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On Monday, Harvard finally stood up to President Donald Trump.

The administration rejected his attempt to suppress free speech and dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion programs on campus. However, this courage didn’t come from Harvard’s conscience. It came from us — the students, workers, residents, and elected officials who organized, rallied, and demanded that Harvard find its spine.

As Trump responds by freezing $2 billion in funding, Harvard must work with its community to have the best chance at winning this four-year fight.

Over the past few months, people have mobilized to oppose Trump’s pressure on institutions like Harvard. His authoritarian encroachment on higher education poses a dangerous threat to civil rights in this country. Events like the April 1 rally in Harvard Yard and the Cambridge Common rally this past weekend — which drew over five hundred people — reflected a collective appeal to Harvard to fight back.

And it looks like Harvard listened. Our organizing was an important reason behind the University’s decision to speak up.

Of course, the University has hardly been on the right side of this fight. Indeed, Monday’s about-face masks a more cynical reading of the past eighteen months. We can’t forget when the University placed the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee on probation, delayed degree conferrals to students who participated in last year’s encampment, dismissed the leaders of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and undermined the Legacy of Slavery Initiative.

These actions severed the relationship between Harvard and its community, so it is OK, and necessary, to have a healthy dose of skepticism now. Beyond the words in Monday’s statement, University President Alan M. Garber ’76 hasn’t shown our campus that he is willing to join the fight with us.

During the 2024 encampments, I wrote that Harvard should respond to student organizing by elevating it as a form of active, engaged citizenship, where through conversation and deliberation, we co-create a more just society. The University failed that test. But what if it offered to listen to us and work together? Now, it has a second chance.

Newton’s first law says that an object at rest will stay at rest unless acted on by an external force. We can apply this principle to changing an institution: It will only move when we push it.

Harvard does not exist in a vacuum. Many internal and external forces have kept it on the wrong path. That includes people aligned with Trump, but it also includes many on the sidelines who stayed quiet in the last two years.

Thankfully, we are seeing a growing push toward justice. Garber didn’t decide to speak out on his own — the political calculus changed. Harvard moved because we pushed them.

So we need to stay in motion. On our end, organizers have to bring more people into our movement, empowering them to stand up to Trump. Many Harvard affiliates and Cambridge residents have shown a willingness to attend rallies, but we have to encourage them to do more. Uniting students, faculty, unions, workers, and residents in durable political organizations is more essential than ever.

And we need to avoid losing sight of the full picture: the sweeping attack on American higher education as a whole. When I spoke at the April 1 rally, I explained the situation we now face in front of 300 of my peers. Since January, hundreds of international students have been targeted by Trump’s immigration enforcement. We’ve also seen research cuts and attacks on racial justice.

Return to that idea of motion. If the system is pushed too weakly, opposing forces win out. But if the system is pushed meaningfully, it will move meaningfully. It’s time to realize our power and organize into a social force.

Garber has demonstrated that he’s capable of being moved. What moved him? The collective power of both student and working class organizing. We can expand that power now that the Harvard administration is starting to align with us against Trump.

But again, the system will only move insofar as we push it. If we want more action on the Harvard side, we have to keep pushing even harder than before.

I reflect on the last two weeks of mobilization, seeing a popular movement uniting under the twin causes of justice and liberation. In my advocacy, from transportation justice to addressing Harvard’s legacy of slavery, I have always viewed this campus as a place where speech — especially speech grounded in justice — should be protected and heard.

Principled student expression can strengthen, rather than undermine, Harvard’s commitment to academic and moral leadership — but only if the University works with us. In moments like this one, we join generations of students testing the boundaries of what a university can be. It is time to join that legacy.

Clyve Lawrence ’25-27, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Government concentrator in Adams House.