As Students Occupy Harvard Yard, Faculty Urge Against Police Response

As Harvard’s pro-Palestine encampment entered its sixth day on Monday, faculty stressed that the demonstration has remained orderly and peaceful.

The response from faculty to the protests suggest general approval for the strategy adopted by interim Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76, who has not sought to clear out the encampment as its membership remains Harvard-affiliated and peaceful.

The reaction of faculty comes in stark contrast to the situation at Columbia University’s encampment, where the arrests of more than 100 student protesters sparked a wave of faculty criticism against Columbia’s first-year president, Nemat T. “Minouche” Shafik.

It was the type of crisis with the potential to permanently scar a new university president — similar to the controversy that ultimately took down former Harvard President Claudine Gay, and exactly the revolt that Garber is hoping to avoid as he works to bring stability back to Harvard.

Garber and other Harvard officials, rather than cracking down on the encampment, have threatened administrative sanctions and restricted access to Harvard Yard indefinitely. But mostly, they have let the encampment — where students have intermittently rallied, prayed, and celebrated — continue unencumbered.

“I think the University leadership has handled the situation overall quite well,” Government professor Steven S. Levitsky said in a Thursday interview outside the encampment. “Certainly compared to other universities, the climate here has been much better in recent months.”

Levitsky cautioned administrators against cracking down on student protesters, saying that doing so would curtail their right to free expression and draw faculty ire.

“If they decide to go down the Columbia path, then I will join the protests, and many faculty will,” he said.

Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesperson Holly J. Jensen declined to comment for this article. University spokespeople Jonathan L. Swain and Jason A. Newton did not respond to a request for comment.

The University has repeatedly threatened disciplinary action against students, but it appears unlikely that any students in the demonstration will face arrests. Harvard University Police Department Chief Victor A. Clay said Friday he would only make arrests if protesters violated state or federal laws — not simply at the request of top administrators.

In a Wednesday op-ed in The Crimson, Government professor Ryan D. Enos urged Harvard to exercise restraint in its response to student demonstrators. A show of force would likely backfire, Enos wrote, adding that Harvard administrators ought to instead listen to students’ demands, many of which he called “eminently reasonable.”

Computer Science professor Boaz Barak, an Israeli-American who has spoken out against antisemitism at Harvard, also penned an op-ed suggesting that Harvard should not seek to clear out the encampment.

“A university should allow vigorous expressions of opinions, even when they cause some amount of disorder,” he wrote. “There are worse things than a few tents on a lawn.”

Still, administrators have recorded the ID numbers of students at the encampment at least once a day. After protesters raised Palestinian flags at University Hall, College administrators passed out paper slips that threatened “increasingly severe sanctions” and suggested students may have their degrees withheld while they face disciplinary proceedings.

That follows a pair of emails from Dean of Students Thomas Dunne warning that protesters violated Harvard policies and would face penalties — though a sanction from the Harvard College Administrative Board is a far cry from the police response on campuses like Columbia University, Yale University, and Emerson College.

Philosophy professor Edward J. “Ned” Hall said he was unsurprised by the threat of sanctions, suggesting it was part and parcel of the disruptive nature of the demonstration.

“Part of civil disobedience is being ready to accept the consequences,” Hall said. “And that should include being up against the Ad Board.”

Former Harvard president Lawrence H. Summers — who has been a vocal critic of student protesters — agreed that participants in the encampment should willingly face punishment from the University.

“As Martin Luther King and Gandhi and many others have recognized historically, accepting punishment rather than insisting that rules not be enforced is essential to the doctrine of civil disobedience,” Summers said in a Saturday interview.

Though the encampment has sprawled across the lawn in front of University Hall, the atmosphere in the Yard has remained orderly and even celebratory — with students studying on picnic blankets and holding religious services.

Still, some faculty and affiliates described the encampment as threatening — including Summers, who wrote on X that protesters’ actions “are antisemitic in effect if not intent.”

In a thread on X Friday, Harvard Law School professor Stephen E. Sachs ’02 described the protest as “a bunch of people quietly hanging out and listening to a teach-in lecture, amid handmade signs glorifying violence and urging the destruction of Israel.” Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi went further, referring to the protesters as “Jew haters and Hamas lovers” in a Wednesday statement.

But many faculty pushed back against claims of chaos and hatred on Harvard’s campus.

“I think the national narrative that protesting students are somehow violent or pro-terrorist or supporting Hamas or antisemitic is wrong, is simply not true,” said Levitsky, the Government professor. “I know a lot of these kids. I’ve taught a lot of these kids. And they are liberal, tolerant kids.”

In a post on X Friday night, Barak wrote that he had spent several hours outside the encampment and spoken with some of the organizers.

“Sorry to disappoint but none of them have horns, and no one I talked to supports Hamas,” Barak wrote. “I saw students who care very deeply about what is happening, and mostly want the war to stop and the hostages to return.”

However, others — including Sachs and Summers — have pressed the University to shut the encampment down.

“The University doesn't have to allow this,” Sachs — a former Crimson Editorial Chair — wrote on X alongside a photo of the John Harvard statue, which protesters had draped in a keffiyeh and a Palestinian flag.

On X, Summers labeled the encampment’s continued presence a “profound failure” — although he stopped short of calling for the use of force.

“I think President Garber’s statements about failing to rule out police action but saying that there’s a high bar for police action are completely appropriate,” Summers said Saturday. “I do not believe that bar has been reached.”

But, he added, the University should have more clearly communicated and enforced “severe consequences for those who continue to be in violation of the University’s rules.”

Psychology professor Steven A. Pinker wrote in an email that he thought it would be “entirely legitimate” and consistent with free speech principles for Harvard to eliminate the tent encampment and prevent protesters from chanting through amplified sound systems.

“The protesters are engaged in coercion: to make campus life as unpleasant as possible, by taking over pleasant public spaces and disrupting enjoyable events and ceremonies, until their demands are met,” Pinker wrote.

Harvard, he wrote, “has a right to prevent its spaces and events from being forcefully expropriated by students.”

Though some faculty think the University has been too hesitant in its response to the encampment, few seem to think it has gone too far. But earlier decisions came in for more criticism.

Several faculty reproached Harvard College’s suspension of the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee — a student group that has led many pro-Palestine actions, although the organization is not a sponsor of the encampment.

Levitsky, the Government professor, criticized the College’s suspension of the PSC as a decision made for “petty formal reasons.” Hall, the Philosophy professor, said he thought the decision was not made transparently enough — and that the public reasoning behind the suspension was insufficient.

In an email to the PSC, the College cited an April 19 protest the group helped stage, writing that the event had not been registered and violated guidelines on the responsible use of space.

Classics professor Richard F. Thomas said he suspected the PSC’s suspension was not made on content-neutral grounds.

“I thought that they were going after them on small rules,” Thomas said.

Thomas is a member of Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, which condemned the suspension in an Instagram post last Monday. In a speech at the encampment Wednesday, music professor and FSJP member Vijay Iyer urged Harvard to reinstate the PSC.

Although other faculty have largely remained at arm’s length from the protesters’ demands, the FSJP has provided direct support to student activists. In a press release, FSJP said that 30 faculty members joined the protest Wednesday and Thursday. Members have attended the protest in four-hour shifts, including overnight, said Harvard Medical School lecturer Aaron D.A. Shakow.

In a Thursday statement, the FSJP urged the University to “engage in good faith” with students’ demands for disclosure of and divestment from investments tied to Israel, the war in Gaza, or “the occupation of Palestine.”

But faculty were split on whether they thought protesters’ tactics would effectively engage administrators — and what role the encampment would play in a campus whose attention has been riveted by the war in Gaza.

Harvard Kennedy School professor Khalil G. Muhammad visited the protest — which he described as students’ stand against an “unjust war” — Thursday afternoon.

It is “inspiring to see young people standing up for their principles to participate in the oldest traditions that are at the heart of liberal democracy, which is the right of assembly and freedom of speech,” Muhammad said.

Other faculty offered criticism of the protesters’ methods. Walking by the encampment Friday, Harvard Kennedy School lecturer Francis X. Hartmann said he was worried the protest was not a “two-way” conversation between students and administrators. And Hall, the Philosophy professor, said he hoped students would make “serious and very visible efforts to reach across divides in this campus” instead of shutting conversations down.

Barak, in his Crimson op-ed, described the Harvard Yard encampment as “performative” and counterproductive to the students’ goals.

“Every day that the headlines focus on the antics of Harvard students is a day that they do not focus on Gaza,” Barak wrote.

In his Friday X post, Barak softened his tone, writing that he hoped protesters focus on “fostering dialogue and raising awareness of the actual situation, rather than provocations” — and adding that “at least some organizers of the Harvard encampment share that hope.”

—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.