THE HARVARD CRIMSON THE UNIVERSITY DAILY, EST. 1873
| VOLUME CLI, NO. 3
| CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
FALSIFIED DATA
CAMPUS CLIMATE
TEST OPTIONAL
SPORTS
Harvard’s Test Optional Policies Face Criticism
Men’s Lacrosse Looks Ahead to 2024 Ivy Campaign
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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2024
Scientist Accused of Research Misconduct MEDICAL SCHOOL. Harvard Medical School neuroscientist Khalid Shah faced allegations of falsified data and plagarized images across 21 papers spanning more than 20 years. SEE PAGE 5
OPINION
Admissions Should Be More Meritocratic MORE MERIT. Psychology professor Steven A. Pinker advocated for Harvard’s admissions system to rely more heavily on merit when selecting which students to admit to the ollege. SEE PAGE 10
Uneasy Return to Campus CALM AFTER THE STORM. When College students left campus for winter break, they left behind fierce divisions. Amid strong disagreement over the Israel-Hamas war and former President Claudine Gay’s resignation, rifts continued to grow. But after months of turmoil, students said they returned to a surprising calm on a campus that remains in recovery. SEE PAGE 6
CATHERINE H. FENG AND HANNAH S. LEE— CRIMSON DESIGNERS
LABOR
Interim President Alan Garber’s Uneasy Relationship With Harvard Unions BY ARAN SONNAD– JOSHI AND SHEEREA X. YU
ARTS
CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
W Artist Profile: Brandon Sanderson FANTASY AUTHOR. Brandon Sanderson, hailed for his fantasy novels, discussed his original work, teaching creative writing, and how he builds fantasy world in an interview with The Crimson. SEE PAGE 13
hen longtime Harvard Provost Alan M. Garber ’76 suddenly became interim president earlier this month, the powerful but largely invisible administrator was unfamiliar to most Harvard affiliates. But not Harvard’s unions. They know Garber well — and they can’t stand him. In his 12-year tenure as provost, Garber served not only as Harvard’s chief academic officer but also oversaw union issues on campus in collaboration with the Harvard Office of Labor Relations, led by Paul R. Curran. Though Garber’s extensive familiarity with Harvard made him a safe choice to
GARBER
AND CAM E. KETTLES CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
KEN GRIFFIN
‘WHINY SNOWFLAKES.’ The billionaire hedge fund manager and Harvard megadonor said he would stop donating to his alma mater and took aim at elite colleges and universities in America. SEE PAGE 4
basically leading the most vicious anti-union campaign that we’ve seen in grad worker unionization,” Mancilla said. The University’s efforts to prevent graduate student unionization succeeded, and HGSU-UAW lost its first union election in Nov. 2016. But lawyers for the union challenged the outcome, sparking months of legal battles. More than one year later, the National Labor Relations Board found that Harvard excluded eligible voters from the election and mandated they hold a second election. This time, in April 2018, the union won — and HGSU-UAW was born. Mancilla alleged that the NLRB reversal was the result of a “vicious anti-campaign” by Garber and Curran. “A Trump labor board — that was how
bad it was, how egregious the violation was — ended up ruling in our favor, to order a second election,” Mancilla said. But even as the union earned the right to exist at Harvard, it was still met with fierce resistance from Garber and an intentionally delayed negotiation process by the University, Mancilla said. “They slow-walk the entire process and Garber is the chief reason why,” he said. “The Office of Labor and Employment Relations can have whatever opinion it has, but in the end, they report to higher administration, and the position of the higher administration is the position that they will take.” Garber was the top administrator overseeing negotiations between Harvard and HGSU-UAW during those 2018 negotiations.
SEE PAGE 8
PLAGIARISM
Garber Will Not Return Diversity Chief Faces to Role as Provost Plagiarism Allegations BY EMMA H. HAIDAR
Griffin Suspends Donations
lead a University in crisis, his elevation to the presidency has many of Harvard’s workers wary. In 2018, when Garber was rumored to be a presidential candidate, labor activists led a campaign against his possible selection, sending more than 100 emails to members of the presidential search committee to advocate against Garber. Members of the Harvard Graduate Student Union-United Auto Workers remember the opposition they were faced with in 2018 when graduate students attempted to unionize and negotiate with Harvard for the first time. Brandon J. Mancilla, who served as the first president of HGSU-UAW, said Garber staunchly opposed labor initiatives and led University efforts to prevent graduate student workers from unionizing. “Garber’s role during that time was
Interim Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 said he will not return to his role as provost after the University appoints Claudine Gay’s permanent successor but declined to say whether he would be a candidate in the search. Garber’s answer indicates that he will either retire after his stint as Harvard’s interim president or take on the role full time. “I am happy to be serving as interim president at a time when Harvard is facing a number of crises,” Garber said. “I am happy in my current position,” he added. “I’ll just leave it at that.” Before his appointment as interim president earlier this year, Garber, 68, served for 12 years as provost — arguably the second-highest position at the University — and was expected to retire in the
first years of Gay’s presidency. Garber is among the most obvious candidates to become Harvard’s 31st president, particularly if the search committee decides the University quickly needs a permanent leader who can provide stability. While the Harvard Corporation — the University’s highest governing body — might opt for a candidate who could serve for more than a decade as president, Garber’s comments indicate he has not ruled out a path to becoming Gay’s permanent successor. Garber did not immediately drop his title as provost when Gay’s shock resignation elevated him to the University’s top post, but in the interview he said that he does not intend to remain provost for much longer. Garber’s comments about his future plans at Harvard, made during his first interview as interim president, only offer a
SEE PAGE 5
BY NEIL H. SHAH AND TILLY R. ROBINSON CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
Harvard’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Sherri A. Charleston faced 40 allegations of plagiarism in an anonymous complaint filed with the University on Monday. The complaint, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon on Tuesday, alleged 28 instances of plagiarism in Charleston’s doctoral dissertation at the University of Michigan and 12 allegations against a 2014 article in the Journal of Negro Education, co-authored with her husband LaVar J. Charleston and Michigan State University College of Education Dean Jerlando F.L. Jackson. Complaints were also filed to the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Charleston co-wrote the 2014 paper, according to the Free Beacon.
The complaint alleged that the “results” described in the 2014 article were “practically identical” to the “major findings” of a 2012 article paper by LaVar Charleston — the UW-Madison deputy vice chancellor for diversity and inclusion — in the Journal of Diversity of Higher Education. The two articles contain nearly identical descriptions of interviewee demographics. While the 2014 article repeatedly cites LaVar Charleston’s 2012 article, it does not attribute the interviews to the 2012 article or cite it in the passages in question. The 2014 article also includes an interview which appears nearly identically in the 2012 article, with no indication that the interviews are shared. The complaint also accused the 2014 article of lifting other phrases from the 2012 article “without proper attribution.” The complaint follows plagiarism
SEE PAGE 8