The siege of Harvard

Time of India

28-05-2025

Debashis Chakrabarti is a political columnist, Commonwealth Fellow (UK), and internationally recognized academic whose career bridges journalism, policy, and higher education leadership. A former journalist with The Indian Express, he brings the precision of investigative reporting to his political analysis and scholarly work. He has served as Professor and Dean at leading institutions across the UK, India, Africa, and the Middle East, with expertise in media studies, political communication, and governance. LESS ... MORE
In the court, a University stands alone against Trump's war on truth
In a nation gripped by political disinformation, bureaucratic overreach, and resurgent nationalism, it is a university, not a legislature, not a media outlet, not a corporate board—that has emerged as the most potent line of resistance.
Harvard University—arguably the oldest and most venerated bastion of higher learning in the Western world—now stands at the epicentre of a constitutional reckoning, one that could reshape the boundaries of American democracy in the 21st century. Its lawsuit against the Trump Administration, recently admitted for hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court, is more than a battle over immigration status or administrative overreach. It is a clarion call against the creeping authoritarianism that threatens to suffocate the very ideals America was built upon.
This is not just Harvard's moment of truth. It is America's.
The Assault Cloaked in Bureaucracy
It began, as many authoritarian encroachments do, not with tanks or tribunals, but with forms and files. Under the Trump Administration's now-declassified executive order, the Department of Homeland Security sought sweeping powers to collect and weaponize sensitive data from universities hosting international students. Harvard's refusal to comply in full—citing federal privacy protections, academic autonomy, and moral principle—was met with swift bureaucratic punishment: decertification from the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP). Thousands of student visas were rendered void overnight.
The policy's cold logic was cloaked in the language of 'national security.' But its subtext was unmistakable: submission or sabotage. For Trump's America, institutions of thought are seen as institutions of threat—especially when they shelter immigrants, celebrate diversity, and challenge orthodoxy.
Harvard's Defiance: A Constitutional Rebellion
The Supreme Court has now agreed to hear Harvard v. Department of Homeland Security—a case that has ignited fierce academic, legal, and political debate across the globe. The university's petition does not merely contest procedural violations; it advances a radical proposition for our time: that the autonomy of knowledge-producing institutions must be constitutionally protected from executive coercion.
Harvard's brief reads less like legalese and more like a philosophical declaration. It quotes Justice Brennan's defense of the 'marketplace of ideas' and reasserts the university's ancient right—enshrined since medieval times—to govern its own intellectual life free from political interference.
This is no routine case. This is Harvard invoking the First Amendment, not for performative defiance, but for survival.
Why Authoritarians Fear the University
Throughout history, autocrats have instinctively feared universities. In their libraries lie contested histories; in their lecture halls, the courage to dissent. From Galileo's trial in the Papal courts to Tiananmen Square's student-led uprising, universities have always stood at the intersection of inquiry and insurrection.
Trumpism—despite its electoral cloak—is no exception. Its visceral contempt for the university arises from a deeper existential threat: universities teach nuance, complexity, multiculturalism, and empirical skepticism. They cultivate a citizenry that thinks—precisely what autocracies fear most.
By targeting Harvard, Trump is not just punishing a critic. He is seeking to delegitimize the entire infrastructure of critical knowledge, from climate science to constitutional law.
Global Reverberations: What the World Is Watching
The world is watching, and not idly. Harvard enrols more international students than any other university in the United States. Its Kennedy School has shaped policymakers from Liberia to Lithuania; its labs host Nobel laureates and biotech pioneers. The attack on its autonomy reverberates far beyond the Charles River.
Canada, Germany, and the Nordic countries are already seeing a surge in applications from international scholars who once set their sights on Harvard or MIT. America's soft power, long sustained not by bombs but by books, is haemorrhaging credibility.
Harvard's fight, then, is not parochial. It is planetary.
The Stakes: Between Nightfall and Renaissance
This case may well take its place alongside landmark rulings like Brown v. Board of Education and New York Times Co. v. United States in shaping the arc of American constitutional history. But its stakes are distinct: the right to question power, the liberty to host strangers, the moral imperative to pursue truth against the sirens of convenience.
Should Harvard lose, the ruling will embolden a future in which federal agencies dictate campus discourse, where visas become levers of ideological conformity, and where intellectual freedom is bartered for bureaucratic favor.
But if Harvard prevails, it will safeguard far more than its reputation. It will renew the very principle that knowledge must remain beyond the reach of the state's clenched fist.
The Torch Must Not Be Passed to Shadows
In the shadowed Gothic courtyards of Harvard Yard stands the statue of John Harvard, bearing a date etched a full century before the U.S. Constitution was conceived. It is more than a relic; it stands as a resolute reminder. The American republic was, in part, imagined in classrooms and debated in libraries long before it was codified in law.
Harvard's defence, then, is not about elitism. It is about enlightenment.
In taking its stand before the Supreme Court, Harvard reminds the world that the true strength of a democracy is not its economy or its army, but its ability to defend its thinkers—especially when they are inconvenient, foreign, or brave.
If Trump's White House believed it could silence Harvard through administrative cruelty, it has badly misread history. Because when the torch of knowledge is under siege, even the oldest walls can roar.
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