Journalist Christiane Amanpour and HKS Dean Jeremy Weinstein Rally Against Trump at Class Day

The Harvard Kennedy School Class Day — established as a celebration of student accomplishment — became a show of resistance against the Trump administration’s assault on Harvard last week, one day before the University’s Commencement ceremony coincided with a key hearing on the status of its international students.

Introducing Class Day speaker and broadcast journalist Christiane M.H. Amanpour, HKS dean Jeremy Weinstein said Amanpour’s motto of “be truthful, not neutral” applied to Harvard’s stand-off with the White House.

“Those words hold particular resonance at Harvard today, as we stand up for our freedom to search for truth without interference or intimidation,” Weinstein said. “We cannot water down our inquiry for the sake of political convenience, and we cannot take the truth for granted.”

Harvard Kennedy School Dean Jeremy M. Weinstein addresses students at the school’s 2025 Class Day. By Grace E. Yoon

The University is currently entrenched in two high-stakes legal showdowns with the White House over federal funding and its ability to enroll international students. Nearly $3 billion in federal funding is frozen, though a judge blocked an attempt to revoke international enrollment last week.

Amanpour equated the role of higher education to the role of the press in challenging abuses of power.

“We cannot surrender to any system that deems only power-approved speech or thought is allowed,” she added. “The whole point of journalism and any other academic enterprise is to investigate power, speak truth to power, hold power accountable without fear nor favor.”

Amanpour said Harvard was living up to that responsibility.

“Guess who’s not bending? We the press. You — Harvard. Academia,” she said.

A similar tenor dominated the morning’s awards ceremony, where students and professors delivered speeches and honored their peers with sobering commentary on the fight with Trump.

“As a kid, I remember wondering what it would be like to live in historic times,” said Lee Stanton, a graduate who spoke on behalf of the Mid-Career Master in Public Administration program. “I’m sure I’m not alone when I say I’m ready to tone my curiosity down a little bit.”

At HKS, the threat to international students is particularly acute because 60 percent of students at the government school are in the U.S. on a student visa. In a news conference the day of the Class Day celebration, President Donald Trump suggested that Harvard should limit its international enrollment to 15 percent.

Amanpour — herself an immigrant from Iran who attended the University of Rhode Island — condemned the attack.

“We need all of your diversity. We need your smarts. We need your energy, and we need your determination,” Amanpour told students.

“I followed the American dream, I followed my own ambitions, and I made it,” she added. “It made me — and I more than gave back, as all of you will too.”

Zubair Merchant, the outgoing president of the Kennedy School Student Government and a master of public policy graduate, said in his morning speech that Trump’s crackdown on international students “jeopardizes the very DNA of HKS.”

“It’s the students who make Harvard great, not the other way around,” Merchant said.

HKS Carr Center for Human Rights Faculty Director Mathias Risse also used his speech to call attention to the same threat.

“What is at stake today — and really, quite literally, today — is the future of Harvard as a profoundly American institution that nonetheless finds the essence of being such a profoundly American institution in an equally profound international orientation,” Risse said.

Within hours of the event, Harvard asked for a preliminary injunction against the Department of Homeland Security to block them from revoking the University’s ability to enroll international students while the court case is pending. Lawyers for both sides are set to appear in court on Thursday.

As the White House attempts to purge diversity efforts from college campuses, HKS speakers also made a pointed effort to demonstrate their ongoing commitment to diversity.

In a speech, Robbin Chapman, the HKS associate dean for diversity, inclusion, and belonging, delivered an elevator pitch for her work, claiming that her office stood for not just ideals but “principles we must actively cultivate through meaningful and often challenging engagement with one another.”

The school has retained its diversity office name after the University’s central Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging was renamed to “Community and Campus Life” late last month.

But not all speakers were supportive of the University.

Even while she celebrated Harvard’s resistance, MPP graduate and class speaker Caren Yap bashed the school for perceived concessions to the Trump administration, including restrictions on protest activity in libraries and the choice to pull funding and space from affinity groups for commencement celebrations.

“Institutions like Harvard that protect their students from federal overreach are the same ones that ban students like me from libraries, defund affinity graduations, withhold degrees, and do everything in their power to repress free speech on this very campus,” Yap said.

But in his speech, Weinstein suggested that his audience could unify in opposition to the Trump Administration’s actions.

“Wherever we live and whatever our politics, the pace of policy and institutional change is dizzying, and the outcomes highly uncertain,” he said.

—Staff writer Elise A. Spenner can be reached at elise.spenner@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X at @EliseSpenner.