Harvard holds graduation in shadow of Trump threat

CAMBRIDGE: Harvard held its annual graduation ceremony Thursday as a federal judge considers the legality of punitive measures taken against the university by US President Donald Trump.

Hundreds of robed students and academics squeezed onto the steps of the campus´s main library as Trump piles unprecedented pressure onto the university, one of the most prestigious in the world.

The president is seeking to ban Harvard from having foreign students, shredding its federal contracts, slashing its multibillion-dollar grants and challenging its tax-free status. The Ivy League institution has continually drawn Trump´s ire while publicly rejecting his administration´s repeated demands to give up control of recruitment, curricula and research choices.

The government claims Harvard tolerates anti-Semitism and liberal bias. “Harvard is treating our country with great disrespect, and all they´re doing is getting in deeper and deeper,” Trump said Wednesday.

Harvard president Alan Garber got a huge cheer Thursday when he mentioned international students attending the graduation with their families, saying it was “as it should be” -- but Garber did not mention the Trump fight directly.

Garber has acknowledged that Harvard does have issues with anti-Semitism and that it has struggled to ensure that a variety of views can be safely heard on campus. Ahead of the ceremony, members of the Harvard band sporting distinctive crimson blazers and brandishing their instruments filed through the narrow streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts -- home to the elite school, America´s oldest university.