Dissent: With New Protest Guidelines, Free Speech Again Stops at Palestine

With the recent clarifications to its protest guidelines — arbitrarily made and selectively enforced — Harvard has shattered what little reputation it had left as a home for open dialogue.

The guidelines, outlined in an email from interim University President Alan M. Garber ’76, stipulate that demonstrations are prohibited in classrooms, libraries, dormitories, dining halls, Harvard offices, or “other places in which demonstrations and protests would interfere with the normal activities of the University.” Essentially, everywhere.

With their tacit support for Harvard’s new guidelines, the Editorial Board today demonstrates that their commitment to free speech is just as specious as our University’s.

Right now, protest guidelines are being written before our eyes, and they’re being written in response to the content of the demonstrations rather than their form. The University recently began requiring that requests to congregate on Widener Library’s steps “be submitted five business days in advance” in what we feel can only be a response to the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee’s weekly “Keffiyeh Thursday” gathering there.

Last week, after hosting a Valentine’s Day card-making activity for Palestine, Harvard Law School Justice for Palestine were told by administration that the space they planned to use for the event was not reservable. A few days prior, a nearly identical event hosted by the Women’s Law Student Association in the same space came and went without notice.

At a “die-in” hosted by Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine last week, a speaker was told by the Harvard University Police Department that he could not use a megaphone. (Imagine that, a megaphone at a protest.)

To in any way legitimize the creation and implementation of Harvard’s new protest guidelines is to give a blank check to the University’s McCarthyist campaign against pro-Palestine organizing. We are horrified that that check bears our Board’s signature.

The Board’s complicity descends into absurdity with their assertion that the new guidelines will reinvigorate — rather than stifle — dissent. Indeed, the dangerous ambiguity of the protest restrictions has produced a visible and disturbing chilling effect on campus: Two weeks ago, a news piece in this very paper characterized our first week back on campus as “calmer.”

As organizers ourselves, we say with certainty: The prospect of disciplinary consequences has chilled our discussions about demonstrations.

While Harvard has legitimate reasons to create protest guidelines, the manner in which it has done so has been anything but legitimate. We have no doubt about the University’s motives — Harvard is financially and morally invested in the apartheid state students protest against.

Last semester, the University seemingly expended more energy censuring pro-Palestine phrases than addressing the rampant doxxing, anti-Palestinian racism, and Islamophobia threatening its students. As of 2019, Harvard had roughly $200 million of its endowment invested in companies identified by the United Nations as tied to Israeli settlements.

We agree with the Board: Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences. We would know: One of us is currently facing disciplinary action for the occupation of University Hall; the other lives in fear of the same repercussions.

The retaliation we have faced for our organizing is evidently and prejudicially excessive.

Since Oct. 7, voicing support for Palestine has been a one-way ticket to the pages of Canary Mission, the side of a “doxxing truck,” and an appearance before the College’s Administrative Board. Two other editors on the Editorial Board did not sign onto this dissent because they feared the consequences that could follow.

In the Board’s encouragement of transgressive organizing, we hear only an excuse for the reprehensible, disproportionate, and often racist scrutiny pro-Palestine student organizers have faced.

The correct response to speech with which you disagree is counterspeech — not institutional sanction. Rather than shutting down discourse, the University should establish forums in which these debates can be had.

Unfortunately, our administration has done the exact opposite. By refusing to meet with students (much less, make progress on the substance of our demands), it has driven organizers to bolder, louder actions — a dynamic that its arbitrary and punitive discipline only reinforces.

If these new protest guidelines are indicative of anything, it’s a growing pro-Palestine consensus among our student body. The Board would be wise to side with its fellow students — and history — rather than a draconian administration intent on silencing them.

Mahmoud M. Al-Thabata ’27, a Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Holworthy Hall and is an organizer with the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee. Violet T.M. Barron ’26, an Associate Editorial editor, is a Social Studies concentrator in Adams House and an organizer with Harvard Jews for Palestine.