At 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, more than 70 Harvard students huddled together at the bottom of the Widener Library steps. Kojo Acheampong ’26, addressing the others, condemned Israel’s ongoing military actions in northern Gaza.

“Are we ready?” Acheampong asked.

“Yeah!” the crowd chanted back.

Then, they all lined up, filed into the library’s main reading room, affixed signs to their laptops condemning Israel, and quietly began to study.

These silent library demonstrations, or study-ins, have become increasingly popular among pro-Palestine campus activists who want to denounce Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza and what they call a selective approach to upholding free speech principles at Harvard.

Many of the study-ins were led by Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine, the same coalition of unrecognized groups that organized the 20-day encampment in Harvard Yard. Members of the encampment — which featured loud chanting, banging on drums, and the creation of a tent city — initially faced severe disciplinary action from Harvard administrators, who argued that the occupation disrupted the University’s normal operations and posed a security risk.

The study-in protests are of a completely different nature.

Now, the pro-Palestine activists read books, watch lectures, and write essays — inviting Harvard officials to discipline them for engaging in the normal operations of a university.

To an extent, library administrators have obliged. At each study-in, security guards note down participants’ Harvard University IDs. Several days later, like clockwork, participants receive two-week bans from physically entering the library.

But the sanctions are largely symbolic rather than punitive. Each disciplinary notice is careful to note that participants retain complete access to Harvard Library resources and are free to use other campus libraries for the duration of their suspension.

Violet T. M. Barron ’26, a HOOP organizer and Crimson Editorial editor, said the study-ins have been “silent and very explicitly non-disruptive.”

“I think it’s a real stretch for them to consider silently studying while wearing a keffiyeh and having a piece of paper taped to your computer as a demonstration or anything that — what is the wording they like to use — violates the functioning of the university,” she said.

That’s where Harvard Library administrators disagree.

Martha J. Whitehead, the head of Harvard Library, defended the decision to temporarily suspend protesters from accessing the library in a lengthy statement posted to Harvard Library’s website.

“While a reading room is intended for study, it is not intended to be used as a venue for a group action, quiet or otherwise, to capture people’s attention,” Whitehead wrote. “Seeking attention is in itself disruptive.”

University spokesperson Jason A. Newton declined to comment for this article.

Caught in a Bind

The rise in study-in protests has put Harvard administrators between a rock and a hard place.

If they fail to discipline pro-Palestine protesters, members of Congress and donors will accuse the University of encouraging campus activism. But if they discipline students for studying in a library, faculty members and free speech watchdogs will levy allegations of censorship.

Faculty members have already shown they’re willing to go to bat for sanctioned students.

Two weeks after the first wave of library suspensions, approximately 25 faculty members staged a study-in of their own in Widener’s main reading room. The faculty members subsequently received similar suspensions — though they’ve since appealed the sanctions.

In effect, faculty members and students argue, the library bans punish them for studying.

When checking study-in participants’ IDs, security guards have passed out sheets of paper reminding them that protests are prohibited in Harvard libraries. But guards and administrators alike have declined to define what they consider a demonstration — and activists have resolutely refused to refer to their actions as protests.

Administrators checked IDs during a Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine sit-in in at Widener Library in late September. By Frank S. Zhou

Sanaa M. Kahloon ’25, an organizer with the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee who has participated in several study-ins, said it was “really powerful” to “sit in a room with people and engage in an activity that is entirely related to your own personal scholarship” and doing so “in the name of Palestine.”

Opponents of the study-in have claimed that even the ostensibly silent study-ins are a distraction.

“We don’t need three-million-volume treasuries like Widener Library just to read sound bites that fit on protest signs,” Harvard Law School professor Stephen E. Sachs ’02, a former Crimson Editorial Chair, wrote in an email. “We do need them to encounter deep ideas in an atmosphere of quiet and concentration, without other people trying to get our attention for the causes of their choice.”

But study-in participants argue that by focusing on actions that “compel attention,” library administrators have set an impossibly broad standard that functions to suppress political speech and pro-Palestine speech in particular.

“A standard as absurd as that is going to leave plenty of room — and, in fact, invite — content-based discrimination,” according to Harvard Business School professor Reshmaan N. Hussam, who joined the faculty study-in.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library Sciences professor Emily J. M. Knox, who chairs the National Coalition Against Censorship, said she thought Harvard could make its library policies more consistent by regulating specific behaviors, rather than banning protests in general.

But Knox said she thinks protesters haven’t crossed a line so far.

“Saying they’re not studying the right way in the library seems to me to be a bit of a stretch,” Knox added.

Writing ‘Rules Before Our Eyes’

Even the Harvard administrators who are willing to publicly defend the library suspensions acknowledge that there is ambiguity about what actually constitutes a protest.

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 defended the suspensions in an October interview with The Crimson, saying the study-in warranted some form of disciplinary action. However, Garber declined to say what specifically about a study-in makes it a protest.

“It’s very healthy to have a discussion about this issue of what actually constitutes a protest,” he said.

But so far, Harvard officials have largely avoided having that discussion in the public eye.

Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana repeatedly declined to take a stance on the library suspensions in an interview late last month, deflecting any questions about whether he supported the level of disciplinary action taken against the study-in participants.

“One of the things I want to really remind people is that because this rollout is new, that it’s understandable if there’s misunderstandings,” Khurana said, adding that he welcomed “feedback and dialogue” regarding the intention behind the rules — suggesting the policy was not yet set in stone.

Some faculty members who conducted a study-in to protest student suspensions said they were chagrined that administrators did not seem willing to speak with them about their concerns.

Harvard faculty members staged a silent study-in in Widener Library's Loker Reading Room two weeks ago. By Tilly R. Robinson

“There’s actually been a frustrating — and I think also potentially damaging — lack of communication from the library and from other administrators about this,” Government professor Ryan D. Enos said. “You would think that the response of an administrator would be ‘I want to understand why these colleagues are so upset and what their concerns are.’”

But frustration at Harvard’s disciplinary response has helped organizers rally more allies to their side. Kahloon said that she’s seen each Widener study-in draw more participants than the last — largely because people have found administrative response to the protests to be “so ridiculous.”

Barron said the temporary bans have made students more willing to protest because the sanctions, though predictable, are lighter than the probation and suspension rulings doled out by the Harvard College Administrative Board last spring.

Nonetheless, Barron said she wasn’t counting on anything.

“If there’s anything that you can trust this administration to do, it is write rules before our eyes and enforce them in different ways at their own will,” she said.

‘An Incredibly Difficult Situation’

Meanwhile, Harvard Library officials have found themselves face-to-face with more practical quandaries — communicating with library staff about the possibility of tense confrontations in their reading rooms, even as some staffers quietly support the protesters.

On the morning of Oct. 17, shortly before students gathered at the Law School library in Langdell Hall, HLS library assistant dean Amanda T. Watson emailed staff to warn them about the upcoming study-in.

“I ask that all of you please go about your normal duties,” Watson wrote in an email obtained by The Crimson. “Please feel free to temporarily work downstairs (if you don’t already) if you have any hesitation about being in library spaces during this time.”

She noted that security guards would be present to check protesters’ IDs and asked staff not to interfere with the ID checks or interact with protesters.

According to one person familiar with the situation, Watson did not address the study-ins to Law School library staff again until Oct. 25 — one day after students held a second study-in in Langdell Hall — when she sent a Slack message describing the repeated protests as “an incredibly difficult situation.”

“For many reasons, chiefly the confidentiality around the situation, I cannot speak about the events of these past weeks,” Watson wrote. “Please know any silence on my part is in no way an indication that I don’t want to share information along the very open path I hope we’ve started together.”

Some library staff have expressed frustration, saying that communication from above has been limited and Whitehead has not directly explained her decisions to library staff.

While waiting for a train in the Harvard Square MBTA station, special collections conservator Amanda C. Hegarty ran into two students who were temporarily banned from Widener for participating in a study-in. After speaking with them, she decided to join the next study-in at a library.

On Oct. 24, she participated in the second Langdell Hall study-in, attaching a sign to her laptop that decried the “erasure” of Palestinian cultural heritage.

On Thursday, Watson sent an email notifying Hegarty — whose preservation work involves materials across the library system — that she was barred from the Law School library for two weeks.

A security guard checked a student's HUID to write down their ID number at a Widener study-in on Tuesday. By Frank S. Zhou

Even as library protests have proved an effective tool for pro-Palestine protesters, they have not entirely turned away from their more traditional forms of dissent. On Thursday, HOOP organized its first rally in more than a month to denounce Garber’s refusal to review Harvard’s investments for human rights violations.

Barron, the HOOP organizer, said the group will continue to employ a variety of methods to advocate for their demands.

“When anything could be considered a protest, even something as non-disruptive as this — I don’t think it gets any more non-disruptive than this — if anything, it doesn’t hinder us,” she said. “We’re just gonna keep on trying stuff, and then seeing what doesn’t work.”

“You can definitely expect new and creative things,” Barron added.

While Barron said the group does not have any immediate plans for a major escalation, she didn’t rule it out either.

“Definitely not tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that,” she said. “Yeah, don’t worry about it in the next few days for sure.”

—Staff writer Joyce E. Kim can be reached at joyce.kim@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @joyce324.

—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.