Students continue to protest against weapons companies fueling the U.S. and Israel's atrocities in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran despite intensified repression from the Trump administration. CONTACT: Palestine Legal Media, media@palestinelegal.org April 14th, 2026 — Three Harvard students who engaged in a demonstration in support of Palestinian freedom and climate justice are likely the first to face punishments from a new university disciplinary body that the Trump administration pressured the university to adopt. Students were protesting a campus event promoting climate sustainability that featured the CEO of a major fossil fuel company and board member of notorious weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin, whose weapons are routinely used by the Israeli military to commit war crimes in Gaza and have been used in deadly attacks on residential areas in Iran according to experts.
The three disciplined students' hearing determinations on April 2nd found them in violation of the new school rules, with punishments including disciplinary probation for up to 6 months. The creation of the new disciplinary procedures to investigate and punish alleged student misconduct, known as the University Committee on Rights and Responsibilities (UCRR) , followed demands from the Trump administration for a centralized disciplinary body, despite Harvard's earlier resistance to such federal control. Harvard’s new, draconian system has now all but eliminated transparency and due process protections for students, which Palestine Legal previously warned would result in “extreme censorship of pro-Palestinian speech, which risks violating Palestinian and associated students' civil rights.”
"It is not truth, not Veritas , but outright hypocrisy to invite the CEO of a major fossil fuel company and top brass of the world's largest weapons manufacturer to a climate sustainability event at Harvard," said one of the disciplined Harvard students. "To stay silent in moments like this would be a betrayal of both your community and the purpose of our education. There is nothing climate-stable about the fossil fuel industry, just as there is nothing equitable about profiting from war and genocide."
These developments are part of a broader, coordinated effort to suppress the Palestinian freedom movement in the United States, as detailed in Palestine Legal’s forthcoming 2025 year-end report, The Front Lines of Dissent: The Palestine Solidarity Movement Resists Trump's Authoritarian Attacks, While Universities Surrender . Palestine Legal’s requests for support last year surged to 300% above the annual average before 2023, with the overwhelming majority coming from students and faculty at colleges and universities.
The report documents a sweeping campaign of repression from both the Trump administration and complicit universities, from sending ICE agents to kidnap and detain non-citizen student activists, using opposition to genocide on campuses as a pretext to extort universities and cut their federal funding, trying to smear pro-Palestine student groups as supporters of "terrorism", and leveraging executive authority to unconstitutionally target student speech.
Last month, the Trump administration filed yet another frivolous lawsuit against Harvard, alleging “indifference” towards antisemitism. Over 120 Harvard Jewish affiliates have vocally denounced it, saying that the lawsuit “cynically exploits concerns about antisemitism to justify what can only be described as an authoritarian assault on institutions of higher education.”
In recent months, several U.S. courts have rightfully ruled in favor of pro-Palestinian protesters , delivering blow after blow to the Trump administration. These court decisions are helping to "create a body of law" in support of Palestinian rights, including legal precedents that could help prevent future attempts at legal repression from Israel lobby groups, which frequently misuse civil rights lawsuits to silence criticism of Israel. These follow major shifts in public opinion, with a majority of American voters — including nearly 7 in 10 voters under 30 — now opposing sending economic and military aid to Israel, according to a September 2025 Times /Siena poll .
"Our 2025 year-end report shows that while universities have largely cowered and caved to coercive pressure from the Trump administration and its pro-Israel supporters, student activists for Palestinian and collective freedom remain a model of moral conviction and courage,” said Dima Khalidi, executive director of Palestine Legal. “Even when facing punitive consequences for speaking out, they are holding the line of dissent against injustice from the U.S. to Palestine, because they understand the cost of surrender for all of us." About Palestine Legal: Founded in 2012, Palestine Legal is an organization dedicated to protecting the civil and constitutional rights of people in the U.S. who speak out for Palestinian freedom. Palestine Legal is the only legal organization in the United States exclusively dedicated to supporting the movement for Palestinian rights. Our attorneys are based in Chicago, New York City, and the Bay Area, and our work spans all 50 states and Washington, D.C. Contact us at media@palestinelegal.org for comment from Palestine Legal attorneys, experts, and students.