Colleges’ response to protests nationwide over violence in Gaza has included arrests and expulsions, heightening since Thursday when more than 100 students at Columbia were arrested. Other arrests have taken place at Yale in Connecticut and as close as Emerson in Boston.
Schools in Cambridge and Somerville are protesting as well in a movement calling for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas and for financial divestment from Israel, but administrators and police are moving with caution, emphasizing support for protest and free speech to contrast with the tarnished images of officials elsewhere.
While an increased presence of campus police at MIT and Tufts has raised tensions, the strongest steps taken by administrators have been at Harvard, where protesters are angry over suspension of a student-run Palestine Solidarity Committee – Harvard has threatened the PSC with permanent expulsion if it refuses to “cease all organizational activities for the remainder of the Spring 2024 term,” The Harvard Crimson reported – and early in the week the gates at Harvard Yard were locked to outsiders. Conscious of tent camps that became a flashpoint at Columbia, the school posted signs at gates stating “structures, including tents and tables, are not permitted.”
That didn’t stop protesters from setting up an encampment on Wednesday. More than 200 protesters gathered on Harvard Yard to begin pitching tents and rallying.
As a protest began Wednesday with residents and the media on the outside looking in and a helicopter hovering overhead, the gates briefly locked to everyone – Harvard ID or not. One student inside ran from one gate to another a few feet away, finding them sealed in turn, then ran back toward the yard. Students outside began getting agitated. A moment later the lockdown ended, with a guard explaining, “That was a miscommunication.”
Interim President Alan Garber told the Crimson on Monday that he would not rule out using police in response to student protests, but the university has a “very, very high bar” before resorting to law enforcement.
Harvard University Police Department officers watched the students pitch tents, but have not yet intervened. Like forces at MIT and Tufts, Harvard police did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
City police came onto the New York University campus to arrest students. Cambridge police have resources on standby for when Harvard or MIT notify them of a protest, but protests that happen on university campuses are handled by the schools’ respective police departments, CPD spokesperson Robert Goulston said.
“CPD supports the right to peacefully protest but also has an obligation to the entire Cambridge community,” Goulston wrote in an email. “Residents and visitors to our city must be able to safely access public streets, buildings and emergency services.”
The department alerts local businesses, shuts down streets and reroutes traffic around protests on city streets, but has no role in “maintaining the closure of Harvard Yard,” he said.
“False sense of security” at MIT
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where students set up at least 15 tents Sunday on Kresge Lawn with Palestinian flags and cardboard signs spelling out demands, protesters noted an increased police presence on campus but said they have not felt threatened by them.
“There was a little bit of worry,” said Layal Barakat, an MIT affiliate of the Coalition of Palestine. “It seemed that the administration and the campus police were gonna shut it down, and a lot of people came in support to prevent that.”
Although Barakat is “preparing for the worst,” she does not feel pressured by the police and instead acknowledges feeling a “false sense of security.”
At a large picnic table centered at the encampment on Monday, students and adults of all ethnicities prepared for evening Seder, a symbolic meal that celebrates the beginning of Passover. “We’re going to be camping out here until they accept [our demands] because there is no life as normal for us when there’s no life as normal in Gaza because of the genocide,” said Quinn Perian, an organizer helping lead MIT Jews for Ceasefire.
Police circling tents encircling chairs
On the other hand, protesters at Tufts University feared consequences by the administration and many were reluctant to be identified by name when speaking with the media.
The Tufts administration has denounced the divestment and boycott efforts meant to pressure Israeli policies around Palestinians, stating, “To be clear: as we have done in the past, we reject the Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement, we wholeheartedly support academic freedom and all our academic and exchange programs, and we will continue to work with all companies that we engage with and do business with now,” university administrators wrote on March 4.
Administrators also increased the presence of Tufts University Police Department foot and cruiser patrols, which protesters said felt threatening.
At the school’s Academic Quad, seven tents were set up on Monday, encircling students in Adirondack chairs.
The students were in the tents for 12 days, from April 7-19, and have since reopened them. The group is sending tents to Emerson College and Boston University, and when the tenting demonstration comes down, they intend to donate their supplies to another school so the “momentum continues.”
“The encampment is so that our presence is visible on campus. The administration has rejected the popular attempts from the student body to divest, so we must pressure them to listen to the student voice,” a student said.
Lux Trevelyan, a member of the Tufts Coalition for Palestinian Liberation encampments, said the group has not “faced many direct confrontations,” but the police “presence has been known. For the first two weeks, they circled us every night.”
Feeling unsafe
Tufts has “created a state of surveillance that makes students feel deeply unsafe,” Trevelyan said.
It’s an echo of how The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish nongovernmental organization and advocacy group, assigned failing grades to Harvard, MIT and Tufts on April 11 for “not doing the basics” in combating antisemitism. Similar concerns brought the presidents of Harvard, MIT and later Columbia to hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, told the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on April 17 that the school was getting tough with protesters – but those efforts led to only a temporary clearing of tents and enflamed protests at Columbia and nationwide. As of Wednesday, 44 schools are protesting, many in solidarity with students caught in the New York crackdown, according to an ongoing thread maintained by journalist Marisa Kaba on the Bluesky social media site.
Lesley University, another Cambridge school, has seen no protests around the Middle East. Over the past term, organizing has focused on fighting a plan eliminating some academic programs.
Tradition of protest
Harvard’s engagement with the protests is reminiscent of its response to Occupy Harvard in 2011, a resistance movement that amplified a national movement against economic inequality and corporate corruption. Harvard University locked the gates to Harvard Yard in response to student protests, limiting entry to those with a university ID. While intended to secure the campus, the action was met with criticism for poor administrative response and for curbing the visibility of the movement.
“I think about the antiwar protests for Vietnam as well and all of that started on college campuses too,” Barakat said. “We are in a historical moment.”
Students at Tufts University also noted the student movements’ mirroring of efforts against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and opposing South Africa’s apartheid regime in the 1980s.
“In the tours, they bring you around to the anti-apartheid protests on the walls of the Campus Center,” Trevelyan said. “But what you’ll see in those photos is that the cops were in riot gear then, and the university are the ones who called the police on them. And we understand that dynamic and we see it replicated today.”
Off-campus protests
The movements have sometimes moved off-campus, including to Cambridge and Somerville city council meetings where activists called for municipal support for a cease-fire. Hundreds of students at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School walked out Nov. 30 to oppose Israel’s continuing military campaign in Gaza, according to the school’s newspaper, The Register Forum.
Somerville Police Department said it was aware of a planned walkout from Somerville High School to the Tufts campus. “The department is working with all community stakeholders to create a safety plan,” a City of Somerville spokesperson said.
“If it is determined SPD presence is needed, the department’s primary concern will be to protect both the safety of protesters, and the larger community,” the spokesperson said. “Every measure will be taken by officers to not disturb the protest.”
A stronger
Please consider making a financial contribution to maintain, expand and improve Cambridge Day.
We are now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and all donations are tax deductible.
Please consider a recurring contribution.