever mattered.”
Rasmus, a visiting scholar from Denmark, met Klein in 2008 during a Harvard seminar on Scandinavian furniture and design. Their short but intense fling changed how she saw the world—and her own body.
“He showed me what Denmark was all about,” Klein said. “Free healthcare. Paid parental leave. Men who actually listen. He read me fairy tales at night. Real ones. Hans Christian Andersen. He made me cry during The Ugly Duckling. Then he made me feel beautiful.”
While the ruling restores visas for thousands of students, it also includes a surprisingly sharp take on American men.
“What kind of future are we giving our daughters,” Klein asked, “if their only romantic options are guys named Kyle, Chad, or Bryce—men who don’t know how to touch a woman and will leave you at their frat house in the morning, only to return with one coffee and one bagel? For themselves?”
Court aides said Klein spent the weekend writing the decision with jazz music playing, flipping through a private photo album titled “Rasmus: A Visual Appendix.” The tasteful pictures—taken during his time at Harvard—show Rasmus lounging next to a radiator, holding a piece of toast and a book he probably never read.
“With Rasmus, everything felt cozy,” she told her clerk. “The candles. The quiet. The way he folded my laundry like it deserved respect.”
Not everyone on the bench was a fan. A conservative judge issued a response titled: “The Court Should Not Be Swayed by Scandinavian Smut.”
And as for Rasmus? After leaving the U.S., he moved back to Denmark, opened a successful pastry shop in Copenhagen, and is now enjoying his eighth year of paid paternity leave while raising his first daughter
