Harvard suspends and sanctions 35 pro-Palestine protesters. Students say disciplinary action violated the camp’s termination agreement

A student in a cap and gown attaches a photo of a deceased Palestinian to a Harvard gate. (Nancy Lane/Boston Herald)

Harvard informed 35 pro-Palestinian student protesters of academic sanctions over the weekend, students said – a move that sparked renewed opposition from groups on Sunday and that some organizers say violates the agreement between the university and the students, their camp to end.

“Harvard violated its agreement with student protesters,” the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee wrote Saturday on X, formerly Twitter. … “If Harvard doesn’t keep its promises, we see no reason to keep ours.”

Harvard and the Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine Coalition (HOOP), a coalition of pro-Palestinian student groups and organizers, negotiated an agreement last Tuesday to end the protest camp in Harvard Yard. Despite students’ claims that the disciplinary measures violated their agreement, and despite a rally protesting the actions Sunday afternoon, no students immediately moved to reopen the camp.

As part of the deal, HOOP said in a press release, students voted to end the camp and in return met with the university’s board of directors to discuss withdrawing from Israeli and other organizations. Additionally, the reinstatement of involuntarily furloughed student protesters and the expedited processing of cases before the board of over 60 students where there were “precedents for leniency in similar actions in the past” should also be discussed.

In a statement, Harvard President Alan Garber said he would encourage disciplinary committees to evaluate protesters’ cases “expeditiously and in accordance with their existing practices and precedents.”

Thirty-five of the cases before the board will face academic sanctions such as suspension and probation, HOOP and other student groups said in statements over the weekend. The students claimed that about 14 students will not graduate next week because of the sanctions and others will have to miss school for an extended period next year.

Harvard did not respond to a Herald request for information about the cases as of Sunday evening.

The decision to discipline 35 of the students with cases before the board violates “existing precedent,” the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee said.

In press releases opposing the decision, several student groups cited precedents related to the results of the 1986 South Africa apartheid camp, the 2001 Progressive Student Labor movement sit-in, fossil fuel divestment sit-ins and blockades from 2014 to 2017, and a Belinda Hall in 2016 at work, among other things. Harvard Artists for Palestine said in all of these cases, organizers faced “little or no discipline for comparable forms of nonviolent civil disobedience.”

A rally in support of students facing disciplinary action began at Harvard’s closed Johnston Gate – the university was closed again to anyone without a Harvard ID on Sunday – and moved through Cambridge on Sunday. Rally participants called the “extraordinary” punishment of pro-Palestine protesters compared to previous protesters at Harvard the “Palestine exception.”