Students at Harvard Law School awoke Thursday to find that someone had placed black tape over the portraits of African-American professors hanging outside a lecture hall.
Clint Smith III, a PhD candidate at the university, first flagged the doctored photos on Twitter. Harvard faculty and students were notified, and a spokesman for the university’s police department told the Boston Globe that they were conducting “an open and active investigation” into the incident.
Following student protests, someone covered the portraits of black professors at Harvard Law School href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/BlackOnCampus?src=hash”>#BlackOnCampus pic.twitter.com/3Pxuyuo31o
— Clint Smith (@ClintSmithIII) November 19, 2015
In an email to the law school community obtained by the Globe, Dean Martha Minnow said she was “saddened and angered by this act” and announced a Thursday meeting to discuss any concerns.
The incident came one day after Harvard students held a rally in solidarity with black student activists protesting racism on other college campuses, including Yale and the University of Missouri.
According to photos posted by other Harvard Law students, the tape has since been removed from the professors’ faces. In its place, students left Post-It notes offering praise and support for the school’s black faculty.
Students have added post-its with positive notes about the faculty members whose portraits were defaced. pic.twitter.com/m026DVs4DD
— Kendra Albert (@KendraSerra) November 19, 2015