A University Police State Is Forming. Harvard Can’t Be Next.

The nationwide movement in solidarity with Gaza continues.

As Israel’s assault on Gaza worsens — it has already killed over 34,000 Palestinians — people across the country, including student groups, have taken a stand. These students have bravely supported Palestinian liberation, echoing a long history of student movements challenging universities complicit in oppression.

This movement escalated last Thursday when Columbia University, breaking long-standing norms, suspended and arrested over 100 students for protesting. While the robust, diverse group of Muslim and Jewish protestors at Columbia underscored the power of nonviolent coalition-building, the university’s president deemed their protest encampments a “clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the University.”

In the following days, faculty members expressed disagreement with the university’s harsh response, rallying in support of student organizers and free speech. Similar encampments have since appeared at schools like MIT, Emerson College, and the University of North Carolina, and administrators have sent police to break them up at Yale University and New York University.

Now, on our own campus, Harvard has suspended the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee, the center of pro-Palestine organizing at this university.

We’re witnessing more than just the clashing of differing viewpoints. These confrontations display a deeply worrying nationwide trend where administrators are increasingly comfortable cracking down on peaceful pro-Palestine protest, including by summoning police. To students, demonstrations are necessary to prevent genocide in Gaza. To administrators, student protests severely disrupt campus life.

These encroachments raise profound questions about the role of university administrators: Will they safeguard free speech or stifle it under the guise of maintaining order?

Historically, campuses have served as incubators for movements that have reshaped society. From the Vietnam War to South African apartheid, student organizing for justice has driven significant changes in public policy and societal norms.

Rarely have universities proactively responded to student demands. Instead, often to their embarrassment, they send police in riot gear to punish students urging peace. In 1969, for example, Harvard sent in the police to aggressively clear students protesting the Vietnam War in University Hall. In 1985, University of California, Berkeley police arrested 159 anti-apartheid demonstrators for blockading two campus buildings.

Although many viewed these movements as contentious or disruptive at the time, they later gained recognition as essential for making progress. This fact is especially evident when one considers that several of these universities, like NYU, market their history of student activism to prospective students.

It appears history is repeating itself, and the hypocrisy of those in power is again on display. The response to current movements has grown increasingly repressive. Universities, supposedly bastions for academic freedom, now marshal police violence, silence valedictorians, and veto student democracy.

We are facing a dangerous return to an era where we treat nonviolent demonstration as criminal activity.

When universities emphasize rules and order, they often also overlook the safety of those expressing dissenting views. Pro-Palestinian students — myself included — continue to face doxxing, threats, and online harassment. There is a necessary balance between ensuring physical safety on campus and respecting our rights to free speech and protest, but that balance is currently lacking.

University crackdowns only serve to stoke student opposition. Given time, they can alienate a school community — faculty, students, and alumni alike, including those without a stake in the conflict.

If universities wish to de-escalate tensions, the solution is straightforward: Engage with students and negotiate meaningful policy changes. It is simply inadequate to acquiesce to far-right donors and pundits at the expense of legitimate student advocacy. That is not the way to address rising antisemitism and Islamophobia.

I fear that Harvard, like many other institutions of higher education, will persist with a misguided focus on “safety-ism.” Prioritizing an end to discomfort over challenging, necessary conversations, including about genocide in Gaza and the atrocities committed on Oct. 7, is a failing strategy and a moral failure.

We can protect all students. We can address injustice. We can avoid an unproductive administrative response.

A poor stance from Harvard at this critical juncture will not endure the test of time. We cannot lean into an academic police state where speech is monitored and muzzled. The consequences of such a shift are dire for both the university and the larger society.

Veritas is something to practice, not just preach. We must call on universities to uphold the principles of free speech and democratic engagement, even — especially — when it involves challenging or radical ideas. While contentious public speech and protest help kick-start debate, classrooms and other academic settings offer a forum for students to move beyond disagreement, eliciting deliberation and understanding.

Our campuses should elevate free speech as a form of active, engaged citizenship — not just reacting to change, but shaping it, aiming to create a more inclusive, dynamic society.

We students will never be silent in the face of oppression. It’s time our universities recognize it.

Clyve Lawrence ’25, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Government concentrator in Adams House.