Harvard Corporation Overrules Faculty; ‘Encampment’ Seniors Will Not Graduate

The Harvard Corporation, the centuries-old body that is the ultimate authority at Harvard University, overruled a vote by the faculty and affirmed a decision by the Administrative Board to prevent 13 “encampment” activists from graduating.

As Breitbart News noted: “The ‘encampment’ disrupted campus life for nearly three weeks, staging protests in the middle of the final exam period. Jewish students said that they felt unsafe, especially given the use of antisemitic, militant slogans.”

The 13 seniors had violated university policies in their participation in the “encampment.”

After the Administrative Board determined that they should not be allowed to graduate, the faculty held a vote in which the overwhelming majority rejected the punishments and said the students should be reinstated.

The Harvard Crimson reported Wednesday:

The Harvard Corporation rejected an effort by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to confer degrees on 13 seniors facing disciplinary charges for participating in the pro-Palestine encampment, an unprecedented veto that opens a new front in the internal battles that have convulsed Harvard for the past year.

…

“Today, we have voted to confer 1,539 degrees to Harvard College students in good standing,” the Corporation wrote in a joint statement on Wednesday. “Because the students included as the result of Monday’s amendment are not in good standing, we cannot responsibly vote to award them degrees at this time.”

On Thursday, pro-Palestinian students walked out of Harvard’s graduation, or commencement, ceremony in protest.

Harvard’s former president, Claudine Gay, resigned earlier this year, partly due to her mismanagement of antisemitic protests on campus.

The Harvard Corporation is said to be the oldest corporation in the Western Hemisphere, according to Harvard.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.