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Republicans in hot water for taking a few photos of public Harvard event
Harvard University should not be investigating a Republican club for posting brief photos and videos and criticizing a Muslim event on campus, according to a national free speech group.
As previously reported by The College Fix, the Harvard Republican Club posted a video of the campus Islamic Society’s Eid Mubarak celebration on X, tweeting that Harvard has been “captured.”
A complaint filed afterward prompted the university to launch an investigation, during which time Harvard characterized the club’s actions as “harassment.”
The university confirmed an investigation is “underway.”
Spokesman Jonathan Palumbo told The Fix in an email that Harvard does not comment on student disciplinary issues. However, he said “there is a review underway in response to a formal complaint that was submitted.”
Palumbo referred The Fix to the Harvard College Dean of Students website, which outlines how student organizations are structured and how complaints are reviewed.
He also pointedto a piece in the right-leaning Harvard Salient, which argued that the Republican Club’s actions mark a shift from traditional Republican values under new club leadership whose “extremist, exclusionary ideology…departs from conservatism.”
The Fix reached out to the Republican club via email several weeks ago asking whether it considers its actions harassment and if it will continue to attend and/or document events on campus. The club did not to either email sent in the past several weeks.
However, a national free speech group criticized the investigation.
“Universities that promise free expression can only punish speech as harassment when that speech is ‘severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive,’” Dominic Coletti said in an email. “That’s a deliberately high bar and protects most offensive or ‘hate’ speech.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression program officer also addressed whether universities should have protections against filming and taking photos at events open to the public.
“Colleges can set reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions on their students’ ability to record, but these must be reasonably related to university operations,” he told The Fix in the same email. “Where students are not obstructing walkways or otherwise disrupting campus by filming, universities should allow them to record in generally public areas.”
The filming drew external pressure from a national Muslim group.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which called for Harvard to punish the Republican group, declined to comment on what specific harm it believes the filming and criticism caused to students. The group shied away from comment after publicly urging sanctions against the club.
Instead, National Deputy Director Edward Mitchell deferred media inquiries to Muslim students at Harvard.
The Fix reached out to the Harvard Islamic Society co-president Moeen Razzaque via email asking whether his group has concerns that punishing the College Republicans club for criticizing an event could be used against Muslim students in the future–such as if Students Supporting Israel brought in a speaker that pro-Palestinian students wanted to protest or criticize
Razzaque did not respond to multiple emails in the past several weeks.
However, he previously wrote an op-ed for The Harvard Crimson criticizing the filming and social media comments actions as antithetical to Harvard’s commitment to religious pluralism.
MORE: UPenn ‘open expression’ rules need work, free speech group says
