Harvard University has the world’s wealthiest and most well-known alumni. They already play a key role in responding to President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign.
Judge blocks Trump’s foreign student ban at Harvard University
A federal judge has extended an order that would prevent the Trump administration from revoking foreign students at Harvard University.
Part of it is justice of the Supreme Court. The rest is former president. Plus, there are business tycoons, well-known actors and powerful lawyers.
Harvard University Alumni – approximately half a million people include some of the most powerful and wealthy people in the United States. Donations to your alma mater amount to hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
Since President Donald Trump began targeting Ivy League campuses as part of a pressure campaign to reform American universities, Harvard has now needed more public and financial support than ever before for its alumni.
In mid-April, the Trump administration froze billions on federal funding at schools, claiming that its administrators had violated civil rights laws because they had not taken steps to curb anti-Semitism.
Then, in early May, the president threatened to withdraw his university’s tax-free status. A few weeks later, the Department of Homeland Security revoked Harvard’s ability to enroll international students who are doing important research and who tend to bring in more tuition fees than students in the country. The federal judge paused the move indefinitely.
The Trump administration’s actions have forced the first time to consider ways to cut costs for schools, one of the world’s wealthiest institutions, in key ways. Harvard President Alan Gerber, Jewish and promised to curb anti-Semitism on campus, received a voluntary 25% salary increase. Harvard borrowed $750 million. That’s well below the $2.2 billion frozen federal funds.
The former students were caught up in action as a new form of federal surveillance plunged schools into disarray. Alumni donations spiked when Gerber first promised to challenge Trump. An online gift totalling $4,000 was recorded 48 hours after Harvard University filed its first lawsuit against the Trump administration, according to campus newspaper Harvard Crimson.
But Alison Wu, a Harvard Business School alumni and co-founder of the Alumni Group, said it is unclear whether alumni donations could fill the massive financial gap created by the federal retreat. Thousands of millions of gifts at Harvard University are not unheard of, but the biggest alumni donation in 2015 was $400 million.
“No one ever gave Harvard on that level,” she said.
Thousands of graduates gather here
The width of Harvard alumni bases was particularly noticeable at a meeting of thousands of former students last week.
The virtual gathering aimed at “opposed federal attacks at Harvard,” including prominent alumni such as Massachusetts Democratic governor Maura Healy, and prominent Harvard alumni such as New York’s Democratic lieutenant governor Antonio Delgado. It was organized by Crimson Courage, a nonpartisan group of graduates that were recently formed to support Harvard’s academic freedom.
Lisa Paige, one of the organizers of Crimson Courage, said the alumni were drafting a brief for court friends in support of one of Harvard’s lawsuits against the White House.
“Harvard graduates certainly don’t line up on any cause,” said Page, who graduated from university in 1980.
Zachary Schermele is an education reporter for USA Today. You can contact him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @Zachschermele and follow Bluesky at @Zachschermele.bsky.social.
