This report from the Harvard Crimson (click headline below to read) is unusual for two reasons. First, it represents something rare these days: serious punishment of protesters (pro-Palestinian ones in this case) who violated the “time, place, and manner” restrictions for speech. (As a private University, Harvard doesn’t have to abide by the First Amendment, but avers that it does.)
Second, it is an almost unprecedented case of the Harvard Corporation, noted as “the smaller and more powerful of Harvard University’s two governing boards,” overruling the wishes of the faculty, which voted by a large majority to confer degrees this year on 13 seniors who were not considered “in good standing”. The reason, as you might guess, is that these students were part of the pro-Palestinian encampment that had been declared a violation of Harvard policy with the possibility of punishment for participants.
Such a clash between the Corporation and the faculty is something I haven’t seen, but it’s going to cause a big fracas, for the faculty will demand that they alone have the right to decide who graduates.
You may remember that the Corporation, which includes 13 members, supported Claudine Gay after she gave an awkward (but technically correct) disquisition on genocidal speech before Congress. And the Corporation also tried to prevent the newspapers from reporting on accusations of plagiarism leveled at Gay later. Only when the plagiarism was shown to be pretty wide-ranging did they ask Gay to resign, leaving Alan Garber as the interim President (as you see from the first link above, Garber is also a member of the Corporation).
From the article:
The Harvard Corporation rejected an effort by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to confer degrees on 13 seniors facing disciplinary charges for participating in the pro-Palestine encampment, an unprecedented veto that opens a new front in the internal battles that have convulsed Harvard for the past year.
The Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, deliberated late into the night on Tuesday as it stared down an impossible decision: render Harvard College’s disciplinary processes toothless by approving the FAS-amended list or undercut the authority of the University’s largest faculty by declining to uphold their amendment.
“Today, we have voted to confer 1,539 degrees to Harvard College students in good standing,” the Corporation wrote in a joint statement on Wednesday. “Because the students included as the result of Monday’s amendment are not in good standing, we cannot responsibly vote to award them degrees at this time.”
Faculty members, at the annual FAS degree meeting, plunged Harvard into something of a constitutional crisis as they voted to amend the list of degrees for conferral at Commencement during what is normally a sparsely attended pro forma session.
Instead, 115 faculty members showed up to a meeting in which a decisive majority voted to confer degrees on the 13 seniors. The students were notified of disciplinary charges from the Harvard College Administrative Board just three days earlier.
During the meeting, faculty members claimed that it had the authority to add the students back onto the list because the disciplinary actions from the Ad Board were subject to approval by the FAS — the “ultimate disciplinary body” for the College, according to the University’s governing statutes.
Whether it intended to or not, the Corporation’s statement signaled that it does not believe the FAS has the authority that some of its faculty members think it does.
This now pits many faculty members against the Corporation at a time when many stakeholders across the University have raised serious questions about the Corporation’s stewardship, accusing the board of repeated leadership failures over the past eight months.
Government professor Steven Levitsky warned in an interview on Tuesday that the Corporation could spark a faculty uprising if it does not sign off on the FAS-approved list of degrees for conferral.
“I would expect a faculty rebellion, possibly a faculty rebellion against the entire governance structure, because there’s already a fair amount of mistrust toward the Corporation to begin with,” Levitsky said.
I’m not sure about the faculty rebellion, but given that, like in most schools, Harvard faculty are overwhelmingly on the Left, this means that a lot of them support the encampment, surely maintaining, even though it’s illegal, that it was after all a form of “free speech.”
The Corporation rejected the faculty vote because it didn’t assess each student’s punishment nor did it “claim to restore the student[s] to good standing.” Finally, restoring graduation rights to the encampment students would, said the Corporation, create a double standard with respect to other students who couldn’t graduate because they were not in good standing.
Although the Corporation somewhat bungled its handling of L’Affaire Claudine Gay, I think it made the right decision here. Without any possible punishment for violating rules, there’s no deterrent to future violations. And the Board is acting fairly in continuing with the disciplinary process, which may allow some of these students to graduate, albeit late:
While the faculty attempted to take matters into their own hands by reinstating students, the Corporation insisted on Wednesday that the Ad Board’s appeal processes must first run their course.
“We fully support the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ stated intention to provide expedited review, at this time, of eligible requests for reconsideration or appeal,” the Corporation wrote. “We will consider conferral of degrees promptly if, following the completion of all FAS processes, a student becomes eligible to receive a degree.”
I had assumed all protestors, both student and faculty (that is the pro-Palestinian ones), were going to be summarily expelled. If then they wanted to protest that, they could hire a lawyer and deal with the university that way.
Why is this news?
Umm. . most protestors at most colleges who engaged in illegal activity, including the ones here, haven’t been disciplined. I TOLD you why it was news at the very beginning. Did you miss that part of the post?
Tangentially related to this post: anti-Israel protestors at Harvard made commencement about themselves, reports Shabbos Kestenbaum:
https://x.com/shabbosk/status/1793656095455789417?s=46
Dreadful.
Nice summary including recent actions by Corp in l’affaire Gay. Glad to see some teeth, in the actions. Now if they can just get timely action and consistency from the University next time to prevent violation of policy and resulting negative impacts on the rest of the university.
My guess is that kids are banned from the ceremony today, but will receive their degrees recognizing four years of work. If so, I think that that is fair punishment for the miscreants and something that is reasonable for students to weigh when considering civil disobedience in the future.
Good.
Maybe I’m naive, but I thought the purpose of a university is to get an education? Free speech is essential, but it can be practised in your own time, away from a university campus. When you deliberately obstruct your own education, and that of others, it shows how little you value education.
I agree we need to support all victims of conflict, but I have serious concerns about people blindly supporting an ideology that oppresses women, allows FGM on little girls, throws gay men off rooftops, stops free speech and considers marital rape a god given right for men.
We should help Palestinian victims in situ. Or help them find places in Islamic countries where they can practise their ideology.
I support refugees in principle, we have welcomed many to Scotland, but 93% of Palestinians are rabidly against homosexuality and I object to putting gay people here in danger with the UK gov’s proposed policy of importing Palestinians en masse. We have 137,000 victims of FGM in the UK already, we can’t import more people who do this barbaric, abhorrent practice.
My MP called my friend Gavin ‘racist’ for expressing fears about importing homophobes. Islam it not a race, he is NOT racist. Islam is a homophobic, misogynist ideology. We have a duty to criticise it.
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/scottish-news/gay-scots-raising-fears-over-32814404
Someone calculated that importing 20,000 Palestinian refugees, means bringing in 19,200 homophobes.
If Palestine is emptied then Israel will take it over, and the refugees will never go home.
It is not just the homophobia, there is a litany of reasons why Palestinians are unwanted (throughout the Arab world where LGBT hatred is near universal). These are some of the reasons:
https://democracychronicles.org/worst-houseguests-ever-the-palestinians/
Very few people in the west are aware of these reasons.
D.A.
NYC
Thank you. Very interesting reading. I’m aware of the Egyptian concerns and that few Islamic countries are taking in Palestinians, but didn’t know all the reasons why.
I still feel uneasy speaking against bringing in ‘refugees’, but this piece justifies why I think we are right to treat Palestinians differently. I’m sure there are nice Palestinians too, but this catalogue of horrors shows why we should be very wary.
I think the Corporation did the right thing here. As Secretary of the Faculty at my own institution (Harvard has one, too), I was concerned by the initial report that the Faculty had been overruled, and what this might portend for faculty control over academic matters. However, after reading the carefully written statement of the Corporation, I see that they are in fact implementing the rules on academic matters, which provide for appeal procedures and the nature of “good standing”. A vote by the Faculty at this time would short-circuit the procedures for a favored group of appellants, while not considering other students facing disciplinary action for other reasons.
I was also concerned that what is usually considered to be a pro forma meeting of the Faculty could be redirected to take substantive action by a small number of faculty members: even if the attempt to graduate the disciplined students had garnered a unanimous vote at the meeting, so few faculty attended that this would be only a small minority of the whole Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
GCM
Agreed. The Corporation would be overstepping if they meddled in grades and curricula, but in this case it seems that they are simply forcing the faculty to abide by their own rules.
Thank you greg and phil for your thoughtful analyses. I felt similarly but not being university faculty, I could not ground my feeling in fact.
One of the missions of higher ed should be helping young adults learn to be good citizens of any country in which they live. Citizenship includes obeying the community’s laws or accepting the community’s sanctions for breaking those laws. Even the children of the elites need to learn that lesson or they could end up like a certain presidential candidate who need not be named. The Harvard Arts and Sciences faculty members who voted to grant those degrees have lost sight of that mission and need to understand that a civic culture becomes poisoned when young people are taught that they can create their own rules if they believe the cause is just. Progressives need to relearn the lesson that permitting crimes and predatory behavior to run rampant in the name of social justice breaks down civilizations and doesn’t help either victims or, in the long run, those committing the crimes and breaking the rules. So good for the Corporation, they finally stepped up to Harvard’s citizenship mission.
+1
In an earlier piece, the Crimson gave details of mistreatment of ordinary staff at Harvard by protesters, including staff people being yelled at, encircled, confronted, followed etc by protesters. This included staff going about routine duties.
Similar turf wars are playing out on numerous campuses. Once again, these battles seem to be over the “wrong” issue. Simply because one agrees with the protestors (campers, whatever you want to call them) shouldn’t enter into it. Follow the process that’s already been agreed upon. If the student is not in good standing, he/she doesn’t graduate. It’s simple. Use the appeal process. All this wavering and excusing is tiring. We’re allowing people to steal up $1,000 of merchandise before holding the thief accountable, we’re forgiving student loans to some while others have paid, and on and on it goes. I sound curmudgeonly but, damnit, I want rules/laws followed/enforced. Period.
The problem for faculty and administrators both is that they have memories of the Vietnam War (first hand as students if they are emeritus) and have carried around with them their whole lives the notion that the campus protests of the 1960s including lawbreaking, trespassing, and vandalism of university property (and a few instances of kidnapping university administrators) were justified because they “worked”: they ended the War (or at least ended the draft.) That this is nonsense need not concern us here. The important thing is the institutional memory on progressive college campuses that lawbreaking was useful and necessary to The Cause, that North Vietnam and its Viet Cong insurgency should succeed in destabilizing and conquering the South, which it did in due course after the United States was induced to pull out. Why would you want to see people punished for being violently victorious in a noble cause?
Today the shoe isn’t even fully on the other foot. Most here at WEIT regard today’s Cause as loathsome in both its antisemitic and its Marxist dimensions. But many participants, including faculty and even some administrators, are sympathetic to both. They are as sympathetic to the illegal but “necessary” methods as the anti-war demonstrators were two generations ago. Those who oppose the goals are trapped into having to explain why the methods they supported back then (in one Marxist cause) they oppose so vehemently today (in another Marxist cause.) If it’s only because they approved of the larger suite of goals back then but disapprove of the suite today, their calls for draconian reprisals against lawbreakers sound like cant. Or is it just because we all get cranky and reactionary as we age? In which case the occupiers can dismiss us with “OK, Boomer…”
Your larger point about the dangers of allowing laws to be flouted without consequence in order to ingratiate oneself with the lawbreakers is of course a good one.
I don’t see anyone calling for “draconian reprisals”, Leslie. I get your greater point, though. I will add that I was not part of the 60s protests. Like you, I was too young.
My apologies, Debi. I didn’t mean “you” personally. I use “you” rhetorically as if addressing a crowd of people disposed to disagree with me, channeling Hitchens.
No sweat.
Beautifully put, Leslie, thank you.
I do recall a few protests at SFU when I started in 1969. It wasn’t as much in Canada of course but SFU was a new university and had hired many American profs. The road up Burnaby Mountain was renamed Ho Chi Minh Way.
But I’m 72 now. Surely most of the 60s protesters are retired by now and not directly influencing events. I did see a photo where Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn were visiting an encampment (they’re in their 80s).
Happy as I am with any punishment of these proto-terrorists and horrible Pal “allies”, I can’t forgive Harvard for employing Ms. Gay, defending her even after us all knowing she’s a fraud and a deeply misguided privileged 3rd world* elite, and continuing to pay her a mil a year.
I understand PCC(E) went there – which explains the obsession – but as a society intellectual life in America is WAAAAY too heavily weighted towards that one school. Personally I’m sick of utterly everything about the place (except PCC(E) and Pinker).
D.A.
NYC
*In her case, Haiti, that matters.
Who’s PCC?
PCC(E) = Professor Ceiling Cat (Emeritus), aka Prof. Jerry Coyne.
Thanks! I hadn’t seen that one. 🙂
Suffering beyond words by innocent human beings giving rise to noble passion of sympathy and motivation for action by good human beings is on one side of the balance while the other side has the offence of violating “time, place and manner” restrictions. In the case of the students whose degrees are withheld, we see that the former sentiment has overweighed and rendered them blind to the restrictions. I feel that this is certainly pardonable and in any case, withholding degree is punishment beyond all proportions.
The students were warned, and one needs serious deterrents to stop recurring protests that interrupt the function of a college. If you’re warned that you’ll be expelled or suspended, and choose to stay there, then you can’t claim you are “suffering beyond words”.
And pardon me, but promoting Hamas and the extirpationof Israel is hardly a “noble passion”.
Anyway, your feelings differ from other people’s feelings and are even less valid than theirs given the warnings and the need for a deterrent.
Here’s a few causes with plenty of people suffering but the students have zero interest in them. Just how much of this is humanitarian and how much is political?
https://hymie.substack.com/p/no-jews-no-news-explains-preoccupation