Political activists at Harvard have apologized for spreading fake notices on campus claiming that their fellow students had been arrested were facing deportation.
Notices from a fake Harvard Special Investigations Unit” posted in dorm rooms were circulated as a protest by the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee, The Harvard Crimson reported.
The fake flyer was also “formally cosigned” by groups such as Harvard Concilio Latino, the Harvard Islamic Society, and the Harvard Black Students Association,
“We regret to inform you that a resident of this dorm has been detained indefinitely due to suspicious actions, suspected violent inclinations, or suspicion of being a deportable alien (i.e. questionable residency status),” the fake notice read.
On the back of the flyer, however, it tells students that “this is not a real notice,” adding: “However, we hope that the unsettling nature of this notice allows Harvard community members to reflect on the reality of people who face these kinds of unwarranted disruptions of life in unexplained suspicious circumstances before a state power that can hold ‘suspects’ indefinitely.”
Despite the notice being fake, this caused anger on campus by multiple students and forced two of the four groups involved in making the flyer to apologize.
“I was upset mostly because I think [the flyers] didn’t take into account the feelings of people who have actually seen deportation notices or experienced the risk of deportation, or have loved ones who are at risk of deportation—their responses were not taken into account,” said Harvard student Karla V. Alvarado, whose parents used to be undocumented.
Another student, Cecilia Nunez, expressed similar sentiment: “As a member of the Latinx and black communities, I was really disturbed by the format of the flyer and how terrifying it was for students of color and undocumented students especially to receive the notice.”
Co-president of the Palestinian group on campus, Fatima M. Bishtawi told the student paper that she “would like to unequivocally apologize for any trauma and pain provoked by the seriousness of this notice.”
The board of Concilio Latino released a statement saying: “[The fliers] are fake, but the effects they may have had on any of you are beyond real and represent something entirely antithetical to what Concilio stands for.”
The group added they although they cosigned the fake notice, they weren’t fully aware of the content before they were circulated.
Concilio Latino said it was not fully aware of the notices’ exact contents before they were distributed.
Two other groups involved with the flyer, the Black Students Association and Islamic Society, haven’t yet issued an apology.
This is the second time the Palestine Solidarity Committee got into hot water over provocative fake notices.
Back in 2013, according to the Harvard Crimson, the pro-Palestine group distributed fake eviction notices to people as a protest against Israel’s policies.
