At Harvard, a confrontation during a protest erupts in political controversy — and lands in court - The Boston Globe (2024)

The incident might have been forgotten as a minor tussle in a charged environment. Instead, it has ricocheted across the globe for more than half a year in viral videos, civil lawsuits, missives from lawmakers, and international news reports. Republicans in Congress have used it as a cudgel to pound Harvard over its response to the turmoil over the Israel-Hamas war. Pro-Palestinian activists have said the reaction to the confrontation is evidence of a pervasive bias that paints them as violent extremists. Some Jewish advocates have held it up as evidence of resurgent campus antisemitism.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation looked into the incident. Mitt Romney signed a letter saying it revealed failings with Harvard’s leadership. It was an element of the conflagration at Harvard last fall that contributed to the resignation of the school’s president, Claudine Gay, earlier this year.

Now, more than seven months later, the confrontation has moved into court: Two pro-Palestinian Harvard graduate students, Elom Tettey-Tamaklo and Ibrahim Bharmal, are facing one misdemeanor count each of assault and battery and a civil rights violation — essentially a hate crime. They are accused of targeting Segev based on his Jewish identity and of making unwanted contact with him as they tried to obstruct his video recording and usher him away from the demonstration.

Segev, 26, who is Israeli, is a Harvard Business School student. Tettey-Tamaklo, 27, is a graduate student at Harvard Divinity School. Bharmal, 28, is enrolled at Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School. He is an editor of the Harvard Law Review.

The accused say they are innocent. Any contact between themselves and Segev was unintentional and they did not know he was Jewish when they approached him, Bharmal and Tettey-Tamaklo said in an interview with the Globe.

They also say they are being railroaded. In court, their lawyers have raised the prospect that Harvard may be pursuing criminal charges against them in response to political pressure. Republicans in Congress, who are investigating Harvard’s response to antisemitism, have urged Harvard for months to punish them. More broadly, some donors have exerted pressure on universities to crack down on pro-Palestinian demonstrations, including the recent encampments that upended the final weeks of the academic year at dozens of schools.

The Harvard University Police Department went to court in Brighton in March to bring the charges against Bharmal and Tettey-Tamaklo. The department, which reports directly to top Harvard leaders, has the power under Massachusetts law to make arrests and pursue criminal charges in state courts. The office of Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden did not publicly sign off on the charges or appear at a hearing on May 8 about the case.

The next day, a clerk-magistrate granted the Harvard police’s request and officially handed down the criminal charges.

In court filings, the Harvard police said Bharmal and Tettey-Tamaklo committed assault and battery by “interfering with [Segev’s] movement,” shouting the word “shame” at him, “appearing to make contact with [Segev] on more than one occasion,” and by “placing a keffiyeh” — a type of scarf — “on top of [Segev’s] head.”

The civil rights violation, Harvard police wrote, is for “participat[ing] in activity that appears to interfere with [Segev] freely walking throughout the campus and to interfere with him taking videos of the demonstration.”

Thomas Nolan, a former Boston police lieutenant and criminal justice professor, criticized the decision to pursue a misdemeanor assault and battery case. “It’s a Mickey Mouse charge,” he said. Battery is “a touching offense,” he added, meaning it can be applied in cases involving light physical contact.

“Most police officers are not going to charge someone with a simple assault and battery,” he said. “They’re going to have something else” — an allegation involving more serious criminality— “to go with that that would compel a criminal prosecution.”

Nolan watched a video compilation of the incident, which was provided to the Harvard police and to the Globe by Segev’s attorney. “I didn’t see anything in the video that I would characterize as an assault and battery ... or anything remotely approaching a civil rights violation,” he said.

Leonard Kesten, a lawyer who has represented police departments in criminal and civil cases, said that even if the elements of the assault and battery crime were met, Harvard police were not obligated to pursue criminal charges. “There’s always discretion whether to charge or not,” he said.

Both men thought the evidence for the civil rights violation was thin because it relies almost solely on Segev’s assertion the defendants knew he was Jewish, which the defendants deny.

They also thought political considerations could have influenced the case. “It’s certainly fair to question what the motivation is for pursuing this case all of these months later,” Nolan said.

A Harvard University spokesperson declined to respond to any questions about the case or the incident. The attorney for Segev, Douglas Brooks, said it would be inappropriate for him to comment since his client isn’t a party to the case.

Brooks, along with the Brandeis Center, an advocacy group, separately filed a civil lawsuit against Harvard in Massachusetts federal court last week. The suit references the Segev case and accuses Harvard of being “deliberately indifferent to the pervasive antisemitism on campus.”

The confrontation occurred during a hellish time on Harvard’s campus — 11 days after Hamas’s killing and kidnapping spree through southern Israel spurred Israel’s retaliatory war in the Gaza Strip. The conflict provoked strong reactions on campus that put Harvard in a spotlight like few other schools. A statement issued by pro-Palestinian student groups on Oct. 7 saying Israel bore sole responsibility for the violence provoked an international furor.

Dozens of students linked to the statement were doxxed, that is, their names, photos, and addresses were posted online. They received death threats. They had job offers rescinded. Trucks with giant monitors rolled through Harvard Square displaying their faces and names under the words, “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites.”

During the Oct. 18 “die-in,” when Bharmal and Tettey-Tamaklo saw Segev video recording the protesters, they said they thought he was going to use the footage to dox them. They said they were also concerned he might hurt protesters lying on the ground as he stepped over and around them.

Numerous videos of the incident have circulated online, from bystanders who recorded from multiple angles, from a news helicopter covering the event, and from Segev himself.

The footage shows Segev stepping over and around the demonstrators lying on the ground while recording them. Then he was approached by Bharmal, who had volunteered as a safety marshal for the demonstration, and Tettey-Tamaklo, an organizer, as well as other demonstrators.

“Our primary concern is for the safety of the people at the die-in,” Tettey-Tamaklo said in an interview. “It’s important that we escort this individual out.”

Tettey-Tamaklo said he and other demonstrators used keffiyehs, a type of scarf that is a symbol of solidarity with the Palestinian cause, to block the camera on Segev’s phone. Excerpts from Segev’s video that have circulated online show keffiyehs draping over his lens.

“You’re grabbing me,” Segev is heard saying in the video. “This is not grabbing you,” a woman responds.

There is disagreement about what happened next.

Segev later told the Harvard police that he was “hit multiple times by many people,” according to a police report. The videos show one unidentified, masked man bumping Segev with his torso and pushing down Segev’s arm as Segev held out his phone. (In the videos, both Bharmal and Tettey-Tamaklo were not wearing masks.)

Bharmal and Tettey-Tamaklo said they were trying to de-escalate the situation. The videos show them obstructing Segev’s movement, as Tettey-Tamaklo and other demonstrators repeatedly yell “Exit!” and “Shame!”

A Harvard Business School administrator, Robert Breslow, who saw the confrontation, told police that he thought the demonstrators’ actions made the situation less safe, according to a police report.

At the end, the videos show Segev walking away from the demonstration.

Tettey-Tamaklo said he stood by his actions. “We felt pretty good about how we had de-escalated the situation,” he said. “It’s important to note,” he added, “that Harvard police officers were on the scene and they saw everything happen.” At least one even recorded the confrontation, according to a police report. None intervened. (The police video has not been made public.)

Later that day, Segev sat down with two Harvard police officers in a Harvard Business School building. He told them protesters had put “their hands on him” and “block[ed] his path,” according to a Harvard police report.

Later, Segev’s father, Ilan Segev, a former Israeli diplomat who lives in the Boston area, emailed the Harvard police and said he had identified two of the protesters shown in the video: Bharmal and Tettey-Tamaklo. Ilan Segev “stated in his email that his son wanted to press charges,” according to the police report.

Over the next two weeks, Bharmal’s and Tettey-Tamaklo’s lives were turned upside down. They were named in an article in the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news outlet, that said they were among protesters who “shoved and accosted” Segev. Then the videos of the confrontation went viral.

Some media outlets called attention to a social media post by Tettey-Tamaklo in the weeks after Oct. 7 that said, “The beast of Zionism shall be slain.”

Websites and social media accounts sought to tie Bharmal to the controversial Oct. 7 statement by Harvard student groups. They noted that a group he had previously led, the HLS South Asian Law Students Association, had originally signed the statement. The group later rescinded its signature, said it regretted signing the statement, and said it “condemns terrorism.”

Bharmal, a Harvard Law School student, said he had a summer job offer from a major law firm rescinded. Tettey-Tamaklo, a Harvard Divinity School student, lost his job as a Harvard proctor, a role similar to a resident assistant. He also lost his university housing, he said.

Death threats and racist vitriol poured into their email inboxes. (Bharmal is South Asian and Muslim; Tettey-Tamaklo is Black.) “I hope you rot in a hole with the rest of the terrorists,” said one email to Bharmal sent on the night of Nov. 1. “You will be wiped off this earth and the world will be a better place.”

Bharmal said he was beginning to have regular panic attacks. Late on the night of Nov. 1, he wrote to three deans at Harvard Law School. “Severely Doxxed, Receiving Death Threats,” the subject line said. “I am currently experiencing targeted harassment and doxxing based on a false allegation,” Bharmal wrote. “I am reaching out proactively because online commenters are tagging Harvard accounts with these false allegations.”

The next day, that email was forwarded to the Harvard police, according to a police report. It became part of the evidence in a criminal investigation Bharmal did not know was underway.

Who kept it alive, and why? Harvard will not say.

What is clear is the university has faced extraordinary pressure to punish Bharmal and Tettey-Tamaklo. In a scathing letter to Harvard’s leaders about a hostile campus climate for Jews, Mitt Romney and other Harvard Business School alumni referred to the incident as a “violent assault.” Republicans in Congress made the incident a focal point of their investigation into Harvard’s response to campus antisemitism. Representative Elise Stefanik recently accused Harvard’s top leaders of a “delay of justice” in the case.

Bharmal and Tettey-Tamaklo also question if bias played a role in the investigation.

The Harvard police detective handling their case, Sergeant Thomas Karns, was accused in 2019 of calling a Black colleague the n-word and a gay slur. According to reports in the Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper, Karns denied using the n-word. But the union for Harvard police officers said he used the gay slur, and an outside arbitrator who reviewed the incident said he used the n-word, according to Crimson reports.

Karns was also once accused by the American Civil Liberties Union of surveilling pro-Palestinian activists. He was spotted, in 2008, photographing demonstrators in Harvard Square and later explained in a police report that he had been engaged in “intelligence gathering,” according to the ACLU. Harvard has never specified why he was gathering intelligence. But in a sworn affidavit for an unrelated case last year, Karns identified himself as a member of an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. Domestic intelligence agencies sometimes surveil pro-Palestinian activist groups.

Harvard declined to answer any questions about Karns or make him available for an interview.

Now that criminal charges have been issued, the decision whether to prosecute the case rests with Hayden, the Suffolk district attorney.

A spokesperson for Hayden’s office declined to comment.

On Tuesday, after the Globe sent questions to Hayden’s office and to Segev’s lawyer, a prosecutor from Hayden’s office asked the Brighton court to impound the files related to the case. The court complied, hiding all of the police records from public view, including from the defendants.

John R. Ellement and Jeremy C. Fox of the Globe staff contributed to this report.

Thomas Nolan was misidentified in an earlier version of this story.

Mike Damiano can be reached at mike.damiano@globe.com.