Harvard students held a rally on Tuesday, protesting against President Donald Trump's attacks on the prestigious institution.
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00:00Our voice is loud and clear, every student's welcome here, every student's welcome here,
00:15in education we believe.
00:18Thank you, and now let's please work out with a link in the bio, thank you.
00:23And now, stand up fight back, what do we do?
00:28Stand up fight back!
00:36If there is anything to learn from this Jewish history,
00:39it's that when we push people out of our schools because of their identity,
00:44it's a symptom of a morally bankrupt politics.
00:48That is why the administration's excuse for these policies, that they somehow address anti-Semitism, are so absurd.
01:01Let's be clear, this has nothing to do with combating anti-Semitism.
01:07Anti-Semitism is a real problem, it's a problem at Harvard, it's a problem in our country.
01:14But these policies will do nothing to combat this age-old hatred.
01:18Instead, they are designed to divide us apart.
01:22And so I'm here today to tell you that the Jewish community rejects this administration's narrative.
01:28Freedom of speech and due process, these are the foundations of the American system.
01:36These are the foundations of a free society.
01:39But Donald Trump is attacking these freedoms, but they get in the way of his authoritarian takeover.
01:45This is what authoritarians do.
01:48Trump has begun a dangerous march to roll back civil rights in this country.
01:54We've seen his vicious, racist attacks on speech and diversity,
01:59and his alliance with far-right billionaires who amplify fascist rhetoric.
02:05The attack on Harvard and its international students is part of a deeper effort to disfund and dismantle the academic world.
02:13It's an attempt to re-root our brightest researchers into private corporations, stripping academic institutions of their power.
02:20Trump is using our international students as a bargaining chip.
02:24He's threatening to revoke our school's hosting status unless we turn over a massive amount of disciplinary information and surveillance.
02:34This is information we are not legally required to give.
02:40And once he has it, he will use it for his own nefarious ends.
02:45He will use it to attack student protesters like all of you standing here today.
02:49Shame!
02:51Trump is also proposing just now to review the social media feeds of student visa applicants,
02:59presumably so that he can screen out those who disagree with him.
03:03Shame!
03:05When Trump demands viewpoint diversity at our university, it's clear what he really means.
03:13He wants to control what our students say, think and believe.
03:17Shame!
03:20What the international students are caught in right now is just a limbo.
03:23It is going back and forth, going to go back and forth in the courts.
03:26We're probably going to have to wait up until it reaches the Supreme Court, until we know something for sure.
03:31And in the meantime, just the uncertainty itself deters people from coming to this country to do research and to study.
03:40And it's really going to threaten the U.S. position at the forefront of innovation and research.
03:47Because a place like Harvard, what makes Harvard Harvard is not its legacy or its endowment or anything like that.
03:53It's its ability to bring back the best and the brightest from all around the world,
03:57put us in the same dining halls, put us in the same classrooms.
04:00And that is what is under threat right now.