Editorial: Trump’s ‘intolerable’ assault on Harvard won't stop at the Charles River

(This editorial first was published in the Dorchester Reporter on May 29, 2025)

• Dorchester’s present-day First Parish Church is the descendant church of one of the five congregations that founded Harvard College in 1636.

Under normal circumstances, this space in the pre-Dorchester Day edition of The Reporter would be reserved for thoughts on what now amounts to a two-day commemoration of Boston’s largest and oldest community.

But these are hardly normal times. 

In the last week, the Trump Administration has unleashed an unprecedented assault on Harvard University by targeting its enrollment of foreign students in particular, stripping out all its federal grants and, most recently, ordering all federal agencies to terminate all business with the institution.

It’s all the work of our nation’s present chief executive— the extortionist-in-chief— who has targeted America’s most illustrious campus for a campaign of retribution and intimidation. 

Make no mistake: It won’t be long before the fanatics of the MAGA movement are unleashed on those of us on the southern end of Massachusetts Avenue.

Let’s recall, too, that there are integral connections between Harvard and our own settlement-turned-town-turned-city neighborhood. Dorchester’s present-day First Parish Church is the descendant church of one of the five congregations that founded Harvard College in 1636. Dorchester itself was settled in 1630 by Puritan migrants who over time displaced the native peoples who had lived along the coast of what we now consider Massachusetts for centuries, perhaps longer. 

To this day, the minister from First Parish is invited to don traditional vestments and attend Harvard’s commencement. Over the university’s history, countless Dorchester residents have taken degrees, played varsity sports, taught, and worked there.

Those who labor under the mistaken impression that Trump’s vengeance agenda will end on the banks of the Charles River had better wake up quickly. His interference in the governance of higher education threatens all colleges and universities, just as his move to strip public media of funding is ultimately intended to chill the public discourse across all forms of media.

Harvard is but the first very public target of this rank racketeer who is in every sense as sinister as the underworld characters whose tactics he emulates. 

A few weeks ago, the leaders of dozens of colleges and universities signed a joint letter denouncing the “government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.” It was notable and heartening to see local presidents like Rev. William Leahy at Boston College, Marty Meehan at UMass, Joseph Aoun at Northeastern, Rev. John Denning at Stonehill, Melissa Gilliam at Boston University, among others, sign a letter in April to “oppose government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses.”

Trump’s subsequent assault on Harvard is a new front in a widening reign of terror designed to silence critics, ward off potential dissidents, and weaken regions of the nation that opposed his re-election. It’s aimed not just at a single institution, but at the complex and well-established ecosystem that depends on Harvard and other higher ed institutions for so much of our Commonwealth’s vitality and economic prowess. 

In attacking Harvard, he seeks to undermine and destroy Massachusetts’s very lifeblood in much the same way as British monarchs of old sought to injure New England for the affront of challenging their levies and edicts.

In the annals of history as we count them, Dorchester is but six years older than Harvard. As we celebrate our 385th anniversary this weekend, we do so in solidarity with our Crimson-clad friends with the full awareness that we’ll all— sooner or later— be targets of this shameful, ignorant regime.