From Harvard to Yale – Stories Written on the Walls of Universities!
By Raja Zahid Akhtar Khanzada
In the stillness of night, when the world sleeps, some doors remain awake — doors behind which dreams of the future are woven, where flames of reason, research, thought, and inquiry burn bright.
Today, one such door has been knocked upon — but not by those who ask questions, rather by those who silence them.
Harvard University in America… is not just an academic institution. It is a lamp that has illuminated generations. Today, efforts are being made to extinguish that lamp, under the pretext that its light fuels “particular ideologies” while leaving other truths in darkness.
But the question is:
Will darkness become truth if the light is blocked?
Will placing a guard over the journey of inquiry change the course of history?
Can presidential seals ever rule over the wisdom of universities?
President Trump’s Anger Isn’t Just Over a Few Protests
It is an old conflict one that began with Socrates’ cup of poison, passed through Galileo’s silencing, and has now reached the courtrooms of modern-day Harvard. This is a battle between two forces: on one side is the power to break the pen, cut off funding, and block admissions and on the other, the power of reason, the will to think, speak, and dissent.
Recently, when President Donald Trump’s administration issued executive orders targeting DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programs, their echo moved from the corridors of America’s universities into the hushed whispers of its libraries. Under these new government measures, federal grants to numerous universities were either suspended or frozen amounting to more than $10 billion in total.
Harvard University, which receives about $2.3 billion annually in federal funding, was abruptly cut off from this financial support. Trump’s message was clear: “The price of freedom is silence.”
Similarly, Columbia University was stripped of $400 million, Cornell lost $1 billion, Northwestern $790 million, and the University of Pennsylvania was deprived of $175 million in funding. Yale, the University of Connecticut, and public universities in Arizona also found their grants under threat.
As investigations swept across the country, more than 60 universities suddenly found themselves at the mercy of the federal government — their funding either under review or fully suspended.
Harvard University President Alan Garber Declares: “We Will Not Bow Down”
These words were not part of a routine press release from an office they echoed a spirit of intellectual resistance. On the walls now, there are not just announcements; in the eyes, it is not dreams but questions that are being written. Every student, every professor, every researcher has today become a living page of history, and in the air of Harvard and other universities, a new book is being written one that might be the final line of defense for the democratic right to knowledge.
Today, cancer research has been halted research that held hope for thousands of lives. On the door of the Harvard Medical School lab, a note is now posted:
“We’ve learned how to dissolve cells, but we haven’t yet learned how to melt the heart of power.”
Across America’s universities, an unheard cry echoes a silent sob that rises in the moment when a wall is drawn between knowledge, identity, and conscience. A Palestinian student is handcuffed, and his thesis a historical study on Gaza is confiscated. A Pakistani researcher’s email is flagged as suspicious merely because it contained the word “Palestine.” The stain on Rumeysa Ozturk’s shirt wasn’t from tea, but a wound from a silent protest that power tried to silence.
These are not isolated incidents they are tests of the very principles on which universities were built. And in these moments, on the walls of Princeton, Albert Einstein’s words come alive once more:
“The aim of education is not merely the memorization of facts, but the training of the mind to think.”
When Columbia University rejected the $400 million grant following President Trump’s executive orders, it did not merely turn down a sum of money it prioritized its academic autonomy over oppression. Yale University raised the flag of intellectual resistance in the streets of Washington. In the library of the University of Michigan, Martin Luther King’s letter still breathes as if his words echo through the walls:
“Silence in the face of injustice is itself a crime.”
When this battle for truth and justice erupted within American universities, not every light could remain lit. After Trump’s orders, when universities in Texas began renaming their DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) offices, the scene resembled that of a criminal trying to hide their identity. When $812 million in research grants at the University of Arizona fell under threat, a haunting silence swept through the laboratories. Universities in Florida went so far as to erase the word “diversity” itself, as if tearing a page out of history and reducing it to ashes.
In such times, the dewdrops on the glass windows of Harvard’s Widener Library are no longer just dewdrops they are tears. Each drop reflects the image of a Pakistani student silently standing in line with a visa application in hand. Each tear is the sob of a Bangladeshi researcher wandering through the data libraries in search of truth. Each droplet is the voice of a Palestinian writer now scripting his stolen homeland in Urdu for there’s no one left to hear his own native tongue.
And all of this is happening in the very country that once shouted the slogan: “Make America Great Again.” But those dreams of greatness have now been consumed by political slogans and hypocritical narratives.
In universities today, the questions are no longer about knowledge they are about identity:
“Why did you criticize Israel?”
“Why did you mention Gaza?”
“Why do you wear a veil?”
“Why is your language Urdu, Arabic, or Persian?”
These questions are no longer being asked in classrooms, but in courtrooms and prisons where fear has taken the place of knowledge, and interrogation has replaced inquiry.
In the United States, the Trump administration is not only withholding funds, it is attempting to stifle intellectual breath. It wants to teach: think, but within our limits. Research, but with our permission. Speak the truth, but only the truth we dictate.
This is not just an issue for Harvard, it is an issue for every student who clarifies their name during a visa interview. It is an issue for every professor who views dissent in the classroom as the pinnacle of truth.
The decision is yours to make… Are you with the light or are you an ally of darkness? Are you the power of the question or a slave to silence? Are you the identity of Harvard… or its enemy within the walls?
History tells us that the ones who changed the course of the world were often students, not armed with cannons but with books in their hands. Today is that moment once again… the only difference is that the throne and educational institutions are face-to-face once more. Now all eyes are on Harvard’s clock tower, wondering when it rings next: will it echo freedom for them, or the chains of command?
The pages of history reveal that the flame of knowledge is not extinguished by the wind; its light only grows brighter. Perhaps a urdu poet foresaw this moment when they said:
ہم ہی وہ علم کے روشن چراغ ہیں جن کو
ہوا بجھاتی نہیں ہے، سلام کرتی ہے”
“We are the bright lamps of knowledge,
Whom the wind cannot extinguish, but salutes instead.”
Today, it is not the walls of Harvard that speak, but the pages of its books, addressing history: “You may erase us, empty our campuses, but the seeds of our thought are in the wind. Tomorrow, when your tyranny fades, these seeds will transform the desert into a garden.”
This story is not only about Harvard University in the United States; it is about every person who believes that the light of knowledge cannot be confined to a single wall. As long as there is even one student in the campuses of Harvard and other universities asking these questions, this war will continue. And history books will always write the names of those who stand firm for truth in golden letters
Zahid.khanzada@gmail.com
