“There’s no class I would rather be addressing than you all,” said journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize winner and creator of the 1619 Project, to the hundreds of students and families gathered in a conference room at the Boston Marriott in Cambridge for this year’s Black Graduation on Tuesday night. The event was organized independently by students and the Harvard Black Alumni Society (HBAS) and held off campus, following Harvard’s decision in April to stop funding and hosting affinity celebrations.
This is the class, Hannah-Jones explained, who entered college in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by a police officer, during a “so-called racial reckoning.” They witnessed institutions, including Harvard, promising to confront their legacies of racism and setting up offices and programs to make that happen—and, within a few years, saw many of those changes reversed. Earlier this year, the University laid off the team behind the Harvard Slavery Remembrance program—which was working to identify the descendants of people enslaved by Harvard faculty and staff—and outsourced the work to an outside company. In April, Harvard renamed its diversity office to the Office for Community and Campus Life, suggesting it would shift away from race- and ethnicity-specific programming.
That same month, the former diversity office announced it would no longer host or fund affinity celebrations, which it had supported financially and logistically for the last few years. These optional events supplement the main Commencement ceremony, honoring students of different identities—ranging from racial and ethnic groups to first-generation and low-income students—through speeches, performances, and the presentation of stoles or cords. They have long drawn the ire of conservative critics, who argue they are divisive and promote segregation. In February, the U.S. Department of Education declared that such ceremonies were illegal, as part of its broader campaign to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in higher education.
So, on Monday and Tuesday, students gathered in off-campus spaces across Cambridge—churches, parks, the public library, a hotel conference hall—for independently-organized events. These included celebrations for black, Latinx, Asian and Asian American, and LBGTQ+ students, as well as veterans, first-generation and low-income students, and students with disabilities.
Though celebratory, the events also carried an air of uncertainty and compromise. In some cases, heightened security was arranged due to concerns about potential Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) presence and doxxing. At a ceremony for disabled students, organizers said they couldn’t read graduates’ names, and students weren’t allowed to walk across the stage. This was because the University had funded ASL interpretation services for this one event—on the condition that it not resemble a Commencement celebration, an organizer said.
At some celebrations, speakers directly assailed the University for cancelling the events. “The same administration that has been cast as heroic for standing up to Trump over academic freedom caved almost immediately on issues of diversity and inclusion,” Hannah-Jones said. “And in doing so—in not standing up for y’all—it didn’t do one thing to stop Trump’s attacks on this university.”
“They gave you up for cheap,” she continued. “And I hope one day you will make them pay for that.”
A University spokesperson declined to comment beyond the statements previously posted on the Community and Campus Life website, including chief officer Sherri Ann Charleston’s message announcing the name change.
The celebrations followed a month-long scramble by alumni and students to organize them. Michael Lupia, the president of the Veteran Student Society, said the announcement came after weeks of uncertainty from the former diversity office, which provided “not very clear answers” when asked about details for a veterans’ celebration. “We knew that something was coming,” he said. “But for [the announcement] to come so late made it extraordinarily difficult to pull this together.”
When the University finally announced it would not support the celebrations in late April, alumni groups stepped in to help raise money for venues, catering, and stoles or cords. The Harvard Asian American Alumni Alliance (H4A) raised $20,000 to pay for this year’s celebration and create a fund for future years, said H4A president Athena Lao ’12 at a celebration at the First Parish in Cambridge. Meanwhile, students balanced academic obligations, Senior Week events, and organizing responsibilities to help plan the events. Between her thesis defense and a final presentation, Elyse Martin-Smith ’25 said, she was on the phone with venues, trying to secure a space for the Black Graduation celebration.
Students said the events provide an opportunity to celebrate with peers who have had similar life experiences. “I think that’s a wonderful thing,” Lupia said. “These ceremonies are a moment for us to celebrate all of our students, and the various challenges that they’ve overcome to succeed here,” said Gretchen Brion-Meisels, a senior lecturer at the Graduate School of Education, at the celebration for disabled students, held in the basement of the Cambridge Public Library.
Harvard’s decision to withdraw support undercut that spirit, said Taylor Holloway, M.Ed. ’25, who attended and helped organize that ceremony. “To make any affinity group students—but especially [students with disabilities]—have to leave campus, and not have the support of the school, and literally put us in a basement, just feels barbaric to me,” Holloway said. “I’m happy we’re here, but I’m also somber, a little bit, about it, too.”
The events also serve as a reminder of Harvard’s history of exclusion, Martin-Smith said, and of the work that remains to make the University a more just place. At the Black Graduation, Hannah-Jones honored those who came before today’s graduates: Beverly Garnett Williams, the first black person admitted to Harvard; Ella Louise Stokes Hunter, the first black woman to graduate; and W.E.B. Du Bois, the first black person to earn a Ph.D. from the University.
“The thing that makes gatherings such as this so dangerous,” Hannah-Jones said, “is that they remind us that we are a part of a tradition—that we did not gain entry into places such as Harvard merely to advance ourselves, but that we are connected to each other.”
Though Harvard only began supporting affinity celebrations a few years ago, they have a longer history and tradition. In 2011, when she was a College junior, Athena Lao, the H4A president, helped to organize a celebration for Asian and Asian American graduating seniors. That experience showed her the power of “grassroots, student-led” organizing.
Over the past month, as students and alumni have rallied to organize these events on their own, she’s been reminded of her undergraduate years, when affinity celebrations were unofficial and run on shoestring budgets. “To see that collective effort, and people really coming together and just doing this as a labor of love,” she said, “that’s a really great reminder of why these things matter, and why they’re so meaningful for our community.”
