Students on leave will not be able to take tests or live in residences on campus; university talks about “risk to the educational environment” of the institution
Harvard University, in the United States, announced this Monday (May 6, 2024) that it will remove students who continue to participate in the pro-Palestine camp. The demonstration began there on April 24.
In an email sent to the university community, the institution’s interim president, Alan Garber, said that students on leave will not be able to take exams or live in residences on campus. Read the full document (PDF – 73 kB, in English).
“Enforcing these policies, which are essential to our educational mission, is an obligation we have to our students and the Harvard community more broadly. This is not, as some have suggested, a rejection of discussion and debate about the urgent issues that concern the University, the nation and the world.”said Garber.
According to the president, the students participating in the act at Harvard “were informed repeatedly” that violations of university policies will be subject to disciplinary consequences.
He also expressed concern about the interruption of educational activities at the institution and reports “increasingly frequent” of intimidation and harassment of members of the Harvard community.
In the statement, Garber also says that:
- the administration continues to “hearing reports from students whose ability to sleep, study and move freely around campus has been harmed by the actions of protesters”;
- students graduating in 2024 “deserve to enjoy” of conquest “without interruptions and obstacles”;
- There are several ways for the Harvard community to engage in constructive discussions about complex issues, “but initiating these difficult and crucial conversations does not require or justify interfering with the educational environment and academic mission” of the university.
ACTS AT US UNIVERSITIES
The recent wave of protests was driven by students at Columbia University in New York.
Pro-Palestinian students began setting up the camp on April 17, the same day that the institution’s president, Minouche Shafik, testified before the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor – at the time, she spoke about the measures the university had taken to regarding accusations of anti-Semitism on campus.
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, on October 7, 2023, anti-Semitic attitudes have been recorded at North American universities. The issue even resulted in the resignation of Claudine Gay as president of Harvard on January 2.
In addition to Columbia and Harvard, acts were recorded at Princeton, Brown, Yale, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania and Dartmouth. The institutions are part of the Ivy League (group of the best universities in the USA).
Protesters call for an end to the war in the Gaza Strip. They also demand that universities separate themselves financially and academically from institutions and companies linked to the Israeli government.
According to information from the New York Timesreleased until 3pm (Brasília time) this Monday (May 6), 2,300 people who participated in the demonstrations have already been arrested since April 18 at 53 US universities.
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