Jesse Bump, a lecturer at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, describes the Trump administration’s sweeping actions against academia as "absolutely unreal" — from a list of "banned" words to visa cancellations and funding cuts that, he warns, are having a "chilling effect" on students and pushing top talent away from the US. "We didn’t imagine a situation that would be this bad," Bump says in an interview with AFP. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES