23 minute read
Editorial
COVID-19 Blocks Housing Day housing From Page 1
“At this time, HUHS is not providing testing, independent of these agencies.”
Burke also announced that, effective immediately, “non-Harvard affiliated out-oftown guests” are barred from staying on campus overnight. Kirkland House Committee CoChair Maranda Ngue ’22 said in an interview Monday though she was “suspecting” a post ponement, she is still “disappointed” by the announcement. She also said the house commit tee is “brainstorming” alternative ways to welcome freshmen to the House.
“The way that we planned for our HoCo in Kirkland was we would continue on with our plan, thinking that maybe Hous ing Day would happen, so either way we were ready to go,” Ngue said. “It’s kind of unfortunate, but we’re trying to find a way to make sure that the next incom ing class of Kirklanders are very welcome here.”
The email comes on the heels of the College’s decision to cancel Visitas — Harvard’s annual ad mitted student weekend — over similar fears of the outbreak. Dean of Admissions and Finan cial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 informed admitted students in a Friday email the College will replace the event with “Virtual Visitas,” a program of videos and online events.
The University is also dis couraging all non-essential international travel for spring break and strictly barred all Uni versity travel to countries with a Level 3 Travel Warning from the CDC. Dunster House Com mittee Co-Chair Dylan Zhou ’22 wrote in an email that he under stands the “safety concerns” behind the decision and added that the postponement is preferable to “full cancellation.”
“Dunster House still intends on hosting its traditional eve ning events, which include a Community Dinner, a Scavenger Hunt, a Welcome Home Stein, and Free Grille Food, on the new Housing Day,” he wrote. “The only backup plan is that we may need to split a larger group into subsets of less than 100 people.” The next email from Har vard College on coronavirus will come Thursday afternoon, per the update schedule the College announced last week. It will in clude more detailed information about spring break housing, din ing, and transportation, according to today’s message.
sydnie.cobb@thecrimson.com declan.knieriem@thecrimson.com
Veterans Legal Clinic Issues Report
By kelsey j. griffin Crimson Staff Writer
The Veterans Legal Clinic at Harvard Law School released a report Thursday contending the Department of Veteran Affairs has unlawfully turned away nearly half a million veterans seeking health care.
The report — titled “Turned Away: How VA Unlawfully De nies Health Care to Veterans with Bad Paper Discharges” — found that more than 400,000 veterans risk being rejected or dissuaded from applying to re ceive health care due to a lack of guidance, oversight, and ade quate training within the VA.
“Many frontline staff at VA health care facilities have im properly turned away former servicemembers seeking health care, telling them that they are ineligible due to their military discharge statuses—without even allowing them to apply,” the report reads.
Those veterans, who have received less-than-honorable discharges, known as “bad pa per discharges,” should in theory receive an individualized review by the VA to determine their eligibility for benefits.
“It puts them in a ‘limbo’ cate gory that requires VA to conduct an individualized eligibility de termination to decide whether the veteran was discharged un der ‘dishonorable conditions’ or ‘other than dishonorable condi tions,’” the report reads. In practice, though, VA staff frequently tell veterans with bad papers they are categori cally ineligible to receive health care benefits, according to the report, which blames this dis crepancy on incorrect information provided to staff in VA enrollment manuals, handbooks, and trainings.
“By law, every person—re gardless of military discharge status—has the right to apply for VA health care, to have VA consider that application on the merits, and to receive a written decision,” Veterans Legal Clin ic Instructor Dana Montalto wrote in the press release.
“We heard from veterans and veterans advocates from across the country that instead, when a veteran with bad paper at tempts to apply for health care, the front-desk staffer denies the veteran on the spot, without due process, merely by looking at the veteran’s DD 214 discharge pa pers,” she added.
The VA did not immediate ly respond to a request for comment Monday evening.
OUTVETS — an advoca cy organization that supports LGBTQ veterans and their fam ilies — commissioned the report, which noted that many of the “bad paper” discharges re sulted from discrimination by the military.
Those past decisions, the re port argues, should not prevent veterans from seeking support. “In many cases, veterans re ceived ‘bad paper’ discharges because they were gay or lesbian, or because they have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or another mental health con dition caused by their military service that led to actions re sulting in their separation from the military,” the press release reads.
While there should be consequences for military misconduct, those consequences should not include being denied healthcare — especially if you have a service related disability, are experiencing homelessness, or are dealing with the impact of MST.
Report from the Veterans Legal Clinic at HLS
The report recommends the VA take three immediate steps to address the issue, including improvements in training, guid ance, oversight of employees, and increased communication between the agency and veter ans.
It also calls for outreach to veterans who the agency wrong fully turned away in the past.
Montalto said in an inter view that she anticipates an increase in oversight of VA practices from Congress following the release of the report, noting that some have already begun to take action in the days since its release.
“After we issued the report, a number of senators like Senator [Richard] Blumenthal of Con necticut submitted a letter to VA, asking for a response to the report,” she said.
The report acknowledg es that veterans who received less-than-honorable discharg es from the military may have transgressed, but states that all veterans deserve the opportuni ty to apply for benefits.
“While there should be con sequences for military misconduct, those consequences should not include being denied health care—especially if you have a service-related disability, are experiencing homelessness, or are dealing with the impact of MST, as so many veterans with bad paper are,” the report reads. “It is time for VA to stop this cy cle of misinformation and stigma and to honor that every person who has served in the military has a right to apply for VA care.”
kelsey.griffin@thecrimson.com
tobacco From Page 1
Harvard Holds Indirect Shares in Tobacco Companies
Developed Markets ETF.
In May 1990, Harvard divest ed from the tobacco industry and adopted a policy that pro hibits the University from owning shares of tobacco companies in the future.
At a forum last April about divestment, University Presi dent Lawrence S. Bacow said the decision to divest from tobac co included barring the product from campus and prohibiting re search funded by tobacco companies.
Asked about the holdings, HMC spokesperson Patrick S. McKiernan referred to HMC’s sustainable investment policies. If the University instructs HMC to divest, HMC would restrict direct holdings of related stocks by internal portfolio managers and outside investment advisors trading in Harvard’s name, ac cording to its sustainable investment policy.
The restriction, however, is not extended to “investment advisers of commingled funds where Harvard is not the sole in vestor” — which is the case for the three ETFs with tobacco in vestments.
Over the past year, Bacow has consistently opposed divest ment from the fossil fuel and prison industry amid protest from students and faculty.
Bacow argued at the April fo rum that the University could never divest fully from fossil fu els, as they did with the tobacco industry.
“The day after, if we were to divest, we’re still going to turn on the lights,” Bacow said in April. “We would still be depen dent on fossil fuels.”
Each of the ETFs allocate a certain percentage of their in vestments to tobacco companies.iShares Core S&P 500 ETF allocates 0.32 percent and 0.55 percent of its fund to Altria Group and Philip Morris Inter national, and iShares Core S&P Small-Cap ETF allocates 0.19 percent of its fund to Universal Corporation as of last Friday, ac cording to iShare’s website.
Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF allocates 0.50 per cent of its fund to British American Tobacco as of January, per Vanguard’s website. The values of the University’s holdings in the three ETFs total around $41 million at the time of the University’s filing.
In total, Harvard roughly puts an estimated $98,265.08 into tobacco companies through the three ETFs. Harvard’s in vestments in ETFs comprise roughly 6.5 percent of its total U.S. securities holdings.
Only about 2 percent of Har vard’s $40.9 billion endowment is publicly available through quarterly disclosure to the Se curities and Exchange Commission.
Harvard only divests in “very rare” occasions when compa nies engage in “deeply repugnant and ethically unjustifiable” conducts, according to the Uni versity’s sustainable investment policy.
In addition to tobacco, Har vard divested from companies involved in South African apartheid in 1986 and a com pany tied to Sudanese government after the Darfur genocide in 2005.
ruoqi.zhang@thecrimson.com
As Candidates Drop From Dem. Race, Campus Orgs. Fizzle Out
By joshua c. fang Crimson Staff Writer
J. Alexander White ’23 was sitting in class last week when he learned U.S. Senator Amy Klo buchar (D-Minn.) was dropping out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
“I heard my phone go off in class and somebody said, ‘Amy just dropped out.’ I said, ‘Oh damn.’ And then I checked my phone,” White said. “We were all just laughing about it, and I was like, ‘You know what’s tough? I’m the chairman of Harvard for Amy.’”
As candidates vied for the 2020 Democratic presiden tial nomination amid the most crowded field in modern his tory, an array of student-run groups at Harvard sprang up to support various candidates. Over the past several months, many of the groups — Harvard for Amy included — knocked on doors, called potential voters, and organized campaign events to rally around their candidate of choice.
Now that the Democratic field has narrowed to a race with only a few candidates, most of the campus groups have shut tered. In several cases, the leaders of the groups wrote sign-off letters to their supporters via email, echoing the group’s vi sion one last time and calling for members to stay active in politi cal advocacy.
“We were so proud to watch so many of you attend your first rally, make your first phone call, knock your first door, or con vince your first family member to vote for an underdog who you believed in,” wrote Michael B. Baick ’22 and Riley S. Hoffman ’23, co-chairs of Harvard Col lege Democrats for Pete, the group backing former South Bend, Ind. mayor Peter P. M. Buttigieg ’04. “You will never forget your firsts, but we know they will not be your last.”
“We know this result isn’t what we wanted, and it’s go ing to hurt for a couple of days. Right now, it is so easy to be dis couraged, and to feel like all of our tireless work didn’t matter. That couldn’t be farther from the truth,” wrote Kate Travis ’22, who led a group support ing Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Damian L. Richardson ’20, the founder of Harvard College Democrats for Kamala, said Senator Kamala Harris (D-Ca lif.) led a campaign that brought a “new kind of racial diversity” into the Democratic race. He specifically pointed to a Sep tember trip to the New Hampshire Democratic convention as a highlight for the group.
“It was one of the most excit ing things I’ve been on. It was a bus full of black and brown — mostly women — going to New Hampshire to support the can didate we really loved,” he said. Richardson, who worked for Harris’s campaign last summer, said Harvard for Kamala gave many students their first expe rience with political advocacy. “Most of them knocked on their first door in New Hamp shire and made their first phone call in our first phone bank back in September. That initial foot in the door inspired by Kamala Harris is what’s going to bring them back, regardless of who the nominee is, to fight for the ideals that we all know are so important,” he said.
joshua.fang@thecrimson.com
Proud to cover Harvard for 147 years and counting.
Editorial
The Crimson Edi orial board Outlining Harvard’s Obligations During Pandemics
Pandemics are scary and fear can bring out the worst in us, as the spread of xenophobia and racism around the world in the wake of the novel coronavirus outbreak demonstrates. In the face of this public health challenge, we hope that everyone in our communi ty will stay mentally and physically well. Still, we urge our campus community to be prepared, be courageous, and be there for one another in these challenging times. Only when we are united can we persevere in the face of this global threat. As coronavirus continues to spread globally, schools and universities have begun to shut down, affecting almost 300 million students worldwide as of Wednesday In the United States, at least ten states have now declared states of emergencies and, as of Monday, corona virus cases in Massachusetts number over 40, with at least 32 cases linked to a conference held by Biogen, a biotech company headquartered in Cambridge. Harvard has revealed new policies in response to this growing pandemic in cluding prohibiting official international travel and non-essential domestic travel, postponing gatherings of more than 100 people such as Housing Day, and cancel ing Visitas — the College’s admitted students weekend.
While we are aware that Harvard has likely considered different measures of responding to the threat of coronavirus on campus, we urge the University to pri oritize the most vulnerable members of our community while it continues to de velop its policies. The spread of coronavirus will be especially harmful for international students, those from heavily-affected regions, those from low-income households, and those with pre-existing conditions. We urge Harvard to serious ly consider the implications of their policies on these students and maintain sufficient and timely communications with them about what special accommoda tions, if any, they will provide or consider providing.
We hope that staff who play a critical and often under-recognized role in our community — not least maintenance and facilities, dining hall, and security staff — will be considered in all decision-mak ing, such that they will not be put in unsafe conditions and will not be compelled to work while sick for lack of sick-leave compensation.
Students should also not feel com pelled to attend classes and activities if they wish to self-isolate, and the Univer sity should specify the academic implications of doing so.
The University must ensure transpar ency to allow students to plan ahead. That shouldn’t merely be a matter of keeping the University apprised of current work ing policy, but the potential policies that may ultimately be invoked, the criteria the University is using to make those de cisions, and the likely implications for all University affiliates. Transparency, in that sense, should be proactive.
Still, we acknowledge that these are difficult decisions for University leader ship with few clear or certain answers. They’re no doubt working hard to make the best possible choices they can with respect to both prioritizing the well-be ing of Harvard affiliates and promoting public health broadly, in light of fluid, perilous circumstances. Whatever course of action the University decides to take should be grounded in the specif ic circumstances we at Harvard find ourselves in. Again, proactive, not reactive, might be the operative mantra. While it should learn from the choices of other universities — like Princeton University, Columbia University, and Stanford Uni versity canceling classes — the University should not simply mimic their actions. As we opined last week, we expect the University to fight against the perpetua tion of xenophobia as anti-Asian racism has spread with coronavirus. But in light of federal mismanagement of the crisis and dissemination of “alternative facts” on the threat coronavirus poses, we be lieve the University can go a step further. In addition to its own internal and collaborative research efforts, given the wealth of public health and immunolog ical expertise at the University, it makes for Harvard to be a leader in provid ing accurate, accessible information on coronavirus to the public.
No doubt, these obligations are not small, but with courage, clarity, and compassion, Harvard can prove itself a leader in this time of global crisis.
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 journal ism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar top ics.
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Teach for America, Yourself, and Goldman Sachs Column
Eric Yang Plain truth
After your stint at Teach for America, a two-year post-undergraduate teaching program, you decided to leave the academic world behind and work in New York. Where are you most likely to be employed? Goldman Sachs.
But we will get back to that. We need to change the pernicious idea that public service is on a separate moral level of “goodness” because it is undertaken purely for selfless reasons. This piece of philosophical fiction is at odds with reality, so much so that it only entrenches the reality it seeks to deny. It is only by acknowledging and appealing to the selfish instincts of people that we can fulfill the goal that should be at the heart of service — serving others.
The selfless ethic of service has many intellectual sources, but I suspect that it finds its purest expression in Kantian moral philosophy. Kant viewed moral action as a dispassionate adherence to moral law.
Through enlightened reason we free ly choose to do the right thing only because it’s objectively the right thing to do, not because of any personal benefits. In fact, Kant says if we act for any selfish reasons we can no longer claim to have acted “morally” since the good result of our actions are only the by-product of our self-interest.
These days few people are as Kantian as Kant, but his insights are embedded in our perception of public service. Pub lic service is noble because it involves a sacrifice of self-interest. Public servants transcend self-interest because they cast it aside.
Yet this praise of the selfless public career path presumes and only confirms the domination of the private, for-prof it career. Only 17 percent of the 2019 class had finalized careers in nonprof its, non-governmental organizations, or governments at the time of gradua tion. This statistic is actually quite impressive. Only about a quarter of Harvard students volunteer with the Phillips Brooks House Association in a given year, and about the same percentage of my class volunteered for the Day of Ser vice.
The problem with public service is that this neo-Kantian ethic of service only has two ways of persuasion: praise and shame, both of which are clearly in capable of motivating a majority of talented students.
I contend that self-interest is what consistently causes college students to wake up at early hours and be on their peak mental game for an entire day. An affinity and passion for the demand ing workload is necessary for success in both the private and public spheres, but that passion doesn’t last forever. Some times people wake up in the mornings because of the work they do, but oth er times they wake up in spite of the work they must do, and just try and get through the day. It is during these mo ments of apathy that the private sector has its greatest allure. Economic self-in terest works better to motivate than any praise and shame associated with mor al duty. Even if the ideal of selfless service attracts some to the public sphere, it has no way of guaranteeing continued dedication, except through praise and shame.
Which brings us back to Teach for America. Teach for America critics, both within and outside the organization, view the program’s own preparation as inadequate to produce quality teach ers. Teachers report feeling ashamed for being unable to teach at the level which they aspired to, and burnout is a real concern for corps members. Some members do develop lifetime passions for teaching and continue on in differ ent advisory contexts, but others, disillusioned by their time as teachers, leave the academic world behind for more lu crative pastures. As such, critics come to view the program on the whole as glori fied “resume padding”, in which teachers don’t even fulfill those responsibilities that they put on their resume in the first place.
Where the neo-Kantians see dere liction of duty or the moral degradation of service, I see opportunity. Partner ships with Goldman Sachs are not what is wrong with Teach for America, but its greatest potential asset.
The necessary accompaniment of the pursuit of self-interest is competition — we can’t all get what we want. Teach for America’s problem is not the intrusion of self-interest, but its unwillingness to harness this self-interest and the pro ductive fruits of competition for the students that it serves.
Teach for America should expand its partnerships with Goldman and oth er prestigious companies in the private sector, so much so that it almost be comes a backdoor to them.
However, it should make offers con tingent upon so many objective teaching metrics — test scores, student reviews and peer reviews — that the only way for corps members to get these jobs is to be good teachers. The best part about this suggestion is that the competition will spur other teachers to new heights. Shame from failure to live up to an im possible ideal is one thing, but shame from potentially performing worse at one’s own vocation than future invest ment bankers is another.
The competition induced by self-in terest doesn’t cheapen service, it revitalizes it.
Service should be for the people whom we serve, not for ourselves, be cause we can’t always live up to the best of our intentions, and it doesn’t make sense to hold ourselves to an unattain able ideal.
Instead, if service is about impacting others, we should be willing, and even obligated, to use every incentive we have to improve the quality of service that is provided.
Op-Ed
After So Many Disappointments, a Case For Joe
By Patrick C. Barham Quesada
A year ago, the candidates running for the Democratic nomination were the most diverse ever to run for a major party’s nomination. This diversity reflected the party itself — a party that’s increasingly uplifting the voices of minorities, working-class Americans, and those suffering through historic inequality. That diversity made me proud.
I was proud because I thought I’d be casting my first vote in a primary election for a candidate that looked like me and that supported many of the ideas I care about. But my candidate would drop out in early January, and over a few weeks, the field would whittle down from the most di verse ever to one whose front-runners have all the diversity of a 77-year-old white man and a 78-year-old white man.
I don’t mean to minimize the ideological dif ferences between these candidates — though they’ve often voted together in the Senate, more than a handful of differences set them apart. These differences give their supporters ammuni tion to use against the other candidate, but this infighting will only hurt the party as it struggles to find its leader.
The soul-searching of finding another candi date to support over and over has taken a toll on my enthusiasm and has left me only mildly en ergized, to say the least. From my conversations with others, I think that’s how many of us young Democrats feel — especially those from minority backgrounds.
But on Super Tuesday, while the latest of my chosen candidates underperformed, another overwhelmingly won over crucial minority vot ers. For all the talk of increasing turnout among young voters and minorities, my then-candidate demonstrated an inability to do so. We cannot ex tend this primary and risk a repeat of 2016. I want to make the case for Joe Biden.
Joe Biden is a dedicated, passionate public servant, a proven leader, and more than quali fied to be the next President of the United States. He’s been endorsed by more local, state, and na tional leaders than any other candidate, and has demonstrated an ability to build a winning coa lition.
He is not the perfect candidate. He has made mistakes and is more centrist than many young voters would like, but now is the time for unity because the alternative is too dangerous. I be lieve these are the calculations that other candidates made before dropping out of the race, and they might also be why a plurality of them now support Biden.
We’ve already seen what can happen when a primary battle goes on for too long. In 2016, the election was decided by a total of 77,700 voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. In all of these states, turnout for Democrats decreased from the last election by more than or approxi mately this amount. No one can know whether this was because Democratic voters didn’t like their candidate or because the lengthy primary race had disillusioned them, but we should not risk the same outcome again. We cannot repeat the mistake of fracturing the party and frustrat ing its voters.
Over the last four years, we’ve gotten a taste of what’s at stake when Democrats are unable to successfully rally around a candidate. Economic gains and tax cuts have disproportionately bene fited the wealthy. On civil rights, we’ve watched this administration fail to stand up for those at risk. At the border, we’ve watched this adminis tration commit human rights violations against children. We have no plan for the climate, no end in sight to a costly trade war. Now a dangerous disease’s global spread has been fueled by this administration’s empty statements and lack of action.
It’s on all Democrats to rally behind the front runner and to make sure we extoll his virtues — and there are many. He wrote one of the first cli mate change bills, has been a leader in the Senate, has taken on the National Rifle Association, spoke up about gay rights before many others, and has remained in the public eye for most of his life. He’s been vetted, he’s experienced, and I trust him to lead this country.
When my home state of Florida votes on March 17, I will cast my ballot for Joe Biden. He wasn’t my first choice, but he is a good man and a good candidate. Come November, he will provide a clear contrast to our current leader for voters around the country.
What’s at stake here are the lives of migrants, health insurance for millions of Americans, the economic stability of farmers, workers, and busi nessmen alike, the future of our climate, and the sanctity of our democratic institutions. This election is too important to lose in the primaries, again.
To echo the slogan of the 2016 Democrat ic nominee, we are stronger together. As Democrats, we must recognize this truth and cast aside internal differences.
Instead, we must work together to put this country back on track. While the words of a New York Times opinion columnist say that to choose Joe Biden is “to choose the past over the future,” really it’s to choose a past we can build upon and one that I believe a majority of Americans would prefer to the present. In Joe Biden, I might be voting for a lesser evil, but I’m also voting for the chance at a greater good.
