Harvard had enough problems last academic year without making matters worse for itself. Yet after handling the pro-Palestinian encampment in the Old Yard from April 24 to May 14 reasonably well (the locked gates isolated the protest, and after some talks it dispersed without heavy-handed policing), the University’s way of disciplining the participants subsequently was a mess. It takes some explaining to detail why this was so. But the work has to be done if the University, already facing a daunting agenda, is to live up to its values and avoid scoring more own goals.
To begin, bear these principles and practices in mind.
First, the governing norm here is the University Statement on Rights and Responsibilities—the importance of which Alan M. Garber and the deans underscored last January 19: less than three weeks into his interim presidency (see harvardmag.com/rules-protest-24). That foundational statement emerged from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) after the chaos of April 1969: campus disruptions far more violent, and far more threatening to Harvard’s ability to operate, than anything experienced in the past 12 months.
Second, notwithstanding the institutional scope of those norms, the University Statutes (its bylaws) delegate discipline to each faculty. That is part of what is meant by Harvard’s decentralization.
Third, in deference to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA, 1974), the University and the schools refuse to talk about discipline.
Now consider the interaction of these parameters last spring. On May 6, invoking an administrative sanction applied in situations such as medical incapacitation or nonpayment of term bills, Garber advised the protestors that they risked being placed on “involuntarily leave” from their schools. Once they decamped, he asked schools to reinstate those placed on such leaves May 10—and further said he would “ask disciplinary boards within each school to evaluate expeditiously, according to their existing practices and precedents, the cases of those who participated in the encampment.”
The College’s Administrative Board did so promptly. But because neither it nor other Harvard academic entities announce or comment on disciplinary actions, even for anonymized groups of students, these were the results:
• No one in the community had any inkling of what specific actions were being punished, individual aggravating or extenuating factors, the range of punishments, or the number of people affected. The educational rationale for creating and applying a disciplinary process (to encourage behavior aligned with standards, not to have to compel compliance by cracking down on repeated violations) was simply thrown away: a huge fail for a teaching institution. Compared to prior protests over fossil-fuel divestment, living wages for campus staff, or investments in apartheid South Africa (including sit-ins, a blockade, and a prolonged Yard “shanty”), the past year’s demonstrations divided groups of students from one another far more directly, and brought forth evidence of hateful bias directed at Jews and Israelis, Palestinians and Muslims. This would have been a good time to clarify Harvard’s norms and rules and their enforcement.
• Communication about the punishments was outsourced to those directly affected, who are of course participants and partisans. Thus everyone outside the proceedings learned via protestors’ statements and social media posts, and subsequent Crimson reporting, that 13 undergraduates placed on suspension or probation would be ineligible to receive their diplomas on May 23 (and could be kept from doing so for multiple semesters). This was portrayed as unusually severe discipline; inconsistent with the sedate nature of the encampment itself and with the consequences for previous cohorts of undergraduate protestors; and sneaky double-dealing by the administration after lifting the involuntary leaves.
• On May 20, enough FAS faculty members gathered at the routine degrees meeting to secure a vote overriding the Ad Board. The Corporation on May 22 ruled that action had not restored the affected protestors to “good standing” so they could not graduate—and Commencement proceeded with blistering critiques from the stage and a sizable walkout by sympathetic students and faculty members (“Locked In,” July-August, page 17).
Nor did that end matters. The schools proceed at their own pace. On June 25, Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP) announced that 10 Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) students were placed on probation for their role in the encampment. That raised anew questions about whether discipline varies among Harvard schools (probation is less severe than suspension, and sources who refuse to be identified have claimed that professional school participants were merely admonished or warned)—a matter that cannot be answered without information on what actions resulted in each kind of discipline.
Then, on July 9, HOOP social media reported that the Ad Board had undone its decision to suspend five undergraduates (reducing their punishment to probation), and shortened other students’ probations. (When students are required to withdraw or are put on probation for more than one term, they can appeal to FAS’s Faculty Council. It determines whether the Ad Board erred procedurally or imposed sanctions inconsistent with its usual practices. Absent further enlightenment, this appears to be what happened here.) As a result, the Corporation found that 11 of the 13 affected seniors had been restored to good standing and conferred their degrees on July 23—exactly two months late (see harvardmag.com/degrees-protestors-24).
For those keeping score at home, at this point no one in the community at large knows precisely what kinds of behaviors resulted in what kinds of punishments—and it remains possible that the University standards were interpreted and enforced unevenly. The process has deepened some faculty members’ distrust of, and even contempt for, the Corporation—at a time when professors are considering whether a University faculty senate might enhance their role in governance. And now it appears that FAS’s disciplinary process was applied to this past spring’s protests in a way that didn’t meet the faculty’s own standards.
Shouldn’t an institution proud of its history of excellence be dismayed by this confusion and the missed opportunities? It should surely worry about possible external consequences. Harvard is the subject of multiple U.S. House of Representatives committee investigations of antisemitic incidents and other biased behavior on this campus since last October. The U.S. Department of Education has inquiries underway, and private lawsuits have been filed, too. Finally, the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance has demanded that the University “enforce [its] codes of conduct uniformly and without exception” (see harvardmag.com/antisemitism-reports-24). Will a “no comment” in response to questions from these quarters about the recent proceedings suffice?
None of this need have happened. A brief review of Harvard’s history, readily available during a quick visit to University Archives, reveals the different path taken in the wake of the 1969 convulsions. Given the obvious threat then to Harvard’s mission (the student seizure of University Hall, forcible expulsion of deans, ransacking of confidential files) and the administration’s decision to bring in state police to arrest the demonstrators, the FAS’s “Committee of Fifteen” faculty and students assessed the crisis—and took decisive action. The interim Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, for the College and GSAS (precursor to today’s University statement), was drafted and adopted by that June 9. By September 30, FAS had enacted an interim Committee on Rights and Responsibilities (CRR) for all disciplinary matters coming under the statement: a recognition that the issues differed from the sorts of academic infractions brought before the Ad Board.
Under incredible duress, the CRR compiled a remarkable record. According to its report of activity through June 1, 1970, it acted on 161 complaints of violations stemming from six “major incidents,” ranging from an obstructive demonstration in the College dean’s office, seizures of University Hall, and obstructive picketing to a demonstration at the Center for International Affairs (CFIA, then based on Divinity Avenue) that interrupted a Board of Overseers’ visiting committee meeting and entailed protestors hounding the center director and committee members from the meeting site to Harvard Square as they fled seeking safety. Following carefully crafted procedures, for each of these cases (and subsequent ones), the CRR issued public reports explaining its decisions—omitting the names of students.
Reading those typescripts now, one perceives a developing jurisprudence: elaborating the punishments meted out; articulating norms (for example, as adopted by FAS that April, the understanding that “intense personal harassment…amount[ing] to grave disrespect for the dignity of others” also be considered an “unacceptable violation of the personal rights on which the University is based”); and clarifying how the norms and reviews of complaints work. The rulings on the CFIA confrontation, for instance, detail distinct punishments as “explained by variations in the degree of involvement in the demonstration (plus, in a few cases, the existence of a record of prior disciplinary action).” Five students who were in the meeting room, but lacked prior records and did not otherwise behave unacceptably, were given suspended requirements to withdraw for two terms; one student with a prior disciplinary record who disrupted the meeting by shouting and followed participants, harassing them, was required to withdraw for the rest of the term and the following one; and a student who was even more physically disruptive was separated from Harvard for at least a year, with his return subject to a majority FAS vote.
Beyond the immediate value of such narratives, they suggest other lessons. In the face of grave damage to the essence of the University, writ large, faculty members assumed responsibility for repairing it, forming a clear perspective on the risks and improving processes to address them. One measure of their success: the Corporation amended the University Statutes to authorize the CRR as a disciplinary body for such cases. Both developments suggest a capacity for innovation and institutional suppleness not as apparent today.
The CRR was not perfect. Its reach was confined to FAS: the College, Radcliffe, and GSAS. Disruptions persisted. In time, students became critical of the committee and its processes, and withdrew from membership.
Nonetheless, the precedent has obvious value today. Amid the new and threatening challenges to the academic enterprise in the late 1960s, faculty leaders created the statement and CRR, which together clarified the conditions essential to the University’s recovery. Pre-FERPA, the CRR communicated informatively and educationally without trespassing on students’ privacy. Surely there are ways today to overcome the legalistic default that withholds all such information about disciplinary rulings from a community facing fresh challenges. And surely it makes some sense to distinguish University-level matters from those tied to each separate school’s academic needs—and to adjudicate the former in a consistent, understandable way.
The University announced on July 18 that a procedure had been devised to breathe life into the little-known University Committee on Rights and Responsibilities as a fact-finding body for certain cases involving students from more than one school (fully reported at harvardmag.com/usrr-statement-24). Coverage isn’t universal and discipline still devolves to each faculty, but this is at least a first step toward lessening the problems exposed of late.
In recent months, this column has suggested that the University’s future leaders must be able to represent it well in an era of heightened political scrutiny of elite institutions. It has also suggested that, if necessary, a newly empowered provost or other officer might direct academic strategy across the schools, as the president focuses on an increasingly demanding public role.
However the Corporation and its presidents sort those matters out, the morass on display recently points to a third priority. Politely speaking, Harvard’s University- and school-level policies and disciplinary processes operate in ways that are opaque, perhaps inconsistent and unfair, suboptimal for educating anyone about norms of behavior, and likely bewildering to those outside the ivory tower: unbefitting a place that aspires to academic leadership. More generally, legacy policies and practices throughout Harvard (lack of procedural clarity, overlapping responsibilities, obtuse communications—or none) call out for sandblasting the rust off the USS Crimson’s hull. No sane president or provost wants to invest his or her term of office doing that grubby work. So, with the costs of inertia painfully on display, a third challenge to governance and leadership is determining who will be charged with overhauling procedures and practices, yanking the University into a rough-and-tumble twenty-first century.
After a troubling year, much must be done within the community to repair breaches among students, and to bridge fissures between students and administrators, faculty members and the governing boards, and Harvard and alumni. Unrewarding though the task seems, rebooting the disciplinary “system” now in place might be a good, high-payoff place to start—especially today.
—John S. Rosenberg
