Progressive groups targeting Harvard, other universities with ad urging them to not hire Trump officials

A coalition of progressive organizations announced Wednesday that it would launch an ad campaign urging major universities including Harvard to avoid hiring former members of the Trump administration.

Restore Public Trust, a group representing 40 progressive organizations focused on issues of civil rights, immigration and government accountability wrote that U.S. schools should not allow Trump officials involved in the administration’s family separation policy, which was ended last year, in their classrooms.

{mosads}“America’s college and university leaders have a moral responsibility to make it clear that the administration officials responsible for this horrific policy will not be allowed to seek refuge in their classrooms, lecture halls, or auditoriums,” Karl Frisch, the group’s spokesman, said in a press release.

“Disgraced former officials should not be offered cushy fellowships to rehabilitate their image or be given space to explain to students why they were only ‘doing their jobs,’ ” he continued.

The campaign’s launch includes an open letter to college and university presidents as well as full-page ads in student publications at major schools, including the Harvard Crimson, University of Virginia’s The Cavalier Daily and Stanford University’s The Stanford Daily.

Groups represented by the letter include RAICES, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Immigration Law Center.

Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer was hired as a Harvard visiting fellow following his exit from the Trump administration, and his speeches at the campus were reportedly off-the-record.

“Not a single word Sean Spicer spoke during his Visiting Fellowship at Harvard was on the record, nor could a single word could be heard without an explicit invite,” one student wrote in the Crimson.