Statement in Support of Harvard Student Elom Tettey-Tamaklo
As a group of faculty across the University, we write to express our growing dismay with a climate on campus that has diverged from the University’s stated commitment to foster an environment “that values the dignity of each person and provides an environment in which everyone can thrive.” We are particularly concerned that the University is departing from its duty under Title VI to protect all students from discrimination regardless of race, color, or national origin by staying silent in the face of a hostile atmosphere for Palestinian and pro-Palestine students and faculty.
On October 18th, Elom Tettey-Tamaklo, a graduate student at Harvard Divinity School and, until November 8th, a proctor for Thayer Hall, was serving as an organizer at a peaceful pro-Palestinian protest on the grounds of Harvard Business School. Part of the demonstration included students staging a die-in where they lay on the ground in silence. According to publicly available accounts and footage, a counterprotester, later identified as an HBS student, stepped over and around student protestors who were lying on the ground. He filmed the students’ faces from close range while they lay on the ground — an act the students perceived as a threat to publicize their identities. The students were frightened and felt physically unsafe. Tettey-Tamaklo and other organizers resorted to de-escalation tactics, in this case interpositioning, whereby marshals place their own bodies between conflicting parties to assure the safety of protesters. They tried to shield the protesters’ faces from view and to usher the counter protester away from the peaceful demonstration.
Yet, in the through-the-looking-glass politics of the moment, Tettey-Tamaklo’s efforts to assure the safety of his fellow students in response to obvious provocation has been re-worked as an act of aggression. The University has responded by taking actions that are biased, precipitate, and disproportionate. Rather than allowing the incident to proceed through usual administrative channels that govern student conduct, the administration has unilaterally evicted Tettey-Tamaklo from his residence in Thayer Hall, suspended his role as proctor, opened a police investigation, and welcomed the FBI to campus to investigate a student protest. All in response to an incident that cannot even be termed a “scuffle,” and which did not warrant intervention from the Harvard University police officers present at the demonstration.
We must ask why Tettey-Tamaklo, who is Ghanaian, was singled out from the other protesters as a threat? We cannot help but wonder if his dark skin was read, as dark skin is so often read in the United States, as a threat in and of itself. The same racist association of human difference with danger that led to the shooting of three Palestinian college students wearing keffiyehs near the University of Vermont in Burlington on November 25th.
While Harvard’s egregious handling of Tettey-Tamaklo’s case stands out, it is but a single episode in a series of frightening attempts to limit free speech on this campus and beyond at a moment when such a freedom could not be more important. On October 8th, around 350 Harvard faculty members signed an inflammatory open letter denouncing the statement of some 30 Harvard student groups about the October 7th attack on Israel “as nothing less than condoning the mass murder of civilians.” Since then, our campus has become the site of fear-mongering and intimidation reminiscent of Cold War anti-communism. Students speaking out in support of Palestinian rights have been publicly labeled “antisemitic” and accused without evidence of being violent and threatening, “supporting terrorism,” and participating in “Hamas marches.” Trucks around Cambridge bearing images of students’ faces — many of whom are Black, Brown, or visibly Muslim — under the label “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites” are yet another crass and dangerous example of a bullying campaign that has pervaded the campus and evidently inflected the governance of the university itself.
In line with the first core principle of Harvard’s Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, & Belonging, which is to “respect the rights, differences, and dignity of others,” Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine is an anti-racist organization: we deplore all forms of racism, including antisemitism. We similarly deplore efforts to misconstrue anti-Zionism and criticism of the state of Israel as inherently antisemitic. It is both shocking and sad that a deliberately misleading account of the motives and actions of our students has become the basis of many official statements and actions of the University’s administration.
We became educators because we believe in our duty to support and nurture students as they seek to acquire knowledge. We will not abandon this duty, especially at a moment when students of color continue to face horrifying discrimination. For far too long, students and faculty at Harvard and at university campuses across the United States have been censured and punished for voicing support for Palestinians — a colonized, dispossessed, and brutalized population.
We stand in solidarity with Elom Tettey-Tamaklo, the brave Jewish students who are being subjected to disciplinary action for following in the storied tradition of civil disobedience to protest injustice, and with all Harvard students concerned with and expressive of Palestinian rights.
We have joined together to call for an immediate end to this inhumane war. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict will only be resolved by a just and durable political solution. It cannot be resolved by force. The ongoing attacks on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are harbingers of more hatred and more violence. We must speak out, on campus and beyond, in support of our students and against the anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, Islamophobic, and racist campaigns in the media, in the political sphere, and within our universities.
Our chapter of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine seeks to hold the administration accountable for these injustices and to provide a space for colleagues throughout the University to come together and speak out against the state-sanctioned, US-backed violence perpetrated against Palestinians for over 70 years.
In our capacity as faculty concerned for the safety of our students, we demand the administration:
- reinstate Elom Tettey-Tamaklo as proctor in Thayer Hall
and
2. establish an investigative committee on anti-Palestinian racism and suppression of pro-Palestine voices on the Harvard campus.
In 1986, student activists built a symbolic shanty town in front of University Hall to protest the university’s investment in South African apartheid. Their efforts to raise awareness about and bring justice to a global concern ultimately led to partial divestment from and cessation of a University internship program in South Africa. At the time, these efforts were met with considerable resistance from the University’s administrators, though none as extreme as removing a student from their role as proctor or involving the FBI.
A sober retrospective of this history draws clear moral boundaries. To support South African apartheid today — let alone to vilify students who oppose it — would be tantamount to institutionalized racism. What will the sober retrospective of this administration’s handling of this issue be? The choice is theirs.
If you are interested in joining Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, feel free to email us at harvardfsjp@gmail.com
