() -- Jessica Tang has two degrees from Harvard University but barely donated directly to the school in two decades as a graduate. She’s even publicly criticized Harvard’s labor practices.
But now, she’s co-founder of Crimson Courage, a grassroots campaign trying to rally goodwill and money for Harvard’s fight against the Trump administration. The group is drawing in alumni like Tang who have previously provided little to no financial support to the university as well as those who have taken issue with its handling of an array of recent controversies.
The oldest and wealthiest US university, Harvard has one of the strongest alumni organizations in the country but faced particular rebuke and a pullback in donations over its response to campus protests amd antisemitic incidents following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel and the Jewish state’s retaliatory response. Harvard’s attempt to crack down on protests then deepened divisions between the administration and some students, faculty and alumni.
But this year, after President Alan Garber led Harvard’s defiant response to the Trump administration, there’s far more unity.
“We don’t agree on everything, but we agreed we could agree on these shared values,” said Tang, now the president of the Massachusetts chapter of American Federation of Teachers, an AFL-CIO affiliate. “That doesn’t mean we don’t think there are problems at Harvard that still need to be resolved, because we do,” she said. “But we think the federal overreach and retaliation is extremely dangerous — not just for Harvard, but for democracy itself.”
So far, the campaign has raised more than $50,000 in less than two weeks, primarily through appeals over its website and social media. Organizers are hoping for a bigger haul as Harvard welcomes back graduates for alumni day on Friday.
That’s a mere fraction of the $2.6 billion in federal research funding for Harvard that’s been frozen by the Trump administration and the billions more that are jeopardized by threats to its tax-exempt status and an effort to prevent the university from enrolling international students. Harvard on Thursday sued to block the White House from banning foreign nationals from entering the US to study at the university.
The fundraising also pales in comparison to the kind of big-money gifts that have traditionally powered Harvard’s $53 billion endowment, underscoring the limits of such grassroots efforts to stabilize its financial situation. Cash gifts to Harvard dropped 15% in the fiscal year that ended in June 2024 amid a pause in support by prominent backers such as billionaires Len Blavatnik and Ken Griffin who have called for changes at the university.
While high-profile alumni Massachusetts Democratic Governor Maura Healey and conservative commentator Bill Kristol joined a recent kickoff video call for the Crimson Courage that drew more than 5,000 viewers, it’s not yet clear if deep-pocketed graduates will rally around this call for support. Others including investor Bill Ackman have continued to criticize the school.
Renewed Loyalty
Still, there’s a renewed sense of loyalty among at least some Harvard students, alumni and faculty.
At Harvard’s commencement last month, hundreds of graduating students and their family members sported Crimson Courage stickers passed out by the campaign’s volunteers. Garber received multiple standing ovations , a sharp contrast to the chorus of loud boos that greeted him last year. The Crimson Courage group has also helped rally more than 8,000 signatures for a planned amicus brief supporting Harvard in its lawsuit over the Trump administration’s funding freeze.
“This is going to be a really healthy and cathartic moment between the university and the alumni community,” said Hunter Maats, another alumni founder of Crimson Courage who is now a real estate investment manager. It’s “a moment to reset the relationship.”
Garber has also appealed to alumni to donate to a special, newly created fund that would give him the ability to plug spending gaps. The money that the Crimson Courage has raised will go to that fund, but while the organizers are in touch with university officials, they consider their initiative separate from Harvard’s own efforts to rally donations.
“We are appreciative of all alumni and friends who support Harvard’s continued efforts to advance knowledge, foster innovation and serve the public good,” a Harvard spokesperson said in an email.
About 150 people signed up to attend a panel organized by Crimson Courage just off-campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during Friday’s Alumni Day. Attendees walking into the event stressed the importance of backing the university financially as it faces down Trump’s threats. They also sought to offer support in smaller ways such as as giving out the campaign’s stickers to passers-by.
Suzanne Boyce, who graduated from Harvard with a linguistics degree in 1977, said she was inspired to come Friday because of her work as a professor at the University of Cincinnati.
“I live with the consequences of the kind of thing that’s happening to Harvard at my own university, although in a milder form. But I have NIH grants, I have students from foreign countries, and I feel like Harvard is taking it on the chin for the entire apparatus of higher education and cutting-edge research,” Boyce said.
Crimson Courage defines its mission as “standing up for academic freedom and constitutional rights at Harvard and in higher education nationally.” The group has taken pains to be politically inclusive. Its website does not mention President Donald Trump by name, instead referencing “financial and other unconstitutional threats from the federal government.”
Harvard has also tried to walk a fine line of agreeing with the White House that reforms need to be made while also defending its right to control academic and campus policies. Garber, who is Jewish, has apologized for Harvard’s handling of antisemitism and acknowledged that he has experienced prejudice himself at the school. But he has also said the extent of the government’s demands show that “the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism.”
That message appears to be resonating with some cohorts of the Harvard community.
“A lot of folks have kept their Harvard sweatshirts in their drawers,” Maats said. “Now they’re dragging them out.”
(Updates with Crimson Courage event in 15th paragraph.)
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