BERKELEY, California (AP) -  
Hundreds of students, faculty and community members on a California campus booed on Thursday as speakers accused the administration of President Donald Trump of undermining American universities, as he questioned whether Harvard and others deserve tax-exempt status.
The protest on the University of California’s Berkeley campus was among events dubbed “Rally for the Right to Learn!” planned across the country.
The administration has rebuked American universities over their handling of pro-Palestinian student protests that roiled campuses from Columbia in New York to Berkeley last year following Israeli attacks on Gaza.
Trump has called the protests anti-American and antisemitic and accused universities of peddling Marxism and “radical left” ideology. On Thursday, he called Harvard, an institution he criticized repeatedly this week, “a disgrace,” and also criticized others.
At Berkeley on Thursday, protesters raised signs proclaiming “Education is a public good!” and “Hands off our free speech!” Robert Reich, a public policy professor, compared the responses of Harvard and Columbia to demands from the administration that they take such steps as ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs and putting academic departments under outside control.
Harvard President Alan Garber, in a letter on Monday, rejected such demands as unprecedented “assertions of power, unmoored from the law” that violated constitutional free speech and the Civil Rights Act.
Columbia had earlier agreed to negotiations after the Trump administration said last month it had terminated grants and contracts worth $400 million, mostly for medical and other scientific research. After reading the Harvard president’s letter, Columbia’s interim President Claire Shipman, said her university would continue “good faith discussions” with the administration, but “would reject any agreement in which the government dictates what we teach, research, or who we hire.”
You cannot appease a tyrant,” said Reich, who served in President Bill Clinton’s cabinet. “Columbia University tried to appease a tyrant. It didn’t work.”
“After Harvard stood up to the tyrant, Columbia, who had been surrendering, stood up and said no.”