Modest Turnout at the Widely Promoted ‘Students for Freedom’ Protest

Contributed by David F. X. Army

For an observer expecting to see mass student outcry against the Trump administration, yesterday's rally must have come as a great disappointment. On the eve of the Trump administration-imposed deadline for Harvard to release the disciplinary records of all international students, the newly formed campus group Students For Freedom held a protest in the Science Center Plaza, which, among other things, demanded that Harvard not capitulate to the Trump administration's demands. There were about ten speakers of various backgrounds, including international students, who took turns delivering relatively short speeches that ranged from encouraging the assembled protesters, excoriating Trump, and demanding that Harvard maintain its course in resisting the administration.

Despite a 24-hour-long astroturfing campaign on Sidechat (a widely used anonymous social media platform) and door-to-door pamphlet deliveries the night before, the protest was woefully underattended, attracting only about forty people at its peak. While not drawing the crowd it had doubtlessly hoped for, the protest was replete with camera crews from local news stations, as well as a sizeable company of Harvard University Police Department officers. It was held in one of the most heavily trafficked areas on campus, which offered maximal exposure for its message.

The messaging, as well as the quality of the speeches, was relatively dull, save for a few moments. Speakers led the protesters in two different chants, both of which were equally disturbing. The first chant declared, “What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now! If we don’t get it [justice]? Shut it down! Shut it down! Shut it down!” What is being shut down remains unclear. The federal government? Harvard? President Trump? More importantly, the method of shutting it down was not specified.

While the speaker did not explicitly call for violence, they also rather ambiguously left the door open to it. In a time during which rhetoric on college campuses has become increasingly hostile, radicalized, and militant, leading in its most extreme example to the violent takeover of Hamilton Hall at Columbia last year, it would be interesting to hear how Students For Freedom would justify an exhortation to “shut it down.”

The following speaker led the protestors in the chant, “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA” before beginning her speech. For years, left-wing press and agitators have labeled President Trump and his voters as fascists, so that part of the chant came as no surprise; somewhat novel was the line “no KKK.”

Beyond the chants, there was nothing noteworthy about this event. After a dedicated messaging campaign and holding the protest in one of the busiest parts of campus, Students For Freedom was only able to assemble approximately 40 students. For a school with an undergraduate population of over 7,000 students, that equates to just .57% of the total undergraduate population. In their attempt to show Trump and the Harvard administration a united student front, “Students For Freedom” fell pitifully short.