The New Yorker:

Jeannie Suk Gersen
Gersen, a professor of law at Harvard, writes about legal issues, the courts, and higher education.

What is most remarkable about Harvard’s commencement exercises isn’t the pomp. It’s the gathering of families from more than a hundred nations, including people of all races and creeds, alongside a stoically dwindling clutch of Wasps whose ancestors eventually opened the university’s gates to immigrants, descendants of slaves, and others different from them. On Thursday morning, Alan Garber, Harvard’s Jewish President—not the first and likely not the last—received a long standing ovation upon merely getting out a “Welcome,” and an even longer one when he addressed “members of the class of 2025 from down the street, across the country, and around the world. Around the world. Just as it should be.” His was not the only voice at the event which cracked with emotion when speaking. Garber did not refer to the university’s ongoing fight against the Trump Administration, which is ostensibly about antisemitism and not about it at all. Yet reminders of the power struggle were constant. A faculty colleague near me spent the proceedings reading Montesquieu, the great theorist of the separation of powers, on his phone.

Since mid-April, when I wrote about why Harvard was rebuffing the government’s threats and demands, the university has become something of an institutional hero, symbolizing resistance to authoritarianism. The Administration has continued retaliating by depriving Harvard of billions of dollars in federal grants and contracts, and by attempting to strip the university’s tax-exempt status. Last week, it even revoked Harvard’s certification to enroll international students. While the commencement ceremony was proceeding, a Boston federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking that policy. But the victory already feels fleeting. Last night, the Trump Administration announced that it would move to “aggressively revoke” Chinese students’ visas. Congress, too, is doing its part with the House’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which includes a drastic university-endowment tax hike aimed to punish Harvard and its peers.

Go to link