Harvard Shouldn’t Silence Protest, but It’s Their Right To Regulate It

After a brief lull, campus protest has returned to Harvard.

Shortly after taking office, interim University President Alan M. Garber ’76 clarified the University’s protest guidelines. Many took the move to signal that his administration would be more swift to discipline campus protestors than its predecessor.

Nevertheless, after a few weeks of relative silence, the familiar sounds of protest again ring out at Harvard and in Cambridge. So far, pro-Palestinian groups have organized a rally in the Science Center Plaza, a march on the house of U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and a “die-in” on the steps of Widener Library.

In general, we welcome protest. Free expression is the lifeblood of the University, necessary to ensure that heterodox views can challenge orthodoxies, expand worldviews, and cultivate a spirit of tolerance.

Historically, the right to free expression has empowered marginalized groups to overcome powerful would-be censors and demand more just treatment. It’s no coincidence that generations of civil rights activists advocated for permitting speech, even when vulgar or hateful: They knew that when speech codes crack down, they start at the margins.

Protest, from whatever perspective, undoubtedly has an important place at our institution. That commitment cannot waver, even — indeed, especially — when speech is incendiary or very uncomfortable.

As it puts its protest policy into practice, Harvard must err on the side of fostering speech, not chilling it. Still, it is surely the University’s rightful prerogative to regulate student protest and, yes, discipline student protestors.

Harvard has legitimate reasons to limit protests — they have disrupted classes, blocked thoroughfares, and, in the case of the University Hall occupation, impacted the ability of administrators to do their jobs.

Under the circumstances, we find it strange that protestors at a private institution unbound by the First Amendment feel the University should look the other way when they resist it in ways that hamper its function.

Harvard owes student protestors a clear articulation of the range of consequences that violations of the protest guidelines could produce. But to a first approximation, to protest is precisely to defy the institution. To protest “within the rules” seems oxymoronic.

The recent student occupiers of University Hall understood this and knew they could face arrests, just as the hundreds of college protestors who demonstrated at Harvard during the Vietnam war.

While we certainly do not support violent reprisals against protestors, the fact remains that many of the most successful protests — the sit-ins of the 1960s, the Stonewall riots, the student protests against the war in Vietnam — also faced the fiercest opposition.

If history is any judge, Harvard’s new posture does not assure the failure of today’s student protestors or those who will follow them. Indeed, it may aid them.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

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