At Union Event, UC-Riverside Professor Says Harvard Is a Collaborator With Trump

University of California-Riverside Professor Dylan Rodriguez discussed organizing against “enemy institutions” like Harvard under the Trump administration at a Thursday event hosted by the graduate student union’s unofficial Workers’ Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions caucus.

The event comes three days after the Trump administration froze more than $2 billion in federal funding following University President Alan M. Garber ’76’s decision to publicly reject their demands.

While many Harvard students welcomed Garber’s strong rebuff of President Donald Trump, Rodriguez said that view mischaracterized Harvard as “in antagonism with the Trump administration before.”

“That’s bullshit,” Rodriguez said. “They’re collaborators.”

“Places like Harvard — and Columbia for that matter — are also sites of classical counterinsurgency,” he added. “Meaning overtly militarized, repressive — the likes.”

A University spokesperson declined to comment for this article.

Rodriguez, who serves as a faculty member in U.C. Riverside’s Department of Black Study, said that Harvard and Columbia — which is currently facing a $400 million cut in funding from the federal government — should not be judged through the lens of either capitulating or standing up to the Trump administration.

“We have to dispense with the terms of capitulation because capitulation means you had a dream that Columbia was something else,” Rodriguez said.

“Universities are enemy institutions,” he added. “Harvard always has been. Columbia always has been.”

Still, Rodriguez called on students to “make demands” to Harvard administrators, “because they should have to answer you.”

The Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Auto Workers’ BDS caucus announced the discussion with Rodriguez on Tuesday in a joint post to Instagram with the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine, an unrecognized coalition of groups of which HGSU-BDS is a member.

The PSC, which is a recognized student group, was put on probation earlier this month after the College accused them of co-sponsoring an April 1 rally with HOOP — which violates Harvard College policy.

While the poster advertising the rally did not contain their logo, the PSC reposted the flyer publicizing the rally on their Instagram page earlier that week.

Rodriguez said the PSC’s probation was a form of institutional repression.

“What do you do when an organization gets put on probation for nothing other than existing? I mean, that’s basically what’s happening,” Rodriguez said.

He claimed the repression of student speech was emblematic of a broader collapse in higher education.

“Universities will never be the same after this moment,” he said.

In the face of political repression, Rodriguez said a united coalition could be a “credible threat” against dominant institutions, like universities.

“Don’t underestimate the degree to which a serious aggressiveness and militancy around that and a disruptive energy against their feelings can do good things for you,” Rodriguez said.

“And with that, fuck Harvard,” he added.

—Staff writer Samuel A. Church can be reached at samuel.church@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @samuelachurch.

—Staff writer Cam N. Srivastava can be reached at cam.srivastava@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @camsrivastava.