Has "Harvard" announced a plan to blacklist President Donald Trump supporters on campus, as a social media post claims? No, that's not true: the plan is clearly one person's idea ("I think we blacklist ...) and not an institutional policy or proposal. In the last week of May, 2025, there was no public evidence the leaders of the private institution suggested or implemented a plan to punish campus Trump supporters over his decision to freeze $2.7 billion in grants and to block Harvard from enrolling international students. The blacklist claim was based on what appears to be one post by one student to a social media platform.
The claim appeared in a May 23, 2025 X post (archived here) on the @MilaLovesJoe account under the title "BREAKING NEWS:" It opened:
Harvard plans on blacklisting Trump supporters. FAFO, Harvard.
This is what the post looked like at the time this fact check was written:
(Source: X.com screenshot by Lead Stories.)
The evidence that "Harvard plans" to blacklist Trump supporters appears to be a post to a social media platform for anonymous posts by college students, called SideChat. Though the screenshot doesn't include a SideChat watermark or logo, the screenshot shows a message that matches past examples of SideChat's Harvard community design, as shown in reports about SideChat by the Harvard Independent, a student news site (archived here). The blacklist post says:
Until Trump backs down (if he does), I think we blacklist Trump supporters on campus. Don't let them into clubs, don't be friends with them, certainly don't date them. Bring back real social consequences for politically affiliating with a fascist.
No such blacklist plan was posted on May 23, 2025 to the webpage where Harvard publishes press releases (archived here).
Lead Stories reached out to the Harvard Media Relations office for comment and will update this fact check when they respond.
It would be extremely unusual for a university initiative to be both unsigned and stated in the first person, as the SideChat blacklist message is. When the university announces an initiative, the responsible official is quoted and named.
News coverage of Trump's disputes with Harvard has been extensive, but no evidence-based news organization has turned up a report on the university organizing a blacklist campaign against campus Trump supporters.
Using the search terms "Harvard AND blacklist AND Trump supporters", Lead Stories found no reporting on such a move in the Google News index (archived here) of thousands of news websites.
Readers can find more Lead Stories fact checks about Harvard here.
