Why Trump is really going after Harvard University

In mortarboards and crimson-fringed gowns, thousands of students were last week joined by smiling families for the centuries-old ritual of graduation day. But this year was different.

- David Smith

Alan Garber, the president of Harvard University, received a standing ovation and welcomed graduates “from down the street, across the country and around the world”, drawing applause for the last words: “Around the world - just as it should be.”

It was a nod to the international students who are part of the lifeblood of Harvard but a target for Donald Trump, whose administration is seeking to revoke the institution’s ability to enrol overseas students. It is just one front in an escalating battle between a US president with authoritarian ambitions and the county’s oldest, wealthiest and most prestigious university.

Trump has used executive power to take aim at Congress, law firms, media organisations, cultural institutions and leading universities. Some resisted but many capitulated. In Harvard, the man who urged his supporters to “fight, fight, fight” faces a resilient foe unlike any he has taken on before.

Its emergence as a bulwark of the opposition to Trump was summed up by this year's Class Day speaker at Harvard, the former basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: "After seeing so many cowering billionaires, media moguls, law firms, politicians and other universities bend their knee to an administration that is systematically strip-mining the US constitution, it is inspiring to me to see Harvard University take a stand for freedom." Harvard was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1636, a century and a half before the nation itself. Alumni include former presidents John F Kennedy and Barack Obama, the supreme court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan, the tech entrepreneurs Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, the actors Matt Damon and Natalie Portman and the writer Margaret Atwood.