Students Hold Unofficial Affinity Celebrations, Marked by Anger at University Decision to Withdraw Support

Eight affinity groups held celebrations for Commencement this week, despite having been denied funding and access to campus venues by Harvard officials.

At almost every event, speakers lambasted the University’s decision not to host the celebrations, which was announced in an April 28 email from Harvard’s Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging — an office renamed “Community and Campus Life” earlier that day. Without University support, group organizers raised tens of thousands of dollars to provide graduates with the traditional ceremony and stoles.

At Harvard Black Graduation, which attracted more than 500 attendees and was hosted by the Harvard Black Community Leaders, Harvard Black Alumni Society, and the Harvard Black Graduate Student Alliance at a Cambridge hotel, Nikole S. Hannah-Jones — an award winning journalist and creator of the 1619 Project — said the last-minute nature of the event inspired her to come speak.

“You deserved better than the capitulation of those in power here that would force you, with very little notice, to hold this graduation off campus and with no University support,” she said in a speech to the crowd. “I almost never accept invitations to speak at commencement ceremonies.”

Soon-to-be Harvard graduates listen intently at the Black affinity celebration, held at the Marriott Cambridge hotel. By Elyse C. Goncalves

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Cornell William Brooks, a former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, also spoke at the ceremony.

“We need not rebrand. We need not rename,” Brooks said. “We need not re-mission who we are, what we stand for, where we come from, who our people are and where we are going. We are Black people. We love Black people. We love all people.”

University spokespeople did not respond to a request for comment.

Athena Lao ’12, the president of the Harvard Asian American Alumni Alliance, opened the group’s Tuesday affinity event by recalling the group’s scramble for donors after the University announced its decision not to host.

“We raised over $20,000 in three weeks to make this celebration possible,” Lao said. “Because of all of you, because of all of us, 1,000 students are receiving heritage stoles this week.”

Graduates wear red stoles, purchased with money from an eleventh-hour student and alumni fundraiser, at the Asian, Pacific Islander, and Desi American affinity celebration. By Grace E. Yoon

Though the policy was not made public until late April, Harvard administrators made the decision not to host affinity celebrations in mid-March, after the Department of Education demanded race-based events be canceled, according to two members of the faculty familiar with the matter.

H4A was not the only organization scrambling to pull plans together. Of the 10 affinity celebrations Harvard hosted last year, eight returned in unofficial forms, including celebrations for Black, Latino, first-generation, low-income, LGBTQ+, Muslim, and Asian, Pacific Islander, and Desi American graduates, as well as for veterans and people with disabilities.

Organizers behind the celebrations for Jewish and Indigenous students that took place last year confirmed earlier this month that they would not be hosting ceremonies for the Class of 2025 — though the decision not to host a Jewish graduation was made before the University announced the new policy.

The University did provide organizers of the disability affinity ceremony with funding for an American Sign Language interpreter for their event, hosted at Cambridge Public Library.

According to organizers, the funds were contingent on a set of conditions meant to distance the event from affinity celebrations, though a University spokesperson said they would have provided the interpreter regardless.

Three of the ceremonies were held at First Parish Church on Massachusetts Ave., across the street from Harvard Yard. The final event at the Church — a Wednesday evening affinity celebration organized by the Harvard University Muslim Alumni — was attended by roughly 100 Harvard affiliates.

Veterans preparing to graduate from Harvard assemble for an affinity celebration onstage at the First Church in Cambridge on Garden Street. By Grace E. Yoon

Halah Y. Ahmad ’17, the president of HUMA, said she was “ashamed” of the University in her speech.

“President Alan Garber wants you to believe that Harvard is standing firm for academic freedom in the face of pressure from the authoritarian Trump administration,” Ahmad said. “The truth is that Harvard has already surrendered its intellectual freedom to far right-wing donors.”

Ahmad also cited the task force report on anti-Arab bias — which detailed widespread accounts of Islamophobia — as well as the Harvard Divinity School’s decision to end the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative as instances of bending to far-right donors.

“That is not leadership, President Garber,” she added.

The condemnation both Garber and Harvard faced at the ceremonies stood in stark contrast to his warm reaction among the College student body. During Wednesday’s Harvard College Class Day, seniors roared into a standing ovation when College dean Rakesh Khurana asked them to applaud Garber for “standing up for what’s right.”

At the ceremony for first-generation and low-income students, Anthony A. Jack — author of “The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students” — said that despite the organizing success, the event was still “marred by broken promises” by the University.

“They tried to take our commencements away,” Jack said. “But nothing — no executive order, no coerced concession — can take away all that went into making this day possible.”

—Staff writer Chantel A. De Jesus contributed reporting.

—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.