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The American Association of University Professors’ national office — and Harvard’s chapter — cheered Harvard’s decision to refuse the Trump administration’s demands after University President Alan M. Garber ’76 announced the move Monday afternoon.

The AAUP’s national president, Rutgers University professor Todd Wolfson, praised the decision in a brief post on X.

“Universities stand up!!!” Wolfson wrote.

The AAUP and its Harvard chapter have been publicly petitioning Harvard to reject President Donald Trump’s demands and stand up against his pressure campaign on higher education.

Government professor Ryan D. Enos — a member of the Harvard chapter of the AAUP and one of the most prominent voices urging Harvard to resist Trump — said that Garber’s letter showed the “power of the greater Harvard community to push the University to take the right action.”

Two weeks ago, Harvard’s AAUP chapter sued the Trump administration over its attempts to deport noncitizen faculty and students. On Friday, the faculty group filed another lawsuit against the administration to end its ongoing review of Harvard’s federal funding.

The Harvard AAUP also held a rally at Cambridge Common on Saturday, drawing more than 500 Harvard affiliates and Cambridge residents who called for Harvard to defy Trump’s demands.

“All of that, I think, was certainly something that put Harvard in a position where they were more likely to do the right thing,” Enos added.

Harvard Law School professor Nikolas Bowie, the secretary-treasurer of the Harvard AAUP, said that “now is a time for celebration — for really showing that when the University’s leadership takes a bold stance in defense of academic freedom and democracy, that the university community stands with it.”

But Bowie cautioned that the moment “remains a time for vigilance,” given the administration’s ongoing threats of arresting and deporting international students.

Classics professor Richard F. Thomas, an at-large member of Harvard’s AAUP chapter, called the move “absolutely the right decision” and the “most encouraging thing Harvard has done in the last two years.”

Thomas, who has occasionally been a fierce critic of the Harvard administrators’ dealings with Washington, commended Garber and said that he hoped the decision would inspire other universities to join together in a “united front against the pretextual weaponizing of antisemitism” by the White House.

“Obedience to that letter would effectively spell the end of freedom of inquiry, even freedom of thought—in other words, the end of the university, which is always the first goal of autocracy,” Thomas said.

“Harvard’s role as a leader doesn’t stop today. It begins today,” Enos said.

—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.

—Staff writer Veronica H. Paulus can be reached at veronica.paulus@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @VeronicaHPaulus.