Former Harvard president urges people to 'speak out' against threats to US democracy
Source: The Guardian
Mon 26 May 2025 14.07 EDT
Last modified on Tue 27 May 2025 00.12 EDT
A recent former president of Harvard University urged people to “speak out” in defense of “foundational threats” to values such as freedom, autonomy and democracy in the US, as those whose deaths for such causes in war were being honored on Memorial Day. Drew Gilpin Faust, the first female president of Harvard, also warned on Monday of US constitutional checks and the rule of law being “at risk” under the current administration, even as Donald Trump issued a fresh threat against the elite university as it seeks to repel his assaults on its independence and funding.
“We are being asked not to charge into … artillery fire but only to speak up and to stand up in the face of foundational threats to the principles for which [the US civil war dead] gave the last full measure of devotion. We have been entrusted with their legacy. Can we trust ourselves to uphold it?” Faust wrote in a guest opinion essay for the New York Times.
She highlighted, in particular, the principles fought and died for by Union soldiers in the US civil war and the roles played by assassinated US president Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist and leading Black civil rights leader of the 19th century. “We must honor these men,” she wrote.
Faust, who led Harvard between 2007 and 2018 and still teaches there, did not mention the US president by name but she referred to his position and made a direct link between the civil war and now.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/may/26/former-harvard-president-drew-gilpin-faust-threats-to-democracy
Link to referenced NYT OP Ed - We Are Not Being Asked to Run Into Cannon Fire. We Just Need to Speak Up.
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