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Boston Globe
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Graduates are feeling trepidation this commencement season, but ‘fear is what needs to drive change,' says MIT class president
Commencement is supposed to be a time of celebration, but this season is shaping up to be subdued. Spring is still spring — students are back on the quad reading, sunbathing, skateboarding, and playing spikeball. Trump's attacks on higher education haven't stopped the steady beat of a cappella concerts or end-of-year parties. Beer pong goes on. 'Seniors are just soaking up what they have left,' said Jack Wile as he sat back in a red lawn chair at the University of Massachusetts Amherst with his sneakers kicked off. Advertisement And yet, even as grounds crews begin to mow pastoral greens and put up graduation banners, there's also a feeling of apprehension thrumming beneath the regular rhythms of college life. 'It's not really a secret that a lot of us are feeling some fear,' Vemuri said. Across Massachusetts, many students are scared to speak out. They've seen friends, classmates, and professors punished for their pro-Palestinian views or simply targeted for their identities. Their peers have been doxxed, detained, arrested, and, in some cases, deported. Foreign students have had their Advertisement Last year, a graduating student used a mortarboard to draw attention to the plight of Palestinians, during the 373rd Commencement at Harvard University in Cambridge. Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff 'Part of the 'vibe check' depends on who you are,' said Archon Fung, a professor at Harvard Kennedy School, where he said more than half the student population comes from other countries. He's anticipating muted ceremonies where students aren't as comfortable expressing themselves — not decorating their mortarboards with Pride flags or Black Lives Matter colors, for instance — due to 'a chilling effect.' It's not just undergraduates and graduate students who are feeling uneasy; it's also faculty and staff. And it's not just at Harvard, where university president Alan Garber is locked in an ideological battle with the Trump administration, with billions of research funding in the balance; or at Tufts, where Turkish graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk was arrested by masked immigration officers on a Somerville street. 'When she was finally released last Friday, there was a bit of a collective sigh of relief,' said Aaron Gruen, a senior who's investigative editor of The Tufts Daily. Still, he says, resistance with a capital 'R' has 'sort of dwindled,' and the mood has been 'a lot more dystopian.' 'I think that there's a general fear that exists, both institutionally and individually — fears about being targeted,' said Genny Beemyn, a nonbinary educator and the director of the Stonewall Center at UMass Amherst. 'We worry about our students, particularly our international students, our transgender students, and our undocumented students,' said Carrie Baker, a professor of the study of women and gender at Smith College in Northampton. 'We're tired.' Advertisement Along with exhaustion, disillusionment has set in at schools across the region. And while a handful of college and university presidents have been hailed as leaders of resistance against Trump, some voices on campus tell a different story, painting administrators as virtue signalers who are publicly putting on an act of resistance, while privately acquiescing to Trump's demands. At Harvard, recent moves to Last year, Harvard hosted 10 affinity celebrations for the Class of '24, including ones for Arab, Latinx, and low-income graduates, Harvard senior Elyse Martin-Smith has been involved in planning affinity-group celebrations for Black graduating seniors that Harvard said it will no longer fund. Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff She said Harvard's decision to rescind its support was 'hurtful' and has implications for other affinity programming. 'We're at a moment where we fear for the future of Black students at Harvard, and to be able to show our solidarity and our strength for completing the last four years is extremely important to us.' Harvard's Chief Community and Campus Life officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, has said Advertisement Fung characterized the past six months as 'whiplash' after 20-plus years of 'trying to figure out many different ways to make the whole environment more inclusive.' There's a sense among critics that some leaders are squelching free expression to avoid political trouble. UMass Amherst associate professor of history Kevin Young was one of around 130 demonstrators arrested last year when There may be no bigger PR opportunity than commencement, and schools around the region are using it to broadcast their own values to students and families as well as alumni, donors, and the American public at large. While some have invited progressive speakers to signal defiance or resistance, others have tapped guests with no obvious connection to politics — suggesting, perhaps, an effort to change the subject or avoid it altogether. A former speechwriter for President Barack Obama, Cody Keenan has about a dozen commencement addresses in the works for clients of his speechwriting firm Fenway Strategies, including one of his own for Salve Regina University in Rhode Island. 'I'd say every single speech we ever wrote for President Obama weighed the tension between the world as it is and the world as it should be,' Keenan said, 'and the same is true of any good commencement speech.' The class of '25 grew up in the aftermath of 9/11, contending with climate change, active shooter drills, and a global pandemic. 'They have every reason to be cynical,' said Keenan. Advertisement Instead, they're asking: How should the world be? And there are as many answers as there are graduating seniors. Vemuri has two minutes to give her speech as class president but knows what she wants to say about the future. She's planning to attend graduate school for neuroscience, but is watching in alarm as Trump targets academia and scientific research. 'It's pretty nerve-wracking to see that break down,' she said, but even more urgent is the immediate threat to free speech and other rights. 'I think what my classmates really need to hear is that this fear is what needs to drive change.' Shira Hoffer is a graduating senior at Harvard who started the Hotline for Israel/Palestine and founded a nonprofit to help people with differences disagree. Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff While at Harvard, senior Shira Hoffer started the Hotline for Israel/Palestine after Oct. 7, 2023, as a way to foster civil dialogue around an imminent war. She was inundated with text messages, but soon realized that while the hotline was great for people who had questions, it didn't reach those who 'feel like they know all the answers,' she said. She founded the nonprofit Institute for Multipartisan Education to help people with differences disagree. 'I feel like I've had a foot out the door ever since,' she said. Still, she's excited to see the commencement speaker — Abraham Verghese, author of 'The Covenant of Water' — and to celebrate with her classmates. Her high school ceremony was held in a parking lot. 'Everyone sat separately. We were wearing masks [and] gloves to receive our diplomas,' Hoffer said. 'So I am looking forward to the whole, like, putting on a cap and gown and sitting with my friends and having everything be ... together.' Advertisement Brooke Hauser can be reached at
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Harvard president pressed on why Americans hate university, acknowledges 'real problems we should address'
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Generate Key Takeaways Harvard University President Alan Garber was pressed on why Americans dislike the elite institution during an interview with The Wall Street Journal amid the university's back-and-forth with President Donald Trump. Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker pressed Garber on why "a lot of people in America really hate Harvard." Trump recently announced he would be freezing federal funds that go to the university, and Harvard responded by filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration. As Garber noted that there was a strong dislike for elite universities in general, he added, "But I will say that we've had some real problems that we should address. One of them is the perceived lack of ideological diversity, among our faculty and among our students." "I have to say that there's recent evidence that makes me think maybe this is overblown, even though I think it's a real problem. But the perception is out there that we are an almost uniformly left-wing institution," he said. President of Harvard University Alan Garber addresses the crowd during the 373rd Commencement at Harvard University. Jewish Harvard Students Speak Out After University Sues Trump Admin Over Funding Freeze Tucker then pressed Garber on why the faculty at Harvard skewed liberal, citing a study by The Harvard Crimson that found that over 77% of the faculty surveyed in 2023 identified as either "very liberal" or "liberal." Read On The Fox News App "One thing I can tell you is it's nothing deliberate about our hiring policies or our tenure policies, and I think there are certain fields with people with more liberal or left-wing points of view feel more welcome. It may be that we don't have as many conservatives as we should have. Part of it also may be that people don't feel comfortable speaking out when they disagree," he said. He said that part of what Harvard faculty needed to do was "promote the idea that it doesn't matter what your personal views are, you need to teach in a way that is fair to multiple points of view." Garber said during an interview with "NBC Nightly News" anchor Lester Holt in late April that he had no choice but to fight the Trump administration. Donald Trump has targeted Harvard by freezing their federal funding as the administration, and Harvard has sued the Trump administration in response. Click Here For More Coverage Of Media And Culture "I would say at Harvard, we have a problem with antisemitism. We take it very seriously, and we are trying to address it. There's no doubt about the severity of that problem. We don't really see the relationship to research funding at Harvard and other universities. They are two different issues," Garber told NBC. Garber released a letter on April 29 apologizing for the university's failure to address both antisemitic and anti-Muslim/Arab tensions on campus in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack. Harvard University also released reports from its presidential task forces on antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias, as well as anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias. In a letter to the university, Garber expressed his gratitude for the teams' work and lamented the rise of bigotry and "sometimes violent clashes" occurring on campus. "The 2023-24 academic year was disappointing and painful," Garber's letter began. "I am sorry for the moments when we failed to meet the high expectations we rightfully set for our community. The grave, extensive impact of the October 7, 2023, Hamas assault on Israel and its aftermath had serious repercussions on our campus." Fox News' Lindsay Kornick contributed to this report. Original article source: Harvard president pressed on why Americans hate university, acknowledges 'real problems we should address'
