Faculty Members Suspended From Harvard’s Main Library After ‘Study-In’ Protest

Updated October 25, 2024, at 12:38 p.m.

Harvard Library suspended roughly 25 faculty members from entering Widener Library for two weeks after they conducted a silent “study-in” protest in the library’s main reading room last week — an extraordinary disciplinary action taken by the University against its own faculty.

The faculty study-in protested the library’s decision to similarly suspend student protesters who conducted a pro-Palestine study-in last month. The University’s decision to suspend students from the library had already come under fire from free speech groups, including the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard.

During the faculty study-in, professors silently read materials on free speech and dissent while placing signs related to free speech and University policy on the tables in front of them. As they did so, Securitas guards noted down their names and ID numbers.

The faculty protest forced Harvard administrators to choose between sanctioning their own colleagues and relaxing the disciplinary precedent it set by suspending student activists three weeks ago.

Though the University has previously disciplined faculty members for academic misconduct or violating policies on sexual harassment, the decision to suspend professors from a library for protesting appears to be unprecedented. The Crimson could not identify any past cases where Harvard barred a group of faculty members from entering a specific campus space as a result of their activism.

The suspension notification sent to faculty members, obtained by The Crimson, was largely the same as the email sent to student activists last month, though it doubled down on the move to suspend study-in participants by citing “the University’s response in prior situations.”

In particular, library administrators charged the faculty members with gathering in the library “with the purpose of capturing people’s attention through the display of tent-card signs, which administrators said violated library policies.

Faculty members were told their borrowing privileges from the library had not been affected and that they would still be able to access other locations in the library system. However, the email said they would not be allowed inside Widener — the University’s flagship library.

The decision to suspend faculty members’ library access appears to have been made by Harvard Library directly as opposed to the individual schools. The email notification said the professors’ deans had been “informed of this violation.”

The faculty protesters were told they could appeal the suspensions to Martha J. Whitehead, the head of the Harvard Library system, by Oct. 29 if they felt the suspension was made “in error.”

Harvard spokesperson Jonathan L. Swain declined to comment on the suspensions, saying the University wouldn’t comment on “individual matters.” Harvard Library spokesperson Kerry Conley referred The Crimson to a Thursday statement from Whitehead.

In her statement, Whitehead wrote that while libraries support free speech and civil discourse, reading rooms are “not intended to be used as a venue for a group action, quiet or otherwise, to capture people’s attention.”

“In the study-ins in our spaces, we heard from students who saw them publicized and chose not to come to the library,” she continued. “During the events, large numbers of people filed in at once, and several moved around the room taking photos or filming.”

“Seeking attention is in itself disruptive,” she added.

Whitehead clarified in her statement that though the protests were silent, it was the coordinated placement of signs that she felt made them unacceptable per library policy.

“An assembly of people displaying signs changes a reading room from a place for individual learning and reflection to a forum for public statements,” she wrote.

The faculty members were not the only Harvard affiliates who were suspended from libraries on Thursday over study-in protests.

More than 60 students found out Thursday morning that they were banned for two weeks from the Harvard Law School’s main library for participating in a pro-Palestine study-in last week. Just a few hours later, more than 50 other students staged a second study-in Thursday afternoon at the HLS libary to protest the sanctions against their peers.

The student protesters who participated in Thursday’s study-in are expected to receive a similar suspension from the library — especially now that the University has now twice referred to its “response in prior situations.”

Board members of Harvard’s American Association of University Professors chapter — several of whom, including President Kirsten A. Weld and Vice President Walter Johnson, participated in the study-in — called the decision to suspend professors “disturbing” in a statement.

Weld and Johnson wrote that “it highlights more serious problems on Harvard’s campus: the proliferation of new rules without meaningful faculty oversight or even input, a problematic lack of clarity regarding the definition of ‘protest,’ and the administration’s inclination to punish in lieu of opening up dialogue.”

Government professor Ryan D. Enos, who also participated in the study-in, condemned the library’s decision to suspend faculty members, saying “it’s very clear to us that these rules are being constructed on the fly.”

“The logic for them is shifting and, in that sense, they don't seem just. It's hard to say that people should be punished — for example — for calling attention to themselves,” Enos said. “That's a new logic that the library has not expressed before and it doesn't seem just to penalize people for rules that are being interpreted differently every time they're applied.”

Harvard Library gave similar reasoning for suspending both student and faculty protesters over the last month for study-in participation. However, the library system has previously chosen not to discipline study-in participants — even for protests in Widener Library.

Enos also pushed back against Whitehead’s characterization of the study-ins as disruptive.

“I was there and Martha Whitehead was not and I can guarantee you that it was not disruptive to the other patrons of the library,” he said.

“Nobody got up and left,” he added. “Nobody was disrupted from their studying.”

Enos said study-in participants had not decided if they would appeal the library suspension and that they will continue to raise the issue “elsewhere,” such as in faculty meetings.

But not all faculty members opposed Harvard’s decision to discipline their peers.

In a thread on X posted prior to the suspension, Harvard Law School professor Stephen E. Sachs ’02, a former Crimson Editorial chair, said the protest wasn’t “honest” and that “in libraries you should try *not* to get people to notice you.”

“There are lots of places to get eyeballs for your protest. The only point of attention-seeking in a library is because you know it’s against the rules that others have to obey,” Sachs wrote in an email.

After The Crimson first reported the suspensions on Thursday, Sachs posted a one-word reaction: “Good.”

—Staff writer Neil H. Shah can be reached at neil.shah@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @neilhshah15.