More than 300 students, parents, and Cambridge affiliates filled the Science Center Plaza on Tuesday to protest the Trump administration’s decision to target Harvard’s international students, four days after the University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification was revoked.
The speakers at the rally, organized by Harvard Students for Freedom, a newly formed unrecognized student organization, condemned the administration’s decision as an affront to democracy and science, and to Jewish students, whose safety the Trump administration has invoked in what it says is an effort to stamp out campus antisemitism. The revocation is currently blocked by a judge.
“We stand here today to affirm that international students are our peers, our classmates, and our friends,” said Nuriel R. Vera-DeGraff ’26, an event organizer. “The Trump administration’s actions from last week and throughout this entire semester confirm how far they are willing to go to impose their authoritarian agenda on higher education.”
The Department of Homeland Security revoked Harvard’s SEVP status — which is necessary to host international students — on Thursday after alleging the University failed to comply with a detailed records request of information on international students’ protest participation.
A federal judge granted a temporary restraining order to Harvard the following day, though the University is awaiting a decision on longer-lasting relief, and international students remain worried.
Jacob M. Miller ’25, a former president of Harvard Hillel, said the administration’s decision to explain the actions as a response to antisemitism is “absurd” and “morally bankrupt.”
“We will not allow our identities to be invoked to destroy Harvard. We will not allow our identities to be invoked to undermine institutions of higher education. We will not allow the administration to wield our identities as a pretextual prop in the political persecution of our peers,” said Miller, a former Crimson Editorial Chair, in a speech at the rally.
Several other speakers praised their international peers in speeches to the crowd.
Government professor Ryan D. Enos said that in his 15 years at Harvard, “the international students that I have taught and worked with are the finest people I know.”
“There is no Harvard without them,” he added.
Avinashi A.L. Bhandari ’26, Rachel P. “Rae” Trainer ’26, and Victor E. Flores ’25 — all U.S. citizens — read aloud testimonies from international peers who did not want to speak at the rally themselves.
“For every student I talked to who said that they were excited to come and that they could make it, I talked to someone else who was afraid to come,” Trainer said. “That is abominable. Aren’t we supposed to have free assembly in this country?”
Flores gave a lengthy speech about his first-year roommate from India, an opera singer who taught him a “surprising amount” of German and helped him realize he was gay.
“I’d never lived with a gay person before, but his openness and kindness allowed me to ask questions about his life and experiences, finding that some of the things that I’ve been feeling but too afraid to share were similar to his story,” Flores said.
The rally was unusually large just days before graduation. Most Harvard students have left campus, and the remaining students have several celebrations to attend with their families.
Leo Gerdén ’25, a senior from Sweden who has emerged in recent weeks as a public face of Harvard’s international student body, ended the rally by discussing his apprehension as graduation approaches in two days.
“I’d lived with a constant fear of not being able to attend this Commencement and graduate,” Gerdén said. “When a man looks at me for a couple more seconds than usual, my heartbeat has started going up because it might be an ICE agent who’s about to detain me.”
He encouraged seniors to use the collective power of their class to fight for the principles they believe in as they enter the next stage of their lives.
“Use it to resist any attempt to make you do what goes against your principles,” Gerdén said. “Let’s all use it to put us on a better trajectory than the one we are on right now.”
—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.
