Harvard grads celebrate while its lawyers eke out another reprieve for international students

Our live coverage of the 2025 Harvard University commencement ceremony and the court action involving the Trump administration has concluded. Please scroll through the posts below to read all of today’s developments.

Harvard law professor Ryan Doerfler speaks with CNN on Thursday.

Ryan Doerfler, a law professor at Harvard, said a federal district judge ordering the Trump administration to not make any changes to the school’s student visa program was “an expected outcome” because the government’s actions were “so fragrantly lawless.”

Before the hearing in Boston began this morning, the Trump administration said it was giving Harvard 30 days to challenge its attempt to strip the university of its ability to host international students.

Doerfler said it was an indication the administration had “not followed the statutorily required procedures if it wanted to revoke Harvard’s status.”

The administration has said the school hadn’t complied with reporting requirements for foreign students and is not maintaining an environment “Free from Violence and Antisemitism,” among other things.

Doerfler said universities have to strike a “delicate balance” between protecting students who identify as part of certain groups, such as Jewish students, and also the rights of students to protest.

Still, he said he thinks the administration is using antisemitism on campus as “a pretext” for the government to take actions against the university.

“That real range and inconsistency of motivations cited by the administration itself really makes it difficult to take seriously that it’s concern with antisemitism that’s motivating the administration,” Doerfler said.

He said students and facility are thinking about what their futures look like now. Already many of them are reluctant to travel and leave the country. It “creates a real chilling effect, not just here at Harvard, but across the higher education in the US more generally,” Doerfler added.

Aleksandra Conevska talks with CNN on Thursday.

One international student at Harvard said she’s planning on staying in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for now, but added the fight between the university and the White House is “disorienting, frustrating (and) confusing” for her and her peers.

“I’m not planning on leaving the country because I know that if I leave, I might have a hard time being readmitted at the border,” Aleksandra Conevska told CNN.

It comes after a federal district judge said she will order the Trump administration to not make any changes to Harvard’s student visa program indefinitely.

The court hearing Thursday morning came after the administration’s decision earlier this month to ban the school from enrolling international students.

Conevska, who is Canadian, said while she remains on campus, she will be checking federal dockets and making sure that the injunction remains in place. “I don’t want to end up undocumented unknowingly,” she said.

Still, the government’s targeting of international students at the Ivy League school is creating an “unsettling feeling,” Conevska said, adding she wants to stay at least until she finishes her degree.

She said she feels as though international students are an “attractive pawn” for President Donald Trump and his administration to use to “try to get concessions out of Harvard.”

“I think we are just caught in the crossfires of this culture war that the Trump administration is engaging in, and it’s convenient for them to target us,” she said.

A protest banner is seen unfurled at Sever Hall during Thursday's commencement.

One banner reading, “Harvard Divest from Genocide in Gaza,” and a second reading, “There Are No Universities Left in Gaza,” were unfurled from campus buildings during the university’s commencement ceremony on Thursday, according to the student-run Harvard Crimson.

College campuses across the country were thrown into disarray last year by pro-Palestinian demonstrations. While the demands among protesters varied at each university, nearly all the demonstrations called for universities to divest from Israel in some form.

Both banners, one hung from the second floor of Sever Hall and the other from top of the steps to Widener Library, were quickly taken down by administrators, the Crimson reported. The buildings face Harvard Yard, where Thursday’s commencement took place.

A Harvard police officer is seen holding a confiscated banner on the Widener Library steps.

It’s unclear if the university learned who hung the banners. The one with the call to divest “went largely unnoticed by the crowd, overshadowed by the presentation of degree candidates,” the Crimson reported.

Signs of protest were far more subdued than a year ago, when hundreds of students walked out of commencement in protest of the university’s handling of discipline for some protesting students.

It has been a tricky issue for Harvard, as the Trump administration has accused it and other universities of letting protests and encampment run rampant in 2024, leading to accusations that Jewish students were intimidated and international students engaged in “violent behavior.”

CNN has reached out to Harvard for comment.

Students and faculty attend the commencement ceremony at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Thursday.

For a few hours Thursday, Harvard and its Class of 2025 turned their focus to all graduates had accomplished for a ceremony that also often heralded the prowess of the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university amid its ongoing legal showdown with the Trump administration.

Under overcast skies, the university’s 374th commencement was marked by moments of unbridled joy as students and their families celebrated. Harvard President Alan Garber, who has become the face of the school’s historic First Amendment fight, got a minute-long standing ovation from graduates as the event began.

Garber welcomed the Class of 2025 “from down the street, across the country and around the world … just as it should be” – a nod to the nearly simultaneous federal court hearing in Boston over the university’s ability to enroll international students.

An attendee wears a sticker during the commencement ceremony.

Harvard University President Alan Garber greets students as they arrive to the commencement ceremony.

As the campus ceremony unfolded, US District Court Judge Allison Burroughs granted Harvard a reprieve, saying she would order the Trump administration to not make any changes to Harvard’s student visa program, indefinitely.

Here are some additional highlights from Harvard’s commencement ceremony:

Carolyn Hao and Rita Moreno perform during the commencement ceremony.

Students cheer during Harvard University's commencement ceremonies.

At a time when the Trump administration has moved to tighten the screws on many visa holders living in the United States, Harvard’s commencement speaker said the medical community in the US relies on immigrants.

“We were recruited here because American medical schools simply don’t graduate sufficient numbers of physicians to fill the country’s needs,” said Dr. Abraham Verghese, a physician and bestselling author.

Verghese first immigrated to the US in 1974 and completed his medical education in India before returning to the US. He said many other foreign-born medical workers are filling critical gaps in the US.

“More than a quarter of the physicians are foreign medical graduates, and many of those foreign physicians ultimately settle in places that others might not find as desirable,” Verghese said.

Undergraduate students react as they get their degrees during the commencement ceremony at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Thursday.

The commencement ceremony for Harvard’s class of 2025 has ended in an eruption of cheers and celebration from the university’s graduates.

Dr. Abraham Verghese spoke about moving to a small town in Tennessee amid the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the mid 1980s, highlighting his pleasant surprise to find his dying patients well-received by their families, “given the prevailing sentiments against gay people.”

“They were cared for lovingly, to the end,” Verghese said. “Love trumps all bigotry, love trumps ideology. When it’s your child, when it’s your family member who’s affected – all that stuff just flies out the window.”

“These brave men taught me so much about quiet and about manhood, not the caricature of manliness, the posturing that has become so fashionable lately,” he continued.

“They found that meaning, … at the end of a shortened life, did not reside in fame, power, reputation, acquisitions, good looks,” Verghese said. “Instead, they found that meaning in their lives ultimately resided in the successful relationships that they had forged in a lifetime, particularly with parents, particularly with your family.”

Dr. Abraham Verghese delivers his commencement address at Harvard University on Thursday.

Dr. Abraham Verghese said he grew up in Ethiopia reading books by American authors such as Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway. From those novels, he said, he came to believe America is “a nation striving to live up to the ideal expressed in its founding documents.”

Verghese said he was inspired to pursue a career in medicine after reading the novel “Of Human Bondage,” by W. Somerset Maugham.

“The idea that now in America, a book that might speak to a young reader, reveal his or her calling, could be banned from their library by a school board or government decree is beyond tragic,” he said.

“I know we will find our way back to displaying those attributes of America I’ve admired from afar,” Verghese said to applause, “the America that I’ve known and loved from over four decades of being here, and it depends on all of you.”

“You deserve to hear from a star or a Nobel Prize winner, or perhaps, God knows, from the pope himself,” Harvard keynote commencement speaker Dr. Abraham Verghese, a bestselling author and a Stanford expert on infectious diseases, told attending graduates.

“When legal immigrants and others who are lawfully in this country, including so many of your international students, worry about being wrongly detained and even deported, perhaps it’s fitting that you hear from an immigrant like me,” he continued.

“Part of what makes America great, if I may use that phrase, is that it allows an immigrant like me to blossom,” Verghese said, nodding to President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. “The greatness of America, the greatness of Harvard, is reflected in the fact that someone like me could be invited to speak to you.”

Dr. Abraham Verghese – the bestselling author, Stanford University professor and infectious disease expert – began his commencement address by acknowledging Harvard is facing “unprecedented” times.

“In this institution’s almost four-century existence, there has probably not been more attention focused on you than in these last few months,” Verghese told the graduates assembled. “In coming to your campus, I feel very much like a medieval messenger who had to sneak through the encircling forces and slip into your besieged community.”

Verghese offered his congratulations to graduates and told them “no recent events can diminish what each of you has accomplished here.”

“A cascade of draconian government measures,” Verghese said, has sown fear in the US and across the globe.

“The outrage so many feel also must surely lead us to a new appreciation – appreciation for the rule of law and due process,” he said, to a burst of applause.

Rita Moreno looks on as Carolyn Hao performs during the Harvard University commencement ceremony on Thursday.

In the midst of the political controversy surrounding Harvard, a special honor for a legendary performer brought down the house. Groundbreaking Latina actor and singer Rita Moreno, 93, broke down in tears as she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Arts degree.

Moreno, who first performed on Broadway as a teenager and noted she was able to find work without a degree, was awarded the degree by Harvard provost John Manning “with hopes that the parchment we now present her will not damage her future prospects.”

Moreno was then serenaded by Harvard student Carolyn Hao with “Somewhere,” the showstopping number from “West Side Story,” a film for which Moreno won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1962. Moreno drew a standing ovation, joining with harmony on the final note.

A graduating student wears their decorated hat during the commencement ceremony at Harvard University on Thursday.

US District Court Judge Allison Burroughs says she will order the Department of Homeland Security and State Department to not make any changes to Harvard’s student visa program indefinitely.

While the Trump administration has tried to defuse the situation heading into a crucial court hearing for Harvard University’s international student population, the judge is moving forward with putting in place a firm court order – a preliminary injunction – after previously stepping in on an emergency basis last week to stop the Trump administration’s revocation of Harvard’s student visa program.

Burroughs said, “I want to maintain the status quo,” to allow Harvard to continue hosting international students on visas at this time.

Burroughs has told Harvard’s lawyers and the Justice Department lawyers to work out an agreement to stop the revocation of the student visa program for the time being.

“It doesn’t need to be draconian, but I want to make sure it’s worded in such a way that nothing changes,” she said.

Harvard’s lead lawyer Ian Gershengorn said he wants to make sure there are no “shenanigans” once the court order is in place.

The judge also has expressed concern that potential Harvard students abroad have been unable to get visas from some US embassies abroad since last week, according to Harvard’s sworn statements.

The Justice Department has said this morning the case may be moot because of the administration’s latest procedural move to delay consequence for Harvard, the judge indicated Harvard’s First Amendment claims may still need to be resolved in court.

The university says it is being unfairly retaliated against. The Justice Department now says that’s not true, and they will allow for additional administrative proceedings with the university over the student visa program.

As its battle with the Trump administration over funding and international students continues, the university is conferring honorary degrees on figures who have fought for equality, diversity and the environment.

Here are the 2025 recipients, who were announced on the morning of the commencement ceremony:

After the Trump administration announced plans to “aggressively revoke” Chinese student visas, Yurong “Luanna” Jiang, a graduate of the class of 2025 from China, received a standing ovation after delivering a commencement speech that urged graduates to remember their “shared humanity.”

Jiang, who is graduating from the School of International Development, began her speech by celebrating her 77 fellow graduates from 32 different countries.

“The countries I knew only as colorful shapes on a map turned into real people with laughter, dreams, and the perseverance to survive the long winter in Cambridge,” Jiang said. “Global challenges suddenly felt personal.”

Harvard’s school of international development was founded on a vision, Jiang said, that “humanity rises and falls as one.”

“If we still believe in a shared future, let us not forget those who were labeled as enemies, they too are human,” she said. “In the end, we do not rise by proving each other wrong. We rise by refusing to let one another go.”

The Trump administration in court is trying to put off being under any court orders in its fight with Harvard University over student visas.

In the first few minutes of the hearing, a lawyer for the Justice Department has told the judge Harvard’s moves in court for emergency help should be moot, because the Trump administration now wants to give the university 30 days to argue to them for their student visa program.

But the judge appears to be skeptical of the administration’s latest procedural move.

“I don’t know whether to take that as an acknowledgment procedural steps were not taken,” Judge Allison Burroughs of the District of Massachusetts said.

“Aren’t we going to end up back here in essentially the same place?” the judge also asked.

Less than 6 miles away from Harvard’s graduation celebrations today, US District Court Judge Allison Burroughs has gaveled in a hearing that could decide the future for Harvard’s international students.

Attorneys for the university will face off against lawyers representing the Trump administration over the government’s attempt to block the university from accepting any international students.

Across the river overlooking Boston Harbor, more than 50 lawyers, media and onlookers are awaiting the Harvard vs. Trump administration clash in court over student visas.

Harvard University has assembled a top-notch legal team that has arrived, expected to be led on Thursday by Ian Gershengorn, a well-established Supreme Court litigator and former acting US Solicitor General in the Obama administration, indicating the seriousness and likely substance of the hearing today on the student visa program.

Gershengorn is also notable for the firm he comes from, Jenner & Block, which was the subject of a severely limiting executive order from the Trump White House in recent weeks that was borne out of Trump’s personal animus toward some lawyers.

Three courts so far have determined the restrictions Trump is placing on law firms he dislikes are unlawful, and the Trump administration’s actions toward law firms and universities like Harvard are perceived as part of a similar campaign to punish powerful intellectual institutions in America that have championed diversity, globalization and the rule of law.

Thor Reimann speaks during his commencement speech at Harvard University on Thursday.

Harvard’s battle with the federal government places it in the middle of a larger fight, a graduating senior told his classmates from the commencement stage.

“We leave a much different campus than the one we entered, with Harvard at the center of a national battle over higher education in America,” said Thor Reimann.

“Now look, our university is certainly imperfect, but I am proud to stand alongside our graduating class, our faculty and our president with the shared conviction that this ongoing project of ‘Veritas’ is one worth defending,” Reimann said, referring to Harvard’s motto, Latin for “Truth.”

Reimann also noted achievements of past Harvard graduates in science and medicine, saying the school benefits the whole as a country.

“All of this, our alumni achieved, not in service of themselves or ideology but in service of others in times of great national need,” they said.

READ MORE: iPhones and GPS owe their existence to US government-funded research. What’s at stake with Trump cuts to university funding

Harvard University President Alan Garber reacts to a standing ovation during the Harvard commencement in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Thursday.

Harvard President Alan Garber received warm applause from the faculty and graduating class at today’s commencement celebration.

Garber, who has been the public face of Harvard’s legal fight against the Trump administration, was applauded for a full minute after giving an enthusiastic “Welcome!” to the audience.

Garber was loudly applauded again after making an indirect reference to the university’s legal pushback against the White House’s effort to make it impossible for Harvard to accept international students.

“Members of the Class of 2025, from down the street, across the country and around the world … just as it should be,” Garber said.

Graduates, he added, should be prepared to “expand our thinking and change our minds in the process.”

“My hope for you, members of the Class of 2025, is that you stay comfortable being uncomfortable,” Garber said.

Watch the moment: