Students who staged pro-Gaza ‘pray in’ at Harvard library suspended

During the protest, covered by The Harvard Crimson, more than 55 graduate students insisted that Harvard “divest from Israel’s war in Gaza and end censorship on campus.” The protest focused on demands from some left-wing students who want the Harvard Management Company (HMC) to stop allegedly investing in organizations connected to Israel. The HMC is responsible for dispensing the endowment funding at the university.

In March 2024, the Harvard Law School’s Student Council voted 12-4 (with three abstentions) to approve a resolution that demanded the HMC “divest completely from weapons manufacturers, firms, academic programs, corporations, and all other institutions” that might in some way be advantageous to Israel. The vote prompted two members of the student government to resign because they said they “strongly disagree[d] with the resolution.”

The pray in went on for about 45 minutes before university security shut down the meeting and suspended the students for abrogating Harvard’s policy “to prevent students from feeling unsafe or distracted in spaces like libraries and classrooms.”

In her email announcing the suspensions, Harvard Divinity School Dean Marla F. Frederick said she is sympathetic towards the need for prayer. “At HDS we honor the importance of prayer and what it represents for so many,” she wrote. “And, as one colleague reminded us recently, ‘prayer is protest.’ In and of itself, advocacy for the cause of people under duress — whether in Israel, Gaza, or other parts of the world — is noble.”

One of the student protesters said Frederick’s remarks failed to grasp the issue at hand. “There’s a serious tension there between the ideals that HDS purports to uphold and the consequences that they impose on students who are living out these very ideals,” she said. “Harvard doesn’t support free speech. And I say this as someone who is Jewish and both concerned about antisemitism and concerned about the genocide of the Palestinian people.”

President-elect Donald Trump has warned America's post-secondary institutions that they need to stop "antisemetic propaganda or lose their accreditation and taxpayer support."