Harvard Awards Denied Degrees to Pro-Palestinian Protesters

Harvard University has awarded 11 degrees to students who were denied their degrees because of their involvement in the 20-day pro-Palestinian protest encampment on Harvard Yard earlier this year.

The university initially refused to issue degrees to 13 students who protested in late May, when the Harvard Corporation, the university’s governing body, voted against granting degrees to students “who were not in good standing.”

A Harvard spokesperson confirmed that the 11 candidates had been “restored to normal status” and referred to the company’s May 22 statement that it would “consider” issuing the degrees if the students followed a disciplinary process.

“Effective, fair, well-understood and consistently applied processes are essential to how we operate as a learning community – and how we balance opportunities to express our views, including through protest and dissent, with our obligations to one another,” said Jason Newton, a Harvard spokesman.

Earlier this month, Harvard also reversed its decision to suspend five students by reducing their sanctions to probation, the most severe of which was one semester, the Justice Department said. Harvard Crimson reported.

THE crimson The school newspaper initially announced the graduation of the 11 students. The other two students are unable to graduate because of unpaid probation until the end of the fall semester, according to the school newspaper.

Non-disclosure of degrees led to graduation strike

The denied degrees were not awarded at this spring’s graduation ceremonies, despite a group of Harvard faculty members voting “overwhelmingly” to grant graduation to seniors. At Harvard’s graduation, students walked out in protest and staged a march in Harvard Square.

Newton said Harvard “continues to work to strengthen and improve disciplinary processes,” including recently announced updated procedures for fact-finding processes for cases involving more than one school within the university.

Harvard officials made the announcement July 18 after the university was “confronted” with “an increasing number of disciplinary cases involving students from different schools involved in the same event or behavior.”

“Each school is responsible for determining the discipline of its own students. The facts that determine discipline should not vary based on the school a particular student attends,” Harvard officials wrote.