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Harvard College suspends library entry for school protesters


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Harvard College has briefly banned roughly two dozen school members from Widener Library after they held a silent study-in to problem the Ivy League establishment’s current self-discipline of equally protesting college students. 

The college revoked the school from bodily accessing the campus’ flagship library till Nov. 7, based on an undated copy of the suspension discover shared with Increased Ed Dive. The ban doesn’t have an effect on entry to on-line library companies or the remainder of the campus.

A college spokesperson declined Friday to provide particulars or verify the suspensions, saying Harvard doesn’t touch upon particular person issues associated to library entry.

School members staged the demonstration to protest Widener Library’s choice to briefly ban a gaggle of pro-Palestinian scholar activists for holding an identical study-in on Sept. 21, in accordance to The Harvard Crimson, the college’s scholar newspaper. 

The scholars silently sat in one of many library’s studying rooms with indicators for about an hour to protest the Israeli army’s assaults in Lebanon. The organizing group, Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine, has made ongoing requires Harvard to divest from weapons producers and firms with ties to Israel. 

Following the college students’ library suspensions, about 25 Harvard school members on Oct. 16 equally sat at tables in certainly one of Widener Library’s studying rooms, Erik Baker, a historical past lecturer who participated within the demonstration, informed Increased Ed Dive in an e mail on Friday. Baker confirmed he was one of many school members suspended from the library.

Every set out a folded piece of paper. One facet included the school members’ supposed studying lists for that day, and the opposite displayed excerpts from college paperwork, together with the library’s assertion of values, Baker mentioned. One signal shared on social media learn “Reasoned dissent performs a very very important half in [our] existence,” quoting Harvard’s assertion on rights and tasks

After the school sat silently for about an hour, a safety guard and one other particular person Baker couldn’t establish informed the group they have been violating the library’s demonstration coverage and wrote down every particular person’s college ID.

Contributors later obtained an e mail from the library’s administration notifying them of their library suspension.

“Given your violation of those guidelines, and according to the College’s response in prior conditions, your bodily entry to Widener Library will probably be suspended from at present till November 7, 2024,” the e-mail discover mentioned.

The discover gave school till Oct. 29 to enchantment their suspension to library management. It informed them to achieve out to Martha Whitehead, vice chairman for the Harvard Library and college librarian, if the penalty prevents them from fulfilling their educating, analysis or writing duties. 


If our library areas turn into an area for protest and demonstration — quiet or in any other case, and irrespective of the message — they are going to be diverted from their very important position as locations for studying and analysis.

Martha Whitehead

Vp for the Harvard Library and college librarian


Baker mentioned he has requested library management to debate the suspension whereas a consultant from his union, Harvard Tutorial Staff-UAW, is current. As of Friday afternoon, he mentioned he had not heard again. 

He estimated the college had suspended 25 school however couldn’t verify an actual quantity.

In accordance with the suspension discover, Widener Library officers mentioned school members assembled with the aim of “capturing folks’s consideration by the show of tent-card indicators.” That violates the college’s insurance policies in opposition to demonstrations in libraries, based on the discover. 

“The college’s communications have emphasised the ‘seize of consideration’ because the salient violation right here,” Baker mentioned. “I’m unsure the place this criterion originated and I’ve a tough time seeing the way it may presumably be enforced in an goal style. Would sufficiently ostentatious style be banned? A T-shirt endorsing a politician?”

Harvard’s rights and tasks assertion says the establishment should guarantee and defend the rights of its members to have interaction in free expression, together with by orderly demonstrations. Nonetheless, the college issued steering in January saying that protests weren’t permitted in libraries or different examine areas with out specific exceptions.


Silent protest has lengthy been acknowledged as a suitable type of protest exactly as a result of it is non-disruptive.

Alex Morey

Vp of campus advocacy on the Basis for Particular person Rights and Expression


The library’s publicly obtainable patron settlement doesn’t reference guidelines about capturing consideration. 

Alex Morey, an lawyer and vice chairman of campus advocacy on the Basis for Particular person Rights and Expression, expressed issues concerning the state of affairs on Friday.

Harvard, like many schools, has struggled “to strike the right steadiness between defending protest and stopping disruption,” Morey mentioned in an e mail.

FIRE is wanting into the circumstances, she mentioned. 

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