Harvard, Penn and MIT Still Struggling to Quell Student Protests

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—Israel supporters hung the nation’s blue and white flags from a fence encircling a pro-Palestinian encampment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, covering protesters’ signs. Encampment members responded by making red handprints on the flags.

The tense back-and-forth this week came two days after MIT President Sally Kornbluth told protesters to vacate the campus lawn they have occupied for weeks or face consequences that have since included dozens of suspensions.

Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania—two other schools long in the public hot seat for their handling of a raucous campus debate over a Middle East conflict—are similarly struggling to shut down encampments they say aren’t permitted. A congressional hearing in December thrust leaders of all three elite schools into the spotlight, and two of the presidents lost their jobs amid widespread criticism of their responses.

So far, none of the three institutions has forcibly evicted these protesters, as happened at Columbia University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and campuses across the U.S., often with mass arrests.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro called Thursday for Penn to clear out the encampment there. “It is past time for the university to act, to address this, to disband the encampment and to restore order and safety on campus,” Shapiro, a Democrat, said in response to a reporter’s question at a news conference.

Penn’s top official this week said school officials were speaking with police, who urged de-escalation, but he also expressed concern that many protesters were seeking police action.

Meanwhile, protesters have remained defiant.

“MIT continues to remain complicit in the ongoing genocide waged by the Israeli Ministry of Defense,” a protester at MIT said, speaking in front of a student center near the encampment, in a video posted Wednesday by the Coalition Against Apartheid student group there.

On Thursday, MIT said campus police arrested some protesters who had marched to a campus building and were blocking a garage. The school in an alert described the number arrested as fewer than 10. Protesters continued to chant refrains such as “Free Palestine” near the site of the arrests, while a mix of state and local police blocked off the street, before marching back to the encampment.

Their chanting has also included “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a phrase Palestinians and supporters see as a call for freedom and peace, and that some Jews and others find antisemitic.

Hana Flores, a protester and MIT Ph.D student, criticized the school for the arrests and other punishments. “The MIT Scientists Against Genocide Encampment is 100% focused on achieving our realistic, popular, moral demands and will continue nonviolent protest actions until demands are met,” she said Thursday.

The schools are navigating a volatile environment where students, donors, parents and teachers often have deeply divided views. Some, such as Brown University, have managed to negotiate a peaceful end to encampments. UCLA, by contrast, saw dangerous clashes between counterprotesters and protesters.

MIT, Harvard and Penn were steeped in controversy five months ago after their leaders appeared before a Republican-led House committee and gave equivocal, legalistic answers to questions about where they would draw the line between protected speech and harassment.

They drew particular criticism for their response to a question about whether calling for the genocide of Jewish people would violate school policies. The presidents of Penn and Harvard—the latter also pressured by plagiarism allegations—would resign.

A fenced-in encampment on MIT’s Kresge Oval established weeks ago includes signs reading “End the genocide” and “Jews for Palestine.” Placed on the lawn just outside the camp are pictures of people taken hostage when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 and a large collection of Israeli flags.

The pro-Palestinian demonstrators are demanding that MIT cut all research ties with Israel’s defense ministry. The school said two contracts worth $265,000 are active and that both involve research available to scientists worldwide.

Kornbluth said she has grown increasingly concerned about the community’s safety.

“This situation is inherently highly unstable,” she said in a message to students Monday, which said protesters needed to leave the encampment by 2:30 p.m. that day. Many did leave before toppling a fence and reoccupying the space by that evening, the school said. Police were on hand but made no arrests.

The debate in Cambridge continues as colleges elsewhere have cracked down. Police in Washington, D.C., for example, made 33 arrests early Wednesday while clearing an encampment at George Washington University that began April 25. The district’s police chief cited growing volatility, including indications protesters were gathering items that could be used as weapons.

Wednesday evening, the encampment at Penn expanded as protesters spilled onto another part of College Green, according to local news reports in Philadelphia. J. Larry Jameson, Penn’s interim president, has expressed worry about escalation and potential infiltration by outsiders.

“We have heard reports of circulating documents with instructions for escalating a protest, including through building occupations and violence. Every day the encampment exists, the campus is less safe,” Jameson said earlier this week.

Penn said Thursday that six students had been placed on mandatory temporary leave, which university policy says is a sanction reserved for “extraordinary circumstances” when a student’s presence is deemed “a threat to order, health, safety, or the conduct of the University’s educational mission.”

The tents at Harvard are behind locked gates and fences encircling Harvard Yard, the heart of the Cambridge campus, and people without school IDs have recently been denied entry.

Alan Garber, Harvard’s interim president, said earlier this week that students who continue the encampment face “involuntary leave.”

“The encampment favors the voices of a few over the rights of many who have experienced disruption in how they learn and work at a critical time of the semester,” Garber said.

Two subway stops away at MIT, Chancellor Melissa Nobles, one of the school’s top officials, said Wednesday the encampment “must end at once.” The school the same day said it suspended dozens of students, barring them from all academic activities for the rest of the semester as well as from commencement in late May.

The school has been buffeted by demands from many corners. Groups representing parents, alumni and faculty have weighed in, some defending protesters and others accusing MIT of failing to protect students from antisemitism.

MIT junior Maya Makarovsky, a Jewish student who is involved with a pro-Israel campus group formed after Oct. 7, said she has to walk by the encampment there several times a day because of its central location. To her, rhetoric such as calls for an intifada are antisemitic and causing growing anxiety.

“It has become completely mentally consuming and makes it hard to focus,” she said. “They need to get rid of the encampment.”

Melissa Korn contributed to this article.

Write to Jon Kamp at [email protected] and Scott Calvert at [email protected]