HLS Officials Disavow Student Government Divestment Referendum, Citing ‘Needlessly Divisive’ Phrasing

Updated March 11, 2025, at 1:16 p.m.

Harvard Law School administrators forcefully distanced themselves from an impending student government referendum on divestment from Israel, calling the referendum’s phrasing “needlessly divisive” in a Monday email to the full student body.

Voting on the referendum — which the Law School Student Government plans to hold independently — is currently scheduled to begin on Tuesday morning at 8 a.m.

In the Monday email, which was obtained by The Crimson, HLS officials called it “deeply disappointing” that the student government opted to proceed with the referendum after “students and other student organizations” raised these concerns, though they did not name these groups.

“The Law School administration will play no role in” the referendum, the email continued. The email was not signed by specific administrators, as the school’s announcements typically are, and was instead signed “HLS Administration.”

Though administrators criticized the referendum’s phrasing, it is worded identically to a petition that received more than 300 signatures from HLS students — the threshold at which the student government is required by its constitution to put it up for a vote of all students.

The referendum asks students to vote on whether Harvard should “divest from weapons, surveillance technology, and other companies aiding violations of international humanitarian law, including Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its ongoing illegal occupation of Palestine.”

In the email, administrators also criticized the student government’s decision to administer its elections independently of the Dean of Students office this year. Administrators indicated they feared the referendum would not protect students’ names, writing that the student government “declined to respond to requests for confirmation that its voting process will be anonymous.”

Less than five hours after the administration’s email, the student government wrote in a statement on its Instagram account that due to the “charged political environment,” they will ensure the votes are kept “secure and private, including from the University.”

“Election results will be reviewed only by the members of the Election Commission to verify one vote per student and to tally the results,” they wrote. “The only information that will be released will be a final vote count and back end data will be deleted immediately after election results are certified.”

Harvard Law School spokesperson Jeff Neal declined to comment on the student government’s Monday evening statement.

John M. Fossum and Déborah V. Aléxis, the student government co-presidents, wrote in a statement to The Crimson that they had “complete faith in the Student Government Election Commission and their ability to run fair and transparent elections.”

The Monday statement — a rare, public rebuke of the student government by administrators — is just the latest flashpoint in a monthslong conflict between the student government and HLS officials. The quarrel started in November when school officials indefinitely postponed a referendum that asked students whether to condemn the administration for suspending study-in protesters from the school’s library.

Last week, the student government included a poem in its newsletter titled “____” in protest of the Dean of Students office. “DOS got our tongue, so we / Are out here writing po e try,” the poem ends.

The poem was in a newsletter approved by the Dean of Students office.

—Staff writer Caroline G. Hennigan can be reached at caroline.hennigan@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @cghennigan.

—Staff writer Bradford D. Kimball can be reached at bradford.kimball@thecrimson.com.