Harvard’s highest governing body sparked outrage by denying a faculty-led action to allow 13 students who participated in pro-Palestinian protests to walk at their commencement ceremony.
Late Tuesday night, the Harvard Corporation voted to reject an amendment proposed by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) to add 13 students to the list of graduates whose names had been left off the roll. Traditionally, the registrar sends the list of those who have met graduation requirements and are in good standing to FAS for approval. If FAS approval is secured, the list is sent onto the corporation, and the process is completed without incident.
But this year, about 500 faculty and staff members signed onto a letter demanding the restoration of those 13 students—including two Rhodes scholars—to the list of graduates. Those students had been left off the roll because they had participated in pro-Palestinian student protests and had been disciplined as a result, meaning they were no longer in good standing and not eligible for degree conferral.
In a show of force, 115 faculty members were present at the usually sedate meeting to support the students. But the corporation shut it down, saying that because the amendment did not challenge the disciplinary status of the students, the corporation could not allow them to walk.
“Because the students included as the result of Monday’s amendment are not in good standing, we cannot responsibly vote to award them degrees at this time,” the corporation said Wednesday. It added that allowing the 13 protesters to receive degrees would be unfair to other students not in good standing for reasons unrelated to the protests.
But the decision to bar the protesters from degree conferral will almost certainly set off a circular chain of events: Harvard Occupied Out of Palestine, the pro-Palestinian student coalition that organized the university’s encampment, signaled its willingness to disrupt the ceremony anyway.
“Your repression only makes us stronger,” the organization wrote Wednesday night, just 12 hours before commencement exercises were set to begin. “Collective punishment will not slow us down. There can be no peace during genocide, and we will not rest until Harvard divests.”
On Thursday morning, Harvard Occupied Out of Palestine posted an update from the front gates.
“Good morning from Harvard’s commencement,” it wrote in an Instagram post.
Hanging from the closed gates to the college was a white banner with text in black, green, and red—the colors of the Palestinian flag. “Harvard Funds Genocide,” the banner read.
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