Harvard Braces for Graduation Protests

The turmoil began on Oct. 7, as more than 30 student organizations at Harvard signed onto an open letter holding Israel responsible for the violence of the Hamas attacks in Israel, in which more than 1,200 people were killed and some 250 kidnapped.

The backlash against the letter, and Harvard’s slow response to demands that it denounce the Hamas attacks as terrorism, led to strife on campus. Pro-Palestinian students were doxxed, their names and faces circulated on trucks around campus; Jewish students were attacked with antisemitic slurs on social media; and wealthy donors withdrew their money.

By January, Harvard’s first Black president, Claudine Gay, was forced to resign, after mounting charges of plagiarism in her academic work and her disastrous testimony before a congressional committee, in which she failed to denounce calls for the genocide of Jews as violating Harvard’s code of conduct.

Even an antisemitism task force met with controversy over the choice of its co-chair, Derek J. Penslar, a Harvard professor of Jewish history, who had drawn criticism that he underestimated the degree of antisemitism on campus.

The latest controversy over student discipline began on Friday, after Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine said that some seniors would not be allowed to graduate. The announcement caused a furor, as supporters of the students said that they were being punished for peaceful protest. Although Harvard did not provide details of what the students had done wrong, official statements indicated that protesters had cut a gate lock and harassed and intimidated staff members.

Some faculty supporters then engaged in a bureaucratic duel over the students’ fates.

On Monday, Harvard’s faculty announced that it had reversed the penalties against the 13 students, allowing them to graduate. Then on Wednesday, Harvard’s corporation, the university’s governing body, overruled the faculty, once again barring the students from graduating.