Under Faculty Pressure, Harvard FAS Dean Hopi Hoekstra Rolls Back Restrictions On Campus Signage

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences quietly revised its guidance on campus use rules last week to allow publicly visible signs in private spaces, after months of pressure from faculty who said the guidelines were being used to limit expression.

The change — issued by FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra — comes months after administrators ordered two Organismic and Evolutionary Biology professors to remove a Black Lives Matter banner from their lab windows in the Northwest Science Building.

Under the revised policy, faculty, students, and staff may display signs in offices, dorm rooms, and other private workspaces even if they can be seen from outside. The amended guidance now explicitly states that campus use rules cannot be used to prohibit items placed inside work areas “regardless of whether any such item may be visible from outside of the space in which it appears.”

The update also removes the word “customary” from the description of where permitted signage may be placed — adopting language proposed by a group of faculty members who had urged administrators to loosen the rules.

The revisions followed a Feb. 16 memorandum, obtained by The Crimson, from 18 faculty members, including the two professors whose banner had been removed, introducing legislation to amend the rules and requiring that it be brought to a vote at the March 3 faculty meeting

But the proposal never reached the floor — because Hoekstra did not want it to, two people familiar with the matter said. The change, instead, appeared in a quiet update to the FAS campus use guidance on March 4.

The day before, at the March 3 faculty meeting, Hoekstra announced a new FAS committee on campus use and operations tasked with reviewing questions about the guidance. She added that membership details would be announced once the committee was fully formed.

FAS spokesperson James M. Chisholm declined to comment on the revisions or why Hoekstra was opposed to bringing the revisions to a full faculty meeting.

The revision marks the second time faculty have pushed administrators to soften the campus use rules adopted in 2024 after a pro-Palestine encampment on Harvard Yard. When the rules were first introduced, faculty members protested restrictions on chalking and drafted a motion to roll back the bans.

That proposal also never made it to a faculty meeting. Though the final rules were later revised in ways that resembled the faculty proposal, administrators said the changes had been developed independently.

The latest dispute began last August, when Harvard ordered the removal of a “BLACK LIVES MATTER” sign from the lab windows of OEB professors Bence P. Ölveczky and Mansi Srivastava, citing a provision banning “self-mounted displays.”

Both professors later joined the group pressing for the amendment.

“I’m just happy that we’re able to push back a little bit on what I thought was a pretty restrictive interpretation of the rules,” Ölveczky said. “And get it in writing.”

Since the professors’ sign was taken down, Black Lives Matter posters have appeared in other windows across campus. The display gained momentum after several campus unions distributed posters to members in protest of the rules.

Ryan D. Enos, a government professor who signed on to the proposed revision, said faculty had grown concerned that the guidelines were being applied to limit speech.

“​​We saw that these campus use rules were being used specifically to restrict the freedom of expression of faculty members,” Enos said. “We don’t think that that is conducive to the type of academic freedom that makes a great university.”

History professor Kirsten A. Weld, the president of Harvard’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said she hoped revision would encourage more visible expression on campus.

“If you go to a university campus anywhere else,” Weld said, “you will find campuses that are bursting chockablock with posters, signs, banners, opinions, flags, ideas, and those university campuses all seem to be humming along at least as well as our own.”

“I hope that we would see more rather than less expression as a result of this modest pushback amendment to the revised campus use rules,” she added.

Correction: March 10, 2026

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the Feb. 16 letter urged FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra to amend the campus use rules. In fact, the memorandum introduced legislation requiring that a proposed amendment be brought to a vote at the March 3 faculty meeting.

—Staff writer Abigail S. Gerstein can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at abbysg.97. Follow her on X @abbysgerstein.

—Staff writer Amann S. Mahajan can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at amannsm.38. Follow her on X @amannmahajan.