SAR’s Academic Freedom Monitoring Project investigates and reports attacks on higher education with the aim of raising awareness, generating advocacy, and increasing protection for scholars, students, and academic communities. Starting July 1, 2026, SAR no longer publishes reports for the incidents that it records. SAR continues to monitor and record incidents that will be used in the annual Free to Think report. This page provides a record of incidents reported up to that date. Learn more about the Academic Freedom Monitoring Project.

Date of Incident: November 11, 2024

Attack Types: Loss of Position

Institution(s):Harvard University

Region & Country:Americas | United States of America

New or Ongoing:New Incident

On November 11, 2024, the Dean of Harvard’s Divinity School, Marla F. Frederick, announced that students had been banned from entering from the Divinity School’s library for two weeks after they held a “pray-in” there.

The pray-in took place on November 4 and followed a series of similar “study-in” protests, including ones that took place in Harvard’s Widener Library on September 21 (see report), October 16 (see report) and at Harvard Law School’s Langdell Library on October 17 (see report).

A group of Jewish students led the pray-in, which lasted for about 45 minutes, inside the library. During the demonstration, students silently prayed, read from religious texts, including the Qur’an, Torah, and Bible, and worked on their computers. They displayed signs include “Harvard Jewish Students Say: Harvard Divest From Genocide,” “No Normalcy During Genocide,” and “Praying For Palestinian Liberation.” Some participants wore keffiyehs, Palestinian scarves.

Security guards took photos of the participants and asked them for their names and ID numbers. On November 11, Frederick announced in an email that an unspecified number of participants had been suspended from the library for two weeks.

Scholars at Risk is concerned about a university taking disciplinary action against students in retaliation for exercising their rights to free expression in a manner that is not disruptive. While university authorities should endeavor to prevent disruptions that inappropriately inhibit the functioning of or access to higher education, they must do so consistent with their responsibility to ensure academic freedom and free expression on campus. Even relatively minor disciplinary penalties for non-disruptive actions undermines academic freedom and democratic society generally.

Sources:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/11/5/harvard-divinity-school-palestine-pray-in/
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/11/13/divinity-school-library-pray-ban-suspend/
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/11/14/metro/harvard-divinity-school-pray-in-library-suspensions/