Harvard University rejected an effort to confer a degree on 13 students who were disciplined for participating in a pro-Palestinian encampment.
An overwhelming majority of the 115 members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted to confer degrees on the 13 seniors, who had been given disciplinary charges from the Harvard College Administrative Board three days earlier, the Harvard Crimson reported. The decision was vetoed by the Harvard Corporation, the highest governing body at the college.
“Today, we have voted to confer 1,539 degrees to Harvard College students in good standing,” the Harvard Corporation wrote in a joint statement to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on Wednesday. “Because the students included as the result of Monday’s amendment are not in good standing, we cannot responsibly vote to award them degrees at this time.”
The typically procedural, sparsely attended meeting was flooded with faculty members seeking to use their power to push through the 13 disciplined students through graduation. The Harvard Corporation and Faculty of Arts and Sciences spent much of the meeting arguing over their respective power and jurisdictions. A statement from the Harvard Corporation implied that it did not believe that the Faculty of Arts and Sciences has the power many of its members believe it has, according to the outlet.
The impasse is bound to trigger a leadership crisis at a college beset by allegations of leadership failures over the past eight months.
Government professor Steven Levitsky told the student newspaper a day before the rejection that such a move by the Harvard Corporation could trigger a “faculty rebellion.”
“I would expect a faculty rebellion, possibly a faculty rebellion against the entire governance structure, because there’s already a fair amount of mistrust toward the corporation to begin with,” he said.
Critics accused the Harvard Corporation of violating its part of a deal to end the campus encampment, which was peacefully disbanded last week after negotiations.
The Harvard Corporation has defended its decision as necessary to prevent a double standard by not conferring degrees on students disciplined for nonpolitical reasons.
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“We also considered the inequity of exempting a particular group of students who are not in good standing from established rules, while other seniors with similar status for matters unrelated to Monday’s faculty amendment would be unable to graduate,” it wrote.
Harvard and many other prestigious universities have struggled since the beginning of the war in Gaza to balance criticisms from those accusing them of doing too much or not enough in dealing with campus protests. Several encampments, including those at Columbia University and the University of California, Los Angeles, led to violence and a massive police response to shut them down.