在与特朗普的斗争中，哈佛大学借鉴了公关策略：“永远不要浪费危机。”

【中美创新时报2025 年 6 月 12 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）哈佛大学正在部署华盛顿的经典武器——游说技巧。这是对抗特朗普计划的重要组成部分。这扇大门体现了哈佛大学自近400年前建校以来一直肩负的公共服务使命，这也是哈佛大学不断向公众传达的使命。《波士顿环球报》记者艾丹·瑞安和布鲁克·豪瑟对此作了下述报道。

哈佛校园的德克斯特门上刻有两行铭文：入口处刻着“进入以增长智慧”，出口处刻着“离开以更好地服务你的国家和你的人民”。

哈佛大学正在部署华盛顿的经典武器——游说技巧。这是对抗特朗普计划的重要组成部分。

这扇大门体现了哈佛大学自近400年前建校以来一直肩负的公共服务使命，这也是哈佛大学不断向公众传达的使命。

但这个信息到底传播了多远？

自三月以来，哈佛大学已成为特朗普政府高等教育改革的首要目标 。特朗普总统将哈佛大学描绘成一个左翼回音室，对丰富校外学生的生活几乎毫无贡献。作为回应，哈佛大学发起了一场全面的媒体攻势，以提升其在美国公众心目中的形象。

近几个月来，哈佛大学校长艾伦·加伯（Alan Garber） 在电视台、报纸和广播中警告联邦政府侵犯学术和机构自由。与此同时，这所常春藤盟校也在社交媒体和主流媒体上加大力度，解释其科研人员正在开展从开发癌症治疗方法到预防危及生命的食物过敏等各种研究。哈佛大学指出，由于 联邦政府削减了数十亿美元的资金，这些研究目前面临着严重风险。

华盛顿传播公司 Bully Pulpit International 的合伙人布拉德利·阿库布罗 (Bradley Akubuiro) 专注于企业危机管理，他表示，温斯顿·丘吉尔有时被认为“说过，永远不要‘浪费一次好的危机’”。

他补充道，哈佛大学正在抓住“一个机会，不仅教育人们他们做什么，而且教育人们他们不做什么”以及“他们代表什么”。

这是哈佛大学办学方式的一次转变，多年来，哈佛大学基本上都是让其精英品牌自己说话，其领导者通常不会通过国家媒体与校园和校友圈以外的人进行沟通。

“艾伦·加伯——愿上帝保佑他——没有接受过针对威权政府的辩护训练，我们的公关团队也没有接受过针对威权政府的辩护训练，”哈佛大学政府学教授、《民主如何消亡》一书的作者史蒂文·列维茨基说。

尽管如此，加伯在媒体中的地位还是很有战略意义的，这位来自中西部的前医生已经成为了傲慢特朗普的陪衬。

哈佛大学中央通讯办公室每天都收到大量媒体对加伯的采访请求。他接受了包括《纽约时报》、《华尔街日报》、美国国家公共电台、NBC新闻和《波士顿环球报》在内的多家媒体的采访。这与近几任哈佛校长的做法截然不同，他们很少接受校方主办的《哈佛公报》、《哈佛杂志》和本科生报刊《哈佛深红报》以外的媒体采访。

在他的支持者中，加伯被视为说话温和但行动稳健的人，是高等教育未来和民主本身斗争中意想不到的民间英雄。

自哈佛大学公开表示反对以来，特朗普政府已取消了近 30 亿美元的拨款，其中大部分用于关键研究资金，并禁止国际学生进入美国就读该大学。

哈佛大学正在利用法庭反击其认为的联邦政府的越权行为，就资金冻结问题起诉特朗普政府，并获得临时限制令，阻止政府禁止其国际学生入学。

哈佛大学的教职员工历来享有自由表达意见的自由——有时他们的言论与校方传达的信息相悖。但在这场危机中，不同学科的教授们表现出了显著的团结，一致认为，资助关键研究的数十亿美元联邦资金并非慈善或某种补贴，而是为了造福美国人民。

哈佛大学的核心公共关系团队，即哈佛公共事务与传播团队（HPAC），通过促成记者、行政人员和教职员工之间的采访，帮助塑造了故事。两位顶级媒体关系官员乔纳森·斯韦恩（Jonathan Swain）和杰森·牛顿（Jason Newton）分别来自密苏里州和德克萨斯州，并带来了在美国其他地区生活的经验。斯韦恩曾在地方和国家政治领域工作，而牛顿曾担任地方电视台记者。

中央媒体关系团队规模很小，只有大约四名员工，与每个学院及其他地方的数十名传播人员合作。学校没有聘请外部创意公司来策划公关策略；然而，它正在利用各种渠道和平台，包括在X上转发加伯的采访片段，以及为哈佛大学的Instagram账户制作介绍研究经费被削减的教师的视频。

有迹象表明，哈佛大学的媒体策略正在奏效。根据雅虎新闻/YouGov的最新民意调查，在两届政府持续对峙的背景下，相当多的美国人现在站在哈佛一边，而不是特朗普一边。根据新罕布什尔大学调查中心的另一项民意调查，在马萨诸塞州，每10名居民中就有6人支持哈佛大学。

大约一年前，倾向保守的拉斯穆森报告 (Rasmussen Reports)的一项民意调查发现，只有 10% 的美国人认为常春藤盟校的学生比其他大学的学生更能成为优秀的员工。

加伯因其清晰的信息传递而受到赞扬，至少在外部是如此；这标志着其前任克劳丁·盖伊 (Claudine Gay)不稳定的六个月任期的转变，在 2023 年国会关于反犹太主义的听证会上，当被直截了当地问及呼吁对犹太人进行种族灭绝是否违反校园规则时，盖伊回答说这“取决于具体情况”。

在加伯写给哈佛社区的信中，以及学校后来发布的关于反犹太主义和仇视伊斯兰教的报告里，他用“一个哈佛”这个词来呼吁大家团结一致，而这个词实际上可以追溯到前哈佛大学校长德鲁·福斯特。

加伯 并非无人批评：一些哈佛师生认为，虽然加伯公开表示抗议，但他在校园里悄悄地做出符合特朗普要求的让步。例如，哈佛大学最近将其“公平、多样性、包容和归属感办公室”的名称改为“社区和校园生活”，并停止为兴趣小组的毕业庆典提供资金。

即使面临这些批评，莱维茨基表示，“在我任职哈佛的25年里，自从艾伦·加伯站出来反对特朗普政府以来，哈佛的品牌从未像现在这样好过。”

与之形成对比的是：自从哥伦比亚大学默许特朗普的要求以来，其品牌影响力或许从未如此低迷。今年3月，特朗普取消了对这所纽约大学的4亿美元联邦资助后，哥伦比亚大学接受了特朗普的所有要求，包括彻底修改抗议和纪律规则。但这并没有阻止攻击——特朗普最近威胁要撤销哥伦比亚大学的认证，此前他的政府称哥伦比亚大学违反了民权法。

五月，哥伦比亚大学毕业典礼上，代理校长克莱尔·希普曼遭到人群嘘声。在剑桥，加伯在哈佛大学毕业典礼上获得了全场起立鼓掌。

还有数十所学院和大学正在关注这两所学校的进展，等待下一步行动。

“有些学校正在采取防守姿态，只是希望能够渡过难关，”前ABC新闻记者、现任波士顿Essex Strategies公司负责人、专注于危机沟通的TJ Winick说道。“哈佛似乎在说，‘听着，既然无论如何我们都会受到攻击，那我们不妨发挥领导作用。’”

汉普郡学院即将卸任的校长爱德华·温根巴赫表示，其他高等教育机构可以从中汲取教训。几年前，汉普郡学院一度濒临倒闭。许多学院和大学担心“可能会惹恼或冒犯他人”，但在这场争夺人心的战斗中，不可能赢得所有人的青睐。

他说，在与媒体或其他形象塑造者交谈之前，首先要“明确自己的身份——你所做的事情是独特的、令人兴奋的、有意义的，是不常见的”。

在思考汉普郡大学的“复兴”时，包括如何最好地吸引筹款支持，该学院倾向于其进步的、反建制的身份——将自己营销得更像一场社会运动或政治候选人，因为温根巴赫说，“从制度上讲，我们有这种 DNA。”

哈佛大学在与特朗普的较量中，正倾向于展现其作为一流研究型大学、重视公共服务的身份。阿库布罗表示，这场战斗本身很可能对哈佛大学有利。

他说：“如果叙事是来自你的机构，你就更有能力控制它。”

哈佛大学的毕业典礼上聚集了一大群人。

题图：自三月以来，哈佛大学已成为特朗普政府高等教育改革的首要目标。（环球报/Adobe/环球报/盖蒂图片社/Bloombe）

附原英文报道：

In its battle against Trump, Harvard is taking a page from the PR playbook: ‘Never waste a crisis.’

By Aidan Ryan and Brooke Hauser Globe Staff,Updated June 11, 2025, 10:19 a.m.

Since March, Harvard has become a top target in the Trump administration’s efforts to overhaul higher education.Globe Staff/Adobe/Globe Staff/Getty Images/Bloombe

Two inscriptions adorn Harvard Yard’s Dexter Gate: “Enter to grow in wisdom” on the way in, and “Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind” on the way out.

The gate speaks to the school’s mission of public service since its founding nearly 400 years ago, a mission that Harvard has repeatedly tried to convey to the public.

But just how far has that message traveled?

Since March, Harvard has become a top target in the Trump administration’s efforts to overhaul higher education. President Trump portrays the university as a left-wing echo chamber that does little to enrich the lives of those outside its gates. The university, in response, has activated an all-out media blitz to burnish its image in the eyes of the American public.

Harvard president Alan Garber, in recent months, has taken to television stations, newspapers, and radio to warn about the federal government’s encroachment on academic and institutional freedom. Meanwhile, the Ivy League school has stepped up its efforts — on social media and in mainstream outlets — to explain how its army of scientific researchers is working on everything from developing treatments for cancer to preventing life-threatening food allergies. That work, the university points out, is now at grave risk because of billions in federal funding cuts.

Winston Churchill is sometimes credited “as saying that you never want to ‘let a good crisis go to waste,’” said Bradley Akubuiro, a partner at Washington-based communications firm Bully Pulpit International who focuses on corporate crisis management.

Harvard is seizing “an opportunity to educate people about not only what they do, but what they don’t do” and “what they stand for,” he added.

It’s a change in approach for Harvard, which for years has largely let its elite brand speak for itself, and whose leaders have not typically made the rounds in national media to communicate beyond campus and its alumni community.

“Alan Garber — bless his soul — was not trained, and our PR team was not trained, to launch defenses against authoritarian governments,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard and the author of “How Democracies Die.”

Nevertheless, Garber is being strategically positioned in the media, and the former medical doctor who hails from the Midwest has emerged as a foil to the brash Trump.

Harvard’s central communications office has been inundated with daily media requests for Garber. He has sat for interviews with publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, NBC News, and the Globe. That’s a departure from recent Harvard presidents, who rarely have done interviews with outlets outside of the university-run Harvard Gazette, Harvard magazine, and the undergraduate newspaper The Harvard Crimson.

Among his supporters, Garber is seen as soft-spoken yet sure-footed, an unlikely folk hero in the battle for the future of higher education, and democracy itself.

Since Harvard went public with its resistance, the Trump administration has canceled nearly $3 billion in grants, much of which goes to critical research funding, and moved to bar international students from entering the United States to study at the university.

Harvard is using the courts to fight back against what it argues is an unconstitutional overreach by the federal government, suing the Trump administration over the funding freeze, and securing a temporary restraining order blocking the government from barring its international students.

Harvard faculty historically have had a free hand to speak for themselves — sometimes with messages at odds with those conveyed by the university’s administration. But in the midst of this crisis, professors from across disciplines have demonstrated a notable unity in communicating that the billions of dollars in federal funding that bankroll critical research isn’t charity or some kind of subsidy: It’s for the benefit of the American people.

Harvard’s central public relations team, known as Harvard Public Affairs and Communications, or HPAC, has helped shape the story by facilitating interviews between reporters, administrators, and faculty. Two of the top media relations officers, Jonathan Swain and Jason Newton, are from Missouri and Texas, respectively, and bring the experience of living in other parts of the country. Swain has worked in local and national politics, while Newton is a former local television reporter.

The central media relations team is small, with only about four employees who work with dozens more communications staff at each school and beyond. The university is not using an outside creative firm to mastermind a PR strategy; however, it is leveraging all sorts of channels and platforms, including retweeting clips of Garber’s interviews on X and producing videos for the Harvard Instagram account that feature faculty whose research funding has been cut.

There are signs that the university’s media strategy is working. A significant number of Americans now side with Harvard over Trump in the ongoing face-off between the two administrations, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll. In Massachusetts, six in 10 residents back the university, according to another poll by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.

That comes roughly a year after a poll by conservative-leaning Rasmussen Reports found that only 10 percent of Americans believed that Ivy League students make better workers than people who went to other colleges.

Garber has been praised for his clear messaging, at least externally; marking a turnaround from the wobbly six-month tenure of his predecessor Claudine Gay, who, when asked point-blank at a 2023 congressional hearing on antisemitism whether calls for the genocide of Jews violate campus rules answered that it “depends on the context.”

In Garber’s letter to the Harvard community that accompanied the university’s later reports on antisemitism and Islamophobia, he summoned a message of togetherness with the phrase “One Harvard,” which actually dates back to former university president Drew Faust.

Garber isn’t without his critics: Some Harvard students and faculty suggest that while Garber has put on a public act of resistance, he’s quietly making concessions on campus that align with Trump’s demands. For example, Harvard recently changed the name of its Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging to “Community and Campus Life” and stopped funding graduation celebrations for affinity groups.

Even with these criticisms, said Levitsky, “Never in my 25 years at Harvard has Harvard’s brand been better than it’s been since Alan Garber stood up to the Trump administration.”

As a counterpoint: Columbia University’s brand power has, perhaps, never been worse since it acquiesced to Trump’s demands. After Trump canceled $400 million in federal funding to the New York-based university in March, Columbia conceded to all of Trump’s demands, including overhauling protest and discipline rules. That hasn’t stopped the attacks — Trump recently threatened to pull Columbia’s accreditation after his administration said Columbia violated civil rights law.

In May, crowds at Columbia’s commencement booed acting president Claire Shipman. In Cambridge, Garber received a standing ovation at Harvard’s ceremony.

There are also dozens of colleges and universities that are watching what has unfolded at both schools and waiting to see what happens next.

“Some schools are playing defense, just hoping to weather the storm,” said T.J. Winick, a former ABC News correspondent and current principal at Boston-based Essex Strategies who focuses on crisis communications. “Harvard seems to be saying, ‘Listen, if we’re going to be attacked no matter what, we might as well lead.’”

There’s a takeaway here for other higher education institutions, said Edward Wingenbach, outgoing president of Hampshire College, which several years ago was on the brink of closure. A lot of colleges and universities fear “potentially upsetting or offending people,” but in the battle for hearts and minds, it’s impossible to win them all.

Before speaking with the press or other image shapers, it’s critical to first be “really clear internally about your own identity — what you do that is distinct and exciting and meaningful, that is not common,” he said.

In thinking about Hampshire’s “rejuvenation,” including how best to attract fund-raising support, the college leaned into its progressive, antiestablishment identity — marketing itself more like a social movement or political candidate because, Wingenbach said, “institutionally, we kind of have that DNA.”

Harvard, in taking on Trump, is leaning into its own identity as a premier research university that values public service. And it is likely benefiting from fighting its own battle, said Akubuiro.

“You have more ability to control the narrative if it’s coming from your institution singularly,” he said.