CAMBRIDGE — For years, decades, centuries, this college town has been home to protests: colonists against the King of England, students against the wars in Vietnam, and in Gaza.
Now something different is brewing just outside Harvard Yard. The city government itself, citing concerns that its oldest and most noteworthy organization might give in to demands from President Trump, is organizing a protest that will pressure the university to resist him.
In what officials acknowledged was atypical, the City Council is hosting a rally from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday on Cambridge Common calling on Harvard leadership to oppose new efforts they see as attempts to make Harvard, and thus Cambridge, a more Trumpian place to live, study, and work.
The fates of the city and university have been intertwined for many years, but officials seldom publicly challenge Harvard leadership in this way. As far as town-gown relations go here, it’s a new era.
“Ordinarily the city should not be telling Harvard what to do and vice versa,” City Councilor Patricia Nolan said. “However Harvard’s response to this situation will dramatically affect the city.”
It’s “very unusual,” she said, but these are “unprecedented times.”
The rally comes in response to threats from the government’s antisemitism task force to withhold nearly $9 billion in federal funding if Harvard doesn’t follow a list of demands, including that it change departments and programs it believes are biased, “commit to full cooperation” with immigration enforcement, change its rules governing student protests, and end diversity programs.
The effort, the Trump administration says, is meant to “root out antisemitism.” But city councilors and more than 600 faculty members who signed a letter opposing it have said it would set a troubling precedent and yield too much power to Trump over colleges and the people connected to them.
A spokesman for the university declined to comment and instead pointed to a March 31 statement from President Alan Garber.
“We resolve to take the measures that will move Harvard and its vital mission forward while protecting our community and its academic freedom. By doing so, we combat bias and intolerance as we create the conditions that foster the excellence in teaching and research that is at the core of our mission,” Garber said. “Our commitment to these ends — and to the teaching and research at the heart of our University — will not waver.”
The city will provide sound equipment and a stage for the rally, a city spokesman said.
Blake Nissen for The Boston Globe
Other elite institutions have been weighing how conciliatory they should be in response to similar threats of funding cuts. Columbia University, also under pressure, has agreed to make significant changes.
So the threat to Harvard and its neighbors is real, the officials organizing the rally said.
“There are all sorts of lines being crossed that we’ve never had to deal with before,” said Cambridge City Councilor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler. “If any institution can stand up to threats from the president and has the endowment to back it up, it’s Harvard. They should be hearing from their students, their alumni, and the broader community because there’s a lot at stake here beyond the confines of Harvard Yard.”
Harvard’s endowment as of the 2024 fiscal year was $53.2 billion.
Earlier this week, the nine-member City Council unanimously passed a resolution that called on Harvard to “use all measures possible, including the University’s endowment funds, if necessary, to safeguard academic independence, the rule of law, and democracy.”
It also called on Cambridge’s city manager, Harvard alum Yi-An Huang, to “coordinate a response and consult with all relevant city, regional, and state entities to develop a united front and take all action possible to counter this assault on the foundational values of our city as a center of higher learning.”
Established in 1636, just six years after the founding of Cambridge itself, Harvard has a major influence on life in the city. Its reputation draws in both scholars and tourists from around the world, and it is Cambridge’s largest employer by a wide margin.
Faculty involved in organizing the event say everyone in Cambridge and cities like it has a stake in what happens at these institutions, whether they’re part of them or not.
“The Trump administration’s illegal campaign against universities isn’t just an attack on the people who work and study at them. It’s an attack on the local communities that thrive alongside” them, said Nikolas Bowie, a professor at Harvard Law School, and a member of the Harvard chapter of the American Association of University Professors, which is co-sponsoring the rally with the city. “We’re gathering these communities to urge Harvard’s leadership to stand up and fight back against sacrificing our freedom and the safety of our international colleagues to appease an aspiring autocrat.”
Spencer Buell can be reached at spencer.buell@globe.com. Follow him @SpencerBuell.