Anti-Israel protesters at Harvard pack up encampment after university agrees to discuss their demands

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts — Protesters against Israel amid its war against Hamas in Gaza are voluntarily taking down their tents in Harvard Yard on after university officials agreed to discuss their divestment demands.

The student protest group Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine says in a statement that the encampment “outlasted its utility with respect to our demands.” Meanwhile, Harvard University interim President Alan Garber has agreed to pursue a meeting between protesters and university officials regarding the students’ demands.

Students at many college campuses this spring set up similar encampments, calling for their schools to cut ties with Israel and businesses that support it.

Harvard says its president and the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Hopi Hoekstra, will meet with the protesters to discuss the conflict in the Middle East.

The protesters say they worked out an agreement to meet with university officials including the Harvard Management Company, which oversees the world’s largest academic endowment, valued at about $50 billion.

The protesters’ statement says the students will set an agenda including discussions on disclosure, divestment and reinvestment, and the creation of a Center for Palestine Studies. The students also say that Harvard has offered to retract the suspensions of more than 20 students and student workers and back down on disciplinary measures faced by 60 more.

“Since its establishment three weeks ago, the encampment has both broadened and deepened Palestine solidarity organizing on campus,” a spokesperson for the protesters says. “It has moved the needle on disclosure and divestment at Harvard.”

Rotem Spiegler, 37, a Harvard alumnus who opposed the encampment, says she’s glad to see it coming down, but she thinks the students are being rewarded in part for being disruptive.

“It just should have happened a while ago, and they should have suffered consequences to what they’ve been doing here violating everybody’s space and not respecting any of the university rules that were adjusted even while they were going,” she says.

In western New York, the University of Rochester cleared out an encampment there today ahead of Friday’s commencement ceremony, university officials says.

Most protesters dispersed voluntarily, but two people who were not affiliated with the university were arrested for damaging a commencement tent, university spokesperson Sara Miller says.