The Harvard Crimson - Volume CXLVII, No. 31

The Harvard Crimson The University Daily, Est. 1873 | Volume cxlvii No. 31 | Cambridge, Massachusetts | Friday, March 6, 2020

editorial PAGE 8

news PAGE 7

sports PAGE 10

Khurana’s broad conception of public service is misguided

Physicist Steinhardt explains his quest to discover a new form of matter

It’s women hockey playoff season for both Harvard and its alumni

Faculty Assess Bacow and Gay By kevin r. chen and james s. bikales Crimson Staff Writers

Just one quarter of respondents to The Crimson’s survey of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences said they feel that University President Lawrence S. Bacow has represented their interests well during his two years in Massachusetts Hall.

Nearing the end of his second year as President, Bacow has already weathered a myriad of high-profile challenges: protests in favor of divestment, a lawsuit challenging Harvard’s admissions policies, controversy around faculty deans, scrutiny over donations, a graduate student strike, and controversy surrounding tenure denials.

Thirty-nine percent of faculty who responded to the survey reported satisfaction with Bacow’s tenure as Harvard’s President thus far. Twenty-nine percent of respondents were dissatisfied, while 32 percent were neutral. FAS Dean Claudine Gay — who started in her role

Warren Suspends Presidential Bid

By Jasper G. Goodman Crimson Staff Writer

one month after Bacow — recei ed a higher satisfaction rating, with 47 percent of respondents expressing satisfaction with her tenure thus far. Seventeen percent of survey-takers were dissatisfied with Gay, while 36 percent were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied.

Surveyed members of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences also strongly favor divesting the University’s endowment from fossil fuels and private prisons, and a majority are unsatisfied with administrators’ responses to the issue.

The Crimson distributed its faculty survey to more than 1,000 members of the FAS in late February, polling Harvard’s flagship faculty on key University policy decisions, pressing issues on campus, and challenges they face as academics. Emeritus, tenured, tenure-track, and non-tenure-track faculty all received the survey. The 74-question survey garnered more than 400 responses, though not all

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) announced she would suspend her presidential campaign Thursday, just two days after a disappointing third-place finish in the Massachusetts presidential primary.

Warren told reporters in a press conference outside her house in Cambridge that she would not endorse another candidate “right now,” but did not rule out doing so in the future.

“This has been the honor of a lifetime,” she said. “Ten years ago, I was teaching a few blocks from here and talking about what was broken in America, and ideas for how to fix it. And pretty much nobody wanted to hear it.”

“I’ve had a chance to get out there and talk with millions of people,” she added. “We have ideas now that we talk about that we just weren’t talking about even a year ago.”

Warren taught at Harvard Law School until 2012, when she was elected to the Senate.

Her husband — Bruce H. Mann,

See faculty Page 7

See Warren Page 7

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) speaks at a Cambridge press conference following her announcement that she would suspend her bid for the presidency. jasper g. goodman—Contributing photographer

Harvard, Activists Disagree Over Amount Invested in Prisons By camille g. caldera and ellen M. burstein

Of The Disclosed $945,000,000, How Much Is Prison-Related?

Harvard’s $40.9 Billion Endowment

Crimson Staff Writers

$3,000,000

$3,000,000

$2,500,000

$2,000,000

2.3%

$1,500,000

disclosed publicly

$1,000,000

$500,000

$0

$18,000 Per Bacow Per HPDC

camille g. caldera—Crimson Designer

Over the past several decades, activists across Harvard’s campus have called on the University to divest its endowment from a wide range of controversial industries.

The calls have intensified in the past two years, particularly with regard to investments in fossil fuel companies and in companies related to the prison industry.

But the latter debate, waged primarily by the Harvard Prison Divestment Campaign, has been dogged by disagreements between the group and the University over whether divestment is a feasible financial strategy — and over which Harvard holdings constitute an investment in prisons in the first place.

Last month, five members of HPDC took their advocacy a step further, and filed suit against Harvard for false advertising and violation of its char-

Cambridge Lowers Speed Limit to 20 Mph

By Taylor c. Peterman

ter, basing many of their claims on an Oct. 2019 report HPDC produced — which estimates that Harvard holds $3 million in prison industry investments.

In a meeting with representatives from HPDC in April 2019, University President Lawrence S. Bacow estimated that Harvard’s holdings in the prison industry amount to roughly $18,000.

Through an analysis of publicly available endowment information, The Crimson examined Harvard’s and HPDC’s methodologies for calculating University holdings in the prison industry — and consulted experts on the ramifications of both sides’ conception of what it means to invest and divest.

HARVARD’S METHODOLOGY

Information about around 2 percent of Harvard’s $40.9 billion endowment is publicly available. Specifically, that figure represents the funds the University has invested in the stock market, which it is re-

See speed limit Page 9 Inside this issue

Harvard Today 2

By fiona k. brennan Crimson Staff Writer

The city of Cambridge is lowering speed limits for most of its streets to 20 miles per hour in an effort to increase safety. ryan N. gajarawala—Crimson photographer

News 7

Editorial 8

Sports 10

Today’s Forecast

See divest Page 10

Harvard Preparing for Possible Outbreak

Crimson Staff Writer

Cambridge has implemented new 20 mph speed limits under a safety program called Vision Zero, according to a banner the Cambridge Traffic, Parking, and Transportation Department hung at the intersection of JFK Street and Mt. Auburn Street Monday.

First implemented in Sweden in the 1990s and adopted by several American cities, Vision Zero is a plan to help municipalities reduce traffic fatalities and serious injuries to zero.

Joseph E. Barr, director of the Traffic, Parking, and Transportation Department, said Cambridge is participating in the strategy in order to treat road safety as a “public health issue” rather than treating traffic fatalities as a “cost of doing business.”

“We are actively working to eliminate fatalities and serious injuries from our transportation network,” he said. “If we set a goal to do anything other than zero, then what are we

quired to disclose quarterly to the Securities and Exchange Commission via a 13F Form.

The Harvard Management Company has public direct investments in only nine companies, all of which are tech or biopharmaceutical firms: Alphabet, Booking Holdings, Facebook, Fulcrum Therapeutics, Magenta Therapeutics, Neon Therapeutics, NuCana Plc, Palo Alto Networks, and Uber Technologies.

Those companies comprise 92 percent of Harvard’s $945 million in securities holdings.

Another 1.5 percent of the securities holdings are in gold.

The remaining 6.5 percent is split between seven Exchange Traded Funds, or ETFs — managed funds that offer exposure to multiple sectors of the stock market. All of the investments the Harvard Prison Divestment Campaign has named that Harvard holds in the prison industry come not through direct investments, but through these

As public health officials warn of the likelihood of a widespread coronavirus outbreak in the United States, Harvard administrators continue to detail contingency plans for its possible arrival on campus and consider a possible transition to online learning platforms.

Harvard University Health Services staff and top administrators from various offices across the school meet daily to stay up-to-date on the continually evolving situation.

Through additional University-wide meetings and regular communication with other colleges and public health officials, experts share knowledge and coordinate responses.

University Health Services director Giang T. Nguyen said that HUHS attends calls with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and participates in webinars with the Centers for Disease Control, receiving updates from public health officials multiple times per day.

rainy High: 50 Low: 37

Harvard administrators have discouraged all non-essential travel and prohibited University-related travel to countries with a Level 3 Travel Warning from the CDC in response to the virus. The College created an Emergency Management task force that will send biweekly email updates to students as the outbreak evolves.

As of Thursday evening, over 98,300 cases of coronavirus and 3,377 reported deaths were confirmed. In the U.S., there are at least 215 recorded cases and 14 deaths.

In addition to three confirmed cases in Boston, Biogen — a biotechnology company based in Cambridge’s Kendall Square — said Thursday that three of its employees have tested positive for COVID-19. The affected employees recently attended a conference at a Boston hotel with 175 co-workers, several of whom have since reported flu-like symptoms.

Through communication efforts from the Boston Public

See outbreak Page 11

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THE HARVARD CRIMSON |

March 6, 2020

Page 2

Harvard Today

For Lunch Basil Chicken Pizza Red’s Best Fresh Catch Grilled Chickpea Cakes

For Dinner Cheese Tortellini with Sausage Turkey Meatballs Marsala Sauce Corn Black Bean Griddle Cake

Today’s Events Dinner with Vanita Gupta, former DOJ Head of Civil Rights Lowell Screening Room, 4-5 p.m.

in The Real World Original “Rosie the Riveter” Dies at 95

Stop by for a discussion and dinner, hosted by the South Asian Americans in Public Service initiative, Harvard South Asian Association, and South Asian Women’s Collective.

Rosalind P. Walter, the inspiration behind the original “Rosie the Riveter” song that touched millions during World War II, passed away on Wednesday at 95. Her work supporting educational public television programs led Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb to write the titular song in her name.

Hyperion Shakespeare Scene Recital: “Exit; Pursued by a Bear Farkas 303, 7:30-8:30 p.m.

Hold onto your hats and favorite Shakespeare stage directions, because tonight’s the opening night of the Hyperion Shakespeare Scene Recital’s feature production of the semester, “Exit; Pursued by a Bear”! Be sure to reserve tickets!

Judge Orders Review of Attorney General Barr’s Redactions of Mueller Report

An aging fire alarm stands across the street from Border Cafe Thursday morning.

Aiyana G. White—Crimson photographer

Daily Briefing Just one quarter of respondents to The Crimson’s survey of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences said they feel that University President Lawrence S. Bacow has represented their interests well during his two years in Massachusetts Hall. FAS Dean Claudine Gay — who started in her role one month after Bacow — received a higher satisfaction rating, with 47 percent of respondents expressing satisfaction with her tenure thus far. In other news, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) announced she would suspend her presidential campaign Thursday, just two days after a disappointing thirdplace finish in the Massachusetts presidential primary.

During a lawsuit regarding Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian intervention in the 2016 presidential election, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton openly criticized Attorney General William P. Barr’s handling of the Mueller report and the redacted version released to the public. Walton ruled in favor of a review of Barr’s conduct and the nature of the Justice Department’s redactions.

2020 Mars Rover Named “Perseverance” As Result of Nationwide Contest

After conducting a nationwide contest, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has officially selected the name “Perseverance” for its Mars 2020 rover to be launched this July. The name was entered into the contest by Virginian seventh-grader Alexander Mather, who hopes to study engineering and work in NASA in the future.

Around the Ivies Dartmouth A second worker at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center has tested positive for novel coronavirus and is under quarantine, The Dartmouth reported. The man is believed to have contracted the virus from another DHMC employee who had disregarded a request from health officials to isolate himself. The first employee to test positive — who had recently returned from Italy — had attended an invite-only Tuck School of Business event in White River Junction, Vt., where the second employee most likely contracted the virus.

DHMC has since alerted those who could have been exposed with the first individual during the private event, and the state has issued an “official order of isolation” to that individual.

COLUMBIA

Columbia suspended all upcoming universityaffiliated travel abroad until further notice due to the international spread of coronavirus, per the Columbia Daily Spectator. The restriction follows Sunday’s announcement of the first reported case of coronavirus in New York City, as well as a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guideline discouraging university-sponsored travel abroad. Columbia and Barnard are currently deciding if they will mandate students currently studying abroad to return to the U.S., planning to evaluate students’ cases on an individualized basis.

yale

In the midst of dining hall renovations, Yale students have criticized the recent closures, according to the Yale Daily News. The dining halls closed to allow for upgrades for a “chefcentric servery” design, similar to that of other renovated Yale dining facilities. Though students have acknowledged the need for the renovations, several said they were concerned about the disruptions to the residential colleges. Accommodations have been put in place for the affected students.

THE UNIVERSITY DAILY, EST. 1873

The Harvard Crimson Aidan F. Ryan President Shera S. Avi-Yonah Managing Editor Emily M. Lu Business Manager

Associate Managing Editors Alexandra A. Chaidez ’21 Molly C. McCafferty ’21 Associate Business Managers Jonathon V. Garzon ’21 Andrea M. Lamas-Nino ’21 Editorial Chairs Ari E. Benkler ’21 Isaac O. Longobardi ’21

Staff for This Issue Arts Chairs Iris M. Lewis ’21 Allison J. Scharmann ’21

Design Chairs Margot E. Shang ’21 Matthew J. Tyler ’22

FM Chairs Andrew W.D. Aoyama ’21 Nina H. Pasquimi ’21

Multimedia Chairs Ryan N. Gajarawala ’22 Allison G. Lee ’21

Blog Chairs Ariana Chiu ’22 Sahara W. Kirwan ’21

Technology Chairs Alexander K. Chin ’21 William Y. Yao ’21

Sports Chairs William C. Boggs ’22 Joseph W. Minatel ’21

Copyright 2019, The Harvard Crimson (USPS 236-560). No articles, editorials, cartoons or any part thereof appearing in The Crimson may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the President. The Associated Press holds the right to reprint any materials published in The Crimson. The Crimson is a non-profit, independent corporation, founded in 1873 and incorporated in 1967. Second-class postage paid in Boston, Massachusetts. Published Monday through Friday except holidays and during vacations, three times weekly during reading and exam periods by The Harvard Crimson Inc., 14 Plympton St., Cambridge, Mass. 02138 Weather icons made by Freepik, Yannick, Situ Herrera, OCHA, SimpleIcon, Catalin Fertu from flaticon.com is licensed by CC BY 3.0.

Night Editor Simone C. Chu ’21 Assistant Night Editors Declan J. Knieriem ’22 Callia A. Chuang ’23 Story Editors Shera S. Avi-Yonah ’21 Alexandra A. Chaidez ’21 Katelyn X. Li ’21 Molly C. McCafferty ’21 Sanjana L. Narayanan ’21

Design Editors Camille G. Caldera ’22 Emily H. Nguyen ’23 Photo Editor Jenny M. Lu ’22 Editorial Editor Michelle I. Gao ’21 Sports Editor Leon K. Yang ’21

Corrections The Harvard Crimson is committed to accuracy in its reporting. Factual errors are corrected promptly on this page. Readers with information about errors are asked to e-mail the managing editor at managingeditor@thecrimson.com.

THE HARVARD CRIMSON | MARCH 6, 2020 | PAGE 3

ARTS

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CAMPUS

THE WEEK IN ARTS

‘Painting edo’ creates a world ‘against gravity’

06

DEALER MADE MUSIC PRESENTS: DREAMER AND MIKE DUBB Listen to trap and 90s rap music by Mike Dubb and Boston-native Dreamer.

Oberon. Mar. 6 at 9 p.m. $10-15.

07

CHARLOTTE A. POWELL CONTRIBUTING WRITER

FRIDAY

SATURDAY COLLEGIUM MUSICUM PRESENTS MOZART’S ‘REQUIEM’ Join Harvard-Radcliffe’s Collegium Musicum for a night of Mozart.

Sanders Theatre. Mar. 7 at 8 p.m. $10-20.

08

SUNDAY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY AT THE MFA Explore woman-centered exhibitions and talks, culminating in a performance by Boston’s Poet Laureate, Porsha O. MFA. Mar. 8, 10 a.m. Free with admission.

09

COURTESY OF NAOMI S. CASTELLON-PEREZ

“It’s almost against gravity,” Walter Kikuchi, a Harvard Art Museums patron, said. He gazed at a woman in a geometric robe. Her clothing is delineated by a thick smudged stroke, like one big shape. Her likeness is part of the largest temporary exhibit to date at the Harvard Art Museums — “Painting Edo” — a 120-piece collection of fans, silk scrolls, and room dividers that aims to “tell a comprehensive story of Edo painting on its own terms,” according to the press release. Hailing from the Feinberg Collection of Japanese Art, “Painting Edo” is one of the largest art gifts ever bequeathed to Harvard.

“I found myself reminding myself to take a step back and look at it as a physical object. Look at the areas around the imagery, the quality of the paper, the way they set the image off within the structure,” museumgoer Daniel Bromberger said.

He paced beside a painted screen the size of a wall, paused, then paced back. On the screen, Japanese courtesans weave their hands together, play chess, then the zither, and compose waka. The mural is called “The Four Accomplishments” of Chinese civilization.

Crossing a bridge from spring blossoms to autumn leaves, the courtesans — draped in geometric silks — rush to a position they aren’t.

During the Edo period, Japan, for the first time, moved from artistic isolationism to absorbing and transmitting outside influences. Here, per the screen’s gallery text, Edo art parodies venerable Chinese themes.

Across the room, “A Portuguese Trading Ship Arrives in Japan” depicts the aforementioned arrival of the Portuguese in 1543 with Jesuit missionaries, who quickly became omnipresent on the archipelago. They are scraggly-faced titans: egg-headed, in foreign florals or checkered shirts. One pins himself to the mast of the ship, like Odysseus pining for a Siren’s call.

The painting is not an eyewitness account, but, per the text, an ode to genre paintings of Chinese ships landing on Japanese shores. This relationship to Chinese genre painting links the two screens together.

The gallery text in the exhibit’s opening room asks: How does art reflect the lineage of Japanese culture?

In the next room, the pieces face each other. The floating people in stilted shoes on the patterned, stamped silks are of numerous artistic styles, each one different from the last. There is the Kabuki actor; the coquette, biting her little red lips; another woman is unaware of the onlookers from the gallery floor and the walls, or perhaps averting her eyes. Another holds her hand — invisible under a swath of fabric — to her chin, self-assured.

“The fabric moves, but not in a way that feels unrealistic to me or like it’s wrong… It doesn’t feel like it’s pulled down to the ground in certain parts. It’s more about the shapes that the fabric makes than trying to depict the weight,” Kikuchi said.

In the distance, a garden of chrysanthemums “transition to wintry nandina with scarlet berries, white narcissus, and bamboo grass,” per the gallery description.

Edo-era art demonstrates a balance of naturalism and expressionism, according to a gallery text description of a lotus pond. It is not enough to capture the likeness of an object, because without recording its essence, its depiction is not truthful.

The Edo era would be followed by the Meiji era, where Japan rushed to globalize. Like the Edo period, in the Meiji period “artists found new ways to frame the past in the present and the present in the past,” the gallery text reads. “[The patrons are] going with the passion of their dreams and leaving with their fulfillment,” said Suresh Ayyagari, the museum attendant in the gallery. “There were monks in what people call Shaolin Temple. They put into action things that they wanted to express in their art, in the way of art. In the 21st century, this ancient knowledge was stowed and shown to the people of the next generation. That is the greatness of this art as well.”

MONDAY ‘HIDDEN FIGURES’ SHOWING AND PANEL DISCUSSION Film screening followed by a panel of experts on space travel and astrophysics.

The Brattle. Mar. 9 at 4 p.m., 7 p.m. $10-12.

10

TUESDAY NEW VOICES IN FICTION: JESSI JEZEWSKA STEVENS AND JORDAN KISNER The authors will share excerpts from their latest written works.

Harvard Book Store. March 10, 7 p.m. Free.

11

WEDNESDAY INSIDE STORIES Join seven Nieman Fellows as they share their experiences in the turbulent world of journalism.

Oberon. March 11 at 7:30 p.m. $20.

12

THURSDAY AOIFE O’DONOVAN ‘SONGS AND STRINGS’ Witness revered singer and songwriter Aoife O’Donovan bring her vocal talents to Harvard’s campus.

Sanders Theatre. March 12 at 8 p.m. $35-55.

06 MARCH 2020 | Vol CXLVI, ISSUE XX Arts Chairs Iris M. Lewis ‘21 Allison J. Scharmann ’21

Associate Editors Hunter T. Baldwin ’22 Joy C. Ashford ’22 Kalos K. Chu ’22

Connor S. Dowd ’22 Annie Harrigan ’22 Cassandra Luca ’21 Samantha J. O’Connell ’22 Amelia F. Roth-Dishy ’22 Jack M. Schroeder ’21 Lanz Aaron G. Tan ’22

Executive Designers

Executive Photographer

Ashley E. Bryant ‘22 Meera S. Nair ‘23

Jenny M. Lu ’22

Design Associates Maia R. Zonis ‘22 Miranda Eng ‘22

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THE HARVARD CRIMSON | MARCH 6, 2020 | PAGE 4

TV music

‘I Am Not Okay with This’ is a Charming, Binge-Worthy Take on the Paranormal Teen HARPER R. ORECK CONTRIBUTING WRITER COURTESY OF NETFLIX

For anyone vaguely familiar with the teen-drama-cumsupernatural-thriller genre, the opening scene of “I Am Not Okay with This” — Netflix’s new teen-drama-cum-supernaturalthriller — may ring some bells. The show opens on a wide shot of a young girl in a party dress, covered in blood, staggering alone through the night. As she passes beneath streetlight shadows, moving down an empty street and away from whatever she’s fleeing, the viewer is supposed to understand that something awful has happened, something worth running from. But beyond that, the viewer is supposed to recognize the reference to “Carrie,” Stephen King’s iconic story of a telekinetic teen who similarly rampages through her town in a blood-soaked gown.

The parallels continue; in fact, the entire first season of “I Am Not Okay with This” builds on the imagery and themes of classic adolescent flicks, from “Carrie” and “It” to “The Breakfast Club.”

Crucially, however, “I Am Not Okay with This” avoids becoming a stale imitation thanks to its stylized worldbuilding and vibrant performances, which combine to addicting effect.

Syndey Novak (Sophia Lillis), a 17-year-old living in smalltown Pennsylvania, is attempting to process her father’s suicide and wrangle her friendship with her neighbor, Stanley (Wyatt Oleff ), and attraction to her best friend, Dina (Sofia Bryant), when she realizes she has superpowers of the telekinetic variety.

She’s dealing with the mundane nightmares of growing up, from her changing body to her best friend’s preoccupation with a boyfriend, while also grieving and discovering a new, unexpected nightmare: She can break things with her mind. At first, she breaks things accidentally. In moments where she experiences stress or pressure, she unleashes a wave of psychic force that explodes everything in its path — trees, bookshelves, padlocks.

The first season of “I Am Not Okay with This” follows her discovery of this talent and its origins, portraying the events leading up to the show’s opening scene. The focal point of the

show, though, isn’t really the undercurrent of supernatural power. The real joy and success of the series comes in its portrayal of adolescent experience and friendship, brought to life by a cast with brilliant chemistry and easy authenticity.

Lillis, best known for her work in the similarly paranormal “It” and “Sharp Objects,” gives a wrenching performance as a troubled outcast left to shoulder the weight of her father’s death alone.

The show’s initial episodes emphasize her solitude, internal and external. She’s physically alone while walking down her town’s deserted, lusciously green lanes; she’s socially alone when she sits silently across from Dina and Dina’s new boyfriend in a diner booth; she’s emotionally alone when she confides in her mother that nobody she loves seems to love her back and her mother responds, “Maybe you’re aiming too high.” Lillis’ nuanced, vulnerable portrayal of Novak keeps the viewer rooting for her even when she’s stubborn towards the people around her.

In these initial episodes, Lillis and Oleff are the reason to continue watching. Oleff delivers a needed measure of levity and charm as Stanley Barber, Novak’s bizarre neighbor. Awkwardly charismatic, Barber’s offbeat quirks defy horror-movie tropes and bring out some life in the otherwise-agonized Novak, creating an intimate and hilarious bond that drives the show forward.

The show also delivers a nuanced portrait of a teenage girl’s fraught relationship with her mother, who’s at once infuriating and sympathetic. The mother works constantly to provide for the family, leaving Novak to care for her little brother, and Novak resents her for it. Their back-and-forth feels true to real complexities of teen communication and resists a cliche version of teen angst often found in other shows.

As the show progresses, director Jonathan Entwistle offers a greater window into Barber’s life and experience, opening the fourth episode with Barber getting ready for the party where he plans to ask Sydney to homecoming. The scene, like much

of the show, is exquisitely stylized; in his basement bedroom — which looks like an elaborately-decorated eighties living room — he dances around to retro rock, makes a martini, and puts on a powder-blue suit. At times, the overt aestheticism of the show dips into the unbelievable. The creators seem eager to give the show a nostalgic vibe reminiscent of “Stranger Things,” despite it being set in the present. The ubiquity of eighties-style rooms, record players, and cars make the show seem chronologically confused.

Even with these anachronisms, Stanley’s character development keeps the viewer invested in his friendship with Sydney, which we see is a light in his otherwise lonely life.

Unfortunately, many of the other characters in the show do not get this same depth of characterization until later, if at all. Only 20 seconds after Novak introduces Dina in a nostalgic montage, Dina ditches her for Brad, her unlikeable football-player boyfriend.

For the next several episodes, she’s absent and uninterested in Novak’s friendship; it’s only later, when she has trouble with Brad, that we see the magnetism of their friendship.

Brad, for his part, remains a one-dimensional villain, ignoring Novak and making no effort to befriend her until he briefly offers her a “truce” in the fifth episode, which ends promptly when she discovers he cheated on Dina. Other characters, from rebellious party girl Jenny Tuffield to Novak’s wise-beyond-his-years little brother, remain undeveloped, never displaying real vulnerability despite traumatic backstories.

Even with these flaws, the show is at once a nuanced portrait of the small horrors of adolescence and a shocking ode to the classic horror genre, finding bright moments in the otherwise bleak landscape of small-town boredom and family turmoil.

Viewers drawn in by the supernatural element will stay for the show’s gorgeous, moving take on high school animated by authentic performances, startlingly funny writing, and gorgeous cinematography.

FILM

Looking Back at Wes Anderson’s Films EMERSON J. MONKS CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

COURTESY OF FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES

There is a difference between a movie and a film, and Wes Anderson is a director of the latter.

Hollywood makes movies (as movies also make Hollywood), and they have one purpose: to entertain. Movies are a pleasant distraction, blockbuster confections that bring people together with buckets of popcorn in 90-minute intervals of detached reality.

Films are for little movie theaters, not big ones, and their purpose varies. Some, like movies, are for distraction and entertainment. Others are made just to look pretty, while still others are made with a message — either poignant or pitiably soapbox-esque — in mind. Some are made because nothing else quite like it has been made yet, and there is something irresistible about the inimitable absurd.

Anderson’s films best fit this last category, although no one who has seen the “Grand Budapest Hotel” can deny that perfectly-symmetrical shots of a salmon-pink castle hugged by Austrian mountains are anything but animated art. For that matter, no one who has seen “Moonrise Kingdom” and its idyllic shots of New Penzance (or simply Suzy Bishop’s knee-high socks and impeccablyironed dress) can deny their artistic appeal, either.

Anderson specializes in films that have not merely strayed off the beaten path, but rather have taken a left-turn into the ocean. What other director, after all, would make a film that chronicles a madman’s manic documentary pursuit of a shark that devoured his best friend (“The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou”)? Or a film about a group of dogs in post-dystopian Japan carving out a living from Trash Island (“Isle of Dogs”)?

Anderson was born in 1969 in Houston, Texas. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in philosophy, and his first ambition was to be a writer, not a filmmaker.

His desire to write stories, rather than to show them, is clear throughout his filmography.

Anderson has written and directed nine films. All are utterly bizarre, and all read with a distinctive narrative style that belies a director who does not view a film as a film at all, but rather as a novel that unfolds itself across a screen.

Although Anderson’s films vary wildly in their premise, they are all characterized by the writerdirector’s characteristically dry, deadpan sense of humor, his narrative style (almost all of his films have an omnipresent narrator, a more weighty version of Ron Howard’s commentary in “Arrested Development”), and his frequent collaborators. Of Anderson’s nine films, eight feature Bill Murray, seven Owen Wilson, and six Jason Schwartzman. Others have smaller, but still notable, recurring roles in his films: Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton, and Wally Woladarsky and Anjelica Huston appear in four, while Adrien Brody has starred in three.

Anderson’s films are meticulous. Visually, Anderson takes every detail into account, be it geometry, colors, or prop placement. The Instagram account @accidentallywesanderson, which boasts almost one million followers, has dedicated itself entirely to photographs that mimic the director’s style: pictures with two or three pastel colors, flawless symmetry, and an odd sense of perspective. Many of Anderson’s films — particularly “Moonrise Kingdom,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” and “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” — feature shots that seem to project directly from the gaze of the viewer, like an augmented virtual-reality experience.

Part of what makes Anderson so paradoxically compelling is his habit of making films at once too odd to ever happen in real life and too realistic to belong in a theater. “Moonrise Kingdom,” for example, deals with the pen-pal relationship between two adolescents and their decision to run away together. Most of the movie is about the tediousness of summer camp and adolescent woe — the kind of everyday emotions happily left behind by most in middle-school. “Moonrise Kingdom” is just weird enough to make for a story, but the premise itself is not wholly out of the ordinary.

Anderson specializes in this particular dichotomy: stories that reflect real life like a funhouse mirror, a resemblance stretched at the edges a centimeter or two beyond believability.

Anderson’s tenth film, “The French Dispatch,” hits theaters this July. The film is inspired by the New Yorker, and deals with the staff at a French magazine, student protests, and a love affair.

(Like most movies made by Wes Anderson, “The French Dispatch” has an affinity for multitasking.)

The movie also features frequent collaborators, including Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, Willem Dafoe, and Anjelica Huston.

Over the course of his storied career, Anderson has gained a cult following and numerous accolades. Most notably in 2014, he won a BAFTA for Best Original Screenplay and a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy) for “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” He has been nominated for seven Academy Awards, five BAFTA awards, and six Golden Globes.

Twenty-four years after his first film, “Bottle Rocket,” Anderson is a pillar of the film industry, one of few directors whose films appear in theaters both big and small. He has found the overlap of the relatable and the unfathomable, the beautiful and ugly, and he has made an indelible impact on an ever-changing, perpetually-unimpactful industry.

Staff writer Emerson J. Monks can be reached at emerson.monks@thecrimson.com.

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THE HARVARD CRIMSON | MARCH 6, 2020 | PAGE 5

MUSIC

Sufjan Stevens and Lowell Brams Defy Gravity on ‘The Runaround’ CLARA V. NGUYEN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

COURTESY OF SUFJAN STEVENS/ASTHMATIC KITTY RECORDS

Sufjan Stevens’ music has never quite been of this world. The Michigan-born singersongwriter’s whispery, poignant vocals and genre-blurring instrumentation veil his melodies in the filmy haze of an Impressionist painting. Stevens has an extraordinary capacity for infusing even the most intimate melodies with sweeping grandeur: The haunting love songs he composed for the soundtrack of the 2017 film “Call Me by Your Name” feel right at home alongside selections from seasoned cinematic composers John Adams and Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Stevens describes his current project, a collaboration with his stepfather Lowell Brams, as “a rich soundtrack from an imagined sci-fi epic.” On Feb. 19, the duo released the album’s first single, “The Runaround.” In its futuristic mystery, the mostly instrumental track evokes a New Age mantra.

With its intricate, overlapping layers of synthesizers, “The Runaround” occupies a strange sonic space, neither acoustic nor artificial. Many of its recurring motifs bear uncanny resemblances to orchestral instruments: The austere opening theme appears to be a keyboard riff until the third note melts into an entirely different timbre, acquiring the expansive

resonance of a woodwind solo. A high-pitched melody reminiscent of strings devolves into an incessant, automated trill like a ringing phone. The buzzing beats that anchor the swirling melodies could be exclamations from a dissonant harpsichord. These distortions of familiar sounds help the track achieve a softness and warmth especially rare in electronic music.

For Stevens and Brams, even the human voice is fair game for a sci-fi spin. When Stevens finally begins to sing in the track’s final minute, his voice multiplies into a wildly reverberating chorus, so heavily altered that it almost blends into its instrumental backdrop. The ten short lines of lyrics raise more questions than they answer: “What are you waiting for / My troubadour?” Stevens sings before a swell of synths engulfs his question.

After Stevens’ voice disappears, the rest of the music follows suit until the only sound remaining is a three-note motif analogous in structure to the opening. As it, too, fades out, “The Runaround” comes around full circle.

Staff writer Clara V. Nguyen can be reached at clara.nguyen@thecrimson.com.

THEATER

The Hasty Pudding Theatricals’ ‘Mean Ghouls’ Builds a World And Then Shatters It Into A Thousand Beautiful Pieces NURI BHUIYAN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

NABIB AHMED, CONTRIBUTING CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Do you ever find yourself wanting to dress up for Halloween? Did the Halloween party scene Do you ever find yourself wanting to dress up for Halloween? Did the Halloween party scene from “Mean Girls,” where Cady is the only one to wear a vampire costume, really speak to you?

If so, “Mean Ghouls,” the Hasty Pudding Theatricals’ 172nd show — produced by Natalie F. Needle ’21 and Samantha J. Meade ’21 — may just be for you.

“Mean Ghouls,” which runs until March 8 in Farkas Hall, tells the story of Mia Ghenstaworld’s (Ellen L. Shaheen ’21) experience navigating high school in Transylvania after her mother, Donna Dedead (Eric J. Cheng ’20), dies and becomes a zombie. Through its tailored script, breathtaking performance, and intricate staging, “Mean Ghouls” builds a mystical world then ruptures it in a mesmerizing act of liberation.

The show opens with Donna Dedead’s funeral procession. Unexpectedly, she comes back to life as a zombie, forcing the family to move somewhere Donna can fit in: Transylvania.

Upon arriving at her new school, Hexeter, Mia is caught up in the “new girl in town” trope and shunned by most of her “mean ghoul” peers, including the archetypal mean girl, Megan Duboiscream (David J. Lynch ’20). In an effort to fit in, Mia consults the witch Myra Vengisnigh (Nick L. Amador ‘22) and her henchman Igor Toplease (Scott Kall ’20). Unbeknownst to Mia,

she becomes complicit in Myra and Igor’s evil plot against the students of Hexeter and must come to terms with her identity in order to save everyone.

Writers Jessica M. Moore ’21 and Jakob L. Gilbert ’21 use comedy and character development to advance a logical narrative — once you look past the whole mom-comingback-to-life-in-Transylvania thing, of course. Their script animates the characters, whose diverse personalities drive the show forward. Each character is given a few seconds in the spotlight through a fourth-wall break, an innovative way to introduce each character quickly and clearly. The nature of each introduction is random — sometimes it is a sound, as when the alcoholic Eureka Booze (Molly R. Peterson ’21) burps, and other times it is a self-promoting slogan, like when ghostbuster Hugh’s (Celia K. Kenney ’20) says “I’ve been busting ghouls since before I could walk.” These seconds of individuality keep the show from boxing in any of the characters, giving them room to grow..

The cast does an exceptional job pushing past these introductions and inhabiting their characters. Shaheen embodies Mia’s sheltered personality while also capturing her enthusiasm for a new life in Transylvania. She brings out these tensions through her songs: “Brave New World” highlights Mia’s loneliness and desire for a fresh start, while “Driving Me Wild” illuminates her feelings for Jason in abundant, vehicular sexual innuendo and “Blessing in Disguise” portrays Mia practicing radical acceptance. Likewise, Cheng consistently advances Donna Dedead’s identity as a gag character through constant shaking, sticking his rear end out at an unnatural angle and obsessively patting his fake breasts. Every one of his movements is decisive and on-brand.

This decisiveness goes beyond character development and manifests itself in the show’s staging. It opens with an upbeat, trumpet-heavy piece accompanied by stark red light on the curtains. When the band changes to a more contemplative and gentle tone, the light changes to blue, and as the band shifts back to emphasizing the trumpets and adds more percussion, the lights go back to their previous red, and then even redder. These first few minutes establish the centrality of light-music synchrony to the vocabulary of the musical. Likewise, the set and the lighting inform and illuminate each other. When we see Igor and Myra brewing a potion, the perspective of the brick column backdrop situates us a mile underground. The space changes between sharp green and neon blue undertones. As Mia comes over for a taste, the lights violently flash a myriad of colors that immerse us in her devilish transition.

While hammering down the show’s aesthetic, the team behind “Mean Ghouls” also keeps a firm grip over the narrative. They maintain the delicate balance between the main plot, which revolves around Mia, and the show’s various subplots. While the show could have ended when everyone finally reconciles with each other and rejoices at their Last Day of October Dance, the production instead abandons all narrative and proceeds to a sequence of dances. The audience becomes immersed in an elegant quartet ballroom dance, werewolf Jason’s (Ryan T. Kapur ’20) solo set to Clair de Lune, and a kickline dance finale with the whole cast dressed in bizarre purple cat-cheerleader costumes. We are liberated, all exploding into a surreal world even more unusual than Transylvania. In choosing this end, “Mean Ghouls” opens itself up to more possibilities. Instead of feeling abandoned in the Underworld with the undead, you’ll leave Farkas Hall feeling like you are floating.

Staff writer Nuri Bhuiyan can be reached at nuri.bhuiyan@thecrimson.com.

e.

ARTS

THE HARVARD CRIMSON | MARCH 6, 2020 | PAGE 6

BOOKS

‘Real Life,’ An Ineffable Novel Evoking The Deep Self CHARLOTTE A. POWELL CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Brandon Taylor’s debut “Real Life” will consume you. It will gnaw on you at every corner and spit you out. It will make a surgical incision into your consciousness. It will peel off your skin, cook off every tendon, raze you down to the bone. You will be mangled and lacerated and bruised. The experience is magnificent — and inconsolable.

His father recently dead, Wallace — in a Bildungsroman for the trapped — mimes adulthood as a biology graduate student at an unnamed Midwestern university, the first Black man in his class in decades. Because of this, he is unhappy.

His experiments fail. His “friends” don’t invite him to anything. Someone also tells him that his admission hinged on his Blackness.

At a gathering of “friends,” Wallace becomes entwined with Miller, a hardscrabble biochemistry student from Appalachia, thanks to closeted self-disgust. Taylor tells us that “They fell into that chilly silence that comes between two people who ought to be close but who are not because of some early, critical miscalculation.” They have sex. Miller leaves.

They meet. They have sex again, violently.

The beings of “Real Life” merge into each other. Miller is the projection of Wallace’s self-hatred, the subliminality of his violent self-animosity. Miller is the projection of all the violent things Wallace wants to do to other people. At best, they use each other. It is the parthenogenesis of a mutually abusive relationship.

Taylor spins a reality more realistic than life, evokes lucid stirrings of the inside, and gives voice to themes discernible only to the self. The real violence of “Real Life” is the emotional one — the outpouring of past, the rawness Wallace has desperately left in the South. In this sort of intimacy, there is a cauterization of self-alienation, unanesthetized. Wallace

loses his protection against his past, and the continued justification for self-loathing that came with it. Vegetarians who don’t eat his family’s prized swedish meatballs at polite dinner things standin for childhood rape and the inherited selfblame of his father.

Wallace hides behind his identities to avoid confronting the traumas inherent to his life. Race and sexuality and class are no longer the sheer gauze over the hurt he is. Still, Wallace is scared of becoming and not becoming what graduate school will make him become — someone approaching white and upper-middle class and fundamentally foreign. “‘With a doctorate, you have better prospects, a better job, better outlook. Without it…the stats are what they are,’” Roman warns him at the dinner party. Wallace suffers from private silence, in the chokehold of the new easiness of life, or of other lives.

Everyone else will forget this remark, but he will suffer.

Taylor masters the ineffability at the edge of emotion. He brings distance and realism to the stream of conscious narrative, vocalizing human experience. He is a polyglot, fluent in the languages of ambiguity, of grief, of scientific precision.

He has not reinvented the modern novel, but enveloped it in emotion. He never abandons chronology, but lets the distant past run parallel to it. It seems that all of Wallace’s life is happening at once.

Taylor hones a skill of unerring exactness inherent to his past as a biochemistry graduate student. He assays the inner self, injects detachment into personal circumstances as though he were watching strangers eat on a lake or listen to a concert. The novel paces itself unexpectedly well, given that it takes place over two days — two days that seem like eons.

Wallace and Miller leave us with their lives unstrung, the future ambiguous.

COURTESY OF PENGUIN PUBLISHING GROUP

COLUMN

Men Explain Quentin Tarantino to Me ALLISON J. SCHARMANN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

It begins innocuously enough. I am minding my own business — eating, doing work, or socializing at some mundane event or another — and the conversation turns to film. It doesn’t take long for someone, and by someone I usually mean a man, to demonstrate his profound knowledge of cinema by singing the praises of the work of one Quentin Tarantino. I take a deep breath. It is not every day, after all, that I can muster the emotional energy to argue with a self-identified cinephile clad in wire-framed, Warby Parker glasses and a two-sizes-too-big sense of self-importance.

The exact impetus of my response is different each time. Often it’s implicit, a positive gesture from my conversation partner to Tarantino’s portrayal of women onscreen. Less often, it is explicit: “And he’s a feminist, too!”

“Quentin Tarantino is not a feminist,” I say.

“But what about ‘Kill Bill?’” the man replies.

You may think I’m exaggerating, but I have had this exact conversation, or a variant of it, dozens of times since the fateful day eight or so years ago that I first sat down to watch “Pulp Fiction.”

My experiences bear an uncanny resemblance to those satirized in Ali Elkin’s popular McSweeney’s article, “An Oral History of Quentin Tarantino as Told to Me by Men I’ve Dated.” I wouldn’t say that arguing about the films of Quentin Tarantino single-handedly ended my last relationship, but it certainly didn’t help.

The issue isn’t that I haven’t seen “Kill Bill.” I have. In fact, I’ve seen every one of Tarantino’s films. It’s not that I don’t like them, either. I do. My personal favorite is “Reservoir Dogs,” in which Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi) delivers an extensive monologue about why he doesn’t tip waitresses — a film where, fittingly, not a single line of dialogue is spoken by a woman. It goes almost without saying that a film can be good without being overtly feminist or overtly feminist without being good. But something about Tarantino’s particular brand of violence and dialogue makes me inherently skeptical of his portrayal of women.

In this, I am not alone. Tarantino’s relationship to feminism has been beaten to death by cultural critics and media outlets, but the criticism reached a new peak in 2018. It was that spring, in the wake of Harvey Weinstein’s #MeToo reckoning, that Uma Thurman revealed Tarantino had coerced her into driving an unsafe car while filming “Kill Bill,” resulting in a near-deadly crash. The director’s decades-long working relationship with Weinstein and

his mistreatment of Thurman prompted many to reevaluate his treatment of women onscreen. Anna Menta, writing for Newsweek in the wake of the Weinstein allegations, called Tarantino’s female characters “dynamic and complex,” but argued that this context made the representation feel more like “exploitation” than “respect.” Ira Madison III, writing for The Daily Beast shortly after the release of Thurman’s account, asked “Can a film then be feminist when it fetishes the abuse of its heroine and also exacts abuse on her during the making of the film?”

What I take issue with, in these critiques and in others, is the baseline assumption that Tarantino’s female characters are uniquely or impressively “dynamic and complex” to begin with.

Female Tarantino characters are not created equal, and for every Beatrix Kiddo or Jackie Brown there is a Broomhilda von Shaft or a Daisy Domergue. Kerry Washington’s Broomhilda von Shaft is criminally ignored in “Django Unchained,” making her a Helen of Troy of sorts. She drives a plot in which she barely participates, save for the gratuitous violence inflicted upon her. Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Daisy Demogue is often likened to a punching bag for the absurd amount of screen time she spends getting beaten up in “The Hateful Eight.” It almost makes characters like “Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood”’s Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) preferable, despite their almost non-existent dialogue. Robbie’s Tate may barely speak, but at least she’s spared the self-indulgent violence that befell the real life Tate, and which befalls so many of Taratino’s female characters.

It is trade-offs like this one that make Tarantino’s films so difficult to autopsy from a feminist perspective. What concessions have to be made to bestow the title of “feminist” upon his films or, alternatively, to take it away? The sheer impossibility of this equation is what makes it so frustrating when, in conversation, a man is so quick to hold up “Kill Bill” as a Get Out of Jail Free card for all of Tarantino’s transgressions.

“Kill Bill” itself is, at best, a deeply flawed example of so-called “feminist cinema.” The film opens with a black-and-white shot of Thurman’s Beatrix Kiddo bloodied, beaten, and nine months pregnant, sprawled across the floor. “There isn’t a trace of sadism in my actions,” says Bill, her ex-boss and lover. “This is me at my most masochistic.” He then delivers a final gunshot to her skull.

She survives and the first thing we learn about her, as she awakes

from a years-long coma, is that she was raped repeatedly by a hospital worker while comatose. Uma Thurman, Vivica A. Fox, Lucy Liu, and Daryl Hannah deliver kick-ass performances in their respective roles, but their talent doesn’t change the fact that misogyny and trauma are the foundation of the plot of “Kill Bill.”

Just because women, too, commit violence in Tarantino’s films, doesn’t make it any less significant that so much violence is inflicted upon them. Bill’s dialogue about masochism and sadism is handy here. It appears Tarantino would like us to believe that the pain and violence inflicted on his female heroes is to their benefit, that it confers upon them the same agency and complexity as his male characters. It begets parity.

Except it doesn’t. Even Tarantino’s most independent female characters are constructed differently from his male characters.

Mia Wallace is defined as Marsellus Wallace’s (Ving Rhames) wife in “Pulp Fiction.” Daisy Domergue is defined as a sister, Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) as a sister, daughter, and femme fatale, and Sharon Tate as a mother-to-be, a virtuous symbol of innocence. Beatrix Kiddo is “The Bride,” and her revenge fantasy is rooted in the desire to reclaim the maternal bliss denied to her by a man. Tarantino’s male characters, on the other hand, are robbers and gangsters. They are boxers and bounty hunters and soldiers. They are not defined, in personality or in motive, by their romantic or familial bonds. Perhaps consequentially, the balance between these male and female characters, when they inhabit the same films, is off. In only two of Tarantino’s ten feature-length films is more than half of the dialogue spoken by women, and in most it’s 30 percent or less. In only three of his ten feature films do women constitute more than half of the characters.

The “strong female character” in the Quentin Tarantino cinematic universe is a myth. These women are exceptions to a larger rule, and flawed exceptions at that. Does this mean we cannot enjoy Tarantino’s films? Of course not. But when confronted with Tarantino’s problematic relationship to gender, it is not a sufficient response to simply hold up “Kill Bill” and call it a day. Women deserve better, and so did Beatrix Kiddo.

Staff Writer Allison J. Scharmann’s column, “Beyond Bechdel,” examines gender representation in contemporary cinema. She can be reached at allison.scharmann@thecrimson.

Page 7

THE HARVARD CRIMSON | March 6, 2020

Biogen Company Confirms Warren Drops Out After Three Cases of Coronavirus Super Tuesday Showing

Warren From Page 1

By fiona k. brennan

who stood alongside her Thursday with the couple’s dog, Bailey — is still a Law School faculty member.

Warren did not win any states in this year’s presidential primary, despite putting in strong debate performances and releasing a multitude of policy plans.

She acknowledged that she struggled to carve out a “lane” between U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. — the two major Democratic candidates remaining in the primary race.

“I was told at the beginning of this whole undertaking that there are two lanes — a progressive lane that Bernie Sanders is the incumbent for and a moderate lane that Joe Biden is the incumbent for, and

there’s no room for anyone else in this,” she said.

I think Senator Warren fought for our values a lot. I think that that she cares a lot about working people, a lot about poor people in this country. That means a lot to me.

Gabe Zimmerman Law School Student

“I thought that wasn’t right.

But evidently, I was wrong,” Warren added.

Warren maintained strong

support on Harvard’s campus.

Many Harvard undergraduates canvassed for her in New Hampshire and in Massachusetts.

Inside the Law School’s Wasserstein Hall, which features a photograph wall of tenured HLS professors, students hung up dozens of sticky-note tributes around Warren’s portrait Thursday night.

Gabe Zimmerman, a Law School student who wrote Warren a tribute, said the display is “wonderful.”

“I think Senator Warren fought for our values a lot,” Zimmerman said. “I think that she cares a lot about working people, a lot about poor people in this country. That means a lot to me.”

One Quarter of Faculty Satisfied

by President Bacow’s Actions

THE CENTRAL ADMINISTRATION

While a plurality of survey-takers said they are satisfied with President Bacow’s tenure, opinions of the University’s 29th leader differed in the survey significantly based on respondents’ demographics.

Harvard faculty views of Bacow varied across gender — 32 percent of male respondents said they think Bacow has represented their interests well, whereas only 12 percent of female respondents did in the survey.

Sentiments towards Bacow also varied across FAS’s three academic divisions — 38 percent of respondents in the Sciences said they think Bacow has represented their interests well, compared to 26 percent in the Social Sciences and 14 percent in the Arts and Humanities.

During the February faculty meeting, FAS voted 179-20 to demand that the Corporation divest the University’s endowment.

A similarly large majority of respondents to The Crimson’s survey said they believe that Harvard should divest from the fossil fuel industry.

Of those who agreed with fossil fuel divestment, 68 percent said they ‘strongly agreed’.

Fifty-three percent of respondents said they are “dissatisfied” with Bacow and the Harvard Corporation’s response to the divestment movement.

A group of professors began calling for divestment more than five years ago, working under the name Harvard Faculty for Divestment.

In 2014, the group wrote an open letter to former University President Drew G. Faust and members of the Harvard Corporation urging fossil fuel divestment.

Roughly 1,100 faculty have signed an online letter asking Bacow to divest from fossil fuel companies.

Seventy-three percent of respondents agreed that Harvard should divest from companies tied to prisons; 47 percent of respondents said they ‘strongly agreed’.

Following this February’s faculty vote, Bacow said he will bring the motion to the Corporation for consideration and report back later this semester.

“President Bacow values the perspectives and the remarkable work of the faculty,” Uni-

versity spokesperson Jonathan L. Swain wrote in an emailed statement. “He works closely with deans and faculty members across the university to advance research, scholarship and teaching.”

Common responses to a write-in question about what Bacow should prioritize during the rest of his tenure included improving faculty diversity, addressing climate change, and divesting the endowment.

Several respondents also said Bacow should prioritize improving the tenure process and maintaining Harvard’s academic excellence.

THE FAS ADMINISTRATION

Like Bacow, FAS Dean Claudine Gay took office in summer 2018 and has weathered student protests during the first two years of her tenure. Gay has also been charged with leading an activist faculty that increasingly backed many of its students’ demands.

A plurality of surveyed faculty — 39 percent — agreed that “Dean Gay has represented [their] interests well,” including 17 percent who strongly agreed. Twenty-two percent disagreed with the statement.

Compared to her 47 percent overall satisfaction rating, 61 percent of respondents from the Social Sciences division — which Gay formerly led — approved of her tenure. By comparison, just 41 percent of surveyed Arts and Humanities faculty registered their approval.

Opinions on Gay’s tenure and representation of faculty interests also diverged among FAS members of different positions.

Fifty-five percent of tenured faculty who responded were satisfied with Gay’s tenure, while 20 percent were dissatisfied.

Just 19 percent of preceptors who took the survey, however, were happy with Gay’s tenure.

Similarly, only 22 percent of preceptors felt represented well by Gay, compared to 42 percent of tenured faculty.

FAS spokesperson Anna G. Cowenhoven declined to comment on the surveyed faculty’s views of Gay and her administration.

Replying to a write-in question asking what Gay should focus on in the next several years of her tenure, common answers among faculty included reviewing the tenure process, improving faculty diversity, helping non-tenure-track faculty, establishing an ethnic studies program, and funding the humanities.

Traditionally, the faculty have governed themselves via monthly meetings and biweekly Faculty Council meetings, the latter of which Gay chairs.

Only 43 percent of respondents, however, had attended an FAS faculty meeting in the last six months.

The majority of faculty surveyed — 56 percent — said they believe faculty meetings are not “an effective forum for FAS to express its interests.”

Several respondents who explained their opinion of fac-

Kendall Square-based company Biogen said Thursday that three of its employees have tested positive for COVID-19.

A spokesperson for the company told the Boston Globe that none of the three employees live in Massachusetts, but all attended a management meeting at a Boston hotel on Feb. 26 and 27 with about 175 of their co-workers.

Massachusetts Governor Charlie D. Baker ’79 said he believes one of the people who attended the Biogen meeting is a Tennessee man who flew into Logan International Airport before testing positive for the coronavirus.

According to a company statment, the individuals with

jasper.goodman@thecrimson.com

Faculty From Page 1

respondents answered each question.

The anonymous survey, a link to which was emailed to nearly every member of the FAS, was open from Feb. 20 to 27.

The Crimson did not adjust the data for possible selection bias.

While the first installment of The Crimson’s 2020 faculty survey series explored political beliefs of the faculty, the second installment examines faculty perspectives on administration and faculty governance at a time when activism — including by members of the FAS — around a number of national and campus issues has roiled the University.

Crimson Staff Writer

coronavirus are “doing well, improving and under the care of their healthcare providers.”

Other people who attended the conference reported flulike symptoms, and some have been diagnosed with influenza, according to a local NBC affiliate.

Biogen advised employees who attended the meeting to stay home from work until March 16 regardless of whether or not they had symptoms.

The company also said it would implement further precautions, including restricting travel through the end of March.

As of Thursday evening, authorities confirmed over 98,300 cases of coronavirus and 3,377 reported deaths across the globe. There are currently 215 recorded cases in the United States and 14 deaths, all

ulty meetings in a write-in question wrote they believe the meetings are too large, formal, and programmed to hold productive discussions.

Sixty-six percent of respondents said they believed the faculty should have more authority in University governance; 51 percent believed the authority of the faculty has diminished over the past several years.

METHODOLOGY

For its 2020 Faculty Survey, The Crimson collected electronic responses through Qualtrics, an online survey platform, from Feb. 20 to 27, 2020.

A link to the anonymous survey was sent to 1,341 FAS and SEAS faculty members through emails sourced in October 2019 from Harvard directory information.

The pool included individuals on Harvard’s Connections database with FAS titles, including emeritus, tenured, tenure-track, and non-tenuretrack faculty.

Of those faculty, 476 accessed the link to the survey.

A total of 416 participants answered at least one question, while 263 participants completed every question in the survey.

To prevent participants from accidentally taking the survey more than once, The Crimson enabled Qualtrics’ browser cookie functionality to register unique survey sessions on each device.

This device data is controlled by Qualtrics, and The Crimson does not retain information that could identify devices accessing the survey with anonymous responses.

In an effort to check for response bias, The Crimson compared respondent demographics with publicly available information on faculty demographics provided by the University — information regarding gender, minority background, SEAS affiliation, and ladder versus non-ladder status.

Overall, respondent demographics tracked with faculty demographics.

Of survey respondents, 41 percent identified themselves as women and 20 percent identified themselves as minorities.

Based on data in the 2019 FAS Dean’s Annual report, women and minorities make up 39 percent and 24 percent of FAS ladder faculty, respectively.

According to the Dean’s report, 41 percent of the FAS were non-ladder faculty — a term synonymous with nontenure-track faculty.

By contrast, 39 percent of respondents to The Crimson’s survey identified themselves as non-ladder faculty.

Of faculty who were sent the link to the survey, 127 — or 9 percent — are affiliated with SEAS. In comparison, of respondents who indicated their divisional affiliation on the survey, 7 percent reported an affiliation with SEAS. kevin.chen@thecrimson.com james.bikales@thecrimson.com

Transformative coverage.

The Crimson thecrimson.com

in Washington state.

Baker told the Globe in a statement that coronavirus still poses a “relatively low risk” in Massachusetts despite the recently reported cases.

He added that authorities will implement additional precautions at Logan Airport based on Centers for Disease Control guidance, but that domestic travel is still “appropriate.”

At Harvard, University administrators discouraged all non-essential travel and prohibited University-related travel to countries with a Level 3 Travel Warning from the CDC in response to the virus.

They also plan to send biweekly emails to update Harvard affiliates as the outbreak evolves. fiona.brennan@thecrimson.com

THE HARVARD CRIMSON | MARCH 6, 2020

Page 8

Editorial The Crimson Editorial board

column

More Public Service Jobs, Not More Jobs as Public Service

Football Island

I

n an interview last week, Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana said that he hopes to expand the way Harvard College and its students define public service beyond the “narrow” conception he characterized as widespread on campus. Khurana specifically cited consulting as a line of work in which conscientious students can perform public service despite the many negative stereotypes associated with the industry, highlighting the fact that consultants often do crucial work advising governments, non-profits, and other impactful institutions.

We don’t agree with Khurana’s attempt to broaden the definition of ‘public service.’ Of course, there are many ways to serve the public, and one can certainly do noble work in the for-profit sector.

However, entering into a career in public service is qualitatively different from serving the public through a career at a for-profit company. Enlarging the definition of ‘public service’ discredits the personal and financial sacrifices of those that go off the beaten path and work in more traditional public service roles.

The choice to pursue a public service career — one explicitly focused on protecting the vulnerable, serving marginalized communities, and leaving a positive impact on society — is unique and deeply commendable.

There’s nothing wrong with profit-seeking students who pursue more lucrative careers. Wanting a high-paying job and the security that such a position entails is natural, and not morally egregious.

Further, we’d be remiss to not acknowledge that in many career paths, it’s possible to perform a public service by being well-intentioned and working assiduously to be the best doctor, corporate lawyer, or software engineer you can be.

But to label these careers as ‘public ser-

Broadening the definition of public service diverts resources and attention away from traditional public service work. vice’ would unnecessarily detract attention to the special status of public service work. Further, the social good one can achieve in a given job varies hugely from person to person, and from job to job. Certain for-profit careers have more potential to produce a larger positive social impact than others.

The recent rise of social enterprises and social impact startups highlights that there are opportunities for people

looking both to make profits and to have a positive social impact.

The heart of the issue is that broadening the definition of public service diverts resources and attention away from traditional public service work, which is badly in need of both. Harvard should recognize and work to rectify the imbalance in recruitment power between various professions on campus. Due to vast disparities in resources, certain industries such as finance, tech, and consulting have a serious advantage in recruiting students. They send representatives to campus and recruit early in the semester, offering both visibility and security.

We commend the work that the Office of Career Services has done thus far to promote access to employers in industries without these resources, and we hope that further efforts will work to expand access to public service work, rather than expanding our conception of public service.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

The Crimson @thecrimson Op-ed

Sometimes Harvard Is Like a Bad Awards Show

W

ith award season behind us, many see Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” Best Picture victory as the biggest upset in the history of the Academy Awards. Some point to the movie’s victory as a much-needed step towards diversity for the Oscars. But upon further analysis, the idea that this represents progress toward diversity seems misplaced.

According to the Los Angeles Times, in 2013, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, or the “academy” — the deciding body of both nominees and winners of the Oscars — was 69 percent male and 82 percent white, with a median age of 49.

So, it comes as no surprise that people called for more diversity in the Oscars following 2015’s lineup that featured no non-white actors.

And this year, despite “Parasite” and Bong Joon Ho’s winning multiple categories, the diversity outcome was not much different.

Eight of the nine films nominated for Best Picture were about white people, six of which were about white men. This comes despite the academy’s pledge to be more diverse.

One op-ed in the New York Times described the list of nominees as “a body’s allergic reaction to its own efforts at rehabilitation.” Some felt that there were plenty of non-white films and actors that were deserving of a nomination yet passed over, such as Awkwafina in “The Farewell” and Jennifer Lopez in “Hustlers.”

All of which begs the question: How did “Parasite” win when the odds were so stacked against it?

On the surface, “Parasite” is a foreign film. It takes place in Korea, has an entirely Korean cast, and is spoken entirely in Korean.

However, there is nothing uniquely foreign about the story — a criticism and satire of class struggle. Lower-class plight is translatable in any country, not least the United States.

“The Farewell” on the other hand, while more American in some major re-

spects, is far less relatable in its central themes.

Despite part of “The Farewell” taking place in America and being partly spoken in English, the story highlights an aspect of Chinese culture that is less relatable to an American audience. In the film, the family struggles with the emotional burden of preventing their beloved grandmother from finding out she has a potentially fatal cancer, for fear that letting her find out would be too much of an emotional burden. The respect and reverence of elders is an important aspect of Chinese culture, but is less emphasized in America.

This cultural barrier makes it hard for a white audience, and the academy, to sympathize with the characters in “The

If Harvard — and the academy — want to promote inclusion, they have to think beyond their own sensibilities.

Farewell”.

The story of “Parasite” would not look drastically different if told from an American perspective; the same could not be said for “The Farewell.” Therefore, while “Parasite” is a foreign film, it is an “acceptable” form of a foreign film for white audiences.

As the academy parades “Parasite” around as its token diversity film, I cannot help but be reminded of Harvard’s superficial attempts to listen to student’s discontent, especially in regards to diversity and inclusion on campus.

Students have been calling for an ethnic studies program for at least 48 years.

And only this past June has the administration finally promised to begin taking steps towards developing the concentration by looking for potential faculty. But, despite its verbal commitment, the University has denied tenure to professors in the field, including associate professor Lorgia García Peña in November. A pattern begins to emerge when we look at Harvard’s treatment of students’ pleas for a multicultural center; for almost a

L

ast month, as I sat in my common room surrounded by pizza boxes and blockmates impatiently waiting to watch Shakira and Jennifer Lopez perform at the Super Bowl LIV halftime show, I could not help but think of home.

As the teams ran onto the field, I was taken back to high school where my Samoan brothers would assemble to perform the haka before games, trying to intimidate the other team. With every touchdown, all I could hear were the raucous drums and the deafening “Cheeeehoo!” that would erupt from high school students that used to, and still continue to, pack Veterans Memorial Stadium every weekend. And with every big tackle I watched these professional players make on my TV screen, I could feel my Samoan brothers bodies taking impact after impact, protected only by old, used helmets and shoulder pads.

Football is the biggest sport in American Samoa. According to the Wall Street Journal, “no other segment of US society produces as many [professional] football players per capita.” With American Samoa located nearly 6,000 miles away from the United States mainland with a population under 60,000 people, it’s insane that Samoans make up about 3% of the NFL — about 50 players, nearly 40 times Samoans’ proportional share of the U.S. population. In fact, big-time American sports agent Leigh Steinberg estimated that, “A Samoan male is 56 more times likely to play in the NFL than an American non-Samoan”. And even outside of the NFL, there are around 300 Samoans playing in Division I collegiate leagues

We must reevaluate the effects of this dominant narrative of American Samoa as “Football Island” and the idea of our Samoan brothers as being “built for football.”

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By JOSHUA M. CONDE

Gabrielle T. Langkilde PASEFIKA PRESENCE

half-century, students have submitted proposals and plans for a multicultural center, only to be repeatedly denied. In this regard, the administration’s commitment to diversity and inclusion seems a lot like the academy selecting nominees — mostly talk.

But last month, a student movement did gain some traction among the faculty and administration; in a somewhat surprising move, the faculty voted 179-20 in favor of divestment. Following the faculty vote, University President Lawrence S. Bacow said he will raise the vote with the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, for consideration.

I appreciate that a movement that has garnered such deep student support is being given the serious consideration it deserves.

But, I am disappointed that other student movements, like calls for ethnic studies and a multicultural center, which have significantly more tenable goals, are not given the same serious consideration.

The Harvard faculty is 74 percent white. President Bacow seems to have taken this faculty vote — a vote of mostly white people — into consideration. And while I agree that the stakes of these movements are different, with climate change presenting a threat to survival, it cannot be understated that the movement for ethnic studies and a multicultural center is a nearly five-decade-long cause.

While both are student movements, the difference is how applicable they are to white people. Ethnic studies is not immediately and obviously beneficial to white people and, therefore, is not given the consideration it deserves. In the language of film, it doesn’t translate. Climate change, however, does.

If Harvard — and the academy — want to promote inclusion, they have to think beyond their own sensibilities. Students — and artists — of color should not have to translate.

—Joshua M. Conde ’22, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Government concentrator in Currier House.

throughout the U.S. While football has undoubtedly provided a pathway towards success and upward mobility for many in our community, we must reevaluate the effects of this dominant narrative of American Samoa as “Football Island” and the idea of our Samoan brothers as being “built for football.”

Who do we exclude in this narrative? Who is being exploited? And who, in the end, is really winning?

The dominant narrative in the media is simple.

American Samoa is “Football Island” and nothing else. In each article, story, and documentary short, the idea of Samoan men as being born for football is perpetuated by the stereotype of Samoans as “heftier…[and] genetically predisposed to developing the sort of bulky frame that’s ideal for linemen and linebackers.” This racist stereotype endangers Samoans by automatically putting them in the most physically dangerous positions on the field, dismisses the diversity of Samoan bodies, and lends itself to more racist assumptions about the “fa’asamoa” (or Samoan way of life) as only embracing and being centered around “physical competition and conflict”. This gross mischaracterization of our complex culture — one premised on the values of family, love, respect, and discipline — only further perpetuates harmful representations of Samoans, especially Samoan men, as primitive, incompetent, and even savage.

Crazy statistics about our overrepresentation in the NFL and stories of individual success, like Troy Polamalu, Marcus Mariota, and Tua Tagavailoa, just to name a few, are emphasized to hide these racist undertones. And with a significant proportion of children in American Samoa living in families below the poverty line, football has long been seen as the “best path to an affordable college degree, which leads in turn to prized jobs in the island government.”

This dynamic excludes Samoan women and non-football players from the same access to higher education and the same chances for upward mobility, helping to reinforce toxic masculinity and other systems of gender oppression in American Samoa.

But perhaps the most egregious consequence of our deep dedication to football is that it puts our Samoan brothers’ at some of the most vulnerable positions on the football field without equipping them with the proper resources and education about the risks of playing the game.

Often times, the fields that young players back home practice on are unleveled and unsafe, and much of the equipment, such as helmets and shoulder pads, do not meet basic safety standards. Not only this, but training and education about concussions and other mental health risks for both players and coaches is not extensive or rigorous enough.

Even in light of the tragic suicide of Samoan NFL player Junior Seau, due to his suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, also known as CTE, there is still a blatant disregard not only for our young upcoming Samoan football players’ mental health, but even that of those who are professional and have access to adequate healthcare and resources.

Let me make clear that I do not blame any of my Samoan brothers for playing the game. I’ve seen it bring a pathway to education, to financial stability, and to a greater sense of family, especially for my brothers who have lacked that sense in other parts of their lives.

But, is it worth the perpetuation of racist stereotypes that continue to subjugate our people? Is it worth the exclusion of our Samoan sisters from the same pathways for upward mobility and their consequent oppression? Most importantly, is it worth our lives?

—Gabrielle T. Langkilde ’21, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a joint concentrator in Sociology and Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality in Eliot House.

Her column appears on alternate Fridays.

Page 9

THE HARVARD CRIMSON | march 6, 2020

Renowned Physicist Talks Finding the Impossible By esat c. bayar Contributing writer ­

Paul Steinhardt,, a theoretical physicist, spoke about his book, “The Second Kind of Impossible: The Extraordinary Quest for a New Form of Matter,” on Thursday evening. Aiyana G. White—Crimson photographer

SPeed Limit From Page 1

Cambridge Lowers Speed Limit, Citing Traffic Deaths really saying about people safety and how important we consider keeping people safe to be?”

Cambridge’s Vision Zero plan is not limited to the lowering of its speed limits. Other steps outlined in the city’s “Vision Zero Action Plan” include to “design and operate safe streets” and to “engage the public.” Former City Councilor Jan Devereux said the Vision Zero plan to reduce traffic fatalities can be summarized by “the three E’s”: engineering, education, and enforcement.

“There’s engineering, which is what you’re actually doing physically with the public space that you have available,” she said.

“And then there is education, which can take many forms, but is a lot of public outreach and so forth about why it’s important to do these things,” Devereux added.

“And then enforcement is, sort of, you’ve got the carrot

and the stick. So, enforcement, obviously, can be challenging because police can’t be everywhere at once,” she said.

In addition to lowering the speed limits, Devereux said Vision Zero also involves plans to redesign streets in a way that maximizes public safety.

“It does work in tandem with the concrete policy that was already part of the city’s approach to redesigning and reconstructing the streets and sidewalks to make them, what we call, multimodal,” Devereux said.

Patrick C. Braga, a Masters in Urban Planning student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, said he hopes the lowering of the speed limit will be used as “justification for redesigning streets to be safer for all modes of travel.”

“It gives the city a bit of justification for pursuing design changes on streets that are currently too wide,” he said.

Braga said wide streets en-

courage faster driving, adding that the city could increase public safety through urban planning.

“Street design plays an important role in how comfortable somebody feels driving at different speed levels, so streets that are physically narrow or visually constrain fields of vision are known to encourage people to drive more slowly,” Braga said.

“One place, for instance, that is a challenge for safe driving is Harvard Square,” he added.

Barr said the town has been very supportive of the city’s efforts under Vision Zero.

“We’ve been lucky that everyone from our elected officials to our residents to our business community, generally, have been supportive of doing this and, if anything, have pushed us to do more in the future,” he said. taylor.peterman@thecrimson.com

Hundreds of Harvard affiliates and science enthusiasts packed into a Science Center lecture hall to hear physicist Paul Steinhardt discuss his new book, “The Second Kind of Impossible”, and his nearly 40year quest to find a new form of matter Thursday evening.

The talk was one of a series of Harvard Science Book Talks featuring authors of recently published science books. Steinhardt, who teaches at Princeton University, discovered the natural origins of a form of matter called quasicrystals.

“Our job as a scientist is to prove the impossible to be possible,” Steinhardt said.

He added that he believes in two sets of “impossible” discoveries: ones which violate the laws of physics, and ones which undercut scientists’ long-held assumptions.

“Maybe if I look closely, and we examine what everyone’s been assuming all along, I’ll discover some loophole, some mistakes everyone has been making after this time,

in which case it’s the second kind of impossible, impossible which is impossible until you notice that loophole and then there’s the opportunity for the main discovery,” he said.

Here’s this piece of a meteorite that fell in remote Russia, and it reinforced a bit of theoretical physics.

What else don’t we know? That, to me, is kind of thrilling.

Romy Aran ‘23 Event Attendee

During the talk, Steinhardt used geometric props to demonstrate how atoms serve as the building blocks of all matter. He also explained a variety of complex physics subjects to the audience members, who ranged from pre-K teachers to college students.

U.S. Rep. Calls for U.S. to Treat African Countries as Equals

By Alex M. koller and hannah j. martinez contributing Writers

United States Representative Karen R. Bass (D-Calif.) urged the nation to treat African countries as equals and play a more active role in global affairs in a conversation with members of the Harvard Undergraduate Foreign Policy Initiative Thursday evening.

The event, titled “Making History: Strengthening US Relations With Africa,” featured a conversation in Emerson Hall between the five-term Congress member and moderators Humza I. Jilani ’21 and Nisha A. Seyed Mohamed ’23 — who serve as HUFPI vice president and treasurer, respectively.

Bass, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, said she thinks the U.S. should embrace internationalism. At the same time, she criticized the U.S.’s current approach to foreign aid in Africa.

Bass said she believes the U.S. should not make African countries dependent on its aid, but in­

stead enable those countries to grow their own economies.

“Why on earth would we send food to Africa? That makes no sense at all,” she said. “If there’s a problem with food, why don’t you send food from Kenya to Ethiopia? And why don’t we send cash to Ethiopia or to Kenya so they can buy food?”

Throughout the talk, Bass said Americans should be educated about the rest of the world, expressing frustration with the public perception of Africa in the United States.

“We know so little about the continent and we treat Africa like a charity case,” Bass said. “I want to change that perspective to us viewing Africa as an equal, as a partner.”

Bass also denounced U.S.-imposed sanctions on African states, a view that sometimes puts her at odds with both Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

“We sanction a country, we end up sanctioning everybody,” she said. “They [Congress] have a hard time saying ‘we should lift sanctions’.”

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Asked about how he imagined the scientific community would accept his findings, Steinhardt acknowledged that the scientific community can be skeptical of new discoveries such as his.

Audience member Romy Aran ’23 said the “winding” path Steinhardt took before making new discoveries stood out to him. Before publishing his research on quasicrystals, Steinhardt said he spent years searching for diaries key to his work and dealt with international smugglers and KGB agents.

“I’ve never heard of such a degree of commitment to such a project before,” Aran said.

“That was really incredible.”

“The guy tells a great story,” Cambridge resident Macky Buck, who also attended the talk, said.

“What stood out to me is that there is so much that we don’t know, and it’s utterly fascinating. Here’s this piece of a meteorite that fell in remote Russia, and it reinforced a bit of theoretical physics. What else don’t we know? That, to me, is kind of thrilling.”

However, despite disagreements with fellow Congress members, Bass noted that African foreign policy draws support from both sides of the aisle.

“This might surprise you, but Africa is actually a bipartisan issue,” Bass said. “So I work well with my Republican colleagues.

I think there is a lot of support for it.”

Aaryan G. Morrison ’22, who attended the event, said she appreciated that the event brought attention to issues that often go undiscussed.

“The idea of relations with Africa is always conflated in conversations of the history of colonialism or postcolonial theory, and it’s oftentimes rarely in practical conversations of how we can improve these things,” Morrison said.

Bass concluded the conversation by calling on the attendees to take action at the voting booth.

“The world is looking at us,” Bass said. “And we bear a responsibility not just to our nation. We bear a responsibility to this planet.”

THE HARVARD CRIMSON |

March 6, 2020

Page 10

divest From Page 1

Experts Discuss Competing Divestment Theories ETFs. ETFs are comprised of hundreds or even thousands of companies, depending on the criteria of the specific fund. For example, one of the funds that Harvard invests in — the iShares Core S&P 500 — seeks to mimic the S&P 500 by offering investors access to 500 of the largest cap U.S. stocks.

One of the central points of contention between the University and the Harvard Prison Divestment Campaign is which companies form the “prison-industrial complex” — a term used

by HPDC and others to signify the collective organizations which contribute in some way to the operations of the U.S. prison system. Some companies HPDC has cited as part of the prison-industrial complex include banks, food providers, and weapons producers.

Bacow has told prison divestment activists that the University has just $18,000 in investments in private prisons.

In a Monday interview with The Crimson, Bacow reiterated that his $18,000 estimate was based on Harvard’s holdings in index funds, not on direct investments in the prison industry.

According to Bacow, that $18,000 comes from Harvard’s holdings in five companies.

“It was indirect ownership.

We don’t own any of the stocks directly,” Bacow said.

The Crimson identified four companies which are private prison operators contained in two of the seven ETFs Harvard invests in: CoreCivic, GEO Group, G4S, and Serco.

The investments come through the iShares Core S&P Mid-Cap ETF and the Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF. CoreCivic is the largest private prison operator in the United States, and GEO Group is the second largest. Both have faced controversies in recent years over the alleged abuse of prisoners in their facilities as well as major contracts that the companies have opened with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

CoreCivic spokesperson Amanda Gilchrist dismissed HPDC’s demands related to her company in an emailed statement.

“Unfortunately, much of the information about our company being shared by special interest groups is wrong and politically motivated, resulting in some people reaching misguided conclusions about what we do,” Gilchrist wrote.

GEO Group spokesperson Pablo E. Paez also defended his company’s practices in an emailed statement. Paez wrote that calls for divestment from GEO Group are based on a “false narrative,” adding that GEO Group’s processing centers provide “safe and humane residential care” as well as a number of leisure amenities for prisoners.

“The divestment efforts against our company are based on a false narrative and a deliberate mischaracterization of our role as a long-standing government services provider,” Paez wrote.

Each of these two companies comprises 0.11 percent of the

S&P 500 Mid-Cap Fund, which Harvard has $5,434,000 invested in. According to that breakdown, Harvard indirectly invests $5,977 in each company.

G4S and Serco, meanwhile, each make up .02 percent of the Vanguard Developed Markets Fund, which Harvard has $13,763,000 invested in. That equates to roughly $2,752.60 in each company.

G4S is a United Kingdom-based security contractor that operates in more than 90 countries. Its employees have been accused on multiple occasions of abusing and harassing detainees. Likewise, Serco is a U.K.-based company specializing in facilities management, including prisons and border security. Serco has been accused of covering up the sexual abuse of immigrants and of exploiting detainees for inexpensive labor.

G4S and Serco did not respond to requests for comment.

Alyssa Thornton, a spokesperson for Vanguard, wrote in an emailed statement that private prisons “make up a very modest portion of Vanguard funds’ portfolios and are largely held in index funds” like the Developed Markets Fund.

Thornton wrote that she “recognizes the concerns” of prison divestment activists.

“I recognize the concerns Harvard Prison Divestment has made regarding the immigration crisis at the border. We believe this crisis is deeply saddening, and one that needs to be solved by our elected officials. We hope that policymakers come to a swift resolution to ensure the safety and security of these children and individuals,” she said.

Between these four companies — and subscribing to the narrowest possible definition of prison investment — Harvard has $17,459 invested in private prisons as of the University’s latest filings.

Several experts said that if one were to adopt the narrow definition of prison-related companies that the University subscribes to, the financial toll divestment would take would be relatively small.

“These are very, very small percentages in terms of how much of the market these companies account for,” said John Streur, the CEO of Calvert Research and Management, an investment management firm that specializes in responsible investing. “So one would have to make an enormous bet on one of these companies for it to have a real financial impact. Eliminating the companies would not be noticeable from a return perspective.”

Julie N.W. Goodridge — the CEO of NorthStar Asset Management, a progressive wealth management firm — said that Harvard was unlikely to experience a substantial loss of revenue if they removed the companies from their investment portfolio.

“Would there be any loss of revenue as a result of getting those companies out of a portfolio? My guess is that there wouldn’t be any loss of revenue that would be even remotely substantial, and that the hassle that they’re getting from the

student body and the greater community would be alleviated,” Goodridge said.

HPDC’S METHODOLOGY

The Harvard Prison Divestment Campaign, however, employs a much more expansive definition of the prison industry.

In its report, which is based on May 2019 filings, HPDC listed nearly 50 companies that they say are tied to the prison industry. They amassed the list from a number of advocacy organizations, including the American Friends Service Committee, Worth Rises, Prison Legal News, the Action Center on Race & the Economy, In The Public Interest, and the

It was indirect ownership. We don’t own any of the stocks directly.

Lawrence S. Bacow University President

Justice Policy Institute.

“Despite the popular misunderstanding, the prison-industrial complex does not only include private prison operators like CoreCivic, GEO Group, and G4S,” their report reads. “Rather, it encompasses a slew of state and non-state entities including federal, state, and local governments; weapons manufacturers; bail bondsmen; analytics and surveillance technology manufacturers; financiers; pharmaceutical corporations; telecommunications companies; and police and guard unions.”

Companies on their list range from Amazon — which they say provides facial recognition and other information technology to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to track immigrants — to a number of banks, including Bank of America and Wells Fargo, which they say finance the debts of CoreCivic and GEO Group. They also list Bank of America and Goldman Sachs for their role in financing Police Brutality Bonds.

A Bank of America spokesperson referred The Crimson to a June 2019 announcement that the bank would cut ties with “companies providing prisoner and immigrant detention services, as expeditiously as possible,” and confirmed that the process of exiting these relationships is underway.

HPDC also includes companies involved in providing telecommunications and money transfer services to prisons, in addition to companies who sponsor bail bonds, manufacture weapons, and monitor people on probation.

In total, 43 of the companies HPDC identified are represented in five of the ETFs Harvard is invested in. Two of the analytics and surveillance companies — Harris Corporation and L3 Technologies — merged into one company since HPDC’s analysis, and Harvard invests in the new company.

In total, The Crimson calculated that Harvard has

$2,925,648.74 in investments in the 44 companies that HPDC lists as related to the prison industry — around $1,750,240 of which is from Amazon alone, which is represented in iShare Core S&P 500 and Investico QQQ. That figure amounts to slightly less than the $3 million that HPDC wrote about in their report.

Christia Mercer, a Columbia University philosophy professor who advocated for Columbia to divest from the prison-industrial complex, said in an interview that including a large number of companies could spark conversations on campus about the far-reaching nature of the prison industry.

“Even if you just have a conversation at Harvard or major universities about the ways in which Amazon and Goldman Sachs and so on are involved, then suddenly you put pressure on those major corporations to reconsider how they’re thinking about taking advantage of people caught up in the prison-industrial complex,” Mercer said. “So are the students right to bring this up? Absolutely.”

Other experts, meanwhile, debated the reasonableness of requesting that Harvard divest from a more expansive list of companies.

“If you were only trying to take out the private prison companies — the publicly traded private prison companies — there is a mechanism for doing that that is not terribly complicated, so that is a reasonable request,” Goodridge said. “If you are trying to get any company out of the portfolio that interacts with prisons through its supply chain, that is a massive undertaking and would be extremely daunting for Harvard Management. It’s daunting for me, and we do it for a living.”

Mercer said that regardless of how difficult divestment from multiple ETFs might be, Harvard should do withdraw its investments.

“This is really complicated, and given how complicated it is, and given that Harvard has been loath to sort out the complications of these kinds of things in the past, why should we expect Harvard to sort out the complications of this now?”

Mercer said. “The answer to that is because they are making money — even though they are making money from a lot of other sources, they’re making money on the backs of children who are being put into cages. And sorting that out, going to the trouble to sort that out, would be a clarion call to people.”

POTENTIAL PATHS FORWARD

Experts named a number of ways that Harvard could invest its money in ETFs or other index funds that seek to avoid the prison industry.

Thornton said that Vanguard offers a number of funds without investments in private prisons.

“Vanguard does offer a screening tool on our website for investors seeking to avoid such companies from their investment portfolios,” she wrote in an email.

However, Goodridge said

that some socially conscious funds are not as reliable as traditional ETFs and have a higher cost to enroll.

“Their performance does vary from time to time,” she said. “I don’t know if Harvard would be satisfied with that, that would involve them taking a look at the performance of those funds, comparing them.”

“They would be at a higher cost, and then the question, is that higher cost worth it based on whatever the performance is?” Goodridge added. “Compared to the size of the Harvard endowment, it’s kind of like a drop in the bucket.”

Matthew W. Patsky, the CEO of Trillium Asset Management, suggested that the social benefit of divesting from the prison industry may outweigh any such financial consequences.

“An endowment that serves a social purpose — and certainly I would argue the endowments of universities serve a social purpose — it could be argued that it’s okay to make decisions that are more designed to have more impact on society in general,” he said.

However, Harvard Management Company spokesperson Patrick S. McKiernan wrote in an emailed statement that HMC’s objective is to financially support Harvard through strong endowment returns.

“HMC strives to generate strong, long-term returns to support the educational and research goals of Harvard University. Our investment decisions are based on achieving that goal through a risk-adjusted portfolio,” McKiernan said.

“As a long-term investor, HMC focuses on material environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors that may impact the performance of our investments. HMC strongly believes that considering all data is not only in line with our fiduciary duty, but simply something that thoughtful investors do,” he added.

Some experts also debated the social effectiveness of divesting from an ETF, even if it were a fiscally sound move.

“Just divesting from the ETF isn’t going to get you any further in the world. It’s not going to take away the problem with the prison-industrial complex.

It’s one teeny tiny piece of the prison-industrial complex,” Goodridge said.

Streur disagreed, and said Harvard could persuade companies who provide ETFs to themselves divest. In the past, such companies — including BlackRock, which manages the iShares ETFs — have created new funds that exclude other controversial industries, including weapons manufacturers.

“You’ve probably seen that some index providers or some ETF providers who replicate indexes are beginning to think about and offer indexes that exclude private prison companies,” Streur said. “I think the concept of Harvard using its power, if you will, to engage with either the index manufacturers, the product providers, or the private prison companies directly and try to solve the problems is pretty attractive.”

Hillary Marshall, a research

analyst at Domini Impact Investments LLC, also said she thinks that Harvard has leverage — if it wants to use it.

“The endowment is huge.

It’s like $40 billion,” she said.

“That’s a momentous amount of money and Harvard itself as an institution can have significant leverage within the financial industry, too, to say, ‘These are businesses that we don’t want to support, that we don’t think is a good investment for our portfolios, because of the material risks that they present.’”

Goodridge said she suspects another reason Harvard does not entertain divestment is that investors may view the move as a “slippery slope.”

“Once you started really looking at the companies that are sitting in that portfolio — fossil fuel companies, cigarette companies, companies that make tobacco, gambling companies — there’s just all sorts of stuff that is going to be in that portfolio that you’re going to take issue with, or that various people could,” she said.

“If you’re simply focused on the publicly traded prisons, it should be a fairly easy thing.”

Harvard has divested three times in recent history — partially from South African apartheid in 1986, fully from tobacco in 1990, and from one company tied to the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan in 2005.

Patsky also noted that, for all the debate about whether or not Harvard has $18,000 or $2 million in prison industry investments, the investments represent just a fraction of the overall endowment. In fact, nearly 98 percent of it remains unknown.

“Transparency is really difficult to get of what the true holdings are,” Patsky said.

He added that he believes the onus is on Bacow to inform students of the endowment’s contents.

“In the case of the University President making a statement that they have just $18,000 invested in private prisons, when he has access to all of the investments and can look through and see what all of the investments are of the entire endowment, is disingenuous,” Patsky said.

University spokesperson Jonathan L. Swain declined to comment for this article, referring to Bacow’s comments on divestment in his Monday interview with The Crimson.

Patsky suggested that, because public investment information is only available for around $1 billion of the $40.9 billion endowment, the total number of prison-related investments in the entire endowment could be as much as 40 times the amount of either side’s estimates — 40 times 3 million, amounting to $120 million, or 40 times $18,000, amounting to $800,000.

“If they’re starting out attempting to mislead you, you’ve got to make some assumptions about it,” Patsky said. “You could very well go back to him and say, given that you’ve given me an answer for the 1 billion for which you have transparency, could one presume that the real number is 40 times that?” ellen.burstein@thecrimson.com camille.caldera@thecrimson.com

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Page 11

THE HARVARD CRIMSON | March 6, 2020

Outbreak From Page 1

Anticipating Coronavirus, Univ. Takes Precautions Health Commission, various contacts throughout the city remain informed on new updates about the coronavirus outbreak.

“The Boston Public Health Commission continues to host information sessions and advise key partners across the City, including hospitals, health centers, schools and local universities & their health centers on best practices, preparedness efforts and protocols for COVID-19,” according to an email from BPHC spokesperson Caitlin McLaughlin.

CONTAINING THE OUTBREAK

On Tuesday, Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health Caroline O. Buckee suggested that, due to insufficient access to testing, knowledge about the full extent to which coronavirus has already spread throughout the city may be incomplete.

“I think there is a significant chance that we already have community transmission of coronavirus in the Boston area,” she said. “This hasn’t been confirmed yet, but we’ve only just received the test kits in order to do the surveillance.”

Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health Michael J. Mina shares

Buckee’s concern about a lack of access to coronavirus testing.

Both highlighted the fact that the city may be deficient in resources needed to test individuals who experience either no or limited symptoms of the virus, but who may still be spreading it nonetheless.

“At the moment, the testing is very, very, very limited in Boston. That means that we’re pretty much exclusively testing patients who come in with illness or potentially very close contacts of [those] individuals,” Mina said. “So I would say at the moment, we have no program set up to screen individuals who are asymptomatic to see if they are carrying the virus.”

HUHS does not currently have on-site coronavirus testing capabilities but will send testing specimens first to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and then, if necessary, to the CDC, the location of centralized national testing, according to Nguyen.

“If and when we have a person who comes in with concern for coronavirus, we have protocols in place to follow and assess the potential risks that this person actually might have coronavirus,” Nguyen said.

While the situation is constantly changing, Nguyen said

that, at the moment, if there was a potential case of coronavirus in a Harvard affiliate, that person would be immediately advised to self-isolate.

Maria Francesconi, senior director of nursing and health promotion at HUHS, said that anyone in isolation would remain in frequent contact with HUHS. “They would get a phone call from us, sometimes twice, three times a day just to check in to see how they’re doing, what their temperature looks like, if symptoms are changing, and we would help to facilitate care if the person was continuing to feel worse,” Francesconi said.

Leonard J. Marcus, a lecturer on public health practice at the School of Public Health, said that in the event that a Harvard affiliate does contract coronavirus, epidemiologists would respond by mapping its potential spread.

“If we discover that there is a student who has come down with disease in one of the houses, what epidemiologists will do is called contact tracing — who are the people who have been close enough to that person that they could have contracted the disease?” Marcus said. “Those people who have been exposed then will be asked to quarantine for two weeks.”

PRECAUTIONARY MEASURES

In multiple University-wide emails, administrators have urged students to take precautions by maintaining personal hygiene. Marcus also emphasized the importance of personal responsibility and individual preparation in containing the spread of coronavirus.

“Go through the ‘what if’ scenario, that I had to be quarantined. And if we all do that, the moment when we’re given that notice you’ve got to quarantine, we’ll be ready for it,” Marcus said. “That’s an exercise we can all go through because personal responsibility is going to be critical.”

In addition to these personal measures, the University is exploring various institutional solutions aimed at limiting the impact of coronavirus.

In the past week, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Claudine Gay suggested that faculty begin familiarizing themselves with Zoom, a video communication platform, which has been proposed as a possible way to limit physical contact on campus.

Mina suggested making the switch to online learning soother rather than later.

“I think that it’s actually a

good time to really strongly consider the option of moving these really large classes in particular to remote learning,” Mina said.

“I think that those are measures that have very few consequences, and they are the types of measures that I think should be the first to really occur on a college campus.”

Nguyen said that while online teaching platforms are already used by some faculty members, the University has yet to make the transition mandatory. He said there is no “formal trigger” to determine if, or when, that change would be implemented.

“There are plenty of faculty who are already using electronic means to teach, and so there’s nothing to say that a faculty member can’t decide to do that now just so that they are comfortable with the system,” Nguyen said. “But right now, we’re not saying that everyone needs to do that.”

The switch to online learning, however, may present difficulties for project-based classes, such as Applied Physics 50B, taught by Professor Eric Mazur.

Mazur called the six group projects the class does during the semester are the “glue that holds the whole course together.”

According to Mazur, while he

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would be able to adapt his curriculum to a situation in which online learning was necessary, it could present complications and negatively affect students’ learning experiences.

“I don’t think it’s going to be completely the same thing as us working together also because the nature of the project will probably change a little bit, so I’m not 100 percent sure that we could deliver exactly the same in the effective teamwork,” Mazur said.

Other universities have already taken steps to limit the possible spread of the virus. On Wednesday, MIT announced that any in-person MIT events attended by over 150 people and taking place before May 15 will need to be canceled, postponed, or moved online. Nguyen said that Harvard is certainly discussing the possibility of canceling future events, such as Yardfest, but does not want to make premature decisions.

“A month is far away, so we don’t really know what to expect for that,” Nguyen said. “But we’re taking these decisions very seriously. And so we don’t want to do them without fully considering all of the implications.” fiona.brennan@thecrimson.com

Sports

Weekend event

schedule

Friday ______________________________________

saturday ______________________________________

sunday ______________________________________

Squash Individual National Championships All-Day, Penn Squash Center

Women’s Water Polo vs. LIU-Brooklyn 8:00am, Blodgett Pool

Fencing, NCAA Regionals All-Day, Stifel Fencing Salle

Women’s Ice Hockey @ Cornell 1:00pm, Lynah Rink

Men’s Ice Hockey vs. St. Lawrence 4:00pm, Bright-Landry Hockey Center

Women’s Ice hockey

It’s Playoff Time for Both Harvard and Its Alumni

By William C. Boggs Crimson Staff Writer

This week, No. 10/10 Harvard women’s ice hockey is preparing for its first appearance in the ECAC semifinals since 2015.

The team will face off against No. 1/1 Cornell, the conference’s one-seed and tournament host, who posted a 19-0-3 undefeated record in league play. The showdown will give the Crimson a chance to pull a major upset, appear in the ECAC Championship game, and potentially qualify for the NCAA Tournament. The contest with the Big Red, however, will not be the only playoff game this weekend that involves Harvard players.

On Sunday, the same day as the ECAC Championship game, the Boston Pride of the National Women’s Hockey League will host a semifinal against the winner of the play-in game between the Connecticut Whale and Buffalo Beauts.

The Pride, who posted a near-perfect 23-1 record, cruised to the NWHL’s top record behind a core of four Crimson alumni: Jillian Dempsey ‘13, Mary Parker ‘16, Brianna Mastel ‘17, and Lexie Laing ‘19. In fact, the Harvard skaters play critical roles for Boston as well.

Dempsey is the team’s captain and became the first NWHL player to cross the 100-point threshold in a career in the league’s history.

This season, Dempsey has put up 40 points, which leads not just the team but also the entire league. Laing and Parker have each passed the point per-game mark with 27 and 24 points on the season respectively. On the defensive end of the ice, Mastel has added seven points and a +10 plus-minus.

“To be with Harvard hockey players who I never actually played with at Harvard—to see those connections are being made beyond the college days— [is] definitely something special,” Dempsey said. “Our love for Harvard runs deep… [It’s] so great to be able to have fellow Crimson on the team.”

Boston’s Feb. 15 matchup with the Connecticut Whale served as one of the best examples of the Harvard influence on the team. As the Pride faced off against a struggling Whale team, an upset looked as though it could have been in the cards.

Midway through the game, the ­

FULL STEAM AHEAD Jillian Dempsey ‘13 hustles back into the play against Boston College in 2013. She and several other Harvard alumni continue to make significant contributions on the ice for the Boston Pride, building off the many lessons learned from the days they donned Harvard jerseys. Photo Courtesy of Robert F. Worley ‘15

Whale found itself right in the mix with the score deadlocked at 0-0. Laing and Dempsey, however, had other plans for the night.

In the late second period, Laing collected the puck off of the end boards and deftly powered it into the top shelf from the slot for the game’s first score. In the early third period, Dempsey battled in front of the net to pry a loose puck away and converted the hustle play into the game-winner. In a tight game, the former Crimson greats would provide the Pride with the edge it needed, an edge the players had honed in their college days. “[Harvard] helped prepare me for the time commitment and giving all of what I have to every shift and every practice,” Laing said. “Making sure that... when it is my time to step on the ice and play, that I’m at my best.”

Transitioning from Har-

vard, the Crimson alumni have found a knack on the Pride roster, picking up from the skills, lessons, and challenges learned from many hours on the ice at the Bright-Landry Hockey Center. In their careers, they cited Havard head coach Katey Stone’s system as continuing to resonate with them.

“One of the biggest mantras of our team in my time at Harvard—and still to this day— is ‘team first.’ That kind of mentality is something that has always stuck with me—thinking of what I can do to help the team,” Dempsey said. “‘Outwork, outhustle’ was another common phrase that she [Stone] would say repeatedly. That one feels like it’s embedded within me because that’s the mentality and kind of a style I play, where I’m trying to consistently outwork the opponent and put in the extra effort and hope to see that pay off on the other end. So

much of what I experienced at Harvard is ingrained in me as a player and as a person. It’s with me to this day.”

The mantra seems to have carried over the years of Harvard hockey. While Laing never overlapped with Dempsey, the more recent grad echoed the same sentiment, using the exact phrase “team first mentality” as well to describe the core value of Harvard hockey.

“You just have to put everything you can to make sure that you’re ready for the team,” Laing said. “That’s one that still resonates with me a lot.”

In addition to the value of selflessness, time management was a key takeaway from Harvard’s rigorous schedule.

And the pro level has brought the importance of time management to a new dimension.

While college hockey offered the structure of daily practices, workouts, and team meetings

along with constant contact with teammates, the NWHL requires a great deal of independence. The league’s players work other jobs (or attend graduate school as Laing does) and have to carve out time for hockey, practicing late at night a couple of times per week and traveling on weekends, sometimes to Connecticut and New Jersey but other times as far as Buffalo and Minnesota.

“I teach, and there’s a range of other professions on the team,” Dempsey said. “After a travel weekend or after a tough week, it’s great to just have a day and recover and relax and take that necessary time. But when you have the work week that starts on Monday, that’s not really an option for us. We learn to balance the challenges of playing and training hard with trying to make sure we’re getting the proper rest and maintaining great quality work at our jobs.”

ALL-STAR Lexie Laing ‘19 earned an NWHL all-star appearance in her rookie season with a 27-point campaign. Laing and the other Harvard alumni have kept tabs on their old collegiate team, which is slated to face Cornell in the ECAC seminfinals with a potential NCAA tournament birth within grasp. Timothy R. O’Meara—Crimson photographer

Yet Dempsey relishes the challenge of juggling the jampacked schedule.

“I always say that I have the best of both worlds,” Dempsey said. “There are some tiring days, but you make it work, you balance everything.”

Despite the busy balance of work and games, the players have taken advantage of being in the Boston area. With the convenient location, heading back to campus for the occasional game has offered the unique opportunity to stay connected.

“I definitely go to as many of the home games that I can,” Laing said. “You still want to be on the ice and still think you’re part of the program, especially with such a short turnaround.”

Going to games, the alumni have had a lot to enjoy. The Crimson has appeared on-andoff in weekly installations of the national top-10 polls en route to an 18-13-1 record and a fourseed in the ECAC playoffs. And despite not posting quite the same prolific winning percentage as the Pride, the two teams find themselves in very similar positions this weekend. Wins would earn both squads championship game appearances while losses would mean time to go home. However, while Harvard only clinched ECAC quarterfinal home-ice advantage in the second-to-last weekend of the season, the Pride had already solidified the NWHL one-seed in January. Nonetheless, under the leadership of Dempsey as captain, the team has sought to put its regular season behind it and readjust its focus.

“We know that the only way that we’re going to be ultimate champions and be successful is if we continue to improve,” Dempsey said. “We can’t stay stagnant. We can’t get complacent. We know that the focus is going to be cranking up the intensity and start playing some playoff hockey. It’s going to stem from just putting in the work and winning the battles and doing those little details the right way. That’s going to be our focus every practice, every period from here on out.”

As the season draws to a close and the calendar turns to spring, playoff hockey abounds, and Crimson skaters will fight for a championship not just in Lynah Rink in Ithaca but also at Warrior Ice Arena in Boston.

Harvard and Cornell will face off at 1:00 p.m. on March 7, and the Pride will take the ice March 8 at 2:30 p.m. william.boggs@thecrimson.com