Additional reporting by Brittney McNamara
At Harvard University, tensions have been building. First, a pro-Palestinian letter from student groups. Then protests, doxxing, die-ins, and sit-ins. Later, disciplinary hearings, clashes between students, and hateful words exchanged.
Harvard has garnered national scrutiny as student action around the Israel-Hamas war continues, reflecting the strain on campuses across the US after the Hamas attacks on October 7 — which killed an estimated 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, with an estimated 117 reportedly still held hostage — and Israel’s retaliatory siege on Gaza. As of December 12, more than 18,200 Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children, per the Hamas-run Gaza Health ministry. As the death toll soars in Gaza, many Americans are calling for a permanent ceasefire and students on campuses across the country are protesting in support of Palestine.
On October 25, college students at more than 100 universities staged a walkout in protest for a ceasefire in Gaza. They also asked for their respective administrations to sever ties with arms manufacturers providing weapons to the State of Israel. The national walkout was organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement, Dissenters, Anakbayan, the National Students for Justice in Palestine, the Muslim Students Association, and more.
But amid the various protests and rallies, at which students may be around like-minded peers, clashes have also increased. Jewish and Arab students report feeling unsafe on campus as antisemitism and Islamophobia rise. According to Inside Higher Ed, the bathrooms and dorm rooms of two Jewish students at American University were vandalized with swastikas and a Nazi slogan, and someone set fire to decorations in a Jewish student’s room at Drexel University. Also at American University, a Palestinian professor got messages saying “death to all Palestinians,” according to Pen America, while students at George Washington University say they’ve had their hijabs ripped off.
That hate has turned violent. In October, a Cornell student was arrested for making violent online threats against Jewish students. And, though the attack didn’t happen on a college campus, three Palestinian American students were shot while walking in Burlington, Vermont.
As the war continues, here’s what’s playing out on campuses across the country.
Harvard
On October 7, the same day as the Hamas incursion, 34 student organizations at Harvard signed a controversial letter blaming Israel for the attacks.
“Today’s events did not occur in a vacuum,” the letter read. “For the last two decades, millions of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live in an open-air prison. Israeli officials promise to ‘open the gates of hell,’ and the massacres in Gaza have already commenced…. The apartheid regime is the only one to blame.”
The letter caused intense backlash, with people well beyond the Harvard community speaking out against it, rescinding job offers to students associated with it, pulling financial backing from the institution, and calling on the university to denounce it. (Harvard's administration later stated that “while our students have the right to speak for themselves, no student group — not even 30 student groups — speaks for Harvard University or its leadership.”) Associates of the student organizations that signed the letter experienced mass harassment, such as doxxing. Accuracy in Media, a conservative watchdog group, sent a black truck flashing pro-Palestinian students’ names and faces on a digital screen to the Harvard campus, where it stayed for at least a week. Notably, the students who have been doxxed by the truck are primarily Black, Muslim, and/or undocumented.
Since October 7, there have been numerous protests, walkouts, vigils, and die-ins on Harvard’s campuses. On November 16 and 17, a group of pro-Palestine students occupied Harvard’s University Hall for 24 hours. Per The Harvard Crimson, the university's student newspaper, the demonstration was organized by Harvard Jews for Palestine, an unrecognized student group of pro-Palestine Jewish students and allies. According to statements they posted to Instagram, they demanded Harvard administrators release a call for a ceasefire in Gaza, make a statement saying that antisemitism is not the same as anti-Zionism, and create a committee to investigate Islamophobia and suppression of pro-Palestine speech on campus.
Amid many pro-Palestinian protests on campus, Jewish students have also organized their own vigils for the Israeli victims and hostages, and many have called on their schools to address rising antisemitism on college campuses. According to data released by the Anti-Defamation League, there's been a rise in antisemitism across the United States over the last year, but especially since October 7. The nonprofit reported a 388% spike in incidents of harassment, vandalism and/or assault compared to the same time period in 2022.
This spike in antisemitism has been true on college campuses too, including at Harvard, according to President Claudine Gay’s recent testimony before Congress. Students at various universities have reported antisemitic incidents, and one Harvard student told Teen Vogue he’d seen antisemitic speech online.
Gay faced widespread backlash and calls for her resignation after her Congressional testimony about antisemitism at Harvard. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) asked Gay, MIT's president Sally Kornbluth, and the University of Pennsylvania's president M. Elizabeth Magill whether calling for the "genocide of Jews" violates their respective campus policies. All three leaders said context and severity would determine whether such statements could constitute harassment and bullying. More than 70 members of Congress called for the resignation of the three presidents; Magill has since resigned, but Harvard and MIT's respective boards of directors have signified support for their president.
The rising tensions on campus have had consequences, particularly as students grapple with one another. A Black graduate student at Harvard, who has been subjected to mass harassment and doxxing online, was suspended from his proctor duties after a video went viral online of him at a pro-Palestine rally on October 18. In the video, the student was seen blocking a person who, the Harvard Crimson reported, had been recording students during the die-in. Students at Harvard have started a petition to reinstate the graduate student, and a few of the first-year students under his purview as proctor have penned an open letter defending his actions. In addition, eight students face potential disciplinary action after the occupation of University Hall.
These tensions are not unique to Harvard, but Prince Williams, cofounder of AFRO (African and African American Resistance Organization), says they’ve captured media attention for a reason. “The world looks to Harvard as a prestigious, ultra-elite institution of higher learning,” he notes. “At the same time, Harvard is a microcosm of all the things we feel are wrong with the country and in our world. Palestine is no exception to that. We understand we have that power as Harvard students and we want to use it for good. We want to use our privilege as Harvard students to stand up for Palestinian people.”
But universities at large act as microcosms of their own communities, and similar tensions among students are coming to a head elsewhere.
A map of some of the clashes between students, and antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents that have been happening on America's college campuses during the Israel-Hamas war. This is not a comprehensive list, and will be continuously updated.
Columbia
Like Harvard, students at Columbia University have experienced great scrutiny.
On October 25, Accuracy in Media sent the doxxing truck that had circled Harvard to Columbia University’s campus; according to The Columbia Spectator, the university’s student newspaper, the administration declined to comment on the truck’s presence. Columbia University has not responded to Teen Vogue’s request for comment.
Prior to October 25, nearly two dozen Columbia student groups signed a joint statement about the escalation of war between Israel and Gaza. Per the Spectator, the statement read, “The weight of responsibility for the war and casualties undeniably lies with the Israeli extremist government and other Western governments, including the US government, which fund and staunchly support Israeli aggression, apartheid and settler-colonization.”
The letter also asked Columbia to cease its dual-degree program with Tel Aviv University. The New York Times reported that two Columbia Law School students who had leadership roles in the student groups listed on the letter had employment offers rescinded.
On November 10, Columbia University suspended the Columbia chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. Per a statement released by the senior executive vice president of the university and chair of the Special Committee on Campus Safety, the reason was that the two groups “repeatedly violated university policies related to holding campus events.” As a result, the groups have lost funding from the university and can no longer hold on-campus events through the fall semester.
Neither group has responded to Teen Vogue’s request for comment following the suspension.
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Other schools have also banned pro-Palestinian groups on campus: Brandeis banned its chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine because it said the group “openly supports Hamas”; George Washington University suspended a pro-Palestinian group after members reportedly projected messages on a campus library saying “divestment from Zionist genocide now” and “glory to our martyrs”; and Brown and MIT have disciplined students for actions during pro-Palestinian protests, Politico reported.
At the University of Indiana-Bloomington, protestors from various sides have been spray painting a bridge, altering one another’s messages to support their mission. According to The Guardian, a student spray painted, “Free Palestine. Educate yourself. End the occupation” on the bridge on October 21; soon after, someone added “From Hamas.”
On November 7, UCLA students staged a large rally to support Israel, and on November 8, other students organized a protest of Israel’s violence in Gaza. Cal Matters called the events “a thunderous expression of each side’s anguish.”
These are just a few of many rallies and protests, large and small, that are cropping up at most colleges and universities.
There’s a long history of student activism in the United States. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ‘60s, students played an integral role in organizing and carrying out demonstrations. Also in the ’60s, students across the country staunchly protested the Vietnam War in demonstrations that were sometimes met with violence, culminating in the Kent State shootings in which Ohio National Guardsmen shot and killed four students, injuring nine others, during an antiwar protest. In more recent years, students have protested the war in Iraq, the Trump administration, police violence against Black people, and more.
For Williams, leveraging the history of youth movements on college campuses is important in becoming leaders now. “We are historically conscious,” Williams says. “We say it amongst ourselves that we remember, have learned from, and are actually taught and trained by the student movements of old organizers who fought against American apartheid [Jim Crow]. We know the student movements who fought on this campus and other campuses. We know how powerful and iconic those images of those student movements are to today.”
