Hundreds of students walked out of Harvard University’s commencement ceremony Thursday morning as degrees were conferred, while hundreds chanted “Let them walk!”, a reference to 13 student protesters who were not allowed to graduate after a vote Wednesday by the Harvard Corporation, the university’s governing body.
The walkout was a jarring reminder of continuing unrest on the Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus, on a day when more than 9,000 graduates and their families were gathered in Harvard Yard for celebration and reflection.
At the start of the ceremony, the university’s interim president, Alan Garber — loudly booed by some in the crowd — acknowledged the turmoil, and the possibility that “some among us may choose to take the liberty of expressing themselves to draw attention to events unfolding in the wider world.”
“This moment of joy coincides with moments of fear and dread, grief and anger, suffering and pain,” he said. “Elsewhere, people are experiencing the worst days of their lives.” He asked the crowd to observe a minute of silence.
Student speakers at the ceremony strongly criticized the Harvard Corporation for its vote Wednesday to bar 13 undergraduate protesters from receiving their degrees in the wake of campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war. The move was seen by the students and their faculty supporters as a violation of an agreement made between administrators and students to clear their encampment from Harvard Yard.
The university, which has not provided details of the 13 students’ disciplinary violations, has denied having made any promises about the outcome of the discipline proceedings.
“This semester, our freedom of speech and expressions of solidarity became punishable, leaving our graduation uncertain,” undergraduate student speaker Shruthi Kumar said before acknowledging the students who had been barred from graduating.
“Harvard, do you hear us?” she asked, to thunderous applause.
The commencement speaker, Maria Ressa, a veteran journalist, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and longtime champion of free speech, also invoked the student protests. “Harvard, you are being tested,” she said.
“The campus protests are testing everyone in America,” Ressa continued. “Protests give voice; they shouldn’t be silenced.”
During the ceremony, someone in the audience held up an Israeli flag, a counter to a half-dozen or so Palestinian flags being waved by graduates. As the ceremony proceeded, a small plane carrying a banner with a combined Israeli and American flag buzzed low over Harvard Yard.
Throughout the morning commencement — the 373rd held by the university — Harvard aimed to minimize distractions from its traditional program, with music, prayer and speeches, including one in Latin. Crimson banners bedecked the historic yard, which had remained closed to the public for 20 days after pro-Palestinian protesters established an encampment there on April 24. The tents were cleared last week, after the students announced on May 14 that they had reached an agreement with university leaders.
From the start, the two sides viewed the terms of the agreement differently. Students with the protest group, Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine, known as HOOP, suggested that Harvard had made concessions in response to their demands, while the university said it had merely agreed to open a dialogue with the protesters. Students said at the time that Harvard was “backing down” on disciplinary measures; Garber said that individual schools would make those decisions.
As she prepared to leave the ceremony before undergraduate degrees were conferred, Kumar said she was walking out as a show of support for the student protesters who were denied their degrees.
“These are my peers and friends, and I can’t in good conscience celebrate when their families are in pain,” she said. “This is beyond politics — it’s about civil rights and civil disobedience. We’re not intending to be disruptive or violent. But it’s making a statement, as a community, as the class of 2024.”
Students who walked out of the ceremony reconvened at a Methodist church near Harvard Square, which quickly grew crowded and warm as graduates in their black robes, and many of their relatives, packed the pews. There, the students staged what they called a “people’s commencement,” sharing stories of people who had died in the war in the Gaza Strip and unfurling long lists of fatalities, which hung down from the church’s balconies to the floor.
As a rainstorm began, some local residents arrived at the church to join the event, carrying a giant banner that read “Harvard out of occupied Palestine” and shouting now-familiar slogans.
The commencement walkouts capped a year in which Harvard was among hundreds of campuses across the country where prolonged protests against the war broke out, stirring a national debate over universities’ handling of the unrest.
The turmoil began Oct 7, as more than 30 student organizations at Harvard signed onto an open letter holding Israel responsible for the violence of the Hamas attacks in Israel, in which more than 1,200 people were killed and some 250 kidnapped.
The backlash against the letter, and Harvard’s slow response to demands that it denounce the Hamas attacks as terrorism, led to strife on campus. Pro-Palestinian students were doxxed, their names and faces circulated on trucks around campus; Jewish students were attacked with antisemitic slurs on social media; and wealthy donors withdrew their money.
By January, Harvard’s first Black president, Claudine Gay, was forced to resign, after mounting charges of plagiarism in her academic work and her disastrous testimony before a congressional committee, in which she failed to denounce calls for the genocide of Jews as violating Harvard’s code of conduct.
Even an antisemitism task force met with controversy over the choice of its co-chair, Derek J Penslar, a Harvard professor of Jewish history, who had drawn criticism that he underestimated the degree of antisemitism on campus.
The latest controversy over student discipline began last Friday, after Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine said that some seniors would not be allowed to graduate. The announcement caused a furor, as supporters of the students said they were being punished for peaceful protest. Although Harvard did not provide details of what the students had done wrong, official statements indicated that protesters had cut a gate lock and harassed and intimidated staff members.
Some faculty supporters then engaged in a bureaucratic duel over the students’ fates.
On Monday, Harvard’s faculty announced that it had restored the 13 students to the official list of students eligible to graduate. Then on Wednesday, the Harvard Corporation, the university’s governing body, overruled the faculty, once again barring the students from graduating.
The 13 students can appeal the decision and request that they be returned to good standing. The corporation said that if they were, the university would confer their degrees promptly, and not wait for the next formal graduation ceremony.