Harvard Placed 3 Students on Probation For Role in Anti-CCP Protest, Documents Show

The Harvard College Administrative Board briefly placed three undergraduates on disciplinary probation for protesting Chinese Ambassador Xie Feng during an event at the Harvard Kennedy School in April.

The disciplinary charges were revealed earlier this week by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, which released several documents obtained from the University as part of its probe into the University’s handling of the anti-CCP protest at HKS. While the three undergraduate protesters were disciplined, a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who was filmed physically removing one of the protesters from the event did not face any disciplinary action from his school.

Rep. John R. Moolenaar (R-Mich.), who chairs the Select Committee on the CCP, slammed Harvard for disciplining the College student protesters but not the HGSE student, accusing the University of adjusting its disciplinary response based on a student’s ideological beliefs.

“This is yet another example of Harvard’s appallingly unequal treatment of protestors based on the speech they support,” Moolenar said. “Harvard is punishing brave students who spoke out against the CCP’s human rights abuses while not only letting the student who assaulted them off scot-free but also handing him an apology.”

University spokesperson Jason A. Newton declined to comment on the investigation, writing that the University “does not comment on individual disciplinary proceedings or cases.”

Cosette T. Wu ’25, a co-founder of the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP, was placed on probation for three days by the Ad Board over her role in the protest. Wu was the first protester to interrupt Xie’s speech, which featured six protesters standing up one at a time to shout and hold up signs denouncing the CCP’s policy toward Tibet, Hong Kong, East Turkestan, the Uyghurs, and Taiwan.

The HGSE student, who helped organize Xie’s talk at Harvard, grabbed Wu by the arm and forcibly led her away from the event to a Harvard University Police Department officer standing outside the venue.

Harvard had not authorized the HGSE student to provide security during the event, according to the documents released by the committee. HUPD officers present during the incident submitted an assault and battery incident report, though Wu declined two separate offers from HUPD officers to press charges against the HGSE student, according to HUPD logs and documents published by the committee.

HUPD subsequently closed the investigation.

House Committee on Education and the Workforce Chair Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), who is separately leading an investigation into campus antisemitism at Harvard, called the University’s response to the anti-CCP protest “unacceptable.

“Whether it’s pro-Hamas or pro-CCP agitators, administrators apologize to and actually encourage some students to keep expressing their so-called ‘meaningful discourse’ at the expense of the safety of other students,” she wrote.

HGSE Academic Dean Martin R. West wrote in a May 22 email to the student that he had decided not to pursue additional disciplinary action even though he had violated the school’s policy on physical violence because the student had been instructed by an event organizer to intervene and his action was “understandable in that context.”

After the event, a flurry of social media posts publicized the identity of the HGSE student, as well as his brother and parents, who allegedly hold top government positions in the CCP.

Following the doxxing, the student returned home and missed his graduation ceremony to be with his family, according to a separate email exchange between West and another HGSE administrator in early May. West wrote in the email exchange that he believed the publicization of the student’s identity had “probably punished [him] enough.”

In the email to the student, West wrote that he felt “sorry” that the student had missed his graduation ceremony and that he regretted the “significant harm” the student and his family faced “as a result of the event.”

The College Administrative Board meanwhile began investigating the three student’s actions on April 26, according to the released emails.

Two of the three students met with a subcommittee of the Ad Board on May 10, the Ad Board subcommittee report revealed. The third student declined to meet with the Ad Board. On May 17, the subcommittee submitted a report to the entire Ad Board recommending that the body “admonish” the students for “inappropriate social behavior.”

On May 21, the Ad Board notified all three students that they had been placed on “disciplinary probation” from May 17 to May 20, an offense that does not permanently appear on a student’s transcript.

The Ad Board took disciplinary action against the three students during the same week that it suspended five pro-Palestine protesters and placed more than 20 students on probation for their involvement in the pro-Palestine encampment in Harvard Yard. Many encampment participants who faced disciplinary charges had their sanctions reduced by the Ad Board several months later.

The committee’s investigation into the incident, however, leaves several of its questions from the July letter unanswered, including whether the group that hosted the April event is affiliated with the Chinese Students and Scholars Association — an organization that shares the same logo as the HKS group and is known for censoring anti-China dialogue on American university campuses.

In its response to the committee on July 31, Harvard wrote that while it was “not aware of any formal relationship between these organizations, nothing restricts students from being members of both organizations.”

Rep. Elise M. Stefanik ’06 (R-N.Y.) — one of Harvard’s fiercest critics in Washington — joined Moolenaar and Foxx in decrying the University’s decision to discipline the protesters.

“Once again, Harvard has proven to be completely corrupted by adversarial foreign influence,” Stefanik said in a statement. “Harvard is kowtowing to Communist China.”

—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.

—Staff writer Dhruv T. Patel can be reached at dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @dhruvtkpatel.