Harvard reaches agreement with protesters to end encampment
Harvard University and student protesters announced Tuesday that they had negotiated an end to a pro-Palestinian encampment in Harvard Yard, with the university agreeing to discuss student questions about its endowment related to the war in the Gaza Strip and to quickly process petitions for the reinstatement of suspended students. The apparently peaceful outcome is one that has eluded some other colleges and universities, where officials have resorted to calling police to clear demonstrators.
The coalition orchestrating the three-week-old encampment, Harvard
Out of Occupied Palestine, known as HOOP, announced that it had “democratically voted to end its encampment after 20 days.”
The agreement at Harvard followed similar deals to end student encampments at more than a dozen other campuses over the past few weeks. At universities such as Brown and Northwestern, students obtained concessions, including meetings with trustees to discuss divestment and scholarships for Palestinian students. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee agreed to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
But at Harvard, the two sides’ statements about the agreement differed in nuance. The student coalition suggested that Harvard had caved in to its demands, while Harvard asserted that it was willing merely to open a dialogue about the demands and had not committed to taking any action.
On the student demand for divestment from Israel, for instance, Harvard maintained that what the administration had agreed to do was to offer the students a kind of tutorial on how its $49.5 billion endowment worked.
Harvard has held meetings about investments in the past with students who raised concerns about
United Nations cites a lower death toll among women and children in the Gaza Strip,
As Israel fights again in North Gaza, military discontent grows, other issues. On energy and climate, for example, Harvard agreed not to make new investments in fossil fuels and to wind down its existing ones.
“I will facilitate a meeting with the chair of the Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility and other University officials to address questions about the endowment,” Harvard’s interim president, Alan Garber, said in an email to the Harvard community.
The student coalition said the university had agreed to meetings with the Harvard Corp., the university’s governing board, and the Harvard management company, which controls its endowment. “Students will set the agenda, to begin discussions on disclosure, divestment and reinvestment,” the coalition said.
But in his statement Tuesday, Garber did not mention the word divestment.
The students said in their statement that Harvard had agreed to consider creating a Center for Palestine Studies. Garber, however, was much vaguer on that subject.
“In keeping with my commitment to ongoing and reasoned dialogue,” Garber wrote, “the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and I will meet with students to hear their perspectives on academic matters related to longstanding conflicts in the Middle East.”
Concerning discipline, the student coalition said the university had offered to extend leniency.
“The university is backing down on disciplinary measures and has agreed that over 60 students and student workers currently facing disciplinary procedures will have those cases expedited in line with precedents of leniency for similar actions in the past,” the coalition statement said.