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A small group of Harvard students accused the University of implementing policies to silence minority students in response to the Trump administration at a rally in Cambridge Common on Sunday afternoon.
The event drew a crowd of roughly 40 people and was the first protest led by Harvard’s chapter of Amnesty International, a charity human rights organization, since it gained official recognition from the Dean of Student’s Office last year.
Speakers at the event argued that recent changes at Harvard, including the shuttering of the Undergraduate Minority Recruitment Program in May and the decision to deny tenure to an associate professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies, were evidence of the University caving to pressure from the Trump administration.
Krupali M. Kumar ’27, co-president of the Harvard Amnesty chapter, said the rally served to “expose the disconnect between our University’s values and their behaviors” as officials reshape, and in some cases, end programming for minority students.
“These actions that the University has taken are showing us who gets to speak and who is punished for speaking,” Kumar said.
Harvard, she added, “is actively eroding the very institutional systems and functions that help minority students thrive and feel supported at this University.”
Since taking office, President Donald Trump has attempted to punish Harvard for its response to antisemitism on campus, challenging its ability to enroll international students and use federal funds. Though Harvard initially refused to meet a series of demands from the White House in April, changes in faculty leadership and diversity office closures have attracted outrage as quiet capitulation.
In particular, the College’s decision to close its three diversity offices — the Women’s Center, Office for BGLTQ Student Life, and Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations — drew swift blowblack from students since the decision first became public in July.
College Dean David J. Deming explained the closures as part of a longer-term effort to overhaul Harvard’s approach to student support in an email announcing the change in July. He told Peer Advising Fellows in August that the changes were motivated by external pressure on Harvard, but did not mention Trump by name.
Harvard Queer Students Association Co-President Josh D. Rodriguez Ortiz ’28 said in a speech on Sunday that he understood the pressure Harvard has been under from the White House, but argued that the University has not been transparent with their rationale for the closures and opening of a new “Office of Culture and Community” at the College.
“We understand Harvard is under pressure, but respect for leadership does not mean silence,” he said. “We’re fighting against the quiet erasure of diversity, against the rebranding of inclusion as something better with nothing to show for it.”
Before the centers’ closures were announced over the summer, a group of 20 affinity group leaders and former office interns signed a letter to the directors and top Harvard administrators inquiring about the future of the offices. They did not receive a response until after the decision was finalized.
“As students, we are told that our voices matter, that we have a seat at the table and that administrators exist to support us. But is that really true?” Rodriguez Ortiz said. “Does support mean ignoring a letter signed by the presidents and vice presidents of nine major student groups representing hundreds of students? Does it mean brushing off meeting requests?”
Spokespeople for the College and University did not respond to a request for comment Sunday afternoon.
Speakers at the rally also criticized what they described as growing barriers to student activism on campus. Juan I. Pedraza Arellano ’25-’27, a member of the Student Labor Action Committee, said that Harvard had applied its student group policies to push out organizers.
“They want the people that stand up against them out,” he said.
Pedraza Arellano pointed to a warning letter the African and African American Resistance Organization received from Adams House administrators after they had attempted to reserve a space in the house without official recognition from the College.
Pedraza Arellano told the crowd on Sunday that the rule was “disgusting.”
“Harvard University doesn’t want to acknowledge that Harvard AFRO is a real student organization — shame on them,” he said. “They want us to do all these little rules and things, to follow their guidelines, to be an official group.”
“What kind of suppression of speech is that to not allow an organization to even meet in a dining hall?” he added.
Arellano said that students would continue to fight for spaces specifically cultivated for minority students.
“Maybe not now, maybe not next year, but they will come back, because we will keep fighting,” he said. “We will keep raising our voices against these institutions, against these people that try to suppress us. We will fight back.”
—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.
