Students, faculty and members of the Harvard University community rally in Cambridge, April 17, 2025. Photo: AP
On Monday, April 14, Harvard became the first U.S. university to flat out stand against and reject the Trump regime’s outrageous offensive to take over university campuses and reshape them to serve its fascist outlook and program. Harvard—the oldest, wealthiest and most prominent U.S. university—called the demands illegal and unconstitutional. Its stance has galvanized other universities to resist, and given heart to millions of people.
For weeks, the Trump fascist regime has been waging an assault against universities across the country by cutting government funding for research and at the same time attempting to take control of the universities’ key internal workings. The regime has been largely succeeding in this, starting with the high-profile capitulation of Columbia University to some of the regime’s key demands following the freezing of $400 million in federal funding.1
Other universities have been hit hard as well: the regime froze more than $1 billion of Cornell’s federal funding, $790 million of Northwestern’s, $175 million slated to go to the University of Pennsylvania, and an estimated $510 million for Brown, and it cancelled dozens of research grants for Princeton.2
Many of these and other universities, including Harvard, had been seeking some kind of accommodation with the Trump regime. This had sparked growing anger among students and faculty, at Harvard and beyond. In March, 800 Harvard faculty members signed a letter urging the university to “mount a coordinated opposition to these anti-democratic attacks.” Which way Harvard would go was unclear—the only certain thing was that their decision would carry a lot of weight, either positive or negative.
April 11: The Trump Regime Escalates Its Demand for Control of Curriculum, Hiring, Research and Admissions
On Friday, April 11, the Trump regime sent Harvard a five-page letter demanding the right to review and have final say-so over curriculum, hiring, research, and admissions in return for continued federal funding.3
The Trump regime demanded that Harvard:
- Implement so-called “merit-based” hiring and admissions, with absolutely no consideration of racial, gender, national, or sexual diversity;
- Shut down “all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, offices, committees, positions, and initiatives”;
- Ban international students “hostile to the American values and institutions ... [or] supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism” (see accompanying box “Nazi-Saluting Fascists Attack Universities in the Name of Combatting Anti-Semitism” for the sheer hypocrisy of this endlessly repeated theme of the Trump regime);
- Institute harsher and more immediate punishments for protesters;
- Investigate departments that “most fuel antisemitic harassment or reflect ideological capture,”4 such as Harvard’s Divinity School, School of Public Health, Medical School, and Center for Middle Eastern Studies (again, see box);
- Ban student groups or clubs that “engaged in anti-Semitic activity since October 7th, 2023, including the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee, Harvard Graduates Students 4 Palestine, Law Students4Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine, and the National Lawyers Guild”;
- Regularly report to and submit to supervision by the Trump regime about all the above measures.
Shutting Down an “Incubator of Ideas,” a Space for Critical Thinking and Dissent
Before getting to what happened, it’s worth stepping back for a minute to consider what was and is at stake.
Universities have historically had a dimension of being sites where critical thinking, dissent, and the search for truth have had more initiative than in society as a whole. And that is precisely what the Trump regime wants to shut down. The regime aims to turn universities into sites of indoctrination and obedience, where the Trump/MAGA fascists dictate what is true and what isn’t, what can be taught and what can’t.
And what are the beliefs, values, and morals Trump and company seek to instill? Perhaps this point from Bob Avakian back in 2017 most crisply captures it:
There is a direct line from the Confederacy to the fascists of today, and a direct connection between their white supremacy, their open disgust and hatred for LGBT people as well as women, their willful rejection of science and the scientific method, their raw “America First” jingoism and trumpeting of “the superiority of western civilization” and their bellicose wielding of military power, including their expressed willingness and blatant threats to use nuclear weapons, to destroy countries.
This, after all, is the regime that made a point of bringing back the original names of such army bases as “Fort Bragg”—named after a Confederate general and then renamed after the 2020 uprising following the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. That is the program, worldview and logic driving the Trump/MAGA fascists’ letter to Harvard and its assault on U.S. universities.
Harvard Quickly Rejects Trump’s Ultimatum
On Saturday, April 12, there was a city-wide protest in Cambridge calling on Harvard to stand up against the regime’s assaults. And on Monday, April 14, Harvard sent the Trump regime its two-page response, saying that the Trump regime’s April 11 letter
presents demands that, in contravention of the First Amendment, invade university freedoms long recognized by the Supreme Court.
The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights. Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government. Accordingly, Harvard will not accept the government’s terms as an agreement in principle… Harvard is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.
Separately, in a statement to the university, Harvard president Alan Garber wrote, “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.”5
“This should be the turning point in the president’s rampage against American institutions”
Harvard’s decision to stand up galvanized many, many thousands in academia, legal circles and the public beyond. “This is of momentous, momentous significance,” said former federal court judge J. Michael Luttig.6 “This should be the turning point in the president’s rampage against American institutions.”
“If Harvard had not taken this stand,” the president of the American Council of Education said, “it would have been nearly impossible for other institutions to do so.” A former president of Occidental College commented, “This gives people a sense of the possible.”
The New York Times reported, “In a hint of a shift in strategy, some of the country’s most powerful institutions have started choosing to resist.” This included a lawsuit by nine major research universities and three university associations over $400 million in funding slashed by the Energy Department.7 Some Big Ten schools are now organizing a “mutual defense compact” against Trump actions. The Big Ten schools are a group of 18 universities that compete in one of the top collegiate athletic conferences in the U.S.
The day after Harvard’s letter was issued, Stanford University’s president and provost issued a statement of support: “Harvard’s objections are rooted in the American tradition of liberty, a tradition essential to our country’s universities, and worth defending.”
“Princeton stands with Harvard,” stated its president. Wesleyan’s president Michael Rogth, who has been calling for institutional resistance to Trump over the last months, wrote, "I applaud Harvard University standing up for the shared values of higher education. Federal funding for universities must not depend on a loyalty oath."
During his April 17 speech to a rally at UC Berkeley, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich invoked the 1964 Free Speech Movement and called on people to resist:
It takes courage. It takes courage to resist tyranny. Courage is contagious. After Harvard stood up to the tyrant, guess what—Columbia that had been surrendering to that tyrant, that Columbia just said no. We have stopped surrendering. We now feel courage.
Meanwhile, some 500 Harvard students and faculty rallied in support of the university’s defiant stance. Nearly 1,000 faculty members at Yale signed a letter calling on their leaders to resist Trump’s demands. M.I.T.’s president spoke out against Trump’s attacks on international students.
Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr wore a Harvard basketball shirt at a recent post-game interview. When asked why, he said he was giving props to Harvard—“Way to stand up to the bully,” he said.
And on Thursday of last week, students and faculty at over 150 schools protested the regime’s policies on education.
One Harvard professor read President Garber’s letter to his class on authoritarianism and democracy. “It looks like Harvard has decided it’s time to fight,” he began. He said (as reported by the New YorkTimes) that “The room of about 100 students erupted into applause.”
Fascist Regime Ups the Stakes with Counterattack
Harvard’s battle with the Trump regime is far from over. The regime quickly moved to raise the stakes, punishing Harvard for refusing its demands. It froze $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard, as well as a $60 million contract for tuberculosis research. Some $7 billion more, including money for Harvard’s affiliated hospitals, is also in jeopardy.
In a dramatic escalation, Trump has also threatened Harvard’s tax-exempt status, which could cost Harvard billions. Using the IRS as a political weapon is illegal under federal law, but that certainly doesn’t mean it won’t happen.
By Wednesday, April 16, the Trump regime was also threatening to prevent Harvard from enrolling international students unless it handed over detailed records about its student body, which could put international students in further danger of detention and deportation. The regime is also accusing Harvard of failing to report foreign donations, a charge Harvard denies.
Every Decent Person Needs to Be Mobilized and to Mobilize Others
The battle between the Trump/MAGA fascist regime and Harvard, as well as other universities, will be a very fierce and an extremely important fight. It’s a fight that must involve every student, professor, administrator and worker on the campus who does not want to be part of a fascist institution. And it’s a fight that must be supported and joined by the community and the public at large.
From now to the end of the school year, these universities and colleges must turn into centers of anti-fascist resistance, marked by lively wrangling over how to defeat Trump fascism now, what its roots are, and what it will take to really uproot them.
In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America
Nazi-Saluting Fascists Attack Universities in the Name of Combatting Anti-Semitism
This onslaught against the universities has, to a significant degree, been spearheaded by Trump’s Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism. The Trump regime routinely conflates any criticism of Israeli state aggression, apartheid and genocide with anti-Semitism (the hatred of Jews as a people). It thus wields “anti-Semitism” as a club not only to crush and criminalize protests against Israel and its genocide in Gaza, but to forbid any critical analysis or discussion of Zionism and its roots in and service to imperialism overall.8
Anti-Semitism—bigotry towards Jewish people or the Jewish religion—is real and is a serious threat to Jewish people and to society as a whole.
But this Task Force isn’t about ending the scourge of anti-Semitism. It’s based on two big and endlessly repeated lies:
One, that criticism of or opposition to Israel or Zionism equals anti-Semitism.
Two, that the student movement supporting Palestinians is driven and characterized by anti-Semitism and threats against Jewish students.
Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Madawi are two cases in point. Both are Palestinians who have been prominent leaders of the righteous struggle at Columbia against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Both are now imprisoned and threatened with deportation by the Trump regime for supposedly spreading anti-Semitism. The reality? They aren’t anti-Semites, they’re vocal opponents of anti-Semitism!
On CNN, Mahmoud declared that “antisemitism and any form of racism has no place on campus and in this movement,” and that Jewish demonstrators were “an integral part of this movement.” During an interview on 60 Minutes, Mohsen describes how he shouted down an individual who was screaming anti-Semitic insults during a protest at Columbia.9
What actually is a dangerous font of anti-Semitism? The regime now in power—stuffed with Nazi-saluting fascists and headed by Donald J. Trump, who has a whole history of giving support to real anti-Semites, who now pose as champions of the fight against anti-Semitism!10