Harvard held its commencement today. Meanwhile, across the Charles River, in Boston, a federal judge moved to block Donald Trump’s attempt to ban the university from enrolling international students. A dispatch from an emotional day on campus. Plus:
• The Supreme Court undercuts yet another check on executive power
• At last, a new non-opioid painkiller
• Is this Wes Anderson’s most emotional film?
Photograph by Brian Snyder / Reuters
Jeannie Suk Gersen
Gersen, a professor of law at Harvard, writes about legal issues, the courts, and higher education.
What is most remarkable about Harvard’s commencement exercises isn’t the pomp. It’s the gathering of families from more than a hundred nations, including people of all races and creeds, alongside a stoically dwindling clutch of Wasps whose ancestors eventually opened the university’s gates to immigrants, descendants of slaves, and others different from them. On Thursday morning, Alan Garber, Harvard’s Jewish President—not the first and likely not the last—received a long standing ovation upon merely getting out a “Welcome,” and an even longer one when he addressed “members of the class of 2025 from down the street, across the country, and around the world. Around the world. Just as it should be.” His was not the only voice at the event which cracked with emotion when speaking. Garber did not refer to the university’s ongoing fight against the Trump Administration, which is ostensibly about antisemitism and not about it at all. Yet reminders of the power struggle were constant. A faculty colleague near me spent the proceedings reading Montesquieu, the great theorist of the separation of powers, on his phone.
Since mid-April, when I wrote about why Harvard was rebuffing the government’s threats and demands, the university has become something of an institutional hero, symbolizing resistance to authoritarianism. The Administration has continued retaliating by depriving Harvard of billions of dollars in federal grants and contracts, and by attempting to strip the university’s tax-exempt status. Last week, it even revoked Harvard’s certification to enroll international students. While the commencement ceremony was proceeding, a Boston federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking that policy. But the victory already feels fleeting. Last night, the Trump Administration announced that it would move to “aggressively revoke” Chinese students’ visas. Congress, too, is doing its part with the House’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which includes a drastic university-endowment tax hike aimed to punish Harvard and its peers.
The school’s transformation in the public imagination, from bastion of élitism into a beacon of hope and dissent, requires a reality check. If the federal government decides it’s going to destroy—or severely diminish—you, it probably can. Courts may order a stop to one policy and then another, but the government will always have yet more means to keep going after a target. From the stage, Garber told graduates, “Stay comfortable being uncomfortable.” As Rita Moreno, the Puerto Rico-born actress who starred in the original “West Side Story,” was receiving an honorary doctorate, she was brought to tears by an Asian undergraduate with a piercingly pure soprano voice, who sang the musical’s famed “Somewhere”: “We’ll find a new way of living. We’ll find a way of forgiving.” The nearly four-century-old university’s leaders were undoubtedly aware that the stakes are nothing less than the institution’s survival.
Editor’s Pick
The Radical Development of an Entirely New Painkiller
More than two million people in the U.S. are believed to have an opioid-use disorder, and last year more than fifty thousand people died from overdoses. A novel approach to pain treatment—something of a “magic non-opioid opioid”—could change the trajectory of the crisis, Rivka Galchen reports. Read or listen to the story »
More Top Stories
Our Culture Picks
- Listen: Spring 2025 is almost over. Put on our playlist for the season one last time before summer arrives.
- Watch: The searing political drama “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” which débuted at Cannes last year, is now streaming on Hulu.
- Read: A new biography traces the ascent of William F. Buckley, Jr., the man who changed the American postwar right.
Daily Cartoon
“We’re sorry, but the goodbye-party budget was gutted by DOGE.”
Cartoon by Adam Douglas Thompson
Puzzles & Games
P.S. Mike White, the creator of “The White Lotus,” will be returning as a contestant on the fiftieth season of “Survivor.” Jeff Probst, the reality-TV show’s longtime host, has a warning that other players should heed: “Good luck winning an argument with Mike White.” 🔥
Caroline Mimbs Nyce contributed to this edition.
