New “Encampment for Palestine” Will Greet Arriving Harvard Freshmen

At Columbia, event features “no condemnations” imam

A new anti-Israel “encampment” is coming to Harvard—just in time to greet the incoming class of 2028.

Harvard administrators in the spring negotiated an end to a weeks-long anti-Israel encampment by students on the Cambridge, Massachusetts campus. Now the tents are coming back, to land just steps away that is controlled by the City of Cambridge, not Harvard.

It’s the latest sign at Harvard and on other high-profile campuses that this fall, rather than bringing new calm or civil discourse to discussion of Israel or the war in Gaza, is on track for a re-run of the violent clashes that characterized the 2023-2024 academic year. Administrators and alumni hoping that the new academic year would bring a fresh start, with attention turning to other issues, may find themselves instead mired in more of the same. 

“As the genocidal war rages on against Gaza, we are grieving, outraged and shocked by the ongoing U.S-backed Israeli atrocities,” the announcement for the “Community Encampment for Palestine states. The event is scheduled for August 24 and 25, when pre-orientation programs for incoming Harvard students—the First-Year Arts Program, First-Year Urban Program, First-Year Retreat and Experience, First-Year International Program, and Leadership Institute for the First-Year Experience—are all in full swing. Student athletes will also be on campus preparing for the fall season.

Because the event is off-campus, it’s difficult for Harvard to control, but students will see it and will see the news and social media coverage of it. Harvard Hillel, Harvard Chabad, and the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance are planning their own major event, on the campus itself, on Sunday September 22, billed as “Crisis on Campus: Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the Future of Higher Education,” and featuring some big-name speakers from Israel. September will also likely see the release of reports by Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias and by Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias.

Harvard’s First-Year Convocation, a Commencement-style welcome event scheduled for Labor Day, has been disrupted in recent years by anti-Israel protesters. Whether that happens again this year and how administrators respond to the disruption will be another early test.

Meanwhile, at Columbia, the Muslim Student Association is hosting a virtual event on August 20 titled, “For the Sake of Allah, From Gaza to Encampments,” with Imam Tom Facchine and Brother Raja Abdelhaq. An X account called Documenting Jew Hatred on Campus at Columbia U, with nearly 18,000 followers, is challenging the invited speakers. “No speakers like these two terrorist supporters should be allowed to speak on campus or virtually hosted by the university. This includes student groups,” the account says, posting a video of Facchine from October 10, 2023, saying he supports Palestinian resistance 100 percent, “no condemnations.” At Barnard, which is both independent of Columbia and integrated into it, a protest is scheduled for this Monday, August 19, at 9 am to “defend the student intifada.” 

In news coverage of Columbia President Shafik’s resignation to go work for a British foreign secretary, David Lammy, who has been so hostile to Israel that Prime Minister Netanyahu reportedly just refused to meet with him, Columbia professors have voiced their concerns. The New York Times quoted one professor, James Applegate, who described the campus as a “toxic hellhole” and said, “I won’t be surprised if there’s an encampment on the first day of classes.”

Another Columbia professor, Shai Davidai, said in a social media post, “Antisemitism at the university runs deep and is perpetuated by indoctrinating professors.” 

As Jeff Robbins, who teaches at Brown, put it to me the other day, “We’re about to go into round two.”