Pro-Palestinian sympathizers began setting up tents on Harvard’s campus on Wednesday to protest the university’s suspension of the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) and demand a boycott on Israel amid its war with Hamas in Gaza.
On Monday, the PSC was suspended for the remainder of the spring semester due to its failure to register a protest and use campus space responsibly. The pro-Palestinian student group will face permanent expulsion if it continues to operate, Harvard warned in an email to the campus organization.
Over 100 encamped protesters flooded Harvard Yard after Harvard restricted access to the area to only university ID holders starting on Sunday, the student-run Harvard Crimson reported. The university, expecting pro-Palestinian protests to occur in the coming days, posted signs telling students they would face disciplinary action if they set up tents or tables in Harvard Yard.
No arrests have been made as of Wednesday afternoon, according to the Crimson, though some students anticipate the possibility. Protesters divided themselves into four color-coded categories based on the risk involvement they are willing to take: the “red team” is willing to be arrested, the “pink team” expects to face disciplinary action, the “yellow team” coordinates with the protesters and provides supplies, and the “green team” expects little to no repercussions.
Interim Harvard president Alan Garber, while declining to rule out a police response to the student protest, said there would be a “very, very high bar” before the police get involved. The Harvard University Police Department was present at the protest, but officers have not intervened as the demonstration has remained peaceful so far.
The PSC referred to the encampment in Harvard Yard as the “Harvard Liberation Zone” in an Instagram post that showed students dancing around in a circle. The protest could potentially go on for days as Jews continue celebrating Passover. The Jewish holiday began Monday night and ends April 30.
In a list of demands, Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine called for Harvard to divest any of its institutional and financial investments in Israel and drop disciplinary action against student organizers, including those involved in the PSC.
“In the past seven months, our protests against the intensifying genocidal campaign in Gaza have been met with repression, administrative targeting, willfully racist attacks (including from politicians and faculty members), and arbitrary policy changes designed to silence our voices,” the group wrote on Mondoweiss, a progressive Jewish news website. “We will not be deterred. By launching this demonstration, we renew our commitment to protest Harvard’s moral, institutional, and financial complicity in the genocide of Palestinians.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts similarly demanded that Harvard reinstate PSC in a Wednesday letter. The university defended its decision on Tuesday and has repeatedly rejected a boycott against Israel.
Harvard did not respond to National Review’s request for comment.
Harvard University became the latest higher-education institution to see widespread student demonstrations across the U.S. in response to the Israel-Hamas war. Anti-Israel protests have broken out on several elite campuses, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, Columbia University, and many others, in the past week. Mass arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters have been made at Columbia, Yale, New York University, and the University of Texas at Austin for their participation.
Also on Wednesday, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the antisemitic protests at leading U.S. universities and colleges, likening them to “German universities in the 1930s” when the Nazis were gaining power.
“They call for the annihilation of Israel. They attack Jewish students. They attack Jewish faculty,” he said in a two-minute video message. “This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s. It’s unconscionable. It has to be stopped.”
Notably, Netanyahu attended MIT as an undergraduate while simultaneously taking courses at Harvard in the 1970s.