CAMBRIDGE - The student group Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine organized a Thursday afternoon rally on the Science Center Plaza to reiterate its call for the university to divest from any organization or business that supports the Israeli war on Gaza.
In a letter to a student group earlier this month, Harvard president cqAlan Garber said the school has no intention of “divesting from Israel,” while rejecting measures that pushed for the institution to slash its investment exposure in that state.
Thursday’s rally drew about 70 students, who formed a semicircle as speakers called for students to double down on their commitment to the cause. They chanted, “when Palestinians are oppressed, boycott, sanction, and divest.”
Tamar Sella, 21, an undergraduate in their final year, opened the rally with criticisms of Garber’s failure “to adopt a policy that stops endowments from funding human rights violations.”
”Such a suggestion should be of zero controversy, of any contention, and still Garber doubles down, confirming Harvard’s consistent position that it has no intention of divesting from Israel,” Sella said.
In his letter to the group, Garber said he will not direct the Harvard Management Co., which runs the university’s $53.2 billion endowment, to change course.
“Harvard will not use its endowment funds to endorse a contested view on a complex issue that deeply divides our community,” read the letter, which was dated Oct. 3. “The reasons for avoiding such an action have been articulated for decades by my predecessors and bear repeating.”
The school’s investment strategy, he said, “is designed to support the academic mission, not to serve as a direct instrument of social or political change.”
The student group issued a press release earlier this week slamming Garber’s response.
“His response exemplifies the lack of outlets for real community engagement with the endowment, while also demonstrating a troubling denial of established, broadly agreed-upon facts about the current crisis in Palestine,” the release said.
In the statement, the student group said it presented two proposals at a September meeting with Harvard brass, during which they discussed the school’s cq$53 billion endowment.
One of the measures called for “the adoption of a human rights investment policy statement,” which would “specifically state Harvard’s commitments to incorporating human rights in HMC’s investment portfolio.” The second asked for the appointment of a task force to review HMC’s portfolio for any investments that might violate Harvard’s commitment to human rights, according to the group.
“Both proposals build on decades of precedence of responsible institutional investment practices, and were constructed in dialogue with industry professionals,” read the release.
The latest clash between the student group and Garber comes after a tumultuous year at Harvard, with the war in Gaza at the center of campus strife.
On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas militants and their collaborators stormed into southern Israel and killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted another 250. Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza, which has now killed more than 42,000 people and entangled Lebanon and Iran, began shortly afterward, and prompted large protests on Harvard’s campus. Some saw the demonstrations as containing antisemitic elements.
A pair of Harvard reports released in the summer found that antisemitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Palestinian bias had surged on campus since the war began.
Pro-Palestinian student activists at the Ivy League school, meanwhile, had their personal information published online, received threats, and lost job offers.
Earlier this month, around a dozen Harvard faculty members and staffers gathered in front of a campus library on Friday to protest disciplinary action against pro-Palestinian student protesters. The students had staged a mostly silent “study-in” at Widener Library in Harvard Yard to protest Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip.
The library protest was one of the first tests of a set of new, or newly enforced, rules that Harvard promulgated during the summer. The rules were part of the university’s effort to avoid the turmoil over the Israel-Hamas war that disrupted much of the last academic year and culminated in a weeks-long encampment in Harvard Yard.
Republicans in Congress have launched investigations of the responses of Harvard, and other universities, to antisemitism and pressured administrators to clamp down on pro-Palestinian activism.
In recent weeks, around the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack, some pro-Palestinian campus groups vowed to “escalate” their tactics. Overnight, between Oct. 7 and Oct. 8, an unidentified person smashed windows at University Hall and splashed red paint on the John Harvard statue. The Harvard police said the incident is under investigation.
Additionally, police are investigating after several “religiously threatening” stickers with antisemitic symbols were posted around Harvard Square, officials said.
The stickers were placed on light poles in the Charles River area and reported to Harvard University police earlier this month. Officers searched the area but were unable to find who was responsible.
The stickers showed an Israeli flag with the Star of David replaced with a swastika, in an apparent comparison of Israel to Nazi Germany, along with the phrase “Stop Funding Israeli Terrorism,” according to photos obtained by The Harvard Crimson, a student newspaper.
Perhaps typifying the intractable nature of the campus divide is an assault case grounded in a confrontation between pro-Palestinian Harvard graduate students and an Israeli Harvard Business School student. The case has pitted investigators against one another and drawn the attention of the FBI.
In early January, Claudine Gay, Harvard’s first Black president, resigned after her brief term was derailed by controversies stemming from the Israel-Hamas war, campus antisemitism, and allegations of plagiarism in her scholarly works.
During the summer, Harvard announced Garber, who in the past year was credited with ending Harvard’s three-week student protest encampment without a police raid, would stay on as president for another three years.
Danny McDonald can be reached at daniel.mcdonald@globe.com. Follow him @Danny__McDonald. Tonya Alanez can be reached at tonya.alanez@globe.com. Follow her @talanez.