Inside Harvard’s High-Stakes Student Vote on Israel Divestment

In a contentious shift from direct democracy to managed feedback, Harvard students are voting this week on a high-stakes survey regarding the university’s ties to Israel, a process born from the HUA’s decision to replace binding referendums with non-binding polls after indefinitely postponing a similar divestment vote last spring.

The current survey, controversially buried in an email primarily promoting a Sports Officer election, features two neutrally-worded questions from the Palestine Solidarity Committee on divestment and disclosure—stripped of their original language referencing “genocide” and “human rights abuses” for being “leading”—and a counter-question from Jews for Peace challenging Harvard’s adoption of the IHRA antisemitism definition.

This entire process has been marred by accusations of opaque procedures, including a failure to publicize submission guidelines, a misleading ballot link, and an “oversight” omitting the names of submitting groups, ultimately reflecting an institutional effort to contain a heated campus debate within a bureaucratic, symbolic channel that explicitly carries no policy weight.

Inside Harvard’s High-Stakes Student Vote on Israel Divestment

The email that landed in Harvard students’ inboxes on Monday night appeared, at first glance, to be bureaucratic and mundane. A call to vote for a single, uncontested Sports Team Officer for the Harvard Undergraduate Association (HUA). But for those who clicked the link, the ballot revealed something far more consequential: a simmering campus conflict over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, repackaged as a student government survey.

This is the story of the inaugural HUA undergraduate survey, a new channel for student voice that has instantly become a battleground. It’s a tale not just of the questions being asked, but of how they were asked, who got to ask them, and the intricate, often opaque, procedural rules that shape modern campus activism. The vote, open for just 48 hours, represents the latest chapter in an 18-month-long struggle between student activists and the university’s administrative structures, a struggle where the very process is part of the fight.

From Referendum to Survey: The Neutering of a Direct Vote

To understand the significance of this week’s survey, one must rewind to April 2024. The Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) was gathering signatures for a full-blown student referendum, a direct question to the student body: Should Harvard divest from institutions supporting “Israel’s occupation of Palestine”?

It never reached the ballot.

The HUA, the university’s undergraduate student government, indefinitely postponed the measure. The official reasons were procedural, but the backlash was immediate. It sparked protests and led to the creation of a “problem-solving team” that ultimately proved fruitless. In response to the turmoil, the HUA passed a resolution in October 2024 that fundamentally changed the rules of the game. It limited future student referenda to questions directly related to the HUA’s own internal operations. Broader, more controversial issues like divestment were shunted into a new, less powerful channel: the semesterly undergraduate survey.

This strategic shift is crucial. A referendum carries the symbolic weight of a direct mandate from the student body. A survey, as the Election Commission itself has been quick to point out, is merely “informational only.” The questions “have no impact on campus policies or procedures,” as stated in a disclaimer on the ballot itself. The HUA effectively traded the potential for a powerful, albeit symbolic, student vote for a process that generates data points, a move that some see as a way to insulate the university from political pressure.

Violet T.M. Barron ’26, the student who submitted the PSC’s questions, acknowledged the tactical miss last semester. “All of our energy was focused on kind of what was happening on the ground here, and just somehow all of us managed to miss the fact that, like, the HUA spring elections were happening,” she told The Crimson. This time, they were ready, but the battlefield had been redefined.

The Battle of the Wording: How a Question Becomes “Leading”

The journey of the PSC’s question from submission to ballot is a masterclass in the politics of language. The original question was a single, forceful query: “Should Harvard divest from institutions that profit from and/or aid Israel’s human rights abuses, including the genocide in Gaza and ongoing illegal occupation of Palestine?”

This was rejected by the HUA Election Commission for being “leading.”

Consider the linguistic evolution. The original question contains three highly charged premises:
1. That Israel is committing human rights abuses.
2. That a “genocide in Gaza” is occurring.
3. That the occupation of Palestine is “illegal.”

The final, approved version was split into two starkly simple questions:
1. “Should Harvard disclose its investments in companies and institutions operating in Israel?”
2. “Should Harvard divest from companies and institutions operating in Israel?”

The change is profound. The first version is an argument; it frames the issue with a specific moral and legal conclusion. The second version is a blank slate; it removes the justification and presents only the action. For the PSC, this was a strategic compromise. Barron noted that in Spring 2024, they avoided the term “genocide” for strategic reasons, fearing it would deter voters. “Now we are at the point where we feel like we can call this thing – which is a genocide – a genocide, so we did that,” she said. The Commission’s ruling forced them back toward a more neutral, and arguably more palatable, framing.

The other student-submitted question, from Harvard Undergraduate Jews for Peace, underwent its own linguistic scrutiny. It asks whether Harvard should have adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. This references Harvard’s adoption of the definition as part of a January Title VI legal settlement. The IHRA definition is itself a flashpoint; its accompanying examples state that it is antisemitic to describe Israel as a “racist endeavor” or to compare its policies to those of Nazi Germany. Pro-Palestine groups argue this definition is used to silence legitimate criticism of the Israeli state.

In both cases, the Election Commission positioned itself as an arbiter of neutrality, arguing its goal was “to ensure that students can share their perspectives freely and respectfully, without external pressure or influence.” But neutrality itself is a political position. By stripping the questions of their justificatory language, the Commission shaped the very discourse it claimed to be merely facilitating.

Opaque Processes and “Oversights”: The Mechanics of Controversy

The rollout of the survey was riddled with controversies that activists say marginalized their efforts. The initial email to the student body, sent on November 11, primarily called for candidates for the Sports Team Officer role. It buried the lede, mentioning almost as an afterthought the “opportunity to submit survey questions.” Crucially, it did not include the full PDF of Election Commission guidelines, which had been attached to the spring election announcement.

This lack of transparency, according to PSC and Jews for Peace members, obfuscated the process. When the voting link was sent on Monday, it read “Click Here to Vote for HUA Sports Officer,” with no mention of the politically charged survey. Barron emailed the Commission, calling this “misleading” and requesting a clarifying follow-up. The request was denied. The Commission stated that since the survey questions were “optional” and had no policy impact, altering the ballot button wording was unnecessary. This decision ensured lower visibility for the questions, framing the entire exercise as a secondary concern to a minor student government election.

Furthermore, the Commission’s own published regulations state that the names of students who submit questions must be posted publicly “to ensure transparency.” Yet, the names of the submitters from both PSC and Jews for Peace were omitted from the final ballot. The Commission called this “an oversight,” but for a process so meticulously concerned with rules, the error seemed conveniently beneficial to those who might wish to downplay the activist-driven nature of the questions.

The Larger Stage: Harvard’s Institutional Identity Under a Microscope

This student survey is not happening in a vacuum. It is a microcosm of the intense pressures facing Harvard since the October 7th attacks and the subsequent war in Gaza. The university has been grappling with accusations of antisemitism, Islamophobia, and a failure to protect both Jewish and Palestinian students. Its every move—from presidential statements to the adoption of the IHRA definition—is scrutinized by donors, alumni, politicians, and the global media.

The HUA’s creation of the survey, rather than allowing a referendum, can be seen as an institutional coping mechanism. It is a way to let students “share their perspectives,” as the Commission says, without creating a direct, headline-grabbing confrontation. The results of this survey will be data—a set of percentages—not a clear “yes” or “no” mandate. This gives the university administration far more room for interpretation and, ultimately, inaction.

The two opposing questions reflect the central fault line on campus. The PSC’s questions push for institutional disengagement from Israel, following in the footsteps of decades of divestment movements targeting South African apartheid and fossil fuel companies. The Jews for Peace question pushes back against what they see as a definition that conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism, defending the space for political criticism.

When students click “yes,” “no,” or “uncertain” this week, they are not just voting on divestment or a definition of antisemitism. They are participating in a ritual that tests the limits of student voice at one of the world’s most prestigious universities. They are navigating a bureaucratic process designed to manage conflict, even as the underlying passions and principles remain as raw as ever. The results may be non-binding, but the battle over what they mean, and what Harvard should do next, is just beginning.