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    Former Harvard president urges people to ‘speak out’ against threats to US democracy

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    A recent former president of Harvard University urged people to “speak out” in defense of “foundational threats” to values such as freedom, autonomy and democracy in the US, as those whose deaths for such causes in war were being honored on Memorial Day.Drew Gilpin Faust, the first female president of Harvard, also warned on Monday of US constitutional checks and the rule of law being “at risk” under the current administration, even as Donald Trump issued a fresh threat against the elite university as it seeks to repel his assaults on its independence and funding.“We are being asked not to charge into … artillery fire but only to speak up and to stand up in the face of foundational threats to the principles for which [the US civil war dead] gave the last full measure of devotion. We have been entrusted with their legacy. Can we trust ourselves to uphold it?” Faust wrote in a guest opinion essay for the New York Times.She highlighted, in particular, the principles fought and died for by Union soldiers in the US civil war and the roles played by assassinated US president Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist and leading Black civil rights leader of the 19th century.“We must honor these men,” she wrote.Faust, who led Harvard between 2007 and 2018 and still teaches there, did not mention the US president by name but she referred to his position and made a direct link between the civil war and now.Noting that about 2.7 million men, mostly volunteers, in 1861-1865 “took up arms to preserve the Union as a beacon of democracy at a time when representative government seemed to be fading from the earth”, she went on to warn: “Today democracy is once again under worldwide threat, assailed as disorderly and inefficient by autocratic leaders from Budapest to Moscow to Beijing, leaders our own president openly admires.”View image in fullscreenFaust said that Lincoln regarded the Confederacy’s split from the Union, when southern states seceded in order to defend slavery and evade federal government intervention, as a “direct assault” on government by the majority “held in restraint” by constitutional checks.“Those structured checks and the rule of law that embodies and enacts them are once again at risk as we confront the subservience of Congress, the defiance of judicial mandates and the arrogation of presidential power in a deluge of unlawful executive orders,” she wrote in her essay.Critics of Trump lament congressional Republicans’ acquiescence to the president’s expansions of his authority and challenges to constitutional constraints, Democrats’ lackluster resistance, and the administration’s defiance of court orders over various anti-immigration extremes and partisan firings of federal officials and watchdogs without cause.Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly accused Harvard of antisemitism and bias against Jewish students and attacked its efforts towards greater diversity on campus, and the administration has further demanded cooperation with federal immigration authorities, while harnessing federal powers to try to punish the university.Last Friday, Harvard sued prominent government departments and cabinet secretaries for what it said was a “blatant violation” of the US constitution when the Trump administration announced it would revoke federal permission for the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based institution to enroll international students. A federal judge issued an injunction within hours, temporarily blocking such a ban.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHarvard had previously sued in April over what it said was Trump’s attempt to “gain control of academic decision-making” at the university and the administration’s threat to review about $9bn in federal funding.On Monday, Trump posted on his social media platform: “I am considering taking Three Billion Dollars of Grant Money away from a very antisemitic Harvard, and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land,” adding: “What a great investment that would be for the USA.”By Monday afternoon the president had not followed up with action or further explanation or statements.Harvard’s current president, Alan Garber, who is Jewish, has called the Trump demands “illegal” and said the administration was trying “to control whom we hire and what we teach”.Faust, a historian and research professor at Harvard, who was also its first president to have been raised in the US south, concluded her essay by acknowledging that those who fought in the US civil war did, in fact, save the nation and subsequently gave opportunities to the generations that followed.“They were impelled to risk all by a sense of obligation to the future,” she wrote, adding that “we possess a reciprocal obligation to the past” and that “we must not squander what they bequeathed to us”. More

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      Trump’s revenge spree on Harvard echoes well beyond education | Jan-Werner Müller

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      In record time, a court has at least temporarily put a stop to the Trump administration’s latest attack on Harvard University, part of a larger retaliation spree that began in April.On Thursday, Kristi Noem had revoked Harvard’s certification to host international students, causing fear and existential uncertainty for thousands of young people and their families. The swift restraining order comes as a relief. But it is no cause for complacency.Attacks will not stop, and it is naive to think that this is all primarily a Harvard problem, or even only a challenge to higher education. Noem’s letter to Harvard makes clear that Trump and his sycophants will weaponize the state against anyone who incurs their displeasure. Courts may prevent the worst, but the whole pattern has to end if we want to have any hope of living in a country free of fear and featuring at least minimum respect for the rule of law.As Harvard’s lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security rightly pointed out, Noem’s revocation fits into the Trump administration’s orgy of vengeance prompted by Harvard’s refusal to comply with evidently illegal demands issued in mid-April. Among other things, Trumpists had asserted their right to determine appropriate levels of “viewpoint diversity” among faculty and students. After Harvard sued, $2.2bn in research funds were frozen, followed by Linda McMahon, the education secretary, asserting at a cabinet meeting on 30 April that Harvard was failing to report “foreign money that comes in”. This line of attack has now been extended with absurd claims that Harvard “coordinates with the Chinese Communist Party” and is somehow “pro-terrorist”.The background noise to the official letters has been a steady stream of social media posts from the president, throwing invective at Harvard instead of conducting the serious government business of maligning Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift. The founder of a university whose attendees received a $25m settlement has accused the US’s oldest university of “scamming the public”, constituting a “threat to democracy”, and exposing innocent young Americans to “crazed lunatics” (as opposed to non-crazed lunatics). It is a well-known pattern in authoritarian regimes that underlings try to please the leader by anticipating his wishes and imitating his style. Official letters, posts, and press statements from DHS and the Department of Education not only fail to provide evidence and violate procedural safeguards; they not only make up ad hoc demands that have no basis in law; they also contain the signature capital letters, spelling mistakes, and kindergarten-level invective familiar from the president’s rhetoric. It is governance driven by a desire to please Fox viewers, online Maga mobs, and the Avenger-in-Chief.Incompetence hardly makes the measures harmless. They instill fear even when courts step in (and no, not all Ivy League undergrads are spoilt kids who never have anything to fear). Noem, in a further escalation, demanded footage and audio from all protests at Harvard. It is a clear signal for young people to shut up and fall in line. But there was also a signal to foreign faculty: the letter emphasized that it was a “privilege to employ aliens on campus”. The threat aligns with the nativism of xenophobe-in-chief Stephen Miller, who is not just going after people who are in the country without proper paperwork – foreigners as such are a problem.But Noem’s rhetoric also aligned with the logic of authoritarian populist leaders who claim uniquely to represent what they call “the real people”: even citizens will not be free from the accusation by Trump and his sycophants that they are not proper Americans. Trump, at the April 30th cabinet meeting, declared: “The students they have, the professors they have, the attitude they have, is not American.” And Noem made it clear in her letter that her weaponization of the state will not be confined to campus; she wrote that the “evils of anti-Americanism” have to be rooted out in “society” at large.We can draw larger lessons from this – so far – failed attack (eight investigations, involving six different agencies, are still ongoing). One has to be ready – Harvard’s lawyers clearly were. Universities have to stand with each other; Noem warned all of them that they have to “get their act together” or else. Not least, university leaders have to explain to a larger public how Trumpists, in an unprecedented spree of national self-destruction, are busy preventing cancer cures, damaging American soft power, and killing one of the country’s major exports, namely higher education.As with so many other Trump policies, the assault on universities is actually not popular. Even after years of journalists and some professors priming people to think that campus is controlled by woke commissars and “Marxist maniacs” (Trump’s expression – I am still looking for them in the Economics Department), a clear majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s approach to higher education. Conservatives have stoked resentment of “liberal eggheads” for decades, but when their children get sick, they will still want to have access to the best medical schools; no parents wants their kids, away at college, to become pawns – as the Harvard Crimson put it – in political games and subject to an administration’s caprice. And even JD Vance is unlikely to send his offspring to Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Budapest (no disrespect!).

      Jan-Werner Müller is a Guardian US columnist and a professor of politics at Princeton University More

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      Hong Kong targets ‘top talent’ as Harvard faces international student ban

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      Hong Kong’s education bureau has called on the city’s universities to “attract top talent” by opening their doors to those affected by the Trump administration’s attempt to ban Harvard from enrolling international students.Last week the Trump administration revoked Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, effectively banning the university from accepting foreign students. A US federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the government from enforcing the ban, which would have reportedly forced students currently enrolled and not graduating this year to transfer to another institution or lose their legal status and visa.Harvard has launched legal action, but it has done little to assuage concerns among students thrown into limbo. Experts have warned the US the ban could be a boon for foreign institutions looking to attract talent.On Monday Hong Kong’s education bureau said it had “promptly called on all universities in Hong Kong to introduce facilitation measures for those eligible with a view to safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of students and scholars, and to attract top talent”.The Hong Kong Science and Technology University announced on Friday an open invitation to any affected foreign students, offering a place to those forced to leave Harvard as well as those with confirmed offers.“The university will provide unconditional offers, streamlined admission procedures, and academic support to facilitate a seamless transition for interested students,” it said.Hong Kong is home to five of the world’s top 100 universities, according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, however in recent years they have been made to integrate national security and patriotic themes into studies, after China’s ruling Communist party tightened its grip on the semi-autonomous city.More than 2,000 students from Asia are currently enrolled at Harvard, with an unknown number accepted and waiting to start.“A lot of people in east Asia have some sort of fantasy and feel the prestige of Harvard,” said Taiwanese student Chu, who asked that his real name not be published.Chu was expecting to start a Masters in Science in August, and has already paid about $3,000 in visa and accommodation fees, and deferred his hospital residency for a year“I either stick with Harvard or I just go back to my residency training,” he said. “There’s no other alternative I have.”In a lawsuit filed against the Trump administrations attempted ban, Harvard said the move would immediately blunt its competitiveness in attracting the world’s top students.“In our interconnected global economy, a university that cannot welcome students from all corners of the world is at a competitive disadvantage”, it said, adding foreign students were “a key factor” in the college maintaining its standing in academia.The vast majority of Harvard’s foreign students – about 1,200 currently studying – are from China. On China’s Xiao Hong Shu app, a Chinese masters student from Sichuan, said she had given talks to campus classmates about unequal access to education in her home country.“As a fresh graduate studying abroad in the US for the first time, I’ve overcome a lot to get here,” she said. “But when the hammer came down today, it was the first time I truly realised just how small I am.”A spokesperson for China’s ministry of foreign affairs, Mao Ning, said on Friday that China “opposed the politicisation of educational cooperation”, and warned the move would “harm the image and international standing of the United States”.On the social media platform Weibo, a series of related hashtags, including “Trump is destroying Harvard”, saw more than 200 million interactions, including many viewing it as the latest skirmish between the US and China. Among the reasons cited by the Trump administration for revoking Harvard’s program was an accusation that it fostered “coordinating with the Chinese Communist party on its campus”.Additional research by Jason Tzu Kuan Lu and Lillian Yang More

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      Judge blocks Trump administration’s ban on Harvard accepting international students

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      A US federal judge on Friday blocked the government from revoking Harvard University’s ability to enroll foreign students just hours after the elite college sued the Trump administration over its abrupt ban the day before on enrolling foreign students.US district judge Allison Burroughs in Boston issued the temporary restraining order late on Friday morning, freezing the policy that had been abruptly imposed on the university, based in nearby Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Thursday.Meanwhile, the Trump administration has accused Columbia University of violating civil rights laws, while overseas governments had expressed alarm at the administration’s actions against Harvard as part of its latest assault on elite higher education in the US.Harvard University announced on Friday morning that it was challenging the Trump administration’s decision to bar the Ivy League school from enrolling foreign students, calling it unconstitutional retaliation for the school previously defying the White House’s political demands.In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Boston, Harvard said the government’s action violates the first amendment of the US constitution and will have an “immediate and devastating effect for Harvard and more than 7,000 visa holders”.“With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body, international students who contribute significantly to the university and its mission,” Harvard said in its suit. The institution added that it planned to file for a temporary restraining order to block the Department of Homeland Security from carrying out the move.The Trump White House called the lawsuit “frivolous” but the court filing from the 389-year-old elite, private university, the oldest and wealthiest in the US, said: “Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard.”Harvard enrolls almost 6,800 foreign students at its campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Most are graduate students and they come from more than 100 countries.Meanwhile, the Department of Health and Human Services’ office for civil rights late on Thursday cited Columbia University, claiming the New York university acted with “deliberate indifference towards student-on-student harassment of Jewish students from October 7, 2023, through the present”, marking the date when Hamas led the deadly attack on Israel out of Gaza that sparked a ferocious military response from the Jewish state, prompting prolonged pro-Palestinian protests on US streets and college campuses.“The findings carefully document the hostile environment Jewish students at Columbia University have had to endure for over 19 months, disrupting their education, safety, and well-being,” said Anthony Archeval, the acting director of the office for civil rights at HHS, in a statement on the action.It continued: “We encourage Columbia University to work with us to come to an agreement that reflects meaningful changes that will truly protect Jewish students.” Columbia University had not yet issued a statement on the citation as of early Friday morning.Orders by the Trump administration earlier this month to investigate pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia University raised alarms within the Department of Justice, the New York Times reported. A federal judge denied a search warrant for the investigation.Earlier this year, Columbia University agreed to a list of demands from the Trump administration in response to $400m worth of grants and federal funds to the university being cancelled over claims of inaction by the university to protect Jewish students.Burroughs said Harvard had shown it could be harmed before there was an opportunity to hear the case in full. The judge, an Obama administration appointee, scheduled hearings for 27 May and 29 May to consider next steps in the case.The Harvard Crimson student newspaper reported that the Department of Homeland Security gave Harvard 72 hours to turn over all documents on all international students’ disciplinary records and paper, audio or video records on protest activity over the past five years in order to have the “opportunity” to have its eligibility to enroll foreign students reinstated.Before Harvard filed suit, the Chinese government early on Friday had said the move to block foreign students from the school and oblige current ones to leave would only hurt the international standing of the US. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology extended an open invitation to Harvard international students and those accepted in response to the action against Harvard.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Friday afternoon, despite the judge’s ruling, Chinese students at Harvard were cancelling flights home and seeking legal advice on staying in the US and saying they were scared in case Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents came to their accommodation to take them away, as they have done to other foreign students.The former German health minister and alumnus of Harvard, Karl Lauterbach, called the action against Harvard “research policy suicide”. Germany’s research minister, Dorothee Baer, had also, before Harvard sued, urged the Trump administration to reverse its decision, calling it “fatal”.Harvard’s lawsuit lists as the plaintiffs the “President and fellows of Harvard college” versus defendants including the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the Department of Justice and the Department of State, as well as the government’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program and individual cabinet members – Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary; Pam Bondi, the attorney general; Marco Rubio, the secretary of state; and Todd Lyons, the acting director of Ice.The White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said on Friday: “If only Harvard cared this much about ending the scourge of anti-American, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist agitators on their campus they wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with.”She added: “Harvard should spend their time and resources on creating a safe campus environment instead of filing frivolous lawsuits.”Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, wrote an open letter to students, academics and staff condemning an “unlawful” and “unwarranted” action by the administration.“The revocation continues a series of government actions to retaliate against Harvard for our refusal to surrender our academic independence and to submit to the federal government’s illegal assertion of control over our curriculum, our faculty, and our student body,” it said.The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Fear on campus: Harvard’s international students in ‘mass panic’ over Trump move

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      Harvard’s foreign students described an atmosphere of “fear on campus” following an attempt by the Trump administration to ban international scholars at the oldest university in the US.On lush, grassy quads filled with tents and chairs ready for end-of-year graduation celebrations, international students said there was “mass panic” after Thursday’s shock announcement by the Department of Homeland Security.The move triggered cancelled flights home for the summer, scrambles for housing to stay in the US over the break, and even swift attempts to transfer schools.On Friday, Harvard sued for a “blatant violation” of the US constitution and Allison Burroughs, a federal judge of the district of Massachusetts, temporarily blocked the White House from revoking Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign students, who comprise an estimated 27% of the student body, or about 6,700 students.Genia Lukin, a third-year PhD candidate from Israel in Harvard’s psychology department, found out during a lab meeting. She said: “It was definitely a moment of: ‘Oh wow, what?’ Obviously, a lot of people are extremely anxious and extremely bewildered and this weird combination of this situation that just exploded out of the blue for most of the international students.”The 41-year-old added that she was in “wait-and-see mode” following the injunction and had cancelled travel abroad with her husband for the foreseeable future. Said Lukin: “The uncertainty is driving people crazy right now. What’s going to happen? Can we complete our degrees remotely? I worked very hard to get into my program so losing the PhD in the middle where I’m a good way through would be pretty devastating.”But, fearful of repercussions following a nationwide crackdown on academics and student protesters, including the arrest and detention of local Tufts University undergraduate, Rümeysa Öztürk, in nearby Somerville, in March, many other students and staff spoke on condition of anonymity.One 24-year-old Ukrainian freshman, who is a Harvard undergraduate during term time and returns to a war-torn country during holidays, said that she had delayed her scheduled flights next week back to her parents who are displaced in western Ukraine, unsure if she can get back into the US.“I feel really shocked,” she said. “If I leave, I’m not sure I’ll get back in. I’m lucky, I have housing the whole summer, so if I need to stay I can. Not all my friends have that. Some people are talking about transferring to different schools, but the transfer window is basically shut now.”She added: “Getting into Harvard is a big deal, it’s transformative, but this is outside our control. It goes against logic, but things go against logic in America right now.”A Chinese visiting scholar from Peking University in Beijing, here for an 18-month research trip for her PhD, called the legal battle “really, really scary” and described “mass panic” among her international friends when the attempted ban was announced on Thursday.The 28-year-old woman said: “We stayed up all night talking about our options, our plan Bs. I was going to go to the UK this summer because my professor has a position in Manchester. I’m a bit worried I won’t be able to get back in. I have to go back to Beijing to finish my PhD, but a lot of students here had long-term plans to stay in America. Harvard is like a special light in the world. If something happens to Harvard it makes me frightened.”A Haitian master’s student, who recently graduated, said a town hall organised by the university to talk to students about their fears had a waiting list of 100 people within minutes, and a campus-wide text chat “blew up with hundreds of messages in an hour”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut she added that the strong statement by Alan Garber, Harvard’s president, and the block by the federal judge made her “hopeful”. She added: “They’ve got our back. I have to trust that they want what is best for all of us.”A member of administrative staff, who lives on campus with international students and works to support them, added: “It’s horrific and almost certainly unlawful. There is a feeling of fear on campus. Normally, you just face typical, internal student problems, but when it is the outside world coming in it is hard to know how to help them.”She added that there was a “misunderstanding that all international students are wealthy” and can afford to have cancelled or disrupted studies. “I would say 50% of them need significant financial aid, and Harvard has a really robust system. They have already been so disrupted because of Covid. Maybe some students can transfer, but maybe they can’t afford to go. And they have lost this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Poof, gone.”Garber said in a letter to the Harvard community: “We condemn this unlawful and unwarranted action. It imperils futures of thousands of students and scholars across Harvard and serves as a warning to countless others at colleges and universities across the country who have come to America to pursue their education and fulfill their dreams.”The Guardian has contacted Harvard for comment. More

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      Trump administration halts Harvard’s ability to enroll international students

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      The Trump administration has said it is halting Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students and has ordered existing international students at the university to transfer or lose their legal status.On Thursday, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration notified Harvard about its decision following ongoing correspondence regarding the “legality of a sprawling records request”, according to three people familiar with the matter.The records request comes as part of an investigation by the homeland security department in which federal officials are threatening the university’s international student admissions.The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, posted a copy of the letter on X, formerly known as Twitter. In it Noem said: “I am writing to inform you that effective immediately, Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification is revoked.”“The revocation of your Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification means that Harvard is prohibited from having any aliens on F- or J-nonimmigrant status for the 2025-2026 academic school year. This decertification also means that existing aliens on F- or J- nonimmigrant status must transfer to another university in order to maintain their nonimmigrant status,” Noem continued.Noem justified the decision by saying: “This action should not surprise you and is the unfortunate result of Harvard’s failure to comply with simple reporting requirements … Consequences must follow to send a clear signal to Harvard and all universities that want to enjoy the privilege of enrolling foreign students, that the Trump administration will enforce the law and root out the evils of anti-Americanism and antisemitism in society and campuses.”The former governor of South Dakota also accused Harvard of “fostering violence, antisemitism and coordinating with the Chinese Communist party on its campus”.In a separate press release, the homeland security department said: “Secretary Noem is following through on her promise to protect students and prohibit terrorist sympathizers from receiving benefits from the US government.”A Harvard spokesperson called the government’s action “unlawful” in a statement to the Guardian on Thursday.“We are fully committed to maintaining Harvard’s ability to host our international students and scholars, who hail from more than 140 countries and enrich the university – and this nation – immeasurably,” the spokesperson said.“We are working quickly to provide guidance and support to members of our community. This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission.”Pippa Norris, an author and Paul F McGuire lecturer in comparative politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, told the Guardian on Thursday that Trump “is basically cutting off international knowledge to American students, he is reducing soft power, and therefore weakening America … And for me personally, it’s going to mean tremendous problems in terms of teaching.”Norris said “about 90%” of her students are international, so if she “can no longer recruit international students, then the demand and participants, etc, is going to go down”.She continued: “Imagine that you’ve come, you’ve spent a lot of money and resources to come to Harvard, and you’ve got in, and your second or third year of the undergraduate degree, or the second year of your master’s degree, and [they] say: ‘Well, I’m sorry, you know, you’re not going to be able to study here next year.’ I mean, it’s devastating.”Leo Gerdén, an international student from Sweden, called the announcement “devastating” in the university newspaper Harvard Crimson.“Every tool available they should use to try and change this. It could be all the legal resources suing the Trump administration, whatever they can use the endowment to, whatever they can use their political network in Congress,” Gerdén said, adding: “This should be, by far, priority number one.”The university currently hosts nearly 6,800 international students, with many being on F-1 or J-1 visas, according to university records. International students make up about 27% of the university’s population.The latest decision from the homeland security department comes amid growing tensions between federal officials and Harvard over the Trump administration’s claims that the university has implemented inadequate responses to antisemitism on its campus.The Trump administration terminated a further $450m in grants to the university in May, following an earlier cancellation of $2.2bn in federal funding.A Trump-appointed antisemitism taskforce has pointed to “just how radical Harvard has become” as nationwide anti-war protesters – including students – demonstrated against Israel’s deadly onslaught on Gaza, which has killed at least 53,000 Palestinians in the last year and a half.The Trump administration has also ordered the university to dismantle its diversity, equity and inclusion programming, restrict student protests, and disclose admission details to federal officials.In response to the federal cuts, the university – with an endowment of more than $53bn – filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration.Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, said in April that “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 also said: “The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights … The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s first amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI. And it threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production and dissemination of knowledge.”Of how this will impact Harvard’s future, Norris said: “Why would any further international students apply to America, not just Harvard, if they can’t know that they’ve got a guaranteed place?“[This halt is] going to benefit Oxford and Cambridge and many other academic institutions, because of course, the best of the brightest could apply wherever they would. America, again, is going to have problems as a result.”Jenna Amatulli contributed reporting More

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      George Washington University student banned after pro-Palestinian graduation speech

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      A graduation speech at George Washington University has resulted in the graduate being banned from the campus after she used the platform to criticize the university’s ties to Israel and express support for Palestinians.During Saturday’s commencement for the Columbian College of Arts & Sciences, part of GWU in Washington, DC, graduating senior Cecilia Culver delivered remarks to the graduating class of nearly 750.Culver condemned the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza, criticized GWU’s connections to Israel, and urged the audience to withhold donations from the college and push for financial transparency, as well as for the college to divest from Israeli-linked companies.“I am ashamed to know my tuition [fee] is being used to fund this genocide,” Culver said from the stage. “I call upon the class of 2025 to withhold donations and continue advocating for disclosure and divestment.”University officials later said Culver had not followed her pre-approved remarks. They later announced she would be barred from campus and university-sponsored events.“The speaker’s conduct during Saturday’s Columbian College of Arts and Sciences celebration event was inappropriate and dishonest: the speaker submitted and recited in rehearsal very different remarks than those she delivered at the ceremony,” the school said in a statement. “The speaker has been barred from all GW’s campuses and sponsored events elsewhere.”GWU also issued an apology, saying the speech had disrupted what was meant to be a celebratory occasion.The incident has since gone viral, with one video of the speech gaining more than 1 million views. Many have praised Culver for taking a stand on behalf of Palestinians, but others have criticized her for “politicizing” a graduation ceremony.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt the event, many graduates loudly applauded and cheered for Culver, with several giving her a standing ovation. Associate dean Kavita Daiya also acknowledged her speech, saying the college supports diverse perspectives. Culver was also receiving a distinguished scholar award at the ceremony.Culver said in an interview with The GW Hatchet that “there was just never any point where I was not going to say something”. More

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      Trump administration piles pressure on Harvard with $450m more in cuts

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      Eight federal agencies will terminate a further $450m in grants to Harvard University, the Trump administration announced on Tuesday, escalating its antagonization of the elite institution over what officials frame as inadequate responses to antisemitism on campus.The latest funding cuts come after the administration cancelled $2.2bn in federal funding to the university, bringing the total financial penalty to approximately $2.65bn.“Harvard’s campus, once a symbol of academic prestige, has become a breeding ground for virtue signaling and discrimination,” the Trump administration’s taskforce to combat antisemitism wrote in a statement. “This is not leadership; it is cowardice. And it’s not academic freedom; it’s institutional disenfranchisement.”The cuts represent a flexing of federal power over the US’s oldest and wealthiest university, first triggered by campus protests against Israel’s brutal military campaign in Gaza – one that is only expected to expand in the coming days – but encompasses a far broader set of grievances against the institution and others like it perceived as politically liberal.Harvard has so far refused to yield, with the university’s president, Dr Alan Garber, who is Jewish, calling the previous attacks “illegal demands” from the administration “to control whom we hire and what we teach”. The university has refused to comply with the administration’s demands, outlined in a letter last month, which included shutting down diversity, equity and inclusion programs; cooperating with federal immigration authorities; and banning face masks, which appeared to target pro-Palestinian protesters.The school, which has an endowment of more than $53bn, had launched legal action against the initial $2.2bn funding freeze, arguing the university faced no choice after the Trump administration “threatened the education of international students, and announced that it is considering a revocation of Harvard’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status”.The Trump administration’s taskforce to combat antisemitism justified the latest funding reduction by claiming Harvard had “repeatedly failed to confront the pervasive race discrimination and antisemitic harassment plaguing its campus”.They referenced a series of alleged incidents, including a fellowship awarded by the Harvard Law Review, which the taskforce characterized as evidence of “just how radical Harvard has become”.Nationwide campus protests appear to be continuing, even as Columbia students were arrested last week. Dozens of students at California State University campuses are staging hunger strikes in solidarity with Gaza, as they simultaneously call on their school to divest from Israel.Harvard recently published its own investigations into allegations of both antisemitism and anti-Muslim bias on campus, but these self-regulatory efforts appear to have done little to satisfy administration officials.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Trump administration’s announcement of the new funding cuts was signed by Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service at the General Services Administration; Sean R Keveney, acting general counsel at the US Department of Health and Human Services; and Thomas E Wheeler, acting general counsel at the US Department of Education.Harvard did not respond to a request for comment. More

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      ‘From all sides’: universities in red states face attacks from DC and at home

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      Days after the University of Michigan president, Santa Ono, announced that he was leaving his post to lead the University of Florida, his name was quietly removed on Wednesday from a letter signed by more than 600 university presidents denouncing the Trump administration’s “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” with academic institutions.As Ono is set to become the highest-paid public university president in the country, in a state that has often been at the forefront of the rightwing battle against higher education, the reversal, first reported on by Talking Points Memo, underscored the challenges of standing up against the government’s sweeping attacks on education in solidly red states.Many private colleges and universities have begun to push back against Donald Trump’s federal funding cuts, bans on diversity initiatives, and targeting of foreign students, while faculty at more than 30 universities, most of them public, have passed resolutions calling for a “mutual defence compact” – a largely symbolic pledge to support one another in the face of the government’s repressive measures. But in conservative states, where local attacks on higher education were in vogue before the US president took office, faculty trying to fight back find themselves fighting on multiple fronts: against state legislators as well as against Trump.Some have persevered, although for now that resistance has been limited to statements and resolutions calling on the universities themselves to put up a more muscular response. The faculty senate at Indiana University, Bloomington, voted in favor of a defence compact last month, days before Republican legislators passed a sweeping overhaul of the state school’s governance. In Georgia, Kennesaw State University became the first – and so far only – school in the US south to join the call for the solidarity pact, in part to protest the state scrapping a decades-old initiative to increase the college enrollment of Black men, which was pulled as part of the broader Trump-led crackdown on diversity initiatives. This week, faculty at the University of Miami in Ohio and at the University of Arizona – both states with Republican-majority legislatures – also passed resolutions in favor of mutual alliances among universities.The resolutions are nonbinding, as faculty senates play an advisory role at most universities, and so far no administrations have responded to the call. But the idea, those behind it say, is to send a message.“All universities in all states are under threat,” said Jim Sherman, a retired psychology professor at Indiana University, Bloomington, who proposed the resolution passed by faculty there. “If we don’t stand together and talk about what each of us is experiencing, how we’re dealing with it, and what the options are, then we’re standing alone, and that’s much more difficult.”Paul Boxer, a psychology professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, first came up with the plan to organize faculty in the “Big Ten” conference, a group of 18 large, mostly public universities, to put up a united front against the Trump administration. But schools outside the conference showed an interest, and the solidarity effort quickly outgrew the consortium to include other, mostly public colleges and universities across the country. Boxer also praised other collective initiatives that have since emerged, including by a group of “elite” universities quietly strategizing to counter the Trump administration policies, but called on more universities to publicly unite in their resistance.“A lot of the attention has been on Harvard, and the Ivy Leagues, and the universities that Trump has name-dropped, and I’m glad that Harvard did what they did, obviously, but they’re sitting on a $50bn endowment, and they can do things that we can’t in a public university,” Boxer said, referring to the university’s public defiance of Trump’s demands and a lawsuit it filed against the administration.Large state universities – particularly those in blue states with sympathetic legislators – had other advantages, Boxer noted, including strong connections to alumni in local government and the broader community.That is a harder case to make in Republican-controlled states – some of which, like Florida, Texas, Iowa and Utah – had essentially drawn up a blueprint for attacking diversity initiatives and academic freedom in the years leading up to Trump’s election. In Indiana, the recently passed measures, which legislators attached to a budget bill at the last minute, would establish “productivity” quotas for tenured faculty and end alumnis’ ability to vote for the university’s board of trustees, which would fall under the full control of the state’s governor, Mike Braun.“There is a lot of anxiety,” said Sherman. “If Indiana is any indication, red states might even be more under threat from their state legislatures than they are from the federal government.”Taking a public stance in a climate of growing repression is not easy, faculty say. In Florida, where Ono is headed, the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, was an early champion of the battle against diversity initiatives and said this week that he expects the incoming president to abide by the state’s mission to “reject woke indoctrination”.In Georgia, at a statewide faculty leadership meeting this week, scholars from across the state’s universities debated how to defend programmes supporting Black students, help international students facing visa revocations, and prepare to fight proposed state legislation that would impose further restrictions on diversity initiatives and criminalize the distribution of some library materials.“Faculty want to do something, they want to respond, but they also see the inevitability of their university system and their lawmakers doing it. There’s no stopping that train here in Georgia,” said Matthew Boedy, a professor at the University of North Georgia who also leads the state’s American Association of University Professors conference.“There are state-level attacks, there are federal attacks,” he said. “We are taking it from all sides.” More