A long line of protesters marched on from Harvard's main campus in Cambridge to its business school in Boston on Wednesday behind a sign saying, "Stop the genocide in Gaza."
There were scores of protesters involved in the march, filling up one of the sidewalks on a bridge over the Charles River. Some carried Palestinian flags. They then held a die-in on a business school lawn.
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Harvard has been embroiled in controversy over its response to the Israel-Hamas War and a statement released by a group of student groups placing the blame for all the violence on the "Israeli regime."
Former President Barack Obama was scheduled at Harvard on Wednesday for an unrelated event, but ended up not attending after experiencing COVID-like symptoms, according to the lab he was slated to visit.
The controversy has attracted national attention, all beginning with a joint statement from the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups, issued soon after Hamas' surprise attack on southern Israel, that said its signatories "hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence" because "Israeli violence has structured every aspect of Palestinian existence for 75 years," calling the political situation in the contested land to apartheid.
Harvard President Claudine Gay was criticized for not immediately offering Harvard's position on the deadly conflict, or for pushing back on the sentiments in the students' letter. Gay later released a statement condemning Hamas' attack on civilians and addressing the student groups' comments, and days after that posted a video noting that the university rejects terrorism, hate and harassment based on people's beliefs while embracing free expression, even "views that many of us find objectionable, even outrageous."
