Newly surfaced video shows a confrontation during a recent demonstration on the campus of Harvard University, where pro-Palestinian protesters surrounded a student who chanted “shame” after he tried to film them.
A video of the confrontation was posted to X on Wednesday, but the incident occurred on October 18, when Harvard students staged a “die-in” on the Harvard Business School (HBS) campus.
The short clip shows half a dozen protesters surrounding a man and holding up keffiyehs, the traditional scarves of Palestinians, to block his view as he tries to walk away from them.
Aerial news footage of the protest NECN TV shows the same man holding up his phone among the protesters as the rally organizers surround him with the fabric blockade and at times even appear to push him.
In a public statementHBS Dean Srikant Datar called the confrontation “disturbing” and said the man engulfed by protesters was a Harvard MBA student, and that reports about the incident had been filed with Harvard campus police and the FBI.
Newly surfaced video shows a confrontation during a recent demonstration on the Harvard University campus, where pro-Palestinian protesters surrounded a student chanting “shame”
A Harvard spokesperson declined to comment on the incident when reached by DailyMail.com on Wednesday evening.
The protest in question was a “die-in” organized by the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee and Harvard Graduate Students for Palestine, during which demonstrators lay on the ground holding signs to protest Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.
The protest came 11 days after Hamas launched its unprecedented surprise attack on Israel on October 7, killing around 1,400 people, mostly civilians.
Emotions were running high just one day after the deadly Oct. 17 explosion at Gaza City’s al-Ahli Arab Hospital, which Hamas blamed on Israel and killed hundreds of people.
This attribution for the hospital blast circulated around the world, but US and British intelligence sources have since called it false and backed Israel’s claim that a failed rocket launch by Islamic Jihad in Gaza hit the hospital.
The Harvard protest began at the school’s main campus in Cambridge and continued as a march to the HBS campus in Boston, where demonstrators held the die-in and called to “stop the genocide in Gaza.”
The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza says at least 8,796 Palestinians in the narrow coastal enclave, including 3,648 children, have been killed by Israeli strikes since October 7.
According to the Harvard Crimson The student newspaper, which reported on the October 18 protest, said the man targeted by the pro-Palestinian demonstrators was a “disruptor” who tried to film the demonstrators’ faces.
“Protesters shouted ‘shame’ at the disruptor as he left,” the Crimson reported.
Protesters surround a man (with arms raised) as he moves through the yard during the October 18 protest, holding up keffiyehs (scarves) before sneaking into a nearby building.
On October 18, a pro-Palestinian ‘Die In’, consisting of Harvard students and their supporters, took place on the lawn behind the Harvard Business School.
Dakar, the dean of Harvard Business School, addressed the confrontation in a statement last week, saying “the pro-Palestinian demonstration that reached our campus from Cambridge last Wednesday, including a disturbing confrontation between one of our MBA students and some of the protesters, have left many of our students shocked.
“Reports have been filed with HUPD and the FBI, the facts are being evaluated, and it will be some time before we learn the results of an investigation.
“But the protest has raised questions about how we handle freedom of expression, hate speech that goes against our community values, and safety for everyone at the school,” Dakar said.
Dakar condemned anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and hate speech and called for “strong dialogue and the expression of diverse views.”
“Some demonstrators at Wednesday’s demonstration held banners and chanted words widely believed to call for the end of Israel — inciting the extermination of a nation and its people,” the dean wrote.
“There is no place for hate speech on our campus. “It violates our community values – values that hold us all to a higher standard than just protecting freedom of expression,” he added.
Last week, Harvard University President Claudine Gay assembled a group of advisors to help address anti-Semitism on campus after a number of disturbing incidents gained national attention.
Harvard University President Claudine Gay told Jewish students she has created a task force to root out anti-Semitism from Ivy League campus
Gay told a Shabbat dinner hosted by Harvard Hillel on Friday that she wanted to make it “absolutely clear” that “anti-Semitism has no place at Harvard.”
“For years, this university has done too little to cope with its continued presence. Not anymore,” she said.
Gay, who became president of the university earlier this year, has been criticized for failing to rebuke a widely circulated letter from several student groups blaming Israel for the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
The letter placed the blame for the attack squarely on the Israeli government and contained no criticism or condemnation of Hamas or the violence.
Gay’s failure to urgently disavow the letter was troubling to some students, faculty and alumni, some of whom publicly cut financial ties with the elite university.