By Suspending the Palestine Solidarity Committee, Harvard Guarantees Chaos

What began as a cluster of tents on Columbia University’s main green calling for its divestment from financial interests in Israel ended with NYPD officers forcibly removing over 100 student protestors.

Since that incident, more than 40 encamped pro-Palestine protestors have been arrested at Yale University, and new encampments have formed on campuses across the nation, including at MIT, Emerson College, and Tufts University.

As protests roil its peers and neighbors, Harvard’s administration is apparently feeling the pressure.

Initially, the University responded by closing Harvard Yard to the public and posting notices reminding students that tents are not permitted there. Now, Harvard has gone far further: Yesterday, the College notified the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee that it had been suspended for co-organizing protests with unrecognized student advocacy groups.

If Harvard hoped this would stave off organizing, they haven’t been paying attention.

As a technical matter, there is no question that the PSC did break the rules, and it was given several weeks of notice that it was doing so. But the College has discretion to enforce these rules, and in this case, it obviously shouldn’t have.

Cracking down on this nonviolent protest group will only inflame community relations at a time when the opposite is needed. By forcing the PSC — and, due to its own club recognition freeze, several of the PSC’s partners — to operate underground, Harvard further alienates pro-Palestinian students, compromising its ability to engage with them constructively. The chaos at Columbia, in no small part a result of the University suspending student advocacy groups last semester, makes that much clear.

More fundamentally, on a campus where, from the start, administrators did too little too late to protect pro-Palestinian speech, this feels like suppression. We can’t pretend to guess at the motives of the Dean of Students Office. But whatever the impetus, the decision will be taken as a paranoid response to events at Columbia and elsewhere.

In an apparent attempt to curb such protest on our campus, Harvard may perversely have just called it into existence. Indeed, if the University’s goal was deescalation, history is not on its side: When it called in the police against student protestors in 1969, the backlash shut down campus.

It’s not too late to stop this madness. The DSO can fix this mistake by working with the PSC immediately to create a pathway to restoring its recognized status.

Student groups aren’t above the rules. But the rules aren’t above the good of this campus. Harvard must choose the latter.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

Have a suggestion, question, or concern for The Crimson Editorial Board? Click here.