Excerpt
Harvard College reversed a discriminatory, eleventh hour decision to charge a student group $300 in security fees for an event on Black-Palestinian solidarity featuring Dr. Marc Lamont Hill, Dr. Cornell West and Palestine Legal’s Dima Khalidi, which took place on the evening of Tuesday, April 2.
A university official had informed a member of Harvard’s Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) at 5pm the day before the event that the fees were being charged due to concerns that the event was “controversial.”
Palestine Legal wrote Harvard Dean Rakesh Khurana and Dean of Students Katherine O’Dair on Tuesday, warning that the fees violated Harvard’s Free Speech Guidelines, which state that Harvard will determine “whether protection of free speech at an open meeting requires security measures” and that “the University will fund these measures.”
Palestine Legal’s email noted that according to news reports, Harvard unilaterally paid $12,000 in security costs for a fall 2017 event featuring Charles Murray, notorious for peddling racist pseudoscience.
Palestine Legal’s email states:
It is unclear why PSC is being charged security fees, which not only disparately impacts PSC, but raises free speech concerns as well. As [Harvard] made clear, PSC is facing this charge not because of any action the group has taken, but out of concern that there may be an effort to disrupt the event. Harvard is in effect giving those who oppose Black-Palestinian solidarity the power to act as gatekeepers by imposing a financial barrier to PSC’s event.
Source:
https://palestinelegal.org/news/2019/4/4/success-harvard-apologizes-for-charging-security-fees-for-black-palestinian-solidarity-event