By Rahem D. Hamid and Elias J. Schisgall
The Class of 2025 spent their final semester in Cambridge looking on as Harvard emerged as an unlikely foil to the Trump administration, taking the federal government to court over billions in funding cuts.
The seniors are proud, to say the least.
After witnessing deep divisions emerge on campus after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, the Class of 2025 offered near-universal praise for the University’s lawsuit against the Trump administration, which has blocked more than $2.6 billion in federal funds over allegations of pervasive antisemitism on campus.
Seniors also gave strong marks to Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76, who was suddenly appointed to helm the University in the middle of their junior year. Garber initially spent his tenure trying to keep Harvard out of the national spotlight — until he unexpectedly became the face of the resistance to Trump’s higher education agenda.
But the senior class did not lend unequivocal support to Garber. Many seniors indicated disapproval for some of Garber’s signature actions, including cracking down on student protests and pro-Palestine academic programming. Half of the survey respondents said they believed Harvard should divest from institutions with Israeli ties — a key demand from pro-Palestine protesters that University administrators have firmly rejected.
Seniors also weighed in on topics including Claudine Gay’s presidency, diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, campus speech culture, and student organizations.
Harvard Administrators
More than 58 percent of surveyed seniors said they viewed Garber very or somewhat favorably, giving him the highest approval ranking for any Harvard president since The Crimson began surveying seniors in 2016. Garber’s approval rating rose nine points compared to the Class of 2024.
The 2025 survey also found a bump in support for former President Claudine Gay, who resigned in January 2025 amid criticism of failing to adequately address campus antisemitism and allegations of plagiarism in her academic work. Nearly 45 percent of survey respondents reported a somewhat or very favorable view of Gay, up 10 points from the Class of 2024.
Still, a slim majority of respondents — 52 percent — said they supported Gay’s resignation, while 31 percent said she should not have resigned. Of respondents who supported her resignation, more than 35 percent said they did so because the pressure on Harvard was too great, while only 16 percent said they felt Gay was unfit to lead the University.
For those that said that they felt Gay was unfit to lead, roughly equal percentages of respondents — 33 and 35 percent, respectively — pointed to her plagiarism and to her testimony before Congress as the primary factors in their thinking.
But not all of Harvard’s top brass enjoyed greater approval. Only 13 percent of surveyed seniors approved of the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, an approximately 10 percentage point drop from last year. The famously secretive Corporation came under scrutiny from students last spring after it voted to withhold degrees from a group of seniors who participated in the pro-Palestine Harvard Yard encampment. It eventually conferred the degrees over the summer.
Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra, who has stayed largely under the radar this past year, had an approval rating of approximately 25 percent, but 68 percent of surveyed seniors said they either did not have enough information about Hoekstra or had neither a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the dean.
Campus Activism and the War in Gaza
The Trump administration has framed its attacks on Harvard — slashing billions and threatening to revoke the school’s nonprofit status — as necessary measures to address a campus overrun with antisemitic students and faculty. Trump administration officials have cited Harvard’s own report on antisemitism, which was released shortly after The Crimson’s survey opened and described rampant social exclusion of Jewish and Israeli students.
But Harvard seniors resoundingly said the Trump administration was making a mountain out of a molehill. More than 60 percent of respondents said the government’s characterization of antisemitism on campus was “very exaggerated,” and almost a quarter said it was “somewhat exaggerated.”
That left only 2 percent of respondents who said the administration accurately characterized antisemitism at Harvard, while fewer than 1 percent of respondents said the characterization was understated.
Seniors broadly indicated that antisemitism at the University was far from prevalent, contradicting the federal government’s primary justification for withholding Harvard’s federal funding. Roughly 66 percent of respondents said antisemitism was very or somewhat uncommon, while only 12 percent described it as very or somewhat widespread.
Respondents who self-identified as Jewish were more divided. Roughly 50 percent of self-identified Jewish respondents said antisemitism was very or somewhat uncommon, while 46 percent said it was very or somewhat widespread.
In contrast, 29 percent of respondents described Islamophobia at Harvard — also the subject of a University task force report this spring — as very or somewhat widespread, while roughly 35 percent of respondents described it as very or somewhat uncommon.
The survey results also revealed a senior class sympathetic to the demands of pro-Palestine activists. Half of all respondents said Harvard should divest from institutions with ties to Israeli settlements in the West Bank or the war in Gaza, while only 19 percent said Harvard should not divest.
The results come in stark contrast to last year, when only 34 percent of seniors said they would have supported a similar Harvard Undergraduate Association referendum on divestment, compared to 48 percent who opposed it.
Seniors were largely split over Garber’s steps to combat antisemitism, which included adopting a controversial definition of antisemitism, cracking down on academic programs with an anti-Israel bent, and centralizing student disciplinary processes. Almost 30 percent of respondents viewed the University’s efforts to combat antisemitism favorably, while 22 percent viewed them unfavorably. Nearly half of respondents either said they had no strong opinion or not enough information.
When it came to the administration’s tightening of protest guidelines — a hot button issue for much of the senior class’s time on campus — a plurality of respondents, 40 percent, said Harvard’s handling of pro-Palestine protests was too restrictive, which marked a 13-point increase from last year.
Nearly 20 percent said they were satisfied with the protest response, and about 17 percent said the school was too permissive, down 14 points from last year’s survey.
Speech and Discourse on Campus
The aftermath of the war in Gaza and Harvard’s leadership crisis saw a renewed interest from administrators in addressing self-censorship and ideological orthodoxy on campus. At the undergraduate level, the College has aggressively promoted the Intellectual Vitality Initiative as an effort to engage students in civil dialogue on contentious topics.
But a plurality of respondents — almost 40 percent — said they did not have enough information to view the initiative favorably or unfavorably. Around 32 percent of respondents had a favorable view, while 11 percent of respondents had an unfavorable view.
Asked whether their peers had become more or less tolerant of dissenting views since their freshman year, nearly 40 percent of senior respondents said students have become less tolerant, while only 22 percent said students became more tolerant. About a quarter of respondents said acceptance of dissenting views stayed about the same.
A plurality of respondents, 43 percent, also said they believe there exists a “Palestine exception” to free speech at Harvard — a frequent allegation from pro-Palestine students and faculty who have said their views are unfairly targeted as hateful or antisemitic.
About 28 percent of respondents said a “Palestine exception” does not exist, while 20 percent said they were unsure and 10 percent had no opinion.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives have found themselves squarely in the crosshairs of the Trump administration, which has said they violate anti-discrimination laws, and many major corporations and universities have rebranded or rolled back their DEI initiatives. The Crimson’s survey was first released on April 28, just hours before Harvard announced that it was renaming and revamping its Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging to the Office of Community and Campus Life.
Still, the survey results suggest broad student support for Harvard’s DEI work. More than31 percent of respondents said that Harvard should not roll back its DEI efforts, and a similar percentage — just under 29 percent — said that the University should expand its DEI efforts. Meanwhile, over 27 percent of surveyed seniors said that Harvard should roll back at least some, if not all, of its DEI initiatives.
But students did not have strong opinions on the former EDIB office itself. An exactly equal number of surveyed respondents — at 23 percent each — said they either had no opinion or not enough information on the EDIB office, while just under 36 percent reported somewhat or very favorable views.
A 41 percent plurality of respondents said they have not been personally affected by Harvard’s DEI initiatives, while 33 percent said they have personally benefited from such initiatives. About 9 percent of respondents said Harvard’s DEI work has negatively impacted them.
Campus Organizations
The Harvard Crimson, the University’s only student-run daily newspaper, enjoyed a nearly 15 point boost in its favorability rating compared to last year, with 63 percent of respondents who viewed the publication favorably compared to 14 percent who viewed it unfavorably.
Other campus publications did not fare so well. The Harvard Lampoon, a semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine, saw only a 31 percent favorability rating, compared to 41 percent who viewed it unfavorably.
The Harvard Independent, Harvard’s other campus newspaper, had a 15 percent favorability rating, compared to 36 percent who viewed it unfavorably. And a large majority of respondents — 72 percent — said they had an unfavorable view of the Harvard Salient, a conservative student magazine known for distributing copies to all undergraduate dorm rooms.
Harvard’s student government, the Harvard Undergraduate Association, continued to receive poor ratings from seniors, even despite a year relatively free from controversy. Only 10 percent of senior respondents had a favorable view of the three-year-old student government, compared to 51 percent who viewed it unfavorably.
The senior class committee, which organizers social events for graduating seniors, saw a comfortable favorability rating of 45 percent, compared to 26 percent who had an unfavorable view.
Admissions
As Harvard navigates the post-affirmative action college admissions landscape following the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to strike down race-based admissions nationwide, the Class of 2025 expressed broad support for both race and class-based affirmative action and opposition towards legacy admissions.
Over 62 percent of survey respondents said they viewed race-conscious admissions very or somewhat favorably, compared to just 20 percent of respondents who reported somewhat or very unfavorable views on race-conscious admissions.
Class-based admissions, an oft-suggested alternative for colleges in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, received even more overwhelming support. A whopping 77 percent of respondents said they viewed class-conscious admissions very or somewhat favorably, with just over 7 percent expressing somewhat or very unfavorable views.
Meanwhile, the Class of 2025 was generally critical of legacy admissions, which have attracted much criticism from both the political left and right. Nearly 54 percent of survey respondents said they viewed legacy admissions somewhat or very unfavorably, compared to the approximately 23 percent of respondents who viewed legacy admissions somewhat or very favorably. Nearly 20 percent of respondents expressed neither favorable or unfavorable views.