Once again, Harvard threatened the protesters. Once again, they were wrong.

Harvard is now policing its affiliates for not recording their protests, using megaphones at rallies, writing messages in chalk on puppies – and now, just when we thought the administration couldn’t go any lower, they threatened to discipline students for participating in a silent protest. .

On Saturday afternoon, about 30 pro-Palestinian student protesters held a silent “emergency study” at the Widener Library in protest against a wave of Israeli attacks against Hezbollah last week.

In response to the protest – which consisted of students dressed in kaffiyehs studying silently with signs attached to their computers – Harvard administrators falsely threatened disciplinary action.

On Friday, Associate Dean for Student Engagement Jason R. Meier informed Harvard’s Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee that the sit-in was “a violation of Harvard policies and that participants could be subject to follow-up, if necessary.

That may be the case – but the policy itself is absurd.

Students wearing keffiyehs and CFP laptop stickers have become commonplace

campus, making it impossible to tell the difference between a politically active student and a protester.

We can’t help but wonder: Are all the students wearing a Trump hat or a Harris t-shirt protesting? The administration is powerless to make a difference. Their radical policies invite nothing but profiling, and we applaud the protesters for exposing the University’s hypocrisy.

This recent form of protest is indisputable. He delivered his message with minimal disruption to University operations and aligned himself with the spirit of the Harvard Statement on Rights and Responsibilities, the University-wide document that regulates protests students.
Additionally, administrators made a lot more noise by taking student ID numbers in the Loker Reading Room than the protesters themselves: if the university really cared about preventing disruptions in Widener Library , she would not have caused a ruckus by disrupting the demonstration.

Last year’s chaos was born from a patchwork of rules applied in a completely ad hoc manner. We demand more clarity: why was this study considered a protest? Was it because there were signs affixed to the laptops? Was it because CPS and affiliated groups publicized it as such? And why did Harvard suddenly decide to start enforcing these rules?

As any liberal arts student knows, you have to follow through with your argument: if a professor posts a sign on his classroom door informing students that the class has been moved, we can’t imagine that they would be sanctioned. Yet Harvard disputes student activists’ “unapproved signage.”

Harvard needs to learn a lesson. His guidelines have always been insane, and now – between the chalk regulations and his response to the study – that inanity is on full display.

We are not saying that protests should not be regulated. The sensible answer is a set of reasonable rules coupled with consistent and unbiased enforcement.

That said, it’s worth thinking about the origins of the stupid “no protesting in libraries” policy, which was almost certainly developed in response to the PSC’s Widener study last December.

Harvard policy should not be designed to curry favor with a hostile Congress. What we need is a common-sense set of protest guidelines, informed by feedback from faculty and students – those who learn, live and teach here.

The University’s current policies – and their seemingly subjective enforcement – are more than stupid. They are reactionary and targeted.

Harvard must do better.

This staff editorial represents solely the majority opinion of the Crimson Editorial Board. It is the result of discussions during regular meetings of the editorial committee. To ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to express their opinions and vote at these meetings are not involved in the coverage of stories on similar topics.