The group hosting the pro-Palestinian encampment at Harvard University announced Tuesday it made a deal with the university to end the demonstration—a fairly peaceful end to encampment that was in place for nearly three weeks and drew national attention to the school.
Tents and signs fill Harvard Yard by the John Harvard statue in the Pro-Palestinian encampment at ... [+]
Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine said on social media Tuesday morning it agreed to take down the encampment on the precondition that the administration would “retract suspensions” of students who were punished for remaining in the encampment.
The university also agreed students could have meetings with the Harvard Management Company “regarding disclosure and divestment” and there would be conversations of starting a Center for Palestine Studies at Harvard, according to the Instagram post.
However, the group said it is “under no illusions” and does not consider these meetings to be “divestment wins,” but that the “side-deals are intended to pacify” the students.
The group’s demands included that the university disclose its investments in occupied Palestinian territories, divest from those investments and reinvest them in the “propagation of Palestinian art, academia, literature and culture” and that it drop all charges against protestors, according to a video on its Instagram.
Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Forbes, but a statement shared with The New York Times said the school’s interim president Alan Garber would “pursue a meeting between encampment participants and the chair of the corporation committee on shareholder responsibility and other university leaders for a discussion regarding students’ questions related to the endowment.”
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“Every day we sustained the encampment—beyond the last day of classes, finals week, move-out—has been a day where we strengthened our organizing capacity, built networks of solidarity, and forced the question of Palestine on an institution that has historically refused it,” Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine said in its statement.
The encampment set up by Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine was in place for 20 days before students agreed to take it down. After almost two weeks, on May 6, Garber announced students who continued to participate in it faced suspension, saying in a statement that “the encampment … disrupted our educational activities and operations” and that “the right to free speech, including protest and dissent … is not unlimited.” Suspended students faced not being able to sit for final exams, to live on campus or even be on campus, among other things. Tensions escalated recently when protesters hung—and later removed—a banner that depicted Garber as a devil, drawing accusations of antisemitism.
Unlike many other universities with pro-Palestinian encampments and student protests, Harvard did not call on outside law enforcement to break up the encampment. At other schools across the country—including Columbia University, the University of Southern California and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—students had been arrested for their roles in pro-Palestinian encampments and some graduation ceremonies were canceled.
Over the weekend, a number of schools faced protests at their commencement ceremonies over the Israel-Hamas war. Pro-Palestinian protests in the form of walkouts and chants occurred at graduations across the country, including at Xavier University, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University.
Whether students protest Harvard’s commencement in any way. The university was setting up for its ceremonies—which are scheduled for May 24 through May 31—as students were dismantling the encampment.