Photo Courtesy of Harvard.edu
Black Harvard students are combating campus discrimination through a newly formed organization, the African and African American Resistance Organization, The Harvard Crimson reported.
Co-founders Kojo Acheampong ’26, Kiersten B. Hash ’25, Amari M. Butler ’25, Prince A. Williams ’25 and Clyve Lawrence ’25 found inspiration in the Harvard-Radcliffe Association for African and Afro-American Students, a group partially responsible for creating Harvard’s African and African American Studies Department in 1968.
The new organization, AFRO, was formed in response to university events that mainly impacted Black students, like the Supreme Court vetoing race-based affirmative action and the April 2023 “swatting” incident where armed campus police officers forced four Black undergraduates out of their bedrooms.
AFRO’s co-founders observed how Black students had no foundation to engage in political issues effectively to provoke change.
“There was no real political space for people to actually do organizing work,” Acheampong explained. “It became very evident with the swatting incident, especially, that this was such a needed space and something that could actually create the change on campus that we need to see.”
Like the Harvard-Radcliffe Association, which also calls itself AFRO, the new AFRO identifies as “militant” and lacks interest in engaging with the administration because it doesn’t see HU invoking change to improve lives for Black students.
This is justifiable, considering the Dean of Students Office announced a pause on recognizing new student organizations, obstructing new organizations’ access to resources.
AFRO refuses to allow the pause to stop them from achieving the organization’s goals.
Lawrence told the outlet that becoming a DSO-recognized organization won’t advance their cause since the approval needs to come from the same administration AFRO pushes against.
Nevertheless, AFRO will continue reaching its short-term goals, like addressing the campus policing situation. AFRO called for the disarmament of the Harvard University Police Department.
It also wants HU to eliminate legacy preferences from its admissions process to ensure a “more reparative view” of affirmative action to benefit Black applicants.
AFRO also called for more Black mental health professionals in Counseling and Mental Health Services.
According to Lawrence, the organization’s goals point toward a more “inclusive” campus for Black students.
“No just more inclusive in the way that we typically think about it, but one that is actually working toward more liberatory ends — ones that address the needs of Black people more holistically, ones that Black people feel proud of, ones that Black people take ownership of and derive self-worth from,” Lawrence commented, adding that “recognition comes from the students themselves.”
AFRO will do whatever it takes to enact change and improve the lives of Black students on campus, even if it requires defying the administration.
“We need to pressure administration,” Acheampong said. “We need to demand of administration. We need to work against administration to get what we deserve on campus.”
So far, the group has about 56 members and already had its second meeting of the semester on Sunday.
Issac Lagrandeur Brown of ’27 shared he joined the organization because he experienced social change by getting involved with his community in Miami.
“I want AFRO to talk about how [police] are part of a broader system of criminalizing poverty, and then sending the same people that are then criminalized for poverty to jail, and creating a vicious cycle of poor living conditions,” Brown said. “I want political education when it comes to that. I want demonstrations right outside of Smith.”