Organizing meeting to protest at Harvard Commencement

A call for a solemn mass protest at the 2026 Harvard Commencement on May 28.

It is time to make both the genocide and raging ethnic cleansing of Palestine and our support for Palestinian self-determination visible once again. It’s time to pressure our educational, medical, cultural, corporate and elected leaders who are collaborating with the genocide to end that support.

The biggest single event over the upcoming period that gives us the best chance to call much needed attention to this crisis is the Harvard Commencement on May 28. Harvard stands at the center of our universities’ strategy to help Israel and undermine opposition to Israeli criminal violence and dispossession of Palestinians. The commencement gives us the opportunity to reach the thousands and thousands of people coming to Harvard Square that day from all over the country and all over the world with our message and our demands.

This is a proposal for our third annual solemn vigil surrounding the outside walls of Harvard with our bodies, signs and banners. Many of you participated in our commencement actions at the 2024 and 2025 commencements when 200 of us surrounded Harvard Yard with our solemn vigil in the morning as thousands started to pour through the gates. Our action received much support from those attending the festivities to whom we presented a powerful witness and provided important information about Harvard and the genocide. The press was swarming around the commencement and a number of us were interviewed and pictures were taken. We were part of the story those big commencement days in Cambridge.

There is a lot going on right now, but not enough concerning Palestine. This is our opportunity to make a big deal out of what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank.

Would you or your organization be willing to participate in the organizing committee for this Commencement action? The first organizing meeting will be held next Wednesday, April 29 at 5:30pm at the Mass. Peace Action office in the St. James building complex at 1991 Massachusetts Ave, north of Porter Square. Please sign up here or just show up next Wednesday. If you cannot attend, but are interested in helping to organize this event, please contact the Public Education and Action Team of Mass. Peace Action’s Gaza Committee at 617-623-5288 (landline, no texts). Based on the response we will make a decision whether to proceed with putting together this year’s commencement protest.

Sign up if you can attend the organizing meeting or if you can help out to organize this effort.

See these directions to our office.