A new school year starts at Harvard as students live with lingering White House threats

Cambridge, Massachusetts —

Summer break is over, and Harvard Yard is waking up again.

The nation’s oldest and wealthiest university – where red brick buildings went up before there even was a United States – buzzes with crisscrossing orientation groups. New students learn where to eat, where to study and why the toe of the John Harvard statue is so shiny, then line up on this sunny day to rub the bronze shoe for good luck.

Returning students, though, have their own story. As veterans of one of the most difficult semesters in Harvard University’s modern history, they have studied and lived at ground zero of the Trump administration’s high-stakes juggernaut against the purported ills of American academia.

And now, they’re back on campus.

“I do think there’s a big, big spike