Harvard Faculty Hold Widener Library ‘Study-In’ to Protest Student Activist Bans

Roughly 25 Harvard professors conducted a silent study-in at Widener Library on Wednesday to protest the library’s decision to temporarily ban pro-Palestine students who held a similar demonstration last month.

During the study-in, Securitas guards recorded the participants’ names and Harvard ID numbers and distributed sheets of paper warning of possible penalties under the University’s January protest guidelines.

“Libraries are not spaces available for demonstrations or protests,” the sheets read. “Violation of these rules may result in possible revocation of library privileges and/or disciplinary action.”

The ID checks and slips of paper closely mirrored the library’s response to the pro-Palestine study-in in September. The University said at the time that students had violated guidelines on free expression and library use, and library staff banned the participants from Widener for two weeks.

Before the Wednesday study-in, at least 10 tenured faculty signatories outlined their plans in a letter sent to Martha J. Whitehead, the vice president for Harvard Library, and University Professor Ann M. Blair, who chairs the library system’s faculty advisory council.

“We would appreciate knowing if you intend to revoke our access to the scholarly resources we need to do our jobs (teaching, research, writing) based on our decision to read in the library,” the faculty wrote.

The letter and subsequent study-in functioned as an ultimatum of sorts to library administrators: discipline faculty participants and risk another round of anger, or withhold punishment and appear to create a double standard.

The Securitas guards at the study-in declined to answer questions — from both protesters and The Crimson — about who had instructed them to conduct the ID checks. A member of the library’s communications staff was also present.

A Securitas guard notes down the Harvard University ID numbers of faculty members who participated in a study-in at Widener Library. By Tilly R. Robinson

Harvard spokesperson Jason A. Newton wrote in a statement that Harvard and the library system “will continue to gather information about the action that took place in Widener Library’s Loker Reading Room today before determining next steps.”

Harvard Law School professor Andrew M. Crespo ’05, who participated in the study-in, rebuked the University’s decision to bar protesters from the library, questioning how a silent protest could be considered disruptive.

“I think that a university has every interest in making sure that its libraries are quiet places, that they are places where people can study, that they’re not disrupted,” Crespo said. “But I don’t think that you can describe sitting quietly at a table reading a book as disruptive in a library.”

Crespo and the Wednesday demonstrators weren’t the first to question the University’s decision.

Over the last few weeks, several professors and free speech advocacy groups have denounced the library’s decision, calling it an encroachment on free expression. Last week, the co-presidents of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard signed a Crimson op-ed condemning the decision, and a group of faculty protested the sanctions outside Widener on Friday.

Several student organizers affiliated with Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine, an unrecognized coalition of campus activist groups, were present at the study-in, wearing keffiyehs and working at a separate table from faculty participants.

At least one of the students — who had brought a camera to photograph the study-in — falsely identified himself as a Crimson reporter to library staff present at the event until confronted by a Crimson reporter.

The student organizer is a Crimson Editorial editor but was not at the event in any official capacity for The Crimson and is not a member of The Crimson’s News staff.

“While I do not comment on personnel matters, The Crimson takes very seriously issues of journalistic ethics and investigates all allegations of staff misconduct,” Crimson President J. Sellers Hill ’25 wrote in a statement.

A library staff member instructed the guards to check student protesters’ IDs but not the IDs of Crimson reporters.

At the study-in, faculty protesters wore black scarves and read texts on dissent, bureaucracy, and censorship — from Franz Kafka’s “The Trial” and George Orwell’s “1984” to the University-Wide Statement on Rights and Responsibilities, which Harvard officials have used to justify imposing sanctions on activists who violate protest guidelines.

When prompted to hand their ID cards to guards, protesters complied but repeatedly asked why the library was conducting ID checks and whether the guards could clarify what actions counted as protests.

Approached by a guard, one postdoctoral student adopted a perplexed tone.

“But I’m just reading,” the postdoc said. “Do you consider this a demonstration?”

“That’s what I’ve been told,” the guard said.

—Staff writer Tilly R. Robinson can be reached at tilly.robinson@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @tillyrobin.

—Staff writer Neil H. Shah can be reached at neil.shah@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @neilhshah15.