Harvard’s Punitive ‘Palestine Exception’

 

Members of the university’s medical faculty call out the Harvard Corporation’s disproportionate punishment of 13 seniors for participating in the school’s Gaza solidarity encampment.

Across the country unrest continues to shake university campuses and commencement ceremonies. At Harvard, over 1,000 people walked out of graduation in a coordinated protest over its handling of students involved in the Palestine solidarity encampment.

On May 14, after three weeks of peaceful protest, Harvard students dismantled their solidarity encampment based on assurances from Harvard President Alan Garber that disciplinary bodies would act “expeditiously under existing precedent,” with the goal that seniors would be able to graduate.

Garber led students (and faculty advisers) to trust that Harvard’s Administrative (“Ad”) Board, which enforces undergraduate academic regulations and conducts disciplinary processes, would be “guided by standard responses and considerations of equity.”

This, however, is not what happened.

The Ad Board placed 39 Harvard College students on multi-semester long probation and suspended five students. Consequently, 13 graduating seniors had their degrees delayed by multiple semesters. On May 20, the Faculty of Harvard College overwhelmingly voted to reverse the Ad Board’s decision and confer the 13 degrees.

However, on May 22, the day before graduation, the Harvard Corporation refused to let the 13 seniors graduate in a shocking rebuke to faculty governance.

These seniors may now lose post-graduate work opportunities and fellowships, including two of the 10 Harvard students awarded a Rhodes scholarship this year. These punitive actions will have lifelong consequences for students, many of whom are not from economically privileged backgrounds.

This disproportionate punishment exemplifies the “Palestine exception” by overturning decades of precedent in university disciplinary proceedings in prior student protest encampments — including many that were longer, larger, and more disruptive.

Far from responding in a “content-neutral” manner to Palestine solidarity protests, the university has shown that Palestinian lives — and the rights of those who advocate for them — are expendable.  (more...)

Harvard’s Punitive ‘Palestine Exception’