Good to see they aren’t giving up
More than 50 Harvard Law School students quietly protested in Langdell Hall’s library Friday afternoon, the third study-in protest to occur at HLS this semester.
The protest, which lasted for roughly 40 minutes, ended without library administrators checking the IDs of participants. While activists were quick to celebrate the lack of ID checks as a victory over the administration, an HLS official said library staff did not have prior knowledge of the protest.
The HLS official said the study-in ended before administrators had time to ID participants. Harvard administrators across the University continued to issue two-week suspensions to any affiliates who participate in study-in protests and there is no indication that the policy has changed.
Students entered Langdell at 12:20 p.m., where they silently studied with fliers taped to their laptops condemning Israel’s war in Gaza. More than 20 students also wore white t-shirts that read: “We were banned from Harvard Library for dreaming of a free Palestine.”
At precisely 1 p.m., students left Langdell en masse to rally outside the library. Following a group photo, organizers led the group in chants of “Free Palestine” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
Maha C. Husseini, a Palestinian American third-year law student, spoke to the crowd about the ongoing war in Gaza, which she described as “not only meant to intimidate, to scare, to kill, but also to make Palestine unlivable and untenable for Palestinians with psychological warfare.”
“In a way, of course to a much lesser degree, this school is silencing us and trying to do psychological warfare,” Husseini said.
“I think the fact that we were not IDed brings us back to what we’ve known the whole time, that these rules are not enforceable, that they’re arbitrary, and that they are trying to get inside our heads,” she said.
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https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/11/16/harvard-law-library-study-in-protest/
