Harvard President Garber Meets With Pro-Palestine Activists About Endowment

Updated September 7, 2024, at 5:18 p.m.

Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine student activists met on Friday with University President Alan M. Garber and Harvard Corporation Fellow Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar ’93 for a discussion about the endowment and divestment from companies affiliated with Israel.

As HOOP representatives talked with Garber, Cuéllar, and Harvard Management Company staff inside a conference room on the 8th floor of the Smith Campus Center, more than 80 pro-Palestine protesters rallied outside the building to demand the University disclose and divest any investments it has in Israel.

In a press release published Saturday afternoon, more than 24 hours after the meeting ended, HOOP wrote that it was represented by a delegation of eight students and faculty members who discussed “the endowment in response to student demands for divestment from apartheid, occupation, genocide, and other human rights violations.”

“In addition to discussing technical details of Harvard’s endowment, we urged Harvard to reconcile the gap between its so-called commitment to human rights and where we know its money is really going: in companies complicit in suffering and death, particularly in the ongoing genocide in Palestine,” one HOOP member who attended the meeting said in the release.

HOOP did not identify the students and faculty members who represented the group in Friday’s meeting.

The meeting came nearly four months after Garber promised to arrange a discussion between HOOP members and top University officials as part of his administration’s effort to negotiate a peaceful end to the 20-day pro-Palestine encampment in Harvard Yard.

Though the HOOP members were granted an audience with a member of the Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, the protesters who rallied outside of Smith Center acknowledged that the meeting was unlikely to meet the group’s demands.

The rally was one of the first actions by HOOP since the start of the new academic year. The pro-Palestine activist group notably did not disrupt Convocation, a ceremony for freshmen that campus activist groups have disrupted in the past.

Instead, the first protest of the semester was planned to take place during the meeting with Garber, which one HOOP organizer described as an “informational session” about Harvard’s endowment — not a real conversation about divesting from Israel.

The rally began at the Science Center Plaza before protesters marched into Harvard Square. In a speech at the beginning of the rally, HOOP organizer Tamar Sella ’25 said it “wasn’t easy” for the meeting with Garber to come about.

Harvard officials, however, have maintained that the decision to offer a meeting with HOOP representatives was not a concession to the encampment protesters. The administration held a similar meeting between a group of Jewish students and Garber and Cuéllar on Thursday, a University spokesperson confirmed.

After protesters marched to the Smith Center, Sella read aloud a statement written by the group of HOOP activists who met with Garber and Cuéllar. The statement did not mention the content of the meeting.

“No matter what the University says or does, our demands have always been crystal clear: Disclose and divest,” Sella said. “These meetings were never the end goal of our campaign.”

HOOP did not respond to a request for comment on Friday about the outcome of the meeting. Harvard spokesperson Jason A. Newton declined to comment on the discussions between Garber and the HOOP representatives.

Harvard University Police Chief Victor A. Clay speaks with a group of police officers in the Smith Campus Center. The University maintained a heavy police presence as the protesters marched from Science Center Plaza to the Smith Center. By Julian J. Giordano

The rally was largely peaceful, but a heavy police presence accompanied the protesters as they marched from the Science Center Plaza to the Smith Campus Center. Both Harvard University Police Department officers and Cambridge Police Department officers were stationed around the perimeter of the protest.

The University has repeatedly warned students that the University is prepared to enforce its disciplinary policies against students who engage in disruptive protest, including in emails from Garber and Harvard Executive Vice President Meredith L. Weenick ’90.

The extensive law enforcement detail assigned to the rally on Friday suggests that part of Harvard’s strategy to deter students from staging disruptive, large-scale protests on campus is to increase its police presence at rallies.

In its press release, HOOP wrote that the police presence at the rally was “another example of the institution ramping up its militarism against students protesting genocide.”

CPD spokesperson Robert Goulston wrote in a statement that police briefly stopped traffic to allow protesters to walk in the crosswalk safely.

“It was a peaceful protest with no issues as far as public safety,” Goulston wrote.

The rally also featured speeches about the decision to take disciplinary action last semester against student protesters who participated in the encampment.

The Harvard College Administrative Board suspended five students and placed more than 20 others on probation — a move that sparked intense backlash from students and faculty members, and promoted more than 1,000 people to stage a walkout during Commencement.

“You can Ad Board five, 10, 15, 500 students,” Harvard Law School student Elias L. Decker said in a speech at the rally. “But you cannot Ad Board liberation.”

Though it was just the first rally of the year, Sella said that HOOP has no plans to slow down its activism.

“They’ll continue to hear us for the rest of the fucking semester,” Sella said.

—Staff writer Michelle N. Amponsah can be reached at michelle.amponsah@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @mnamponsah.

—Staff writer Azusa M. Lippit can be reached at azusa.lippit@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @azusalippit or on Threads @azusalippit.