Hundreds of students gathered at Harvard Yard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Wednesday to protest Israel's war in Gaza and the Ivy League university's suspension of the Harvard University Palestine Solidarity Committee.
In addition to the suspension, the university restricted access to Harvard Yard, the oldest part of campus, to Harvard students and faculty over the weekend. This was an apparent effort to prevent protests like the ones that have hit many other American campuses over the past week, including Columbia University, Yale University, and the University of Southern California.
But students appeared to be agitated by Harvard's actions, flooding the school grounds and setting up tents as part of an “emergency rally” to protest the suspension of the student group, also known as Harvard University for Palestine. .
The group was suspended after organizing a protest in Harvard Yard last week with other groups. An email from the university, obtained by the university's student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, called on the group to “cease all organizational activities” through the spring semester.
A Harvard University spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
A pro-Palestinian group at Harvard University is facing backlash over how it described the October 7 Hamas-led attack. The group leading Wednesday's protests issued a letter at the time calling the Hamas-led attack initially signed by many other campus groups. The attack “did not occur in a vacuum,” and given the region's history, the organization said, “the Israeli regime bears full responsibility for all the violence that is unfolding.”
The university has been at the center of a series of controversies since the war. Its former president, Claudine Gay, resigned after being accused of plagiarism while trying to fend off allegations that she did not do enough to protect Jewish students on campus.