Nearly 200 Harvard Affiliates Rally on Widener Steps To Protest Arrest of Columbia Student

Nearly 200 faculty, staff, and students gathered on the steps of Widener Library on Thursday afternoon to protest the arrest of Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil and call for Harvard to deliver a more assertive rejoinder to President Donald Trump’s attacks on universities.

Khalil, a prominent pro-Palestine activist at Columbia and a legal permanent resident of the United States, faces deportation after being arrested on March 8 by federal immigration officers, who told him his visa had been revoked. The Department of Homeland Security alleged Khalil “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”

The Thursday rally — hosted by the Harvard chapter of the American Association of University Professors — was called in response to Khalil’s arrest and drew one of the largest crowds to attend a campus protest since last spring.

Speakers’ topics ranged widely, spanning everything from pro-Palestine advocacy to concerns about the First Amendment and Harvard’s recent cost-cutting efforts under Trump’s presidency.

In one speech, Harvard Law School clinical instructor Anna A. Crowe said Khalil’s arrest, alongside Trump’s recent decision to withhold $400 million in federal funding from Columbia, showed that universities can’t escape financial penalties by appeasing Trump.

“No amount of compliance with whatever we think the Trump administration wants Harvard to do is going to make a difference to how they treat our university,” Crowe said. “Having an endowment that lasts a thousand years means nothing if Harvard bends to the will of a nefarious government.”

The Trump administration demanded in a Thursday letter that Columbia ban face coverings, shift disciplinary power to the university president rather than faculty, and give campus police the power to arrest “agitators” in exchange for negotiations to restore the school’s federal funding.

Harvard has tried to shield itself from becoming a target for Republicans, hiring Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm with ties to a number of Trump’s top advisers. Though the University has condemned measures to limit federal research funding, it has yet to publicly single out Trump.

And in recent weeks, Harvard has taken concrete steps to insulate its finances against increasingly grim prospects. On Monday, the University froze all staff and faculty hiring, and one day later, it rejected all waitlisted applicants to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Jules Riegel, a History and Literature lecturer, criticized the University’s cost-cutting measures in a speech, calling the hiring freeze a “cowardly retreat to austerity” and Harvard’s overall strategy a “refusal to meet this crisis with the moral courage that it demands.”

“The University’s key mission, after all, is research, and its education,” Riegel said. “With this hiring freeze, with cuts to graduate admissions, the administration is choosing to leave that mission behind.”

A University spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment Thursday evening.

In another speech, Harvard Law School professor Jeannie Suk Gersen said the Trump administration’s actions meant protest had become a necessary tool in the fight for free speech. She urged attendees to “unite” against “forces in our government that would like to squelch that vision of our democracy and of our university.”

Gersen said she disagreed with some of the protesters’ substantive beliefs on other issues, and that she was “not very comfortable” standing at the front of a rally — rather than working at her desk or in a courtroom.

But Gersen said she fears that fights over academic freedom may not “go our way” in the courts — making public advocacy beyond litigation critical for protecting freedom of speech at universities and nationwide.

“That is why I’m not just in a classroom today,” she said. “That is why I’m not just in a library today. It’s because we reached a moment where we have to make our voices heard.”

Though Gersen’s speech drew several rounds of cheers, the following speaker, Sa’maia J. Evans ’27, appeared to take a jab at Gersen, saying protesters should not separate their advocacy for First Amendment rights from the content of their demands.

“It is important that we understand that we are not simply here in defense of free speech or constitutional rights,” said Evans, who is involved with HOOP. “Our fight cannot end nor begin at the restriction of free speech.”

Instead, Evans said, protesters should recognize that Khalil was arrested because he specifically advocated for pro-Palestine causes.

“The U.S., Trump, Columbia — they’re all the same — are not trying to deport Khalil simply because of his words,” Evans said. “They’re trying to deport Khalil because everything he said, he meant.”

In the final speech of the rally, Harvard Medical School professor Gordon D. Schiff discussed his recent lawsuit, filed with fellow HMS professor Celeste S. Royce, against the Trump administration. Schiff and Royce sued several government agencies for removing their research — which mentions terms banned by Trump, including “LGBTQ” and “transgender” — from a government-run website.

The plaintiffs argue that the removals violated their First Amendment rights and the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies create regulations and specifically bans “arbitrary or capricious” actions.

“This attack on academic freedom is really unexpected,” Schiff said, urging attendees to fight to protect scientific research.

“We all have to speak out in this climate of intimidation and fear, whether it’s people demonstrating, whether it’s people writing honest articles,” he said.

—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.

—Staff writer Veronica H. Paulus can be reached at veronica.paulus@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @VeronicaHPaulus.