At Harvard, American and international students vow they won't let Trump divide them

Yahoo

30-04-2025

As international college students across the United States find themselves targeted by the Trump administration, a group of international Harvard undergraduates stood shoulder to shoulder with their American peers Tuesday evening and delivered a message of defiance, unity and warning.
Many of the Harvard students — American and foreign-born alike — said they came to the demonstration on the Cambridge campus because of their shared concern for their school and American democracy.
They wanted continued resistance from their school leadership of President Donald Trump's attempts to influence Harvard's management of its campus.
And regardless of their country of origin, the students said they wanted American citizens to be wary of any erosion of their rights by the federal government.
Leo Gerdén, a Harvard student from Sweden, recognizes the risks international students take by publicly protesting the government.
" I am feeling it every day. Whenever I'm walking on the street, I'm looking behind my shoulder and thinking if that man who looks like a civilian is actually a civilian or if it's a masked ICE agent," he told MassLive.
But as several dozen students gathered Tuesday outside the Harvard Science Center, Gerdén said that fear did not deter his desire to advocate for the future of his school and what he believed in.
'We are fighting the front line battle for American democracy,' he said.
Karl Molden, a 21-year-old Harvard student from Vienna, said he too felt a responsibility to the United States.
'The threat of a dying democracy in the U.S. is very abstract,' Molden said. Not so in much of Europe, where he hails from.
'A lot of Americans are taking elections, freedom of speech, for granted,' Molden said. 'At the verge of [democracy] breaking down, we have to be as honest as possible about that, and as national students, we want to send the word to Americans: watch out.'
The protest played out as the university eyed a summer court date in its new legal fight with the Trump administration to protect billions in federal research funding for the school.
The Trump administration is seeking an overhaul of Harvard's admissions, discipline and management policies, and has placed at least $2.2 billion in multi-year grant funding on the line to compel the school's cooperation.
Administration officials say the reforms are necessary because the university has done too little to protect Jewish students from antisemitism amid a wave of pro-Palestinian protests that began after the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Earlier Tuesday, Harvard released long-awaited reports on antisemitism and anti-Muslim or anti-Arab bias, finding a collection of failures by the school to adequately support students of Jewish, Muslim, Arab or other backgrounds or manage the heightened campus tensions after the attacks.
Harvard President Alan Garber apologized, pledging the school would 'redouble' its efforts to combat hate so that 'mutual respect is the norm,' along with multiple other commitments he laid out in a lengthy letter to the school community.
Federal officials have warned they could take up to $9 billion from Harvard if the school refused the government's demands for reform, which included an end to its diversity, equity and inclusion programs and independent audits of Harvard's student, faculty and staff viewpoint diversity.
A federal judge on Monday scheduled arguments for July 21 over the university's lawsuit against the government, after both sides met in court for the first time in a brief hearing.
Harvard students said they were proud of their school leadership's stance against federal influence. But they also lambasted other moves from the school they saw as capitulating to some of Trump's demands, including the renaming of the school's diversity, equity and inclusion office and the withdrawal of school funding for campus affinity group graduation celebrations.
Tuesday's rally occurred amid weeks of tremendous uncertainty for international students at Harvard and other colleges and universities across the country.
The Trump administration has revoked and then abruptly reinstated the legal status of thousands of international students, placing their ability to study in the United States on ever-shifting ground.
In some circumstances, the administration has taken steps to deport international students who have protested against government policies such as its support for Israel.
Abdullah Shahid Sial, a Harvard student from Pakistan, said he recognized the threat facing international students who protested the government. But he said he felt a responsibility to stand up for what he believed in.
'I don't want to not speak up when times are actually tough,' he said.
In the face of pressure from the federal government, Harvard maintains it has taken meaningful, ongoing steps to combat antisemitic discrimination against Jews on campus, though Garber acknowledged significant work left to do combating hate in his message to the school Tuesday.
Harvard's lawsuit also pushed back on the administration's attempts to exert control over a private university, something Garber has called 'beyond the power of the federal government.'
'No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,' Garber wrote in a letter to the school community on April 14.
Some Jews also fear Trump has politicized the fight against antisemitism.
Jonathan Greenblatt, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, a leading Jewish civil rights group, said that though Harvard has taken steps 'in the right direction' to combat antisemitism, the school has had a 'serious problem of antisemitism' dating back years and needs to do a 'demonstrably better job' combatting anti-Jewish hate.
Read more: Trump's $2.2B funding freeze for Harvard would hit cancer research, battlefield medicine and more
However, the Trump administration's demands of Harvard have gone beyond the ADL's aims for reform, Greenblatt wrote earlier this month.
'The issue of combating antisemitism on campus should be addressed on its own process and merits,' he wrote. 'Other debates on higher education may be important, but they can and should be resolved separate from fighting antisemitism on campus.'
'Campus antisemitism is real. We've seen it. We've felt it,' Maia Hoffenberg, a Jewish Harvard student, told the crowd gathered at Tuesday's rally.
But, she added, 'The Trump administration is trying to use me and trying to use all of Harvard's Jewish students to wage a war against higher education.'
Cornell William Brooks, a Harvard professor and former president of the NAACP, said he felt a responsibility to demonstrate alongside the school's students.
'I have to be at your side when you decided to take on this administration and these constitutionally and morally wrong-headed policies,' he said, urging unity among Harvard's diverse student body.
Caleb Thompson, one of Harvard's co-student body presidents, was among the students urging Harvard to ignore an upcoming deadline from the Trump administration to turn over records on international students.
Shahid Sial, his fellow student body president, also urged Harvard students to remain united.
'When someone attacks a member of our household, we all fight them. We all stand up for them,' he said. 'A divided Harvard is a Harvard that has already lost.'
However, he later added, the response from students to the events of recent weeks gave him hope.
'Harvard is the most united it has ever been,' he said.
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Read the original article on MassLive.
Read the original article on MassLive.