Introduction
Introduction Statistics Contact Development Disclaimer Help
.-') _ .-') _
( OO ) ) ( OO ) )
.-----. ,--./ ,--,' ,--./ ,--,'
' .--./ | \ | |\ | \ | |\
| |('-. | \| | )| \| | )
/_) |OO )| . |/ | . |/
|| |`-'| | |\ | | |\ |
(_' '--'\ | | \ | | | \ |
`-----' `--' `--' `--' `--'
lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
A new school year starts at Harvard as students live with lingering
White House threats
By Andy Rose, CNN
Updated:
8:03 AM EDT, Thu September 4, 2025
Source: CNN
Summer break is over, and Harvard Yard is waking up again.
The nation’s oldest and university – where red brick went up before
there even was a United States – buzzes with crisscrossing
orientation groups. New students learn where to eat, where to study and
why the toe of the is so shiny, then line up on this sunny day to rub
the bronze shoe for good luck.
Returning students, though, have their own story. As veterans of one of
the in Harvard University’s modern history, they have studied and
lived at ground zero of the Trump administration’s high-stakes
juggernaut against the purported ills of American academia.
And now, they’re on campus.
“I do think there’s a big, big spike in how much people feel
scared,” says Abdullah Shahid Sial, a junior who is co-president of
the undergraduate student body.
The summer break was no vacation for Harvard’s attorneys, who have
been working furiously to reverse this year that shocked the campus
community, then the whole of US higher education: The White House of
Harvard’s federal dollars, then tried to the school’s ability to
enroll international students, who for the last four years have made up
more than a of the student body.
To justify these punishments of the country’s university, the Trump
administration antisemitism starting with pro-Palestinian protests on
campus more than a year ago – a problem Harvard says it is addressing
– as well as alleged discrimination in diversity, equity and
inclusion .
In similar fights in the and , President Donald Trump has racked up
prominent wins as schools have agreed to policy changes and lump-sum
payments. And he’s willing to do the same for Harvard, he says, but
at a higher price: “We want nothing less than $500 million from
Harvard,” Trump education secretary last week, adding, “Don’t
negotiate.”
While Harvard has racked up in both legal cases – including one the
day after the fall semester began – school officials remain cautious.
On campus, Harvard’s refusal so far to pay up or make major
concessions to its academic independence has stoked a palpable tension,
especially among students from abroad and their American friends. It
has shaken up parents, along with a college town reliant on university
business, while upending the lives of scholars whose research money has
vanished.
“There’s a level of self-censorship – and it’s frightening
everyone – which I’ve never seen before,” Sial says. “It’s
really sad that it’s happening at Harvard.”
Anxiety mixes with hope the threat will pass
On Harvard Yard, the move-in bustle gives way to picnics and Frisbee
tosses. Curious parents armed with iPhones take in landmarks. Students
make new friends and find old ones, catching up with smiles and
laughter.
But the cheer often dissolves when the matter of the school’s
precarious stance with the White House comes up.
“You’re not going to use my name, are you?” more than one
international student replies when asked about the continuing row
between Harvard and the Trump administration. Some contort their faces,
concerned a wrong word attached to their name might jeopardize their
hard-won chance at an elite American education.
Right now, the only thing allowing these students to study at Harvard
is the order of US District Judge the Trump administration’s
revocation of the university’s international student program. With no
timeline in place for a final decision and the status-quo order more
than two months old, some are doing their best to drown out the noise.
“I’ve not been feeling a lot of anxiety,” a Japanese student says
as she tosses an Aerobie disc to a friend.
But that friend, a first-year student from Canada, acknowledges the
future of Harvard’s foreign scholars is not entirely out of their
minds.
“It’s definitely still worrying to see that our enrollment is not
fully guaranteed,” she says.
Some who hail from non-democratic countries seem especially adept at
choosing their words. A Chinese student who declines to give his name
pauses for several seconds when asked whether he feels welcome.
“I feel … comfortable,” he says, emphasizing the last word with a
finality and a tight smile that make clear this is as much as he is
willing to say on the subject.
His friends respond with knowing chuckles.
Some international students stay away, for now
Sial is a prominent exception to the heads-down strategy so many
international students take. A native of Lahore, Pakistan, he entered
student leadership just before the Trump administration’s attacks on
Harvard began.
“That happened to perfectly align with what I wanted to stand for,”
he says.
His position as class copresident gives Sial a soapbox – but not
protection. So far, the junior has not seen any changes to the
five-year visa approved at the beginning of his academic career in the
US. But he knows that could change at any time, especially with the
Trump administration talking about on visas.
“I don’t think I have anyone to talk with to assess what’s the
right strategy here because it’s so new,” he says.
Talking about his predicament in a shaded wedge of grass near the
center of Harvard Yard, Sial speaks with a mixture of passion,
frustration and weariness, pushing back the shaggy hair that frequently
falls over his eyes.
“I made my peace with (the possibility of) getting deported a while
back when I started speaking out.”
Many of Harvard’s international students made plans to stay in the
country over the summer to avoid the prospect of not being allowed back
in the US if they’d left, Sial says. Others, including friends, are
taking an unplanned “study abroad” year outside the US – not
leaving Harvard entirely but anxious to see if things will be calmer in
a year.
“They’re like, ‘Oh, I want to wait this out,’” Sial says.
“It’s unfortunate that they feel it’s a necessity.”
It’s an option also available to Harvard freshmen from overseas.
“Incoming first year international students have been allowed to
accept a spot at a non-US university in addition to their slot at
Harvard and, if necessary, defer their enrollment for a year,” said
James Chisholm, spokesperson for Harvard’s undergraduate admissions
program.
Fear spills over to American students
Kaden Gillum is a sophomore majoring in government and economics. His
first year at Harvard gave him unexpected lessons in both.
“When we first heard they were going to threaten to remove
international students, we just sort of brushed it off,” he says,
“like they were just bluffing.”
Gillum faced his own culture shock arriving in Cambridge from Mt.
Sterling, Kentucky, a city with fewer residents than Harvard has paid
employees.
“I knew nobody who had ever gone here,” Gillum says. While he had
excellent grades at an accelerated high school, his application to
Harvard was a long shot fired off before he applied to less prestigious
universities.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he says of receiving his acceptance
notification for Harvard’s class of 2028. “I was in shock.”
It didn’t take long for Gillum in his first semester to adjust to his
new surroundings. He made friends, though many found their own concerns
dramatically changed in the spring semester as their student visa
status was thrown into limbo.
“I have a lot of international friends and some that I’m rooming
with this year,” says Gillum. “It was really stressful for them.”
Gillum keeps close tabs on those friends, who deal with the pressure
mostly by focusing on studies and avoiding controversy. They confine
their worries to conversations behind dorm doors, where guidance from
the university’s international program mixes with rumors of Harvard
students being hassled as they reenter the country, he says.
“We still have to keep our heads,” Gillum says.
Harvard students bring life – and wealth – to Cambridge
Alongside its battle with Harvard, the Trump administration has put on
Democratic-leaning communities across the United States. And while
Harvard leaders may tiptoe publicly around the White House debate, the
world just outside their gates doesn’t hide its politics.
Historic stone churches display and , and even the narrowest side
streets find room for . Signs touting Democratic candidates for local
offices dot many yards in this so-called “People’s Republic of
Cambridge,” the largest city in a county where only of registered
voters claim the GOP.
The energy from campus orientation spills out on this sunny day to
Harvard Square, the famous mix of restaurants, music stores, tattoo
shops and bohemian entertainment that relies on the thousands of
students from the other side of the brick and iron fencing across the
street.
“We do get a lot of international students,” says Jeff Ng of Le’s
Vietnamese restaurant, a sit-down eatery a block away from Harvard
Yard. “A lot of them are Asian students.”
But before Ng can finish his thought, 18 Harvard students walk through
the door, launching a lunch rush that will keep him and the other
employees at Le’s busy for the next two hours. Managing the carefully
choreographed arrival of bowls of pho and plates of spring rolls, Ng
has no time to consider what might happen if a quarter of Harvard’s
students were forced to leave.
Whether Harvard’s international student enrollment has taken a hit in
the White House barrage is still unclear. The school has not yet
released a final number after extending the deadline for international
students to accept a slot off of Harvard’s wait list, a university
spokesperson told CNN.
Parents hope for a return to stability
Nearby side streets leading to Harvard dormitory houses strain with
cars and luggage carriers as parents help their children move back onto
campus, optimistic things are moving in a calmer direction for
students.
“It’s been beautiful! The weather is great,” beams Joanne
Barkauskas of Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, as she moves her daughter
Emma into the Lowell House residence wearing a “Lowell Mom” shirt.
Her husband, Rich – in matching “Lowell Dad” garb – says they
didn’t feel worried for their daughter last spring.
“Actually, as a parent, I thought the year before was where most of
the tumult was,” he adds, referring to the pro-Palestinian on Harvard
Yard that disrupted campus activities and forced the school to its
famous iron gates for a time.
A university task force this April acknowledged in how the school
handled those protests, at once vowing improvements while also giving
grist to the White House’s continuing claims of antisemitism on
campus.
Still, the future of the federal grants and contracts frozen in April
in part over that issue remains unclear, meaning the turmoil for
Harvard scholars who rely on that money for their research – and
their livelihoods – continues.
Grant-funded researchers wait for answers
The creaky wooden stairs that Henri Garrison-Desany ascends for work
could easily be confused for the weathered stairwells in many buildings
at Harvard, where he used to be a post-doctoral researcher. But these
stairs are 2 miles from the T.H. Chan School of Public Health where the
geneticist was a fellow last spring – and instead lead to a
third-floor studio where he works as a yoga instructor.
What started as a pandemic side interest has become a financial
lifeline for Garrison-Desany after his program at Harvard lost its
federal funding. Although he is used to uncertainty as a researcher
living on time-limited grants, it now seems like all the doors are
closing.
“They’ve changed all the rules,” he says, “and it’s really
hard.”
Not only did Garrison-Desany lose his position at Harvard, his attempts
to find other research work have been fruitless so far this year, even
as a coauthor of .
“I think until the (grant) money hits the bank account, a lot of
other universities are scared to proceed with a new hire when they have
other people that they’re trying to keep employed as it is.”
Many of Garrison-Desany’s studies have included research on the LGBTQ
community – the kind of research that increasingly gives higher
education institutions pause as the Trump administration diversity,
equity and inclusion efforts on college campuses.
On that point, even Harvard in the spring, of its of Equity, Diversity,
Inclusion, and Belonging to Community and Campus Life.
“As someone who is queer, as someone who is Black, too, I worry that
honestly that’s seen as a liability, just who I am,” says
Garrison-Desany. “Am I automatically (seen as) DEI if I get any
job?”
He moved nearly an hour away to Worcester, Massachusetts, to be closer
to his parents – and in light of his new financial reality.
“I was applying for a mortgage at the time, and then this all
happened, and that’s just not happening, obviously.”
Could Harvard settle and keep its academic freedom?
A day after the fall term started, an extra ray of light shone on
Harvard Yard with a in its lawsuit over the Trump administration’s
grant freeze. Burroughs ruled the decision to block the money violated
the First Amendment and ordered the government to restore it.
But the White House immediately announced it would appeal, and even
Harvard’s president responded cautiously to the ruling: “We will
continue to assess the implications of the opinion, monitor further
legal developments, and be mindful of the changing landscape in which
we seek to fulfill our mission,” President Alan Garber .
With no clear end in sight to Harvard’s legal fights against the
Trump administration, some in the school community are tempted by the
possibility of a settlement that could reset the school’s
relationship with the White House.
Gillum did not like between the government and Columbia University, a
$221 million settlement that restored the New York school’s
government funding but also established an “independent monitor” to
report to the Trump administration whether Columbia is meeting its end
of the deal. Critics say that could chill academic freedom.
“But if they’re able to get a deal that stops the federal
government from breathing down their back without placing restrictions
on what we can do, then I would be fine with that,” he says.
“I wouldn’t like it, but I would be fine with it.”
Sial also recognizes the benefits a settlement could achieve,
especially as someone whose ability to stay at Harvard stands in the
balance. But he’s not convinced there’s any way to work an
agreement that would not ultimately harm higher education.
“At this point, I don’t really care what the deal is,” the
undergraduate co-president says. “The idea of having a deal itself
just hands over a ‘Oh Yeah, This is Fine’ card to President
Trump.”
One thing students agree on: the relief they feel that the difficult
decision on whether to make a deal falls to someone else. As Harvard
leaders keep those discussions behind closed doors, most students
manage their concerns over the school’s future as silently as the
John Harvard statue with the shiny shoe presides over the Yard.
CNN’s Betsy Klein contributed to this report.
<- back to index
You are viewing proxied material from codevoid.de. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.