Dear President Faust,
My name is Duncan Kennedy and I am a professor at the Law School. I’m writing with a suggestion and a comment on how the administration, through the Harvard University Police, is handling the Occupy Harvard protest movement.
My suggestion is that it would be a good idea, supposing that the University is committed to excluding anyone without a Harvard ID from the Yard, to have more open gates as checkpoints, rather than closing almost all of them and restricting access and exit for ID holders to a mere three.
Even if this would marginally increase the cost of policing, I think it would be worth it for the following reason. The limited access for ID holders is likely to increase friction within the University community, with some blaming the protesters and others blaming the University for the inconvenience involved. Since many faculty and staff and students work in the Yard or live there or go to class there or to the Library or to Memorial Church, the inconvenience is not trivial. But it seems unnecessary, since it would be easy enough to have more checkpoints.
My comment is that it seems to me an overreaction to have closed the Yard to outsiders last night. It may be true that at Dewey Square there have been issues of homeless people and some otherwise disruptive people causing problems for the protesters and for the police, but I don’t believe that was even a small danger last night. The exclusion of students from other schools who wanted to join the event, leading to the protests moving outside, ended up increasing disruption of the town, since it required us to block traffic while we moved to Holmes Field at the Law School. And whatever danger “outsiders” posed in the Yard, it would seem they also posed at the Law School.
I understand that it might have been the view of some that it was important to protect the symbolic center the University against an equally symbolic contamination by “outsiders,” or that there were other questions of “image” involved. But … as a participant, the massive security presence, albeit friendly enough, had a Homeland Security feel to it. And I think it would be better now to allow free circulation of outsiders. Again, perhaps there has been an overreaction.
Thank you for your attention, and best wishes for success in handling this complex situation,
Duncan Kennedy