Harvard University's highest governing body, the Harvard Corporation, reversed its decision to withhold degrees from 11 students who participated in an unlawful anti-Israel encampment, including a Pakistani Rhodes Scholar now set to attend the University of Oxford next year.
Asmer Asrar Safi was among 13 graduating students whose degrees were withheld in May for their roles in the encampment. Safi, an encampment organizer and international student from Pakistan who was originally supposed to graduate two months ago, had said his new commencement date was set for May 2025. No longer.
Safi responded by trashing the value of a Harvard degree, writing in a social media post, "What does it mean to be conferred a degree from a university that holds millions of investments in illegal occupation, bankrolls the annihilation of Palestinians, and mistreats its students for a political agenda?"
"While we know our fellow organizers … will continue to mobilize, please remember that every student, faculty and staff member at the university has a responsibility to challenge the status quo," Safi added.
In an Instagram message, Safi thanked students and faculty for pressuring Harvard into reversing its decision to withhold degrees. "After relentless student and faculty pressure, Harvard conferred our undergraduate degrees today, three months after the corporation barred us from graduating alongside our peers. We are grateful for the peers and community members who walked out on Commencement, signed and wrote statements, and called on Harvard to listen to its students," he wrote.
The decision from the Harvard Corporation, led by Hyatt Hotel heiress Penny Pritzker, suggests the university is reluctant to take a hard line when it comes to meting out discipline to students who violated school policies last year—and who have promised to resume their activities in the fall.
A university spokesman told the Free Beacon that the Harvard Corporation voted to confer degrees to 11 of the 13 disciplined graduating students because they had "been restored to good standing."
"Consistent with its May 22 statement, the Harvard Corporation has voted to confer degrees to 11 eligible candidates who have been restored to good standing following the completion of Faculty of Arts and Sciences processes," the spokesman said.
"The University continues to work to strengthen and improve disciplinary processes," he continued. "Effective, fair, well understood, and consistently applied processes are vital to how we function as a learning community—and how we reconcile the opportunities to express our views, including through protest and dissent, with our obligations to one another."
In addition to Safi, Suhaas Bhat's undergraduate degree was also withheld over his role in the encampment, though it is unclear if he is among the 11 pardoned. Bhat, another Rhodes Scholar, was also slated to start at Oxford in October and planned to study "mathematical modeling and scientific computing as well as international health and tropical medicine."
Harvard students pursuing a Rhodes scholarship must receive an endorsement from their university.
Safi, a social studies major, has a long history of anti-Israel activism. In 2021, he authored an op-ed for the Harvard Crimson in which he accused Israel’s "apartheid regime" of imposing "a hegemonic, authoritarian rule over Palestinians." About two years later, he interrupted a ceremony featuring Harvard College dean Rakesh Khurana, saying the school "supports, upholds, and invests in Israeli apartheid and the oppression of Palestinians."
Harvard announced Safi had received a Rhodes scholarship in November—just two months after the ordeal. He went on to serve as a key encampment leader, giving media interviews demanding Harvard "disclose its investments in occupied Palestine" and "divest from all said investments and reinvest them in the propagation of Palestinian art, academia, literature, and culture."
Safi was also behind a student-led petition in April that aims to establish a student referendum on whether Harvard should divest from Israel.
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