Harvard IOP Student Leader Resigns, Citing ‘Palestinian Exception to Free Speech’
Nuriel R. Vera-DeGraff ’26 — the chair of the Harvard Institute of Politics Campaigns and Advocacy Program — resigned on Monday after the IOP rejected his last-minute proposal to heavily refocus the program on Israel and Palestine.
Nuriel R. Vera-DeGraff ’26 — the chair of the Harvard Institute of Politics Campaigns and Advocacy Program — resigned on Monday after the IOP rejected his last-minute proposal to heavily refocus the program on Israel and Palestine, according to an email obtained by The Crimson.
In his resignation letter, which was addressed to IOP staff and the student executive team, Vera-DeGraff said the decision to reject his proposal — a 10-week program that focused largely on pro-Palestine advocacy — constituted a “Palestine exception to free speech.”
“After a month of opaque communication, censorship, and deep disrespect for my role as CAP chair and time spent at the IOP — ended by meeting with my leadership team behind my back, changing the weekly meeting time without me, and a second email ignored by staff and exec — it doesn’t make sense to go on as chair,” Vera-DeGraff wrote in his resignation letter.
As CAP chair, Vera-DeGraff led a team of three other students who typically help invite guest speakers and develop programming centered around electoral campaigns and advocacy.
But five IOP students who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel issues said that Vera-DeGraff independently led the campaign to shift CAP’s focus to pro-Palestine advocacy.
IOP President Pratyush Mallick ’25 wrote in a statement that the executive team was “absolutely okay with an elections-based curriculum that included extensive conversation on Israel and Palestine” and that the group “opened up multiple lines of communication, opportunities for collaboration, and conversations on these topics.”
“No matter what angle of good-faith compromise we developed, the former Chair of CAP refused to work in collaboration with us or his program leadership,” he wrote.
Vera-DeGraff’s resignation comes almost one year after three members of the IOP Student Advisory Committee resigned in October 2023 after the group opted against releasing a statement condemning Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
IOP spokesperson Brigid O’Rourke and IOP Director Setti D. Warren did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.
The Fallout
Vera-DeGraff, a Crimson Editorial editor, said in an interview that he felt his proposal was being “sidelined” and alleged that there were “multi-day lapses in response time from different staff members” that limited his ability to proceed with his new vision of CAP.
“I was hearing no clarifying answers from student or staff leadership — that was really, for me, what was blocking CAP from moving forward,” Vera-DeGraff said.
In addition to serving in student leadership at the IOP, Vera-DeGraff is a prominent pro-Palestine student activist on campus. Last semester, he was placed on academic probation for his participation in the encampment of Harvard Yard.
The fallout between Vera-DeGraff and the IOP began on Aug. 26 when he shared his plan with Mallick and IOP Vice President Ethan C. Kelly ’25 to heavily refocus CAP on Israel and Palestine, according to Vera-DeGraff.
His interest in changing CAP’s programming came nearly two months after he submitted an original proposal — which Mallick and Kelly approved in June — that focused exclusively on the 2024 election and had no mention of Israel or Palestine, according to a document obtained by The Crimson.
By Aug. 30, Vera-DeGraff had submitted a revised programming outline for CAP, which he had prepared independently and not presented to other student leaders in CAP before sharing it with the executive team, according to two people familiar with the situation.
Vera-DeGraff’s revised proposal for the fall semester, which was obtained by The Crimson, included inviting a speaker from the pro-Palestine Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement to speak at CAP.
While his proposed programming touched on polling and the U.S. presidential campaign, his suggestions heavily focused on the state of pro-Palestine advocacy in U.S. politics. Topics included Vice President Kamala Harris’ public support for Israel and a pro-Israel lobbying group’s efforts to heavily fund primary challengers looking to unseat progressive members of Congress who were staunch critics of Israel.
Vera-DeGraff’s initial proposal did not include any explicit plans to invite Israeli speakers to CAP-hosted events this semester. Vera-DeGraff confirmed in a statement that his Aug. 30 proposal for CAP omitted Israeli speakers.
Vera-DeGraff said that IOP leadership considered his August proposal to be “too biased,” but added that he submitted a revised proposal on Sept. 27 that included one week of pro-Israel advocacy discussion.
‘10000% Opposed’
In his resignation email, Vera-DeGraff took particular aim at Kelly, alleging that he had privately expressed disinterest in having the IOP host conversations on Israel and Palestine.
Kelly wrote in a text message sent in a group chat with the IOP executive team on Aug. 25 that he was “10000% opposed to any and all I/P talk as part of our programming,” according to screenshots obtained by The Crimson.
“That could do incomprehensible damage to the IOP if done wrong,” he added. “And it will be done wrong.”
In a separate text to Mallick on Aug. 28, Kelly clarified that “CAP should be about campaigns” and that the IOP could “seek avenues elsewhere” for discussions about Israel and Palestine.
Kelly called the text message a “cherry-picked quote from a much longer, broader series of conversations between members of the IOP Executive Team,” in a statement on Tuesday.
“The ‘our’ in the text message shared with the Crimson references our CAP programming specifically — not the IOP at large,” Kelly added.
Kelly wrote that the “IOP’s top priority is and always will be student safety and belonging” and that the group is launching a new series “to provide a safe and productive venue for discussing Israel-Palestine.”
Vera-DeGraff alleged in his email that the proposal was rejected by the IOP over its “thematic narrowness” and focus on Palestine.
However, Vera-DeGraff noted that his proposed programming last spring — which focused on campaigns and advocacy in the Boston and Cambridge area — had a “quite narrow” scope but was still approved by the IOP executive team and staff.
Mallick wrote that the IOP only greenlit Vera-DeGraff’s programming proposal for the spring term because it focused on “conversations around campaign building skills, from the focus of local leaders in campaigns.”
‘I’m the Chair’
Two people close to the situation acknowledged that the IOP disagreed with the focus of Vera-DeGraff’s proposal for this semester, but said the IOP had offered to host a “two track” version of CAP that would feature programming on both the Israel-Palestine conflict and the 2024 U.S. elections.
But Vera-DeGraff rejected the IOP’s proposal and was adamant about having CAP maintain his proposed syllabus, according to the two people.
Vera-DeGraff said in the interview that he felt the IOP did not respect the authority that came with his leadership role and was hesitant to let CAP situate its programming “in the real world context” of Israel and Palestine.
“I’m the chair,” he said. “I’m proposing this to be my theme for the semester and a way for my students to learn about candidates and advocacy.”
Mallick wrote that since “we are nearly halfway into the semester of IOP programming, and 4 weeks away from the election, we had to meet with someone on the rest of CAP leadership to at least send out acceptances.”
“This was a conversation that was prompted by prospective CAP members, CAP leadership, and staff requesting that CAP have some kind of clarity on who was accepted or not,” he added.
Acceptances for CAP were delayed by Vera-Degraff’s August proposal and were not sent until last weekend — nearly two weeks after the IOP’s deadline for onboarding new members, according to one person familiar with the matter.
Throughout September, Vera-DeGraff had six meetings with the IOP executive team to discuss his proposal and two meetings with Warren and IOP staff, according to the two people.
Vera-DeGraff said he told Warren that his revised proposal was “not fully about Israel and Palestine,” but never won his support.
Vera-DeGraff said in an interview that he received an email on Sept. 17 from Mallick saying that the IOP did not intend to remove him from CAP programming, but that CAP would move forward with the traditional syllabus “with the help of CAP leadership, alongside support from IOP staff.”
“This email seems very contradictory and hypocritical to me,” Vera-DeGraff said. “Especially the point about wanting my involvement as CAP chair running the program, because the whole prior month had essentially been full of no willingness for me to actually have any impact on running the program.”
Vera-DeGraff’s resignation was not a surprise for several people close to CAP and the IOP. In a Sept. 9 meeting between Vera-DeGraff and members of IOP leadership, he was vocal that he felt unhappy with continuing with CAP in its traditional format, according to one person familiar with the matter.
Two people added that the IOP staff began sourcing speakers and allocating funds for Vera-DeGraff’s June blueprint shortly after it was approved. A description of the June proposal’s focus on the 2024 elections was also advertised on the IOP’s website and made available to prospective CAP applicants on July 1.
More than 100 students applied to CAP under the original June proposal and were not familiar with Vera-DeGraff’s proposed change to the syllabus at the time of their application, they said.
“By the time the former Chair reached out to us with new plans for the semester, we had already received applications for the program, as well as extensively advertised CAP,” the IOP executive team wrote in a statement.
In his email, Vera-DeGraff maintained that the IOP’s response to his proposed shift marked an atypical level of interference into the day-to-day operations of an IOP program.
“I faced no censorship, criticism, or pushback from exec or staff — you only took these measures when I tried to center programming around Israel and Palestine,” he wrote in the email. “It’s clear that my proposed blueprint was rejected primarily because it covered Israel and Palestine.”
“If this isn’t a Palestine exception,” Vera-DeGraff added, “What is?”
—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.
—Staff writer Dhruv T. Patel can be reached at dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @dhruvtkpatel.