More than a thousand people gathered on Cambridge Common on Saturday to demand that Harvard stand up to the latest threats coming from the Donald Trump administration. Late last month, the administration threatened to freeze nearly $9 billion in federal grants, part of an attack on elite universities including Princeton and Columbia ostensibly to weed out antisemitism on campus.
City councillor Burhan Azeem, who helped organize the protest, said that the three main sponsors, the American Association of University Professors, the Cambridge City Council and 50501, which has been organizing nationwide protests monthly in all 50 states, came together and organized the event in just a few days. “We are really encouraging Harvard to stand up to Trump” at a moment a decision is imminent, he said.
Protesters also demanded that Harvard support foreign students and researchers, many of whom have seen their visas canceled or worry they will be. One Russian-born scientist, Kseniia Petrova, is in U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement custody after being detained at Logan airport.
Among the 19 speakers Saturday were local leaders, Harvard professors and students including Tova Kaplan, a Jewish Harvard College student, who declared that “When Donald Trump invites Nazi apologists into his inner circle and releases violent antisemites from prison, we know that this is not about protecting Jews.”
The protesters circulated an online petition asking the Harvard Corp. to condemn attacks on universities publicly and affirm Harvard’s commitment to academic freedom. It also asks the leaders to contest and refuse to comply with unlawful demands that undermine academic freedom and university self-governance. Lastly, they demand that the corporation coordinate with peer institutions and alumni networks to build a strong, collective response to these antidemocratic threats.
In a video shared on the social media platform Bluesky, Harvard Law School professor Nikolas Bowie urges the university to go to court to challenge what the administration is doing, stating that, “the Trump administration has leveled some unlawful and illegal threats on Harvard University. Nothing gives the president the power to make this demand.” The video also featured statements by AAUP members professors Ryan Enos, who teachers in the department of government, and Kirsten Weld, department of history.
Harvard may be the world’s wealthiest university, with an endowment of more than $50 billion, and yet the potential freezing of federal grants “would be catastrophic, an existential disaster,” says Weld, who studies Latin American history, including social movements, memory, democracy and dictatorship. “A lot of the money included is grants that go directly to the hospitals affiliated with Harvard.”
She critiqued “the idea that the federal government doesn’t like the way a few student protesters have been disciplined by Harvard College, so you’re going to shut down pediatric cancer research labs at Dana-Farber and research into prenatal care at Brigham? All that because you want to crack down on the Constitutionally protected pro-Palestine speech of undergrads on the other side of the river?”
Standing at the podium, Cambridge mayor E. Denise Simmons gave an impassioned plea. “With the largest academic endowment of any academic institution on this earth, Harvard possesses not just the resources to withstand the pressure, but the moral obligation to do so.” At the same time, she clarified that “Harvard does not stand alone in this fight. Cambridge does not stand alone in this fight, Massachusetts, the birthplace of American democracy does not stand alone.” The 1,000-person crowd estimate was provided by a city spokesperson.
Liz Feltnor, who is studying at Harvard Law, held a sign she made that read, “Stand up to Autocrats. What, like it’s hard?” – a reference to the film Legally Blonde, in which a sorority girl pursues a degree at Harvard Law to impress her ex-boyfriend and goes on to become a successful lawyer.
“I think Harvard should put it’s money where it’s mouth is. If it’s teaching us the law, it should stand up for the law and the constitution,” Feltnor said.
She hopes Harvard doesn’t capitulate and “does the right thing,” she said.
On Friday, the national AAUP and its Harvard chapter filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration. They also filed a motion for a temporary restraining order, which, if granted, would bar the Trump administration immediately from following through on its threats. As Weld explained, “If nobody challenges them, they get away with it. We aren’t going to let them get away with it.”
According to a press release issued by the AAUP, the lawsuit is “seeking to block the Trump administration from demanding that Harvard University restrict speech and restructure its core operations or else face the cancellation of $8.7 billion in federal funding for the university and its affiliated hospitals.”
The lawsuit alleges that the administration’s demands violate the Constitution without any federal law authorizing their actions. “The First Amendment does not permit government officials to use the power of their office to silence critics and suppress speech they don’t like,” said Andrew Manuel Crespo, the Morris Wasserstein professor of law at Harvard University and general counsel of the AAUP Harvard faculty chapter.
“Harvard faculty have the constitutional right to speak, teach, and conduct research without fearing that the government will retaliate against their viewpoints by canceling grants,” Crespo said.
Among those attending were families with young children, including one boy who made a homemade sign reading “Stop Being a Bad President” and 93-year-old Radcliffe graduate and retired library curator Eva Moseley, whose sign read, “Harvard University W.G.U. Don’t Bow to Tyrants.”
“W.G.U.” stands for “world’s greatest university,” she explained.
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Maybe this isn’t the moment for the Council to demand higher PILOT payments from Harvard?
The Council should never “demand” anything from Harvard. I have a lot of experience in negotiating deals. Perhaps you do not. Demanding something in a deal gets you nowhere.
The Council should negotiate with the university. One of the things it should say in the negotiating strategy is that this is what we believe is a fair pilot sum. If “you” (i.e. Harvard) don’t agree, just as you have your own police department, we think it is time for you to have your own fire department.