After Opaque Process, HUA Election Commission Keeps Survey Results on Israel Divestment Under Wraps

The Harvard Undergraduate Association is Harvard College's student government. The HUA's Election Commission is releasing only limited results from a survey that included questions on whether students support the University's divestment from firms in Israel. By Frank S. Zhou

Updated November 19, 2025, at 1:48 p.m.

The Harvard Undergraduate Association’s Election Commission will not publicly share the results of a survey asking whether students support University divestment from “companies and institutions operating in Israel.”

The Commission also declined to release figures to The Crimson that would make it possible to calculate how a majority of respondents answered the question.

Survey results show that 8.4 percent of all 7,103 Harvard College students support the University divesting from “companies and institutions operating in Israel,” according to Assistant Dean of Student Engagement and Leadership Andy Donahue and a member of the Election Commission.

Donahue, who is an adviser to the HUA and the HUA Election Commission, and the member declined to share the number or percentage of “no” respondents, but added that more than 80 percent of the total student body answered that they were “uncertain, skipped the question, or did not answer the survey at all.” They declined to share a more precise percentage.

The Election Commission member also shared that 6 percent of all Harvard College students said Harvard should not have adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, and 9.3 percent of all Harvard College students said they thought Harvard should disclose its investments in Israel. They declined to provide respondent totals or comprehensive answer counts for either survey question.

The limited information provided by the Election Commission prevents conclusions from being drawn from the data. The body declined to release results for more than one answer option for each question — making it impossible to conclude the majority opinion of respondents for individual questions. They also did not provide an explanation for reporting the results as a percentage of all Harvard College students, though only a small fraction of undergraduates vote in even the most publicized HUA elections.

The Commission cited a policy against publicly sharing survey results, which it says are designed to inform student groups that use the survey process to gauge public opinion among undergraduates. No such policy exists publicly in writing, and Donahue and Commission members did not respond to questions about the policy.

The HUA’s most recent campaign guidelines do not specify whether results for student group survey questions will be announced to all students, but state that results will “be released in a non-leading manner.” The Election Commission conducted most of the survey process without circulating updated guidelines for this semester, but the HUA posted the 2024-25 guidelines on its website Tuesday morning, more than halfway through the voting period.

Rather than with the full student body, results to the survey questions will only be shared with the two pro-Palestine student groups that submitted the questions: the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and Harvard Undergraduate Jews for Peace. In a Wednesday morning email to the PSC, Donahue “asked for patience” as the Election Commission verifies results and that “they will be in touch soon,” but did not provide a specific timeline.

The election form also contained eight questions submitted by the HUA, which operates separately from the Election Commission, in addition to the PSC and Jews for Peace questions. Responses to the eight questions — which polled students on issues including campus transit, grading policy, and student ID cards — will also not be released publicly, according to a Commission member.

The opacity of the survey process, which was conducted simultaneously with elections for the HUA Sports Team Officer, began long before voting closed on Tuesday.

Throughout the voting period, the Commission also limited participation in the survey results by placing the optional survey questions behind a mandatory vote for the Sports Team Officer position and not allowing survey questions student organizations to publicize the questions they submitted. Voting students were required to rank all three Sports Team Officer candidates before seeing what the survey questions were.

Donahue and the Commission also strenuously emphasized that the survey results were nonbinding. In a Tuesday email to the College’s full student body, they accused The Crimson of sharing “misinformation” over objections to the use of the word “vote” in a Crimson article describing the survey process.

“The survey questions are not votes on the issues presented,” Donahue and the Election Commission wrote. “The survey results have no impact on the Harvard Undergraduate Association, Harvard College, or Harvard University.”

In interviews with The Crimson, undergraduates said they were unaware of the survey questions until Tuesday.

“I had seen an email for the HUA elections that were happening, and I saw that the candidates were in the email, but I didn’t see any other questions or surveys after that,” Aiden E. Zaphiris ’28 said.

“I think if they wanted people to answer the questions, they probably could have pubbed it a little bit better, like maybe in a separate email or something,” he added.

The Election Commission also used its campaigning regulations to repeatedly discourage students in organizations that submitted questions from discussing them with fellow students.

Violet T.M. Barron ’26, a member of the PSC and a Crimson Editorial editor, was notified Tuesday night that the Commission “received a complaint” that she had posted a “campaign-related message in a group chat.” The Commission wrote that, after reviewing the matter, the student would be “receiving a stern warning for violating HUA campaigning rules.”

The message found to be in violation was a response to another text in a 150-person group chat of Harvard Hillel members asking members to vote in the survey on the IHRA and divestment questions, which the sender accused of “specifically targeting Israel and the Jewish community.” The original sender requested members of the group chat vote “yes” on the IHRA question, and “no” on the divestment and disclosure questions.

Barron was then found to violate campaign guidelines for her response to the student’s message. In the message, Barron argued that “to say these questions target Jews is wholly unfair,” and “everyone is of course welcome to vote how they like – the whole point of a survey like this is to gauge student opinion, not push a political agenda.”

Donahue did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the exchange.

The Election Commission wrote in a Tuesday morning statement to The Crimson that the “primary purpose of the fall election is to elect the HUA Sports Officer.”

Donahue did not share the HUA’s own survey question results or the winner of the Sports Team Officer election with The Crimson. The Sports Team position’s three candidates were Mark S. Guzelian ’29, Ocean Ma ’28, and Jack G. Smith ’29.

Ma was elected the Sports Team Officer, Donahue confirmed on Wednesday.

—Staff writer Julia A. Karabolli can be reached at julia.karabolli@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Claire L. Simon can be reached at claire.simon@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @ClaireSimon.