Harvard grads cheer calls for school to stand strong
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Harvard graduates in caps and gowns have urged the Ivy League school to stand strong in the wake of a public battle with the Trump administration.
Graduating students cheered speeches emphasising the maintenance of a diverse international student body and standing up for truth in the face of attacks by the Trump administration.
“We leave a campus much different than the one we entered, with Harvard at the centre of a national battle of higher education in America,” Thor Reimann told his fellow graduates.
“Our university is certainly imperfect, but I am proud to stand today alongside our graduating class, our faculty, our president with the shared conviction that this ongoing project of veritas is one that is worth defending.”
Among the Trump administration’s latest salvos was asking federal agencies to cancel about $US100 million ($A155 million) in contracts with the university.
The government has already cancelled more than $US2.6 billion ($A4.0 billion) in federal research grants, moved to cut off Harvard’s enrolment of international students and threatened its tax-exempt status.
Visa interviews for international students admitted to schools nationwide were halted on Tuesday, and Trump said on Wednesday that Harvard should reduce its international enrolment from 25 per cent to about 15 per cent.
A federal judge on Thursday extended an order blocking the Trump administration’s attempt to bar Harvard University from enrolling foreign students.
US District Judge Allison Burroughs extended the block she imposed last week with a temporary restraining order, which allows the Ivy League school to continue enrolling international students as a lawsuit proceeds.
Sustained by a $US53 billion ($A82 billion) endowment, the nation’s wealthiest university is testing whether it can be a bulwark against Trump’s efforts to limit what his administration calls anti-semitic activism on campus, which Harvard sees as an affront to the freedom to teach and learn nationwide.
Harvard President Alan Garber, who has repeatedly defended the school’s actions, didn’t directly touch on the Trump administration’s threats on Thursday.
But he did get a rousing applause when he referenced the university’s global reach, noting that it is “just as it should be”.
Several of the graduating speakers spoke more directly about the challenges facing the school and society.
Speaking in Latin, salutatorian Aidan Robert Scully delivered a speech laced with references to Trump policies.
“I say this: … Neither powers nor princes can change the truth and deny that diversity is our strength,” Scully said.
It was a sentiment echoed by Yurong “Luanna” Jiang, a Chinese graduate who studied international development.
She said she grew up believing that the “world was becoming a small village” and that she found a global community at Harvard.
“When I met my 77 classmates from 32 different countries, the countries I knew only as colourful shapes on a map turned into real people, with laughter, dreams and the perseverance to survive the long winter in Cambridge,” she said of the other students in her program.
“Global challenges suddenly felt personal.”
Now, though, she said she wonders whether her worldview is under threat.
“We’re starting to believe those who think differently, vote differently or pray differently, whether they are across the ocean or sitting right next to us, are not just wrong — we mistakenly see them as evil,” she said.
“But it doesn’t have to be this way.”
AP
