Hoekstra Issues New Guidance to Allow Chalking Despite Harvard Campus Use Rules

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences will once again permit chalking in campus spaces — so long as the chalk does not deface school property, according to a new interim guidance on how the FAS will enforce Harvard’s new campus use rules.

The move marks a reversal for the University after it first rolled out the policy in August after a year marked by intense campus protests over the war in Gaza. The campus use rules banned chalking but empowered individual schools and facilities to grant exceptions.

Though the campus use rules gave individual schools freedom to grant exceptions, a draft version of the policy obtained by The Crimson was poised to ban chalking outright.

The policy drew the ire of students and faculty members, who claimed the chalking ban encroached on free expression and the right to protest. In September, a group of professors chalked messages — including “Why do preschoolers have more academic freedom than Harvard students” — in front of the John Harvard statue to protest the policy.

Before new guidance was released, a group of professors sent FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra a draft motion they planned to introduce at a Nov. 5 faculty meeting. The motion, if passed, would’ve rolled back the prohibitions of chalking and postering in the FAS.

A professor said the FAS’ eventual guidance resembled the motion that the group put forward but an FAS spokesperson disputed that characterization, saying the guidance had been developed by an independent group and was not the same.

“Dean Hoekstra has made it clear that she welcomes faculty input,” the spokesperson said. “She characterized the feedback as clear and sensible and passed it along to the team who already had been working on FAS implementation guidance,” the spokesperson said.

The FAS’ interim guidance, which also explicitly allowed posters in approved locations like “bulletin boards” and “display cases,” is expected to be finalized by fall 2025, according to the spokesperson.

The chalking protest was not the only time faculty members voiced opposition to the chalking ban.

The new rules faced loud opposition at an Oct. 1 FAS faculty meeting, during which several professors raised questions about how the policy had been determined. During the meeting, Hoekstra told faculty that she had not been involved in designing the new rules.

Government professor Steven Levitsky, who participated in the chalking protest, said that he felt the new guidance was a step in the right direction but that there was still work to be done in improving academic freedom at the school.

“There’s more to be done because there’s an effort to impose a culture shift,” Levitsky said, referencing how students had recently been suspended from Widener Library for holding a silent study-in.

“As long as forces outside the University and elements within the University administration are coming up with new ways to regulate and restrict students’ right to expression, I think there’s going to be dialogue, pushback, and protest by faculty,” he added.

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