CAMBRIDGE — Harvard professors, alumni, and students gathered Friday night for a "teach-in" against the Trump administration, urging the university to hold the line and refuse to negotiate with the White House.

About 50 people showed up.

Cornell Brooks, a Harvard professor and former president of the NAACP, told the crowd that the Trump administration's actions amount to racism.

"They encourage us day in and day out to fight one another," Brooks said. "It's racism. It's discrimination."

Theda Skocpol, a Harvard professor, urged attendees to take the fight beyond the university. "This is a regime that works between official power and popular pressure from the right," she said. "We should be fighting outside the university."

Rep. Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat and Harvard graduate, didn't attend in person — he sent a pre-recorded video instead. "From Harvard University, to Minneapolis, to the TV networks and Jimmy Kimmel, we gotta stand up for everybody's right for free speech," Raskin said, "and the ability of institutions to govern themselves and not to be controlled and ruled by Donald Trump and the MAGA authoritarians who surround him."

Jimmy Kimmel made the cut. The 50 people in the room probably appreciated that.

The Trump administration has spent months pressuring Harvard to adopt merit-based admissions and hiring policies, end race-based preferences, and hand over admissions data. The administration also froze $3 billion in research funding, arguing the university failed to address antisemitism on campus. A federal judge later restored the funding.

Harvard has responded by filing multiple lawsuits. The university has refused to turn over admissions data, calling the demand "retaliatory" and lacking merit.

Other Ivy League schools haven't taken the same approach. Brown, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania have all signed deals with the administration. Harvard has not — and the speakers Friday night urged it to stay that way.

"If Harvard holds out for them, I don't think there will ever be a deal," Skocpol said.

Whether 50 people in a room on a Friday night constitutes a movement or a book club is a question the speakers didn't address.