The authors are all staff writers at The Harvard Lampoon, the school’s 150-year-old humor magazine.
It has been 19 days, four hours, seven minutes, and 33 seconds since Harvard University leapfrogged Rosie O’Donnell to become Donald Trump’s most hated American institution. On April 11, the White House sent a letter to Harvard’s administration detailing the hoops that the university must jump through to retain what Trump is calling “hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds” of dollars of federal funding — a figure others are calling “billions.”
As Harvard students, we are no strangers to attention. On a daily basis, people compliment us for being “smart” and “hardworking,” when all we have done is cure cancer and then made sure the treatment is unaffordable.
Yet this attention from the Trump Administration is thoroughly unwelcome, because it is directed towards our entire university and not just us personally.
From what we’ve gathered from copying and pasting the White House’s letter into ChatGPT, the Trump Administration is asking that the university stop conducting cancer research, start researching how far away the moon is, and identify the names, disciplinary records, skin colors, and general vibes of all international students.
To other universities (Columbia), these demands might be enough to scare them into submission. But we at Harvard say: “No way, José,” hoping Trump will be pissed off that we implied he’s Mexican. Alan Garber, Harvard’s president, colloquially known as Papa Smurf, commented: “Harvard University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights. It will, however, immediately give up any students not paying full tuition.”
In an effort to stall on Trump’s demands, Harvard has provided a preliminary list of international students including “Boobs McGillicuddy, Arnold Poopy Pants III, Jackin’ Off Kennedy, and Manuel D. García ’27 who lives in Randolph Hall, Room 519.”
The federal government continues, however, to actively oust and uproot international students by sending undercover ICE agents to attend student protests. We attended a recent demonstration, where one 55-year-old student, sporting a backwards baseball hat and a riot shield, told us: “I am a college student. I have a giant bomb, which I will use to attack America, her people, and her freedoms. Who here is with me?”
His gray-haired friend joined in, asking, “Yo, where can I get a fake visa ’round here?”
Trump insists that these provisions are for the sake of protecting Jewish students. We reached out to an actual, real-life Jewish student in Harvard Yard to ask how the community is feeling. In response to the political turmoil on campus, they said they are feeling “For the last time, please stop following me. I just want to go to class.”
To get a more professional perspective, we sat down with RFK Jr., a Harvard alumnus, to get his take on the crisis. He commented: “I think a registry of international students is important. For instance, before the autism registry, I had no idea how autistic I was. Now, I need to know if I’m an illegal immigrant.”
Meanwhile, Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana has used social media to galvanize students and the greater community to stand strong against the demands. On Monday, he posted the first “Crimson Square” on his Instagram, calling on others to participate in Crimson-Out Tuesday. Though the movement was well-intentioned, it quickly lost focus as the online discourse shifted to a debate on which shade of red best represented the oppression of Harvard students.
In addition to the demands surrounding international students, Trump has also requested several conservative-focused courses be added to the freshman year requirements, such as English 101: Jane Austen and Ben Shapiro – Proud of Prejudice, as well as Life Sciences 20: Masturbation as Murder, and Government Lab 100: Poll Watching in Practice.
Other provisions of the letter included that Harvard ban all DEI policies, or at least those that consider gender, race, ability, age, socioeconomic status, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, or nationality. While we agree that people of gender take up too much space on campus, we worry about the implications of attacking diversity on such a broad level. For example, are French majors safe from deportation? Are our mothers, who are women, protected? Does our friend Elmer, a 1/16th Swedish white-passing male, still qualify for Goldman Sachs’ Diversity Internship? The fact that we even have to ask these questions is abhorrent and dystopian.
Trump is also pushing the school to dismantle certain student organizations, such as the Palestinian Solidarity Committee — not to be confused with the Poodle Shaving Club, which was founded with the sole mission of promoting Jewish life on campus.
But all hope is not lost. Harvard has not only been fighting back but also reflecting. It has introduced a new anti-anti-anti-anti-antisemitism initiative to confuse Trump, in addition to a series of task forces. These include a task force to determine if antisemitism is trending on campus, another task force to determine if that task force was antisemitic, and a third, deliberately antisemitic task force, which exists so that Harvard knows what not to do.
Although Trump’s list of demands has caused a major stir on campus, shortly after they were received, communications from the president’s inner circle revealed that the letter was sent by mistake. “Butt text,” wrote Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. She offered no further explanation.
So, as Harvard prepares to take on Trump in the courts, we say to you, gentle reader: Don’t forget about this small liberal arts school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ask not what Harvard can do for you, but what you can do for Harvard’s endowment. Donate today.
#OpEd #Trump #Writers #Lampoon
