A Rare Piece of Good News at Harvard

For once, Harvard has some news worth celebrating.

According to Harvard University Police Department’s most recent data, violent crime reports on campus declined by 52 percent between 2023 and 2024.

With discourse dominated by the perceived chaos within and outside our campus walls, this is welcome good news. It’s also a rebuke to outside critics who have attempted to paint Harvard as a place where those of us on campus — especially Jewish and conservative students — are uniquely fearful for our physical safety.

Take the White House’s effort a few months ago to revoke Harvard’s authorization to host international students. The Trump administration declared that “[c]rime rates at Harvard University — including violent crime rates — have drastically risen in recent years.” The federal government has even characterized Harvard as an “unsafe campus environment by permitting anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators to harass and physically assault individuals.”

As the recent data show, claims like these simply don’t hold up under scrutiny.

While crime has risen since 2021, the vast majority of this increase can be attributed not to indiscriminate acts of violence — but thefts of electric scooters. And there were only seven reported hate crimes in 2024, down from 10 in 2023. Though five were religiously motivated — up from two in 2023 — magnitudes this small mean that an increase like the one we’ve seen hardly signals a substantial rise in crime, and could even be caused by complicating factors like differences in reporting between years.

Of course, it is vital to investigate religiously motivated crimes, to continue to take measures to maintain campus safety, and to combat both antisemitism and anti-Palestinian bias. But at the end of the day, the Trump administration’s reports of a crime wave at Harvard come down to a bunch of stolen scooters.

From experience, we can tell you that the chances of being spat on by a student protester or beaten while walking through the Yard are effectively zero. Harvard Magazine points out that “[t]he most significant protests of this past fall were intentionally quiet: library demonstrations that tested the University’s definition of what constitutes a protest and its rules on the time, place, and manner of such actions.” And, as we have written, Harvard’s spring 2023 pro-Palestine encampment started peaceful and stayed that way.

No matter what the media and the White House may say, Harvard has not descended into a bastion of terror-sympathizers or violent mobs. And don’t just take our word for it – every day, hundreds of tourists fearlessly walk through the Yard without incident.

Indeed, HUPD’s latest crime numbers show us that campus reality is far more benign than sensationalist accounts would have it. Harvard’s faced a lot of bad news in the last year — the recent crime statistics are a welcome respite.

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.

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