Harvard students awoke to a somber campus following Donald Trump’s reelection to the presidency early Wednesday morning. “My heart dropped a little bit,” one student said.

Some Harvard professors canceled classes. Others tweaked their lesson plans and asked students to care for their mental health. This week on Newstalk, Harvard reacts to Trump's return to the White House.

When you think about election organizing at Harvard, a few words might come to mind. Privilege. Access. Money.

The Harvard College Democrats are backed by a federally recognized PAC. Student leaders at the Harvard Republican Club have dined with former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and pulled off speaking events with multi-billionaire Peter Thiel.

Talk to them, and you’ll find that the name-dropping is constant, and the access is unparalleled. They’ll also tell you that all of it — the organizing, the networking — is available to any Harvard student who wants in on the action.

You’ll get the sense that Harvard’s run-up to Election 2024 goes far beyond the confines of campus. It takes students to the Republican National Convention and Democratic National Convention — to Pennsylvania, to Georgia — rubbing shoulders with some of America’s most powerful politicians, in some of the election’s most high-profile moments. Today on Newstalk, in an election special, we talk to the presidents of the Harvard Republican Club and Harvard College Democrats about the world of election organizing at Harvard.

As we neared the one-year anniversary of October 7 earlier this month, the Harvard Institute of Politics — the largest student organization on Harvard’s campus and its flagship platform for political discourse — saw a high-profile shakeup in its student leadership.

Citing the Palestinian exception to free speech, a vocal pro-Palestine activist resigned as the chair of one of the IOP’s popular programs on campaigns and advocacy.

The reason? Closed-door infighting over how to handle the 2024 elections and Israel-Palestine conflict in its programming.

As concerns about free speech and censorship ramp up, the IOP shakeup marked a fundamental disagreement between the IOP’s top student leadership on how to handle political campus discourse on Israel and Palestine.

Today on Newstalk, we join our reporters to break down the dispute — and we join the student who resigned to hear his version of the story.