Harvard University and student protesters announced early Tuesday that they had negotiated an end to a pro-Palestinian encampment in Harvard Yard, agreeing to discuss student questions about divestment related to the war in Gaza and to quickly process petitions for reinstatement of suspended students.
The apparently peaceful outcome is one that has eluded many other campuses where officials have resorted to calling the police to clear demonstrators.
The coalition orchestrating the three-week-old encampment, Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine, known as HOOP, announced that it had “democratically voted to end its encampment after 20 days.”
The end of the encampment came as the campus was emptying out for the end of the school year, buildings were closing and the protests were becoming more difficult to sustain. Some student participants had been placed on “involuntary leave,” barring them from the campus.
A few days ago, protesters drew accusations of antisemitism when they displayed a poster depicting Alan Garber, Harvard’s interim president, as a devil sitting on a toilet, under the words, “Alan Garbage funds genocide.”
The Harvard statement said that Dr. Garber would “pursue a meeting between encampment participants and the chair of the corporation committee on shareholder responsibility and other university leaders for a discussion regarding students’ questions related to the endowment.”
