“Our colleges and universities have always been fundamental in the struggle for civil rights—a place to be challenged, but also a place to challenge conventional wisdom and ask what could be, instead of settling for what always has been.

“And that is why the current occupant of the White House is obsessed with attacking colleges and universities and restricting academic freedom across the country.”

Video (YouTube)

BOSTON – Yesterday, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-07) rallied with student activists from over fifteen universities in the Greater Boston area to push back against the Trump administration’s attacks on higher education and urge colleges to stand strong against the White House’s threats to deny students their right to academic and intellectual freedom. Rep. Pressley and the students – a cross-campus coalition known as the Educational Freedom Project – were joined by faculty, community members, state and local elected officials, labor leaders, and coalition partners.

An excerpt of the Congresswoman’s remarks is below and the full video is available here.

Transcript: Pressley Rallies with Students to Resist Trump’s Attacks on Higher Education, Urge Colleges to Defend Academic Freedom
November 15, 2025

Boston, MA

Good afternoon, movement family! And we are one human family.

And you all are here because you recognize that our freedoms and our destinies are tied.

We’re not numbers—we’re neighbors.

So I thank you for the intention with which you arrive here today. You care about your family, you care about your communities, you care about this Commonwealth, you care about our country, you care about our democracy.

Quick digression. I’ve been living with the autoimmune disease alopecia totalis for about five years. It’s a disease which makes it—I can’t grow hair, and I lost all the hair on my head, my face, and my body in a five-week period. And I had the option of wearing a wig, but I chose not to, because I recognize the power of representation.

And so it is with intention that I enter every space demonstrating what it is to be fully, authentically, and unapologetically myself, recognizing that I’m not only here to take up space, but I’m here to create it. 

Every single one of you deserves to show up in the world exactly as you are: fully, authentically, and unapologetically, without fear and without discrimination. 

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When I came here—I’ll age myself, because I look good still—in 1992, I walked onto the campus of Boston University. While there, I was President of my Student Government, and I was a Student Ambassador, doing all the things that you all are doing right now—building myself up so that I could build the world up.

Each of you are nation builders, and I’m so grateful for your sweat equity, for your laboring in love. It is truly an honor to be here with you activists, table-shakers, dreamers, and movement builders.

Thank you to the Education Freedom Project for bringing us together and for inviting me to share the stage with leaders from across the city and across our Commonwealth.

This hostile government would like for us to be a people that are ignorant and uniformed. A people that are indifferent to the suffering of our neighbors. A people that are inactive.

So when you are here, and you are engaged and active, when you are compassionate about the suffering of your neighbors, when you are well-informed—you are resisting and rejecting their dark, dystopian view of this country.

History has shown us that the way to beat authoritarianism is not with appeasement. That the only way to beat a dictator is with defiance.

So I thank you for the defiant way in which you show up here today. You are leaders who are bold enough, daring enough to imagine a world guided by justice.

You know, people like to accuse progressives for not being ‘pragmatic’ or ‘realistic,’ ‘too aspirational.’ My goodness, if my forefathers and foremothers had that opinion, I wouldn’t be here today.

The fact of the matter is that because of disruptors of an unjust status quo—the Civil Rights Movement, the progressive movement, which is just a continuation of that—somebody already wrote the blueprint for my survival, for your survival.

And in this moment, it is our responsibility to write the blueprint for someone else’s survival, to send a love letter to future generations, to be unapologetically aspirational.

I’m okay with people thinking I’m radical. My greatest heroes—Angela Y. Davis defines radicalism as getting to the root of the problem.

We’re here to get to the root.

It’s an honor to be here with you. And as I evoke the urgent words of Dr. King, he asked “Where do we go from here? Chaos or Community?”

That is the question. Because we are in a moment of chaos, of cruelty, of callousness, of people who govern with cluelessness about the struggles of everyday people.

So we must choose community. That’s what brings us here today.

We are choosing community.

We are choosing the discipline of hope over the ease of cynicism.

We are choosing to love our neighbors and to put that love into action.

We choose to create space where everyone who calls this community home can show up as their authentic self, free, and without fear.

We choose to organize and mobilize in defense of our shared values and the radical notion that representative democracy should deliver results for the people—all the people.

As I said on the floor of the House before Republicans voted once again to make us hungrier, sicker, less safe, to put healthcare farther out of reach for millions. 

In the United States of America, there is no lack of resource, there is no deficit of resource—only a deficit of empathy, of political will, and courage.

The fact of the matter is at its best, government is meant to be a backstop, a compassionate steward of the public good.

At its best, government catches people when they stumble in a moment of hardship.

At its best, government makes it easier to feed your family, see your doctor, build health and wealth.

And everyone here—no matter where you were born, where you attend class, what you are majoring in, or where you hope to serve after you graduate—we all have a role to play in the movement.

And you must play that role, because this is not about how to weather the next four years—this is about shaping the next one hundred. And our colleges and universities have always been fundamental in the struggle for civil rights.

As my good sister Darlene Lambos laid out—a place to explore new perspectives, expand your horizons, meet chosen family, forge bonds. 

A place to be challenged, but also a place to challenge conventional wisdom and ask what could be, instead of settling for what always has been. 

And that is why the current occupant of the White House—when he’s not working around the clock to deny families their SNAP benefits or tearing families apart for simply being Black and brown in America—is obsessed with attacking colleges and universities and restricting academic freedom across the country.

If only more people were more afraid of a dictator than they are diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.

So to every college and university in the Commonwealth, I say, remember who you are.

Do not shrink in the face of these precise, coordinated attacks on our intellectual freedom.

Root yourselves in your mission, in truth, in the sacred calling to educate a democracy worthy of its name. 

History has shown us that appeasement does not work. The only way to beat a dictator is with defiance. 

You know, their strategy relies on us accepting that their march towards authoritarianism is inevitable. They want us to believe it is inevitable. They need us to fall in the face of the odds. 

But I am here to tell you that the power of the people has always been greater than the people in power. 

You do not need permission to lead in your classrooms, on your campuses, or in your communities, or in this movement. 

Coretta Scott King once said that ‘freedom is never really won. You earn it and win it in every generation.’ 

Thank you for stepping up in this moment to win it for this generation. 

And I’ll close with something I’ve studied and have realized as I’ve studied movements throughout history—that every successful movement requires three things.

Imagination. Before you can do any radical work, you have to have a radical dream. Will you dream with me? Will you keep an imagination that we can one day all be free? You need imagination. 

The second thing you need is strategy. You’ve got to be innovative and nimble in that. 

And the third thing you need, and this is the hardest, is stamina. 

Today, you exemplify all three of these things, daring to dream of a future rooted in justice.

We’ll continue to organize, agitate, mobilize across campuses and across communities.

We’re here because we believe another world is possible. One where higher ed doesn’t mean a lifetime of debt. One where people choose people over profit. 

Young people—Light, truth, courage. Let your light shine bright. Speak your truth even when your voice shakes. And may your courage be contagious. 

Thank you, movement family.

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