Harvard Law School Students Pass Referendum Urging University To Divest From Israel

Updated March 14, 2025, at 12:27 a.m.

The Harvard Law School student body voted on Thursday to call on the University to divest from Israel — delivering a decisive endorsement of language that Law School administrators harshly criticized before it went up for a vote.

The resolution, which called on Harvard to “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,” passed with 72.7 percent of votes in favor, with 842 students participating. Nearly 2,000 students attend HLS.

The results — announced late Thursday night — mark the second vote by a Harvard student body in favor of divestment. Students at the Harvard School of Public Health voted in June to urge Harvard to divest from Israel, and governments at the Law School, Harvard Divinity School, and the Graduate School of Design have all urged divestment. But its passage is unlikely to result in change from Harvard, whose leaders have rebuffed calls for divestment at every turn.

The Law School moved swiftly to distance itself from the referendum outcome.

HLS spokesperson Jeff Neal wrote in a statement that “although it has historically administered leadership elections for student government, and offered to do so again this year, the law school administration played no role in the referendum conducted by student government.”

“As explained in a message to students, the administration expressed deep disappointment with student government’s leadership’s decision to proceed with a needlessly divisive referendum which runs contrary to student government’s stated objectives of ‘fostering community’ and ‘enhancing inclusion,’” he added.

The referendum was first proposed in a petition by Law Students for a Free Palestine, an unrecognized student group, which passed the 300-signature threshold to trigger a Student Government referendum Feb. 18.

In a press release Thursday night, HLS LSFP organizer and third-year HLS student Irene Ameena celebrated the result as a rebuke of U.S. President Donald Trump.

“The Trump administration’s threats are meant to scare us into submission, but this referendum shows that those efforts only strengthen our solidarity with Palestine,” she said.

In the last two weeks, the Student Government and HLS administration have been engaged in a heated back-and-forth over the referendum special election policies. The dispute boiled over into the public on Monday, when administrators anonymously wrote to condemn the referendum’s phrasing and students’ decision to administer it independently from the HLS Dean of Students Office.

Administrators wrote in the email that they feared votes would not be kept anonymous by the student government, which issued a response via Instagram hours later vowing to keep votes “secure and private, including from the University.”

According to a statement posted to the HLS Student Government website on Tuesday, elected leaders had asked for help from the administration in conducting the referendum, but the request had been denied by Dean of Students Stephen L. Ball.

Neal declined to comment on the Student Government’s Tuesday statement.

In the joint press release by Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine, the Dissent Collective, and HLS LSFP, Allie Ryave, a third-year HLS student, said that “far from scaring students into staying silent, the administration’s attempt to undermine this referendum rallied even more student support for divestment.”

Ryave, the president of HLS Tzedek, a group of pro-Palestine Jewish students, added that “it is clear that Harvard is intimidated by our collective power and the ever-growing movement for a liberated Palestine.”

The HLS Alliance for Israel, an officially recognized student group, criticized the referendum as “plainly discriminatory, calling for divestment from companies that violate human rights, but then falsely pointing to and moreover singling out the Jewish state.”

“This language turns what could have been a universal and inclusive referendum into an antisemitic one,” they wrote. “It forces students to side with false accusations of genocide and refers to Israel’s ‘illegal occupation of Palestine,’ implying that Israel has no right to exist anywhere.”

This week’s vote, which was held from 8 a.m. Tuesday to 10 p.m. Thursday, was originally planned to be held only on Google Forms, where students were asked to verify eligibility with their Law School email address. But to address concerns over anonymity, the Election Commission also held in-person voting on Wednesday and Thursday.

In an Instagram post the Student Government also pledged to delete data about how students voted after the results were announced.

“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. “To ensure privacy, student’s emails and their vote will be verified separately.”

“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,” they added.

The Election Commission spokesperson confirmed that the data had been deleted Thursday night.

“This referendum was properly brought by a petition signed by 300 students,” the Election Commission wrote in a statement to The Crimson. “As the HLS Election Commission, we take seriously our duty to carry out referenda once students avail themselves of the democratic process to which they are entitled under our Student Government Constitution.”

Correction: March 14, 2025

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the Harvard Law School vote was the first student body vote in favor of divestment from Israel. In fact, Harvard School of Public Health students cast a similar vote in June.

—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.