Live updates: Harvard graduation, Trump admin international student ban case hearing

CNN

4 days ago

Update:
Date: 10 min ago
Title: Small protests form as Harvard Yard fills with beaming graduating seniors
Content:
Harvard was bursting with activity Thursday morning as thousands packed into historic Harvard Yard for commencement – all while the school's ongoing battle with the Trump administration loomed over the day.
Beaming graduating seniors were decked out in caps and gowns as family members in suits and spring dresses swarmed to celebrate their loves ones.
Meanwhile, outside the campus' main gates, two dozen or so pro-Palestinian protesters gathered amid lines into the commencement event. Older protesters who did not appear to be students held signs reading, 'Gaza must have food and water,' and 'Ceasefire Now.'
A smaller group of pro-Israel counterprotesters also stood outside the gates, with some among them arguing with some of pro-Palestinian protesters. Despite the crush of people filling the streets of Cambridge, all was relatively calm leading up to commencement.
Update:
Date: 4 min ago
Title: Harvard's commencement ceremony has begun
Content:
The commencement ceremony for Harvard's graduating class of 2025 – the 374th celebration in the school's storied history – has begun.
Update:
Date: 11 min ago
Title: In speech at Harvard, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar praises leaders for standing up to government
Content:
Basketball legend and social activist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar came out in strong defense of Harvard University and its leadership during a speech Wednesday on campus.
'When a tyrannical administration tried to bully and threaten Harvard to give up their academic freedom and destroy free speech, (Harvard President) Dr. Alan Garber rejected the illegal and immoral pressures the way Rosa Parks defied the entire weight of systemic racism in 1955,' Abdul-Jabbar said, according to The Harvard Gazette, the school's official publication.
Abdul-Jabbar – who is being awarded an honorary degree Thursday by the university – was the keynote speaker at Class Day, an event for underclassmen held a day before the university's main commencement exercises.
'After seeing so many cowering billionaires, media moguls, law firms, politicians, and other universities bend their knees to an administration that is systematically strip-mining the U.S. Constitution, it is inspiring to me to see Harvard University take a stand for freedom,' said Abdul-Jabbar.
Update:
Date: 32 min ago
Title: Some international students at Harvard are worried about attending graduation, school tells court
Content:
The Trump administration has thrown the lives of the university's 7,000 international students into distress and disarray, with some afraid of attending commencement this week, Harvard's director of immigration services spelled out yesterday in a new court filing.
Some US students are even reconsidering enrolling this fall because of the Trump administration's actions, Maureen Martin wrote in her sworn statement.
Harvard's faculty and administration are being 'inundated with questions' from concerned students, and international students are so distressed their mental health has been affected, she wrote.
'Some are afraid to attend their own graduation ceremonies this week out of fear that some immigration-related action will be taken against them,' Martin wrote. 'Some have cancelled upcoming international travel plans to conduct academic research or see their families in light of the risk that they might not be admitted back into the United States.'
Martin's declaration in court highlights the competitive disadvantage the Trump administration's recent actions against the university have caused. A judge has temporarily blocked the State Department and Department of Homeland Security from rescinding Harvard's ability to host international students.
Yet some of the damage is already done, the school says.
International students set to come to Harvard for future semesters are reconsidering, including at least one medical school and one law student, Martin added, as are at least three US students who want to study where international students also can be. Others have had trouble getting student visas to the US at embassies abroad in recent days.
Update:
Date: 16 min ago
Title: Alumni group Crimson Courage hands out stickers to commencement attendees
Content:
Members of the alumni group Crimson Courage handed out stickers and leaflets to commencement attendees outside Harvard Yard while graduating seniors and their families entered for Harvard's 2025 commencement exercises.
The group describes itself as 'a growing community of Harvard alumni from all schools and decades united in standing up for academic freedom at Harvard and beyond.'
The sticker was meant to be a sign of support for the university, offering alumni the chance to 'stand up for Harvard's independence and integrity.' The group was also encouraging people to sign an amicus brief to support Harvard in its various federal court battles with the Trump administration.
Update:
Date: 57 min ago
Title: A physician who advocates for the power of human touch will deliver Harvard's commencement speech
Content:
Doctors interact with patients, in many cases, when they are feeling their worst — so how they talk to those patients during such a vulnerable time matters.
That's the philosophy of Abraham Verghese, the bestselling author, Stanford professor and infectious disease doctor who will address students at Harvard University's 374th Commencement this week. For many years, Verghese has advocated for strengthening the physician-patient connection and bedside skills.
Harvard's invitation to Verghese comes at a time of significant uncertainty at the Ivy League school amid its ongoing clashes with the Trump administration over academic freedom, federal funding, campus oversight and most recently, a ban on the enrollment of international students.
Verghese will be the first physician to give Harvard's commencement speech since 1996, according to the school's student-run newspaper, The Harvard Crimson. That year, Harold E. Varmus, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and former director of the National Institutes of Health, told graduates that supporting science was a shared human responsibility.
'He has pursued excellence across disciplines with an intensity surpassed only by his humanity, which shines brilliantly through his works of both fiction and nonfiction, as well as his work as a clinician and teacher,' said Harvard President Alan M. Garber about Verghese in the university's commencement announcement.
Update:
Date: 37 min ago
Title: Trump administration reverses course, giving Harvard 30 days to challenge ability to host international students
Content:
The Trump administration on Wednesday said it would give Harvard a month to provide evidence to challenge the administration's attempt to strip the university of its ability to host international students.
The move appears designed to unravel a legal challenge the school mounted against the effort last week, and is a reversal of course on the hardball that the administration was playing in attempting to revoke Harvard's student visa program, since a judge stepped in.
Lawyers are set to appear in court this morning.
Attorneys with the Justice Department notified a federal judge early Thursday of the fact that the Department of Homeland Security sent the school a 'Notice of Intent to Withdraw' it from the Student and Exchange Visitor's Program.
The five-page notice cites several reasons for why the government was moving to strip the university of its ability to host foreign students and gave the school 30 days to respond with sworn statements or other evidence 'to rebut the alleged grounds for withdrawal.'
The notice has the potential to upend a major court hearing set for Thursday morning in Harvard's challenge to the administration's decision earlier this month to ban the school enrolling international students – a move that the school says officials made without following any federal regulations for decertifying a college from the SEVP system.
The new notice cites the same alleged issues the administration leaned on in its recent threats, including that the school hadn't complied with reporting requirements for foreign students and that it is not maintaining an environment 'Free from Violence and Antisemitism.'
US District Judge Allison Burroughs has not responded to the filing. The hearing is expected to start at 10:30 a.m. ET.
Update:
Date: 1 hr 9 min ago
Title: Attacks on Harvard by the Trump administration have built for months. A timeline of the dispute
Content:
Since returning to office in January, President Donald Trump has made a major push to put America's elite universities on notice over political ideology. But the groundwork for the White House's stronger stance was laid more than a year earlier.
Two months after Hamas' October 7, 2023, attack on Israel sparked the Gaza war — and protests at colleges over the siege and the US ally's retaliatory bombardment of the territory — the then-president of Harvard University was asked in a congressional hearing whether 'calling for the genocide of Jews' would violate Harvard's rules against bullying and harassment.
'It can be, depending on the context,' Claudine Gay said in a response that slackened the jaws of many students and donors and deeply divided the campus and its alumni.
Gay later apologized. But the backlash, plus a plagiarism scandal, ultimately led her to resign, with Jewish organizations agreeing the nation's oldest, wealthiest and most prestigious university wasn't taking antisemitism seriously enough.
Still, the Trump administration's claims of campus antisemitism continue to dog Harvard, with the White House making sweeping policy demands of its leaders, while threatening billions of dollars in federal funding.
Read the full timeline of the dispute here.
Update:
Date: 56 min ago
Title: Some international students weigh gap year or transferring, Harvard student leader says
Content:
With no end in sight to Trump administration's ever-escalating fight with Harvard University, some international students are considering taking a gap year or transferring to other schools, Harvard student body Co-President Abdullah Shahid Sial told CNN's Sara Sidner.
It's important to remember the young adults 'bearing the brunt' of the latest attacks from the Trump administration are international students often thousands of miles away from their home countries and their families, Sial said.
'The absolute bare minimum you need is simply the security of being safe,' he said, adding none of the students he's spoken with are taking the possibility of leaving Harvard lightly.
'None (of the alternatives) sound as good as continuing your education within the university that you put so much effort to get into,' Sial said.
Update:
Date: 1 hr 14 min ago
Title: Graduation day: What to expect
Content:
It's a graduation day unlike any other at Harvard University, as the Ivy League school persists in its months-long feud with the Trump administration over antisemitism, federal funding and the First Amendment.
With hundreds of students set to walk across the stage today, here's what to expect at the celebrations.
Update:
Date: 1 hr 14 min ago
Title: Commencement and the courts are colliding at Harvard
Content:
On Thursday, federal district Judge Allison Burroughs will hear the most significant debate so far in the ongoing fight between the Trump administration and Harvard University, after the administration last week tried to put into jeopardy the immigration status of more than 7,000 international students at the Massachusetts elite university.
The international student population at Harvard makes up 15 percent of undergraduates, and an even larger percentage of graduate students — in all, a quarter of Harvard's student body. And the university says that with this case, its 'educational mission, its competitive edge, and its academic and research programs' are fundamentally at stake, according to a university administrator who has provided a sworn statement to the court.
The arguments – at the courthouse along Boston's harbor a few miles from where Harvard's graduation ceremonies take place at the same time Thursday – are set to be the most significant debate so far in the ongoing fight between the administration and Harvard.
The judge has already temporarily blocked the US State Department and Department of Homeland Security from taking action on Harvard's students. The university now aims for a more indefinite protection.
Harvard's legal team has argued the university's constitutionally-protected freedoms like free speech are being violated by the federal government. International students are already in chaos and fear heading into the summer and fall semesters, a Harvard official told the court before the hearing.
The Trump administration has used accusations of antisemitism and unfairness in faculty hiring and enrollment to threaten billions of dollars of funding for Harvard and notify the university it was pulling all student visa approvals as well as federal contracts and grants.
Separately, the university is suing over the administration revocation of more than $2 billion in grants. The grant funding case is also before Burroughs, an Obama appointee, and is set to move forward beginning next week through the summer.
'This is really about academic freedom at universities across the country,' one lawyer involved in the cases on the university's side told CNN this week.
Update:
Date: 1 hr 13 min ago
Title: Harvard's class of 2025 graduates amid new worries after pandemic beginnings
Content:
As Harvard University's undergraduate seniors collect their diplomas today, some can't help but liken the tumult at the Ivy League school with the uncertainty from their freshman days during a global health crisis.
'I came here right after the (Covid-19) pandemic,' said graduating international student Leo Gerdén. 'Next semester, international students might not be able to come back — It's the only four years that international students have been able to attend this campus.'
President Donald Trump has said Harvard should have a cap on the percentage of foreign students at 'maybe around 15%, not 31%.' International students make up over a quarter of Harvard's student body.
'It's a very weird thing to be leaving in uncertainty just as much as you came in uncertainty,' said Chukwudi Ilozue, a Harvard graduating senior. The crackdown on international students 'makes me feel very fearful for them. These are people who I expected to be able to see around, see maybe back in Boston, see around the US, and I think these blows are just very saddening for me.'
'We thought Covid was something that would be insurmountable — that would permanently change everything — and to some extent it has. But we beat Covid. We beat a lot of things in the grand history of this very, very old university. I think that Trump will not be the thing that beats us.'
Chukwudi Ilozue, Harvard graduating senior
Update:
Date: 1 hr 12 min ago
Title: Trump suggests Harvard should have 15% cap on foreign students
Content:
President Donald Trump doubled down on his attacks against Harvard University, saying yesterday that the Ivy League school should have a cap on the percentage of foreign students.
'I think they should have a cap of maybe around 15%, not 31%. We have people want to go to Harvard and other schools, they can't get in because we have foreign students there,' Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
Harvard has said in court documents that full-time international students make up about a quarter of its student body.
Harvard has broadly refused many government demands, including that it hand over foreign students' entire conduct records and allow audits to confirm it has expanded 'viewpoint diversity.'
The Trump administration last week canceled Harvard's ability to enroll foreign students, a move that a federal judge put on hold. And The Trump administration on Tuesday directed federal agencies to cancel all remaining contracts with the university.
'Harvard has to show us their lists,' Trump said yesterday. 'They have foreign students, about 31% of their students are foreign-based, almost 31%. We want to know where those students come… Are they troublemakers? What countries do they come (from)?'
Trump suggested, without evidence, that some of the international students included in Harvard's records will be 'very radical people.'
'They're taking people from areas of the world that are very radicalized, and we don't want them making trouble in our country,' Trump said.