OccupyHarvard

Why Didn't We Occupy Harvard?

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 01:50:02 -0500

Today’s Ivy League student thrives in the embrace of an institution

(from The Harvard Crimson, 02/13/12)

As social movements go, Occupy Harvard could hardly have been more successful. It made headway toward all its main goals: making endowment investments more ethical, raising staff wages, and diminishing the power of on-campus interviewing for financial firms. Its leaders are now national figures. “When reading period is over, GS will still have Sandra Korn [’14, associate editorial chair] to contend with,” wrote the business blog Dealbreaker of Goldman Sachs’s decision to cancel an information session.

The amazing thing is that Occupy Harvard accomplished all of this without the support of the student body. In a Statistics 104 research project that yielded responses from one sixth of the College, students gave Occupy Harvard an average rating of 2.85 out of 10. Perhaps only the angriest students responded to this poll, but wider sentiment, expressed on sites like isawyouharvard.com and harvardfml.com was just as negative. “Who actually sleeps in those tents?” was a common question.

Nothing draws Harvard students like the smell of success, yet no one wanted to touch this national media darling. This school has entire courses devoted to social movements and even a strong social justice organization in the First-Year Urban Program. Yet the most relevant and important cause in a generation was met with widespread scorn.

Why is this? In Slate Dylan R. Matthews ’12, who is also a Crimson editorial columnist, suggested that it is because Harvard is made up of the one percent. In the Harvard Political Review, Josh B. Lipson ’14 suggested it is because “Harvard is not the bastion of radical leftism that second-rate social commentators describe.” I disagree with these views. The Harvard College Office of Admissions and Financial Aid says that around sixty percent of the student body receives financial aid, while that figure is around fifty percent at UC Berkeley, a school that embraced the Occupy movement in a much greater way. Moreover, although I wouldn’t call Harvard a bastion of radical leftism, it is a still a very liberal place. This is a college wherepro-life posters get ripped off of bulletin boards with minimal reaction. Declaring that the poor deserve to be poor and the rich, rich would be a very controversial and unpopular sentiment to share at dinner.

Instead, the answer may lie in a decade-old article by New York Times columnist David Brooks. In 2001, Brooks set out to identify the distinguishing characteristics of the most accomplished of Princeton’s accomplished students. He returned dismayed; the students had breakneck schedules, could count the hours they slept on one hand, and had to schedule catch-up sessions with their best friends at dawn or dusk. In The Atlantic he wrote, “The young men and women of America’s future elite work their laptops to the bone, rarely question authority, and happily accept their positions at the top of the heap as part of the natural order of life.”

I think this, in a nutshell, explains why the majority of Harvard undergraduates turned up their noses at the tents in the Yard. Harvard is a school made up of kids who sat in the first row of the class in grade school and probably ratted out those passing notes in the back. We got into Harvard by showing respect—nay, devotion—to social rules, and rebellion just isn’t in our blood. This is demonstrated by the careers students pursue post-Harvard. We jump from the arms of one established institution into those of another. We leave not just for Goldman and Bain but also for Teach for America, Stanford, The New York Times, and now the military. These organizations are places where we believe we can find mentors, networking opportunities, secure exit options, and all the other perks associated with joining a ship someone else has launched. Sure, there are exceptions—like Mark E. Zuckerberg—but these people are exceptions. Even those who say they are going to join a start-up after graduation are more likely to be joining a million-dollar investment featured in Wired magazine than a garage operation.

Obeying authority has brought us tremendous success in life, so it’s difficult to consider why this wouldn’t work for anyone in any situation. Thus, students weren’t threatened by the ideas of Occupy Harvard—a Facebook status I saw read, “I support Occupy Wall Street unless Wall Street wants to give me a job”—as much as by its methods. Occupy Harvard sought change not through elaborate networks of emails, shared documents, year-long plans, and official sponsorships, but by screaming outside of Massachusetts Hall. It was so vulgar.

Although Harvard’s student body has gained tremendous diversity since our founding, we cling to a sense of social propriety that is downright antiquated. I am reminded of British soldiers reflecting on the American army during the revolutionary war. They didn’t march in lines! They crossed the Delaware on Christmas! Their general didn’t graduate from Sandhurst! They probably looked like a rag-tag bunch of tents, too.

Anita J. Joseph, an editorial chair emeritus, is a social studies concentrator in Leverett House. Her column appears on alternate Mondays.

socialismartnature: (Video) Bread & Puppet Theater visits...

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 01:46:21 -0500

socialismartnature:

(Video) Bread & Puppet Theater visits #OccupyHarvard - 1/25/12 »

We invited Bread & Puppet for three performances of Occupy Calisthenics around the Harvard Yard. They performed three acts of street theatre; starting in front of the alleged John Harvard, moving onto Harvard Square, and ending in front of the Science Center, marching with the band from one act to the other.

The Bread and Puppet Theater (often known simply as Bread & Puppet) is a politically radical puppet theater, active since the 1960s, currently based in Glover, Vermont.

Occupy Harvard started 9th of November, 2011 and will continue to stand against the system of inequality harbored and perpetuated by the university.

Visit us at: www.occupyharvard.net

A letter to my colleagues regarding the Occupy Harvard occupation of Lamont Library

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 01:46:09 -0500

goshabrarian:

Hello all,

I stopped by the Lamont Cafe yesterday to attend the “What is a Library? What is the Future of Libraries?” discussion sponsored by the students who have “occupied” the space. It was overall a really positive experience for me, and I’d encourage you to stop in and engage with the students if you have a chance.

You may perhaps feel ambivalent about the technique of “occupying” in this situation or you may (like me) find that you do not completely agree with some of the positions the group has taken. Don’t let that stop you from going. The people I met were really interested in engaging with libraries and library staff to further scholarship.

The way I see it is that some of our patrons have put together a week of informal focus groups … we should be paying attention. This is an opportunity for us to hear direct input from our patrons, establish new relationships, and imagine some creative ways that we can address their scholarly needs. It also seems to have brought together scholars from a range of disciplines. One of the things many of us want libraries to be is a meeting ground where scientists, humanists, and social scientists can encounter one another and cross-pollinate ideas. This is a concrete attempt at that.

The students have tried to create a space for collaboration and discussion in the Cafe, and have even started offering services like writing workshops. These are examples of exactly the kind of things we should want to see in our library spaces.

Please go visit if you have the chance. This doesn’t need to be simply a reaction to anxiety about the transition, it is also an opportunity to engage with and help create a successful transition.

Joshua

Joshua Parker
Countway Library of Medicine

“Letter from a Librarian” at Occupy Harvard

Photo

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 01:44:06 -0500

glitchthemachine: Chris Hedges addresses Occupy Harvard...

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 03:15:00 -0500

glitchthemachine:

Chris Hedges addresses Occupy Harvard November 28 2011 (pt1)

pt2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugU6ELwbi_o&feature=related

pt3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKSUfCG7ax4&feature=related

RELEASE: Occupy Harvard's Next Phase

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 22:15:13 -0500

OCCUPY HARVARD
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
16 December 2011

Contact: Jeff Bridges, Fenna Krienen
(617) 701-6224
occupy.harvard@gmail.com

OCCUPY HARVARD MOVES TO NEXT PHASE OF ACTION
Occupation of Yard to Continue While Broadening Movement’s Focus

Cambridge, MA — On Monday, Occupy Harvard will launch the next phase of its occupation, with a focus on moving beyond mere physical occupation to occupying the hearts and minds of those beyond the university’s walls.

“Occupy Harvard 2.0 will focus on education, activism, and strengthening the connections between Harvard’s Occupy outpost and the world outside our university’s gates,” said Maggie Gram, a doctoral student in English. “It is our hope that with this action, Harvard administration will respond by returning access to the Yard to the larger community it belongs to.”

In moving to this next phase, Occupy Harvard will consolidate the footprint of its original encampment to a winterized geodesic dome—provided by Occupy supporters at MIT—serving as a hub of activity and growth for the movement.

“Our second phase will consolidate the footprint of our original encampment while broadening our movement’s energy, spirit, and base,” Gram continued. “We feel that Occupy Harvard has achieved what it set out to achieve with the original encampment by occupying the attention of students, faculty, staff, and administrators. The Harvard community is focused on issues of social justice in an entirely new way, and we hope to encourage that conversation even more with Occupy 2.0.”

In existence for just over a month, Occupy Harvard counts among its successes the negotiation of a better contract for custodial workers, increased attention on the social impact of the university’s multi-billion dollar endowment, and a teach-in where hundreds of participants heard faculty lectures on the economic, historical, and legal implications of the Occupy movement. With this next phase, Occupiers say they’re more committed than ever to making their movement impossible to ignore.

“Our visceral disruption of business as usual on campus would not have been possible without the physical presence of our encampment,” Gram concluded. “Our challenge now will be to find new ways to turn Harvard’s attention — and the world’s — to the transformative questions the Occupy movement asks.”

Photo

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 22:13:43 -0500

This Is Why We Occupy

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 20:14:21 -0500

This Is Why We Occupy:

From The Harvard Crimson, 11/22/2011.

Open Letter to President Faust

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 20:13:02 -0500

Open Letter to President Faust:

From The Harvard Crimson, 11/28/2011.

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Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:55:05 -0500

Occupy Vision Statement

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 11:25:05 -0500

Occupy Vision Statement:

watchthespace:

#OWS gets real. The #Occupy Vision Statement. Beautiful.

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Mon, 28 Nov 2011 00:19:07 -0500

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Mon, 28 Nov 2011 00:16:27 -0500

lluvini: And I think to myself, what a wonderful world…

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 13:03:05 -0500

lluvini:

And I think to myself, what a wonderful world…

Photo

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 11:23:06 -0500

kingofthelostkids: Some Occupy Boston pictures I got today.

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 01:00:48 -0500

kingofthelostkids:

Some Occupy Boston pictures I got today.

Photo

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 23:21:05 -0500

leftish: UC DAVIS STUDENT SPEAKS TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY,...

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 22:05:09 -0500

leftish:

UC DAVIS STUDENT SPEAKS TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY, outlining the LIES they were told about why there was ANY justification in Pepper Spraying peaceful demonstrators.

OVER 100 HARVARD FACULTY VOICE SUPPORT FOR OCCUPY HARVARD; YARD LOCKDOWN WIDELY CONDEMNED

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:58:54 -0500

minitruthful:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
21 November 2011Occupy Harvard
Contact: Jeff Bridges or Fenna Krienen
(617) 701-6224
occupy.harvard@gmail.com

OVER 100 HARVARD FACULTY VOICE SUPPORT FOR OCCUPY HARVARD; YARD LOCKDOWN WIDELY CONDEMNED

Cambridge, MA — When Occupy Harvard set up camp on 9 November in Harvard Yard, University officials responded by placing the campus on “indefinite” lockdown, allowing entrance only to those with Harvard IDs. Students, faculty, and staff have joined together in condemning the lockdown, some voicing their opposition through open letters to University President Drew Faust. Additionally, more than 100 faculty have signed an online petition in support of Occupy Harvard.

“As a member of the Harvard community, who knows much of what is happening, the security seems unduly strict, disproportionate, unnecessary,” wrote Francis Clooney, Parkman Professor of Divinity and Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. Clooney, who called Occupy Harvard a “vigil of concern for justice,” also stated in his letter to Faust, “Those keeping Vigil are dear and welcome members of the community, some of our best, and not a security challenge.”

Harvard Law School Professor Duncan Kennedy also expressed his dismay at the lockdown in a letter to President Faust now widely distributed.

“We are, of course, honored to have the broad support of many outstanding faculty here at our school,” said Fenna Krienen, a fifth-year doctoral candidate in Psychology. “From the very beginning this has been a movement involving the entire Harvard community. We would like it to involve the broader community, but it appears that the university would rather extend its highly selective admittance policy to simply being on campus as well.”

Private security guards and Harvard University police officers even refused admittance to a Nobel Peace Prize-nominated political activist on Friday evening, 12 November. Egyptian revolutionary Ahmed Maher addressed Occupy Harvard through the locked gates of Harvard Yard. Additionally, on the morning of 18 November, Richard Wolff, Professor of Economics now teaching at UMass-Amherst, was scheduled to deliver a talk at the encampment but was denied entry into the Yard. Professor Wolff is an alum of Harvard College ‘63 and leads a distinguished teaching career. However, those credentials did not appear to be enough to admit him onto the campus.

“I knew it was hard to get into Harvard,” concluded Krienen, “but I never knew they would make it so hard to get in to Harvard Yard.”

A petition in support of Occupy Harvard has circulated through campus networks, amassing over 650 signatures, including 110 faculty signatures as of this writing. Faculty signers include Peter Ellison, Professor of Anthropology and former Dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences (2000-2005); Mary Steedly, Professor of Anthropology and Director of Undergraduate Studies; Archon Fung, Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship at the Kennedy School of Government; Alice Jardine, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality; and Stephen Marglin, Walter S. Barker Chair in Economics.

Music professor Richard Thomas wrote, “I applaud the seriousness and commitment of the students. I hope this will lead to broader discussion of economic injustice, the greed of Wall Street, and Harvard’s relationship with such.”

“As a former economics department faculty member,” wrote Juliet Schor, “I lived through both the ‘Ec 10’ controversies and the Living Wage fight. Occupy Harvard is something I strongly support because without movements like this, justice is never achieved. Harvard University needs to become a democratic, transparent, fair, morally accountable institution. Occupy Harvard can help achieve some of those goals.”

Psychology professor Ken Nakayama added, “I strongly support the worldwide Occupy movement for social and economic justice and applaud Occupy Harvard’s participation in this.”

###

Full letter by law professor Duncan Kennedy:
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/duncan_kennedy_occupy_harvard.pdf

Online petition:
http://www.change.org/petitions/harvard-community-support-occupy-harvard

List of signatures (faculty listed on second tab):
http://tinyurl.com/c8qdpcw

Petition Text:
Occupy Harvard is a movement that challenges the vast political and economic inequalities in the United States and around the world. At Harvard, we have a duty to examine our own role in contributing to these disparities and should seek out ways to create a more just world. Therefore, we support Occupy Harvard in the pursuit of this goal.

###

Communiqué #2 from the Harvard University administration on Occupy Harvard

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:58:26 -0500

Communiqué #2 from the Harvard University administration on Occupy Harvard:

socialismartnature:

Once again, the pursuit of public accountability compels me to release this second message in as many weeks from the Harvard University administration to all students, staff, and faculty on the topic of Occupy Harvard (see below).

I find it interesting that the President continues to assert here that the complete lock-down of the campus gates is, at least in part, for the “safety of the Occupiers,” despite the fact that Occupy Harvard has made abundantly clear its opposition to this measure.

Moreover, she refers to the safety of the first-year undergrads who live within the gates of Harvard Yard, despite the fact that the overwhelming sentiment of students within and without the Yard is that the security lock-down needs to end.

False justifications aside, the reality is that the 1% who control the Harvard Corporation which runs Harvard University have locked-down the campus, not because of any physical security threat posed to the students, staff, or faculty by the presence of the Occupy encampment, but rather because of the threat this encampment poses to the unquestioned supremacy of the aforementioned 1% at Harvard and in the world.

The Harvard executives are frightened that our movement might actually affect some fundamental changes at Harvard (and the world) — changes that would seek to undo the damage wrought by the ruling elites who treat Harvard as their playground, their country-club, their fortress, as against a world that only has meaning for these elites insofar as they can profit from it.

By shutting down the campus, they hope to isolate the movement so that it neither spreads to, nor gains strength from, the outside world. For them, the Occupy phenomenon is a metastasizing cancer to be destroyed; for us, it is the unfurling hope of a brighter future.

===

Dear Members of the Harvard Community:

Over the past twelve days, I have heard from many members of our community about events related to the national Occupy movement, Occupy Harvard, the encampment in Harvard Yard, and the judgments we’ve made at the University related to access to the Yard. As we approach the Thanksgiving break, I want to take this occasion to share more fully some of the principles and realities that have informed our decisions and actions, and to update you on plans for Yard access.

The values of free speech and the commitment to the safety of students, faculty, and staff have been fundamental in our considerations. To sustain both these goals, we decided to limit access to the Yard to Harvard ID holders and authorized visitors. All members of the Harvard community have full ability to enter the Yard and express their views, and the rest of the campus remains open as usual for all voices and participants in the debate. Over the past nearly two weeks, the Occupy Harvard group has held meetings, rallies, and information sessions, significantly shaping the broader community discourse. Occupants have camped safely in the Yard, and have gathered with others outside the community in demonstrations and rallies at the ART, in the IOP Forum, in Harvard Square, and at other locations. Forums have been held in many undergraduate houses, at the Harvard Political Union, and online. We have sought throughout to affirm the rights of the demonstrators to express their views, on and off campus, while simultaneously protecting the safety and security of our freshmen residences. We have heard from many freshmen and parents that they appreciate the efforts to safeguard the students’ living space.

Our concern about the safety of our students has been greatly influenced by our observations of the behavior of outsiders who participated in the demonstrations on Wednesday, November 9, as well as by web postings from individuals outside Harvard urging confrontation and disruption on our campus. Several hundred people converged on the Harvard campus that night. The conduct of many of them was deeply troubling. Some attempted to enter the Yard by force, assaulted at least one Harvard police officer, grabbing his gun belt and stealing his radio. The crowd included individuals who, according to external law enforcement agencies, have engaged in violent behavior elsewhere with the explicit goal of causing disruption and with little connection to any particular cause. Incidents of violence—including shootings and sexual assaults—have occurred at other Occupy sites.

Our responsibilities for the safety of the Harvard community compelled us to take measures to ensure that individuals whose intentions were not peaceful could not encamp in Harvard Yard or create an environment of violence and intimidation that would dampen everyone’s freedom. We want to do everything possible to maintain the character of peaceful interaction that has prevailed in the Yard since the Occupy Harvard supporters erected their tents. Our decision to monitor access to the Yard was not to limit our own students and faculty but rather to ensure their safety, including that of the nearly 1,400 first semester freshmen who live in the close vicinity of the encampment.

From the beginning, Campus Services, Yard Operations, Harvard Police, and others have worked hard to minimize the disruption or inconvenience caused by the ID-checking system now in place. Within 24 hours of the new Yard protocols, the Campus Service Center set up a system for facilitating Yard access for guests, Extension School students, lecturers, Memorial Church parishioners, and others in need of Yard access. While the system has no doubt been imperfect, it has nonetheless facilitated access to the Yard for nearly 3,000 visitors, and has enabled hundreds of Yard-based academic programs, visits, and community events to go on as planned.

Out of our concern for the safety of those Occupiers currently camped in the Yard, and our concern for the security and well-being of those who live in the Yard, we are planning to maintain a system of ID-checking for Yard access for the time being. To further facilitate access and decrease disruption, we will be opening two additional gates during daylight hours after Thanksgiving, and will continue to do all that we can to arrange for academic and other University-related programming in the Yard. As before, access for guests can be arranged through Campus Service Center at campusservicecenter@harvard.edu.

Sustaining both freedom and security always requires difficult and nuanced judgments, both in a university and in the wider world. We have endeavored to make those determinations in the context of our ideals and obligations. We meet regularly to evaluate our decision, as we have no interest in restricting access to the Yard for a day longer than we believe necessary. While we believe the current Yard access protocols remain warranted, we know others can and will disagree. These issues are being debated on campus, and I view that as a good thing. Members of my administration have reached out to representatives from Occupy Harvard to discuss the balance we seek to strike, and I spoke today with several Occupy Harvard students at my regularly scheduled office hours. As President, I am deeply committed to freedom of expression: it is a fundamental university value, defining our most essential purposes. I am also committed to sustaining the environment in which that freedom can thrive. These principles have guided our decisions to date, and will guide them going forward.

Sincerely,
Drew Faust

©2011 President and Fellows of Harvard College | Harvard.edu