Cambridge, Mass. – Harvard University is celebrating its beginning on Thursday at a crucial moment, when its place as one of the world’s highest higher education institutions is under what more and more seems existential threats of the Trump administration.
Other schools face the loss of federal funds and their ability to register international students if they do not agree with the changing demands of the Trump administration. But Harvard, which was founded in 1636, a century and a half before the Nation, is taking the initiative to challenge the White House in the Federal Court and pay a significant price.
Trump administration’s latest salons include asking federal agencies To cancel about $ 100 million in contracts With the Ivy League school. The government has already canceled more than $ 2.6 billion in federal research grants, moved to cut from Harvard’s Registration of international students and threatened his tax exempt.
Visa interviews for international students admitted in schools throughout the country were arrested On Tuesday, and Trump said Wednesday that Harvard should reduce his international registration from 25% to approximately 15%.
Sustained for an endowment of $ 53 billion, the oldest and rich university in the country is testing if it can be a bulwark against Trump’s efforts to limit what calls anti -Semitic activism on campusthat Harvard sees how an affront to The freedom to teach and learn throughout the country.
The Trump administration has demanded that Harvard promulgate a broad government and leadership reforms and changes in its admission policies. He also demanded the opinions of the University of Diversity on Campus and stop recognizing some student clubs.
Dr. Abraham Verghese, the best -selling author and Stanford expert in infectious diseases, will be the main speaker in the 374th beginning of the university. On Wednesday, the member of the NBA Hall of Fame Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was the speaker of the “Class Day”, and the Christian journalist Amanpour went to the graduates of the Harvard Kennedy school.
Both praised Harvard for facing the Trump administration, with Abdul-Jabbar specifically calling the actions of Harvard president Alan Garber.
“When a tyrannical administration tried to intimidate and threaten Harvard, revoke his academic freedom and destroy freedom of expression, Dr. Alan Garber rejected illegal and immoral pressures,” said Abdul-Jabbar with a wide applause when he compared Garber’s response with the racist position of Rosa Parks.
“After seeing so many billionaires, media magnates, law firms, politicians and other universities to fold their knee to an administration that is systematically undermining the constitution of the United States, is inspiring for Harvard University to take a position for freedom,” he continued.
In response to the threats of the administration, Harvard has sued to block the freezing of funds and persuaded a federal judge to temporarily stop the prohibition of registration. Thursday goes to court in Boston Thursday just when the beginning is concluding, with the hope of a ruling that allows him to continue registering international students.
“We believe that the overreach and devastating government attacks on scientific and medical research are unjustified and illegal, so we have taken legal measures to defend the institution,” Garber said in an interview with a university publication.
“We must all worry that schools and universities have been attacked more and more. But we should not rule out criticism even when they are based on distortions or inaccuracies, we must seek the underlying concerns that can be integrated into them,” said Garber, who commissioned internal reports last year about Anti-Arab anti-Semitism and prejudice on the Ivy League campus.
The Trump administration has said that it wants to “protect students and American professors from violence and anti -Semitic harassment.” He quotes the protests of the campus against Israel. Like many university students throughout the country, Harvard students created tents at the university that disinception of companies that support Israel’s military, which has leveled Gaza in response to Hamas attacks.
Last year, hundreds of graduate students He left the beginning Song “free and free Palestine” after weeks of campus protests. Harvard also said that some protesters would not receive diplomas along with their classmates, although it eventually allowed most to obtain them.
This year, the manifestations against the war have vanished largely from the view, but the protesters plan a silent vigil before Thursday’s ceremony.
“As a Harvard graduate, I am horrified by the mass murder of the Palestinians of Israel (even due to deliberate starvation), their total leveling of Gaza, their objective of hospitals, their assaults on Palestinian educational and cultural institutions, and their murders without tight journalists,” said Harvard Wallis’s graduate in a statement.
