Hundreds of pro-Palestinian students had arranged themselves in the grass in front of Harvard Business School, pretending to be dead. An Israeli American student appeared, holding a camera phone.
It was two weeks after Hamas’s attack on Israel, and tensions were high. The student with the camera was quickly surrounded. Protesters blocked his lens with scarves, yelling, “Shame.” They formed a scrum and forced him to exit the area.
The police at the scene did not interfere. But two years later, as Harvard works to mitigate the impact of the Trump administration’s assault on higher education, lingering disagreement over what happened — and who was harmed — illustrates how the national debate over the Israel-Gaza war continues to divide Americans, on campus and off.
The protest has become a touchstone for broader debate over campus unrest, cited over and over again by Republican government officials questioning how Harvard responded to protests. Justice Department lawyers invoked it in a Boston federal courtroom in June. Lawyers for the Department of Health and Human Services also brought it up, as evidence that Harvard permitted a hostile atmosphere for Jews.
Last month, the altercation was the focus of a House of Representatives Education and Workforce Committee letter threatening to cut off Harvard’s funding.
A lawsuit filed against Harvard in July by Yoav Segev, the Israeli American student, accuses the university of conducting a “sham investigation” of his assault. It is the key remaining civil case pending against the university for its handling of protests.
Mr. Segev’s lawyer, Mark Pinkert, called the episode a “key inflection point in campus antisemitism” since Oct. 7, 2023, the day Hamas attacked Israel. He, along with Republicans in Congress, have argued that not enough was done to punish the protesters, and that “blatant discrimination allowed for the ensuing antisemitic fervor at Harvard that continues to this day.”
The protesters, one of them Black and the other Southeast Asian, argue that they are the ones who have faced bias and unfair treatment, including punishment for actions they say were not illegal.
Debates over the treatment of antisemitism on campus and whether discrimination against some groups is taken more seriously than others have reverberated across the country. Universities have cracked down on protests and tightened rules around activism. Professors and students have been disciplined, expelled and fired. Campuses have been torn over which forms of speech should be tolerated and which should be penalized.
The protests died down long ago, but the issues seem far from settled. Republicans in power continue to question whether universities are doing enough to change campus culture, even as many on campuses say the pendulum toward punishment has swung too far.
The protests, said Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of the history of education at the University of Pennsylvania, “became the new cudgel of the new cancel culture warriors.”
A ‘die-in’ that never died
The “die-in” was timed to coincide with a campus appearance by former President Barack Obama. He canceled at the last minute, but the protest went on. Hundreds of students marched to a lawn near the Harvard Business School, chanting, “Free, free Palestine.”
Elom Tettey-Tamaklo, a Ghanaian American student at Harvard Divinity School, and Ibrahim Bharmal, a Pakistani American student at Harvard Law School, had been asked by organizers to serve as monitors to protect fellow protesters.
A number of counterprotesters were at the scene, but Mr. Segev’s actions stood out, Mr. Tettey-Tamaklo recalled in a recent interview. Mr. Segev was walking among the prone protesters, attempting to photograph their faces.
“We had seen a rise in doxxing people on trucks. So why else would you be recording at close range?” Mr. Tettey-Tamaklo said. “Even more than that, we just didn’t want him stepping on people. So we engaged him with our kaffiyehs.”
Video of the moments that followed show protesters forming a wall with scarves around Mr. Segev. There was jostling. Students yelled “exit” and “shame.”
Mr. Segev left, speaking briefly with a police officer before going to take an exam. Later in the day, he said he had not sought medical attention and did not want to file a report, according to police reports filed in court. But he also told police officers that he had been pushed, shoved and touched against his will.
That night, during internal discussions over whether to issue a statement on the protest, Alan M. Garber, who was then Harvard’s provost and is now its president, texted the dean of Harvard’s business school, Srikant Datar, seeming to suggest that Mr. Segev had provoked the skirmish.
“Another complication is that, although [the Israeli student] was technically within his rights … [t]he way he was taking videos appears provocative,” according to an excerpt from a text Dr. Garber wrote, which was cited in the letter released last month by the House committee.
But videos of the protest were garnering thousands of social media page views. The F.B.I. soon joined the investigation. By November, Bill Ackman, a hedge fund manager, and other prominent Harvard alums had attacked the university’s handling of the incident.
On Capitol Hill, Representative Bob Good, a Virginia Republican, incorrectly stated during a hearing that Mr. Segev had been pushed to the ground. The Department of Education demanded that the two protesters be expelled.
In May 2024, after a monthslong investigation, Mr. Tettey-Tamaklo and Mr. Bharmal were charged with misdemeanor assault as well as a hate crimes violation.
Mr. Tettey-Tamaklo said he inadvertently touched Mr. Segev’s backpack, but insisted he committed no crime. “There was no assault that happened here. I saw the headlines, and I couldn’t believe they were talking about me,” he said.
In a message to The New York Times, Mr. Bharmal denied he had ever intended to intimidate, harm or touch Mr. Segev.
Lawyers for Mr. Tettey-Tamaklo and Mr. Bharmal, who are now both 29, argued that they were singled out because they were people of color.
“This became a good case study because it involved an Arab man and Black man in a way that they could use racist language to pull into these stereotypes,” said Hussein Rashid, a former Harvard Divinity School lecturer who knows Mr. Tettey-Tamaklo.
Peacemakers in conflict
Mr. Tettey-Tamaklo was born in the United States, but raised in Accra, Ghana, as a Christian Zionist in a country strongly tied to Israel. His father is a diplomat, and Mr. Tettey-Tamaklo said that he had an epiphany after visiting the Palestinian territories and witnessing what he described as heartbreak and injustice, later teaching in Ramallah and working with the United Nations in Jordan.
When war broke out in Gaza, he became a fervent supporter of the Palestinian side.
Mr. Segev is also the son of a diplomat. Mr. Segev declined an interview request, but in an interview with the police days after the episode, he described himself as a peacemaker. His admissions essay to Harvard Business School laid out a project to build business collaborations between Palestinians and Jews.
Mr. Segev did not at first file a complaint, but his father, Ilan Segev, a former Israeli consul in Atlanta, later emailed the police saying that he had identified the protesters and that “his son wanted to press charges,” according to court records. The elder Mr. Segev is a Harvard Business School alum who served as co-chair of the Boston chapter of the Israeli-American Council, a national organization.
In court papers, lawyers for Mr. Tettey-Tamaklo and Mr. Bharmal raised questions about the Harvard police detective assigned to investigate, noting in court documents that Harvard’s police department suspended him after an incident in which he confronted a Black co-worker with homophobic and racist slurs.
But the criminal charges were ultimately dropped against the two men.
Instead, they were required to do community service, including picking up trash, but both graduated in May. Mr. Bharmal received a law degree, and Mr. Tettey Tamaklo received a master’s degree in theological studies.
The outcome has outraged Republicans, including the leaders of the education committee that has called university leaders in to testify over the treatment of Jewish students on campus.
“Harvard does not appear to have disciplined — and instead has rewarded — two students who assaulted an Israeli Jewish student who was filming a ‘die-in’ protest,” the leaders, Representatives Elise Stefanik and Tim Walberg wrote in September.
Among their complaints was that Mr. Bharmal was granted a $65,000 fellowship by the Harvard Law Review to advance his work with a Muslim civil rights organization in his native California.
The committee has demanded documents and threatened the university with possible termination of federal funding if it does not comply.
Mr. Bharmal and Mr. Tettey-Tamaklo say they have faced other repercussions, including harassment and threats. Mr. Tettey-Tamaklo, who had planned a career in international humanitarian aid, said he was still looking for a permanent job.
“There are a lot of opportunities I’ve had to forfeit because, ‘Who wants to be associated with Elom?’” he said. “I was the character cast in this awful theater.”
Stephanie Saul reports on colleges and universities, with a recent focus on the dramatic changes in college admissions and the debate around diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education.
The post The Harvard ‘Die-in’ That Set Off a Debate Over Protest and Punishment appeared first on New York Times.
