Faculty and Staff Statement of Solidarity with Harvard Gaza Solidarity Encampment

April 24, 2024

We, the members of Harvard's FSJP, stand in unwavering support and solidarity with our students in their opposition to the unfolding genocide in Gaza. 

Over the past two hundred days we have watched the Israeli military massacre tens of thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children. We have witnessed the displacement and death of many of our colleagues in Gaza, as their universities and hospitals have been completely demolished. Rather than denounce these horrors or use its power to end it, Harvard University continues to invest in companies tied to the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. The administration has chosen to silence, punish, and threaten students, faculty and staff who have dared to protest against US-backed Israeli war crimes and genocidal violence. Harvard's suppression of dissent contributes to the material erasure of our Palestinian colleagues, preventing their stories from being told. This epistemic violence enables genocide. 

Today, Harvard students have built, in solidarity with their peers around the nation, a Gaza solidarity encampment on campus. With their encampment, students are peacefully refusing the use of their tuition dollars to fund genocidal violence, while standing in solidarity with the 2 million Palestinians who have been forced to live in tents and other makeshift housing after being forcibly displaced by Israeli soldiers and bombs. 

We call on the university to engage in good faith with our students' demands for disclosure of investments, divestment from the State of Israel and institutions that profit from the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the occupation of Palestine, and reinvestment of those funds in Palestinian communities.

We call on the University to honor our students' rights to freedom of speech and political expression. We urge the Harvard administration to refrain from any retaliation against the students (whether via pre-emptive suspensions of individuals and/or organizations, ad hoc disciplinary proceedings, or police involvement), and to ensure students’ access to food, housing, and a pathway to graduation without penalty. 

We reject the University’s use of the language of "safety" to stifle peaceful protest. We condemn university administrators' mischaracterizations of peaceful protestors as “antisemitic,” “violent,” or “threatening.” In the Gaza solidarity encampments around the country, Jewish and Palestinian students, alongside students of many other ethnic, racial, and religious identities, are practicing solidarity, cooperation, free speech, free assembly, and the collective rejection of military violence. Today’s Harvard Yard encampment further challenges the unquestioned authority of the Harvard Corporation, which governs our institution without meaningful accountability or transparency to our community.

With their encampment, our students aim to construct a liberated space for collective education, toward a diverse, equitable and just tomorrow. We are proud to support this vision of an emancipated future under our students' courageous leadership.