Law Students

Harvard Law Students Counter Protest Suppression With 1 Easy Trick!

Pulled a sneaky on ya!

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harvard crestQuick, what’s the difference between a punishable protest and a study group at Harvard? Turns out, all you have to do is not advertise your presence in advance or show your ID! Despite the institution’s previous framing as studying while wearing a scarf or having a stickered laptop as “protest” and “distracting,” a  legal cohort of over 50 people was able to quietly study in the law library while the staff seemed none the wiser. The Crimson has coverage:

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.
…
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.”

It is hard to read the HLS official’s “we didn’t have prior knowledge” excuse for not carding the students and take it seriously. The university is defining protest as “an attempt to send a common message” and anyone who is literally being paid by one of the world’s most premier universities to help students sift through complex information in a timely manner shouldn’t need a heads up via email to figure out that 20 people in the library wearing “We were banned from Harvard Library for dreaming of a free Palestine” shirts at the same time should count as a protest under the school’s goofy definition.

The school is also heading toward another blunder: perverse incentivization. A protest is one thing, but a protest that spawns collectible in-group memorabilia? That’s cool. And you know what cool protests do? Spread. Did we learn nothing from mandating parental advisory stickers on music? “It actually became a sales tool — it made it easier for teenagers to identify the cool stuff.”

Not only will Harvard have to force its librarians to police student wardrobes to prevent future bad PR, they’ve also introduced some plausible deniability into the mix. Is that person wearing a “We were banned from Harvard Library for dreaming of a free Palestine” in solidarity with the protestors as an act of solidarity or because they thought the shirt was cool? Is it still a protest if the attempt to send a common message is just to signify that “this shirt is cool” or “I’m cool for wearing it”? If so, the librarians are going to spend more time focusing on wardrobe choices than call numbers.

Harvard Law School Students Protest in Library, Leave Before ID Checks [The Crimson]

Earlier: So Much For Free Speech: Harvard Law Students Punished For Reading Together At Campus Library
Harvard Doubles Down On ‘Protest’ Retaliation & Punishes Teachers For Studying In Library
Harvard Triples Down On Punishing Campus Free Speech, Adds Prayer To No-No List

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Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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