Anger and Anticipation: Harvard Students Tune In for Trump’s Presidential Inauguration

In the days preceding the 2024 United States presidential election, Harvard’s campus buzzed with hopeful political activity as students donned pins, sent in mail-in ballots, and threw their support behind both candidates.

But just a week before the spring semester kicks off, President Donald Trump’s inauguration brings a different tone: somber, angry, and — for some — excited.

Across the globe, Harvard students tuned in to Trump’s Monday presidential inauguration, which marks the beginning of his second term as U.S. president.

Mandy Zhang ’27, co-president of the Harvard College Democrats, was initially hesitant to watch the inauguration.

“A lot of my friends around me were kind of against watching it,” she said.

But Zhang ended up watching the inauguration live on her laptop while curled up in bed, studying for an exam.

“As a good leader, even though I don’t want to watch it, I still force myself to,” she said.

While watching Trump’s inauguration, Zhang said she felt “angry a bit, just by some of his rhetoric and the policies that he was going to propose.”

Michael Oved ’25 — former president of the Harvard Republicans Club, which endorsed Trump in the election — said that the inauguration marked “a sign of a wonderful four years to come.”

“I watched President Trump’s inauguration, his speech, and I think it signals a tremendous shift from the administration that preceded him,” Oved said.

“The bulk of his speech was centered around the centrality, or the incoming centrality, in his administration of putting America first,” he added. “I think there’s a lot of value to that for American adversaries — and for even our allies — to know and understand that we are putting ourselves first.”

Sylvie S. Wurmser ’27 — who watched the inauguration during a Harvard-sponsored trip to Georgia in eastern Europe — said that seeing Trump take office was a “somber” affair.

“It was kind of sobering to watch the inauguration in a place where already so much has been taken,” she said. “I felt a little bit embarrassed for America when I was watching.”

Other students, like Jack W.H. Tueting ’27, co-president of the Harvard College Democrats with Zhang, were more struck by Trump’s first actions as president rather than the inauguration itself.

In the first few hours following his inauguration, Trump took 46 presidential actions, including 26 executive orders, according to the White House website. One of the orders Trump signed denounces diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at federally-funded education institutions — putting Harvard under increased pressure.

Tueting said he was focused on “the immediate aftermath of his inauguration, particularly a number of actions targeting vulnerable groups in the United States.”

“We are just seeing the same old tactics used in his first term that are tired, targeting many groups,” he added.

In Georgia, Wursmer woke up to the deluge of executive orders Trump signed into office. She said Trump’s decision to effectively leave the Paris Climate Agreement and end the Green New Deal “is not the direction we need to be heading in” during the next four years.

“I just kind of ate breakfast in silence because I was like, ‘Okay, like 1600 capital rioters were pardoned,’” Wursmer said.

“I was just shocked by his productivity because I felt in the last political election after he came in, he was a little bit incompetent,” she added. “So now, watching all these things happen just in the first couple of hours — to me, overnight — was definitely sobering.”

As students return to Cambridge, interviewees anticipate negative reactions from their peers, whose political views generally lean liberal. According to The Crimson’s annual freshman survey, 83.2 percent of freshmen found Trump as an unfavorable presidential candidate.

“I think that the student body at large is going to react very negatively to both this inauguration and the first few days of the new administration,” Tueting said.

Still, Oved encouraged his peers to approach Trump’s presidency with an open mind.

“There’s no doubt that the majority of my peers lean liberal. The one thing I’ll ask, and one thing I hope, is that they’ll give him a chance,” Oved said.

“I hope that my peers are rooting for America’s success during the next four years, just as much as I am,” he added.

—Staff writer Hiral M. Chavre can be reached at hiral.chavre@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Darcy G Lin can be reached at darcy.lin@thecrimson.com.