Protest Is Intellectually Vital

Following this spring’s pro-Palestine encampment in Harvard Yard, the University has released new regulations concerning student protest, including campus-wide bans on camping, chalking, and unapproved signage. Harvard Executive Vice President Meredith L. Weenick ’90 issued an ominous warning alongside them: “Where there is substantial disruption of the normal operations of our campus, University police may remove or remediate the disruption.”

Weenick’s promise of police action in cases of “substantial disruption” raises an important question: What are Harvard’s “normal operations,” and when does protest become an unwarranted disruption of these operations?

There are, of course, campus accessibility concerns that come along with any protest: Generally, spaces must be physically accessible and free of major distractions so students can go to class, the dining hall, the library, and so on. The importance of accessibility could be said to extend to sound — in the spring, the College Dean of Students Office claimed that noise from the encampment had been “disruptive” to the Yard’s first-year residents. (Though the majority of the more than 40 freshmen interviewed by The Crimson for an article on the subject found the encampment non-disruptive.)

I do not wish to relitigate the extent to which the encampment was or was not a “substantial disruption” that would, by Weenick’s definition, trigger police action. Rather, I question the assumption implicit in the Executive Vice President’s statement: Namely, that a physically disruptive protest is necessarily a disruption of the proper functioning of a campus.

But can protest be considered, rather than disruptive to University operations, an integral part of them? And even if a specific protest disrupts the physical environment of campus, is it necessarily a disruption of the necessary processes of learning?

Final examination and reading periods could be considered “disruptions” to the flow of classes — but we need the time to study and to be assessed. Winter Recess “disrupts” the flow of classes from fall to spring — but again, we need time to rest. Mandatory General Education and distribution requirements “disrupt” our ability to choose our courses completely freely — but they also expose us to much-needed new voices, perspectives, and ideas.

The value of new perspectives seems to be more resonant now than ever. In February, the “Intellectual Vitality Initiative” was launched by College Dean Rakesh Khurana. The initiative’s website reads: “We are all committed to upholding intellectual vitality at Harvard College. In our roles, we will foster a spirit of rigor, charity, and open exploration. This includes promoting thoughtful discussion and consideration of different perspectives in classrooms, student groups. and social settings.”

Central to this notion of intellectual vitality is confronting new and challenging ideas — especially ones that may go unheard in the classroom. History has taught us that the most popular ideas, even in the world of academia, are not necessarily the ones we ought to endorse. For instance, there was a time when eugenics and scientific racism were widely embraced by scholars, even those at Harvard.

Moreover, sometimes the force of an argument is not best presented on paper but in voices and on signs. To appropriate a cliché: Actions (can) speak louder than words. Protest provides not just another venue, but another crucial context in which ideas can be heard, felt, and considered.

If Harvard is as committed to intellectual vitality as it claims to be, then it must also acknowledge protest’s role in furthering this intellectual vitality, even when it interrupts other other functions of our University. If exposure to new perspectives — even those with which we don’t align — is vital, then perhaps even a “disruptive” protest may be in our best interest, not only as democratically engaged citizens but also as learners.

And “business as usual” is also a certain perspective on how things are to be run. It comes with a set of practices that may hide certain voices while amplifying others. If a group, acting in good faith, feels that “normal operations” are hiding a perspective that needs to be heard, then is their choice to protest a “disruption” something we should condemn or an exception to the everyday we should praise?

Some may wonder why their fellow students may be the arbiters of when, where, and how “different perspectives” are heard. Consider, however, what makes a Harvard education so special — its course selection, renowned professors, infinite resources, but also the people we learn alongside. When protests arise on campus, we should view them not as disruptions to our learning, but rather as unique opportunities to do that very learning — only this time from our dissenting peers. Indeed, some of the most valuable learning occurs outside the classroom, when encountering new, even unconventional, ideas.

It seems Harvard’s “normal operations” are a means to an end, a way of creating an environment conducive to education. If the everyday ways of doing things reach a point where they fail to support the end they purportedly serve, we must question their utility.

Before blindly accepting new regulations and administrative decrees like Weenick’s, we must pause and consider: Perhaps the “disruptions” of protest are a student-driven mandate for rigorous, open inquiry and the sharing of even the most unpopular opinions.

Allison P. Farrell ’26, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Philosophy concentrator in Leverett House.