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More than 500 Harvard alumni signed an open letter to University President Alan M. Garber ’76, urging the University to make a public statement committing to protect its affiliates’ free speech and maintain its independence.
The letter was circulated after the March 8 arrest of Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent legal U.S. resident who is facing deportation due to his participation in pro-Palestine protests last year. So far, Harvard has yet to make a public statement on Khalil’s arrest or on President Donald Trump’s threats to deport pro-Palestine activists.
The alumni letter — penned by Boston University professor Jim P. Stodder ’71 — asks Harvard to make an “open-letter statement that it will govern its own internal affairs, and protect the free speech and right to due process of all its students, faculty, and staff.”
Stodder said Garber has not responded to the letter, which was sent to his inbox late Monday night.
A Harvard University spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday evening.
The letter claims that the Trump administration has infringed on Columbia’s rights to govern its internal affairs in an “attempt to terrorize foreign-born students and faculty” and argues that Harvard, as a private university, has the right to regulate free speech while fostering debate on issues.
“Our own time at Harvard was enriched by students and faculty from all over the world,” Stodder wrote. “The arrest of Khalil is a threat to Harvard students’ ability to speak their minds and be active on issues they care about.”
This month, the Trump administration has taken unprecedented steps to extend its authority over universities’ internal affairs. On March 8 — the same day Khalil was arrested — the White House announced $400 million in cuts to federal grants and contracts to Columbia University.
Nearly two weeks later, Columbia ceded to many of Trump’s demands, agreeing to change its protest policies and assert new administrative authority over its Middle Eastern studies department — a concession that sparked anxiety across academia.
“We cannot appease the Trump administration — it always asks for more,” the letter urged. “It will soon ask to see our course offerings, speakers’ lists, staff’s CVs, admissions notes, and so on.”
In an interview, Stodder said the letter originated after he met with a group of fellow alumni who were involved in the 1969 occupation of University Hall by anti-Vietnam War protesters. Stodder began sending the letter to alumni mailing lists last Monday, and the discussion group later posted the letter online.
University Professor Eric S. Maskin ’72, a Nobel Prize-winning economist who holds Harvard’s highest faculty rank, wrote in a statement to The Crimson that he signed the letter because he feared the Trump administration was intruding on university affairs.
“I am concerned that government interference in academic matters (such as requiring Columbia to put its Middle Eastern studies department under receivership) poses a serious threat to academic freedom,” Maskin wrote. “And academic freedom is the cornerstone on which strong and innovative universities are built.”
Donna E. Lieberman ’70 — who leads a group that is helping represent Khalil, the New York Civil Liberties Union, in his effort to block his deportation — said that she felt that free speech in higher education was “under the most existential threat in my lifetime.”
When Lieberman came across the letter on several email lists she is part of, she felt it was a “no brainer” to sign.
“It’s remarkable that every university would not run to the defense of their students when they’re under attack like this,” Lieberman said.
Journalist and Jimmy Carter speechwriter James M. Fallows ’70, who received the letter through a classmate, said that he typically wouldn’t have signed. But Fallows, a former Crimson president, said he was moved to add his name after Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgruber condemned the Trump administration’s federal funding cuts at Columbia in a March 19 article in the Atlantic.
“If somebody with as much at stake as the President of Princeton would come out and say, ‘This is wrong,’” Fallows said, then a “university like Harvard, should too.”
Former University of California, Berkeley, journalism school dean Orville H. Schell ’62, who also signed the letter, said that universities “have to maintain their ability to be places of free exchange and civil free exchange.”
“If free speech suffers and it’s the casualty, then the lights go out on the whole democratic proposition,” he said.
The alumni letter is one of several public condemnations by Harvard affiliates in recent days of Khalil’s arrest — and the latest demand for Harvard to stand up to the Trump administration.
Harvard’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors joined a lawsuit on Tuesday morning against Trump administration officials over their attempts to deport Khalil and other pro-Palestine activists. And more than 80 Jewish Harvard affiliates signed a Monday statement urging universities to denounce Khalil’s arrest.
Stodder said that signatories of the alumni letter don’t have to agree with the actions of Khalil or other students, but that the University has a “responsibility to protect their students.”
“They also have a huge, historic responsibility to protect the rights of people in their community — students, faculty and staff alike — to free expression,” he added.
—Staff writer Elyse C. Goncalves can be reached at elyse.goncalves@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @e1ysegoncalves.
—Staff writer Akshaya Ravi can be reached at akshaya.ravi@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @akshayaravi22.
