Harvard Law School suspended at least 18 students’ access to the Langdell Library for two weeks following a silent “study” in support of clinical instructors last Friday.
At least 18 participants received suspension emails Friday morning, according to an organizer. The organizer said at least one student who was in the library but did not participate in the study also received a notice.
One student who received a suspension email was still able to access the library shortly after 11 a.m., the organizer added.
Assistant Dean for Library and Information Services Amanda T. Watson cited student participation in an “organized protest” at HLS Library on Nov. 6, according to a copy of the email obtained by The Crimson.
“Participants gathered in the law library reading room in an effort to attract attention through the coordinated display of flyers provided by the protest organizers,” Watson wrote.
The email stated that students’ physical access to the law school library would be suspended until November 27, but that they would retain borrowing privileges, online access and access to other Harvard libraries. Students could request a review before November 17. The suspension would not be included in their disciplinary record.
On November 6, approximately 40 HLS students held a nearly hour-long silent “study” on the fourth floor of Langdell Library. Students posted signs on their computers calling for fair pay for the school’s clinical instructors and wore blue badges reading “Students Stand With HLS Clinicians.”
More than 260 students signed an accompanying petition calling on the University to reach a contract agreement with the union after more than two years of negotiations.
HLS administrators were not observed scanning participants’ Harvard IDs during the event, as they had done in similar studies in the past.
An HLS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Get The Crimson delivered to your inbox.
The Harvard Law Record, an independent HLS student newspaper, reported Friday that a student journalist covering the event was also suspended. Kelsey H. Carido, a second-year law student and Record reporter who was taking photos of the study, wore a badge supporting the clinical instructors.
“The email indicates that students were suspended for posting flyers,” Carrido wrote in a statement. “I didn’t show any. I was there as a journalist and I would like to know why I was suspended.”
“Like any student journalist, I have personal opinions. They are separate from my reporting. It is my understanding that wearing a button or signing a petition is protected expression under Harvard’s own policies,” she added.
Law School professor Stephen E. Sachs ’02 suggested that students who participated in the study should face disciplinary action in an email sent to HLS faculty Monday.
Sachs pointed to a similar study done in 2024 on anti-war protests in Israel and Gaza and what participants described as “Harvard’s complicity in Israeli genocide.” At least 60 students were temporarily barred from the library after the protest, during which HLS administrators scanned participants’ Harvard ID cards.
The restrictions prompted Harvard, outside occupied Palestine, to organize another study to protest both the disciplinary action and the original cause.
“It seems important to me that similar cases be treated equally, without the possibility of justified claims of selective repression against particular people or causes,” Sachs wrote in the email, calling the protest a “sit-in.” “In fact, the argument for academic discipline rather than a temporary loss of library privileges is stronger now that the underlying policies have been made so clear. »
Sachs wrote in a statement that “the law school should treat all of its students fairly and enforce its library policies equally, without regard to the cause of the students.”
“Sometimes we can’t help but distract others in a library, but even then we should try not to attract more attention than necessary, such as when we cough up a cough,” Sachs wrote. “But deliberately choosing a library for a protest is deliberately seeking to draw other people’s attention away from their books and toward the signs on our laptops.”
“If no one had looked up, our group efforts would have failed,” he added. “Harvard Libraries are for reading and studying, not for a captive audience. »
HLS spokeswoman Lacey J. Rose previously declined to say whether the law school was pursuing disciplinary action against students, instead referring The Crimson to an email sent Thursday morning to HLS affiliates.
The email — signed by Watson, Dean of Student Services Catherine Peshkin, and Dean of Administration L. Tracee Whitley ’88 — stated that affiliates who violate “the natural restrictions of time, place, and manner of content, particularly as they relate to the Harvard Law School Library” could be subject to library suspension or other disciplinary action.
“Free speech and academic freedom are core values of our academic community, as are the rights to assembly, protest, and dissent,” they wrote. “Nevertheless, the exercise of these rights must be consistent with the rights of others to speak, learn, teach, and work, and with the ability of the law school to fulfill its educational mission.” »
Sachs, Crimson’s former editorial chairman, also pointed to a 2024 essay by Harvard Library vice president and university librarian Martha J. Whitehead, who argued that even silent protests shifted the focus of libraries from individual learning to a public forum and wrote that “seeking attention is itself disruptive.”
“If sitting silently in a library is an inappropriate way to support clinicians, what does the university think is the right way?” Law sophomore Matthew T. Tyler, a member of the HLS-Harvard Graduate Student Union organizing committee, wrote in a statement. “For weeks, the University has been telling the unions that if they would sit quietly, they could get a contract.”
—Editor Uy B. Pham can be contacted at (email protected) or on Signal at ubp.88. Follow him on X @uybpham.
Gn world
