The Harvard Crimson THE UNIVERSITY DAILY, EST. 1873 | VOLUME CXLVI, NO. 50 | CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS | THURSDAY APRIL 11, 2019
EDITORIAL PAGE 6
NEWS PAGE 4
SPORTS PAGE 8
Harvard Business School must reform capitalism to stay relevant.
Harvard Engineering Dean Francis J. Doyle III is the dean who does it all.
Harvard men’s and women’s tennis start Ivy weekends.
Letter Calls for Tenure Review By JONAH S. BERGER and MOLLY M. MCCAFFERTY CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
Hundreds of Harvard students and alumni have signed a letter criticizing Harvard Divinity School’s decision not to grant tenure to Ahmed Ragab, who they say is the first Muslim faculty member at the school to come up for tenure. The letter — addressed to University President Lawrence S. Bacow, Provost Alan M. Garber ’76, Senior Vice Provost Judith D. Singer, and Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Claudine Gay — alleges Ragab is the first scholar at the Divinity School in a decade to be denied a full professorship without receiving a review from an ad hoc tenure committee. Divinity School spokesperson Michael P. Naughton declined to comment on why Ragab did not receive tenure. “The School doesn’t comment on individual tenure cases,” Naughton wrote in an emailed statement. The letter alludes to the findings of the recently completed Presidential Task Force for Inclusion and Belonging that called for a more diverse faculty, arguing that the University
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has failed to follow through on those findings in denying Ragab tenure. “The significance of his efforts only become more relevant as the undergraduate population continues to diversify, urging the College to live up to its values of diversity, equity, and inclusion,” the letter reads. Ragab did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The letter also highlights accounts of several students who cited Ragab’s ability to connect with minority students through his teaching and mentorship. “The decision to deny tenure to Professor Ragab thus carries a symbolic weight that will surely affect the aspirations and confidence of undergraduates from marginalized backgrounds for years to come,” the letter states. The students and alumni specifically cited Ragab’s research in the field of Muslim studies, which they argue is under-represented at the University, writing that he fills a “crucial gap” in scholarship. They also contend that he is the “most published” of any tenure applicant at the
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AEI Pres. Encourages ‘Love’ at IOP
American Enterprise Institute President Arthur C. Brooks spoke with University Professor Danielle S. Allen at the IOP on Wednesday evening.. MARIAH DIMALALUAN —CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER By JAMES S. BIKALES CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
resident of the American EnP terprise Institute and recently appointed Harvard professor of practice Arthur C. Brooks called love the solution to the problem of contempt in American government at an Institute of Politics event Wednesday. More than 60 people attended the event, which was named after Brooks’s new book “Love
By MOLLY C. MCCAFFERTY CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
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Kennedy School posted a video on its Facebook page of Brooks describing the Dalai Lama’s advice to show warm-heartedness even in the face of contempt. The video garnered more than 11 million views. “It’s a middle-aged think tank president talking about love that got 11 million views,” he said. “That is absurd. And I thought to myself, there’s a book in this.” Following the video, Brooks
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Bacow Discusses Need for ‘Open Dialogue’ at Council Meeting
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By ALEXANDRA A. CHAIDEZ and LUCY LIU
fter years of motions and A hearings, a 2015 lawsuit against Harvard alleging the school failed to closed caption its public online content and provided inaccurate closed captions where they did exist will move forward in federal court. In the February 2015 complaint, the National Association of the Deaf and four of the organization’s members filed suit in Massachusetts District court, naming the University as well as the College. The plaintiffs claim that Harvard’s online platforms — including YouTube, iTunes U, Harvard@Home, and the Extension School — frequently fail to provide sufficient captioning for video and audio content in violation of federal law.
Your Enemies.” It began with remarks from Brooks, followed by a discussion moderated by University Professor Danielle S. Allen. Brooks — who is set to leave AEI and become a professor of the practice of public leadership at the Kennedy School in July — said his book was partially inspired by a question and answer session he had on the same stage two years ago at the JFK Forum. After the 2017 event, the
searched for solutions to what he calls America’s “love crisis,” which he describes as the growing partisanship and lack of respect among politicians. Advocating for love as the solution to the discord in Washington, Brooks introduced findings from his interdisciplinary study of neuroscience, philosophy, and politics. “My whole life, I’ve been involved in institutional answers to big problems,” he said. “The revolution doesn’t lie with institutions. The revolution lies in each one of our hearts.” Allen — who Brooks said he consulted while working on the book — challenged Brooks’s ideas during the discussion period. “I think it’s too big an ask,” Allen said of Brooks’s suggestion to show love to all of one’s political adversaries. She cited Aristotle’s ideas of performing friendship regardless of how you feel about someone, which she called more “fair” to ask of people than love. At one point during the event, Brooks used the term “Kumbaya” to show that current efforts to foster civility are lacking. Allen, however, challenged Brooks’s argument. “Our everyday language is a carrier of contempt and my
One of AODS’s flyers is posted outside near Lamont Library regarding edibles. CHRISTIE HUNG—CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
University President Lawrence S. Bacow solicited the Faculty Council’s opinions on how to “foster more open dialogue” on campus at the Council’s bimonthly meeting Wednesday, Council member David L. Howell said. According to Howell, Bacow told the Council — the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’s highest governing body — that a lack of respectful conversations on campus in recent months has become a major “campus climate” issue. Howell said Bacow cited an incident at the Harvard Kennedy School last week in which roughly 30 protestors interrupted an event featuring Bacow and Graduate School of Education Dean Bridget Terry Long. At the event, students from two campaigns — Divest Harvard and the Harvard Prison Divestment Campaign — chanted and lofted signs in the John F. Kennedy, Jr. Forum, calling for Harvard to divest its nearly $40 billion endowment from
companies related to the fossil fuel industry and the United States prison system. Six of the students sat down on the stage. After Bacow and Kennedy School Dean Douglas W. Elmendorf failed to convince the students to move to the back of the room so that Bacow and Long could continue their presentation, administrators and some audience members left the forum, continuing the event in a nearby classroom to a smaller audience. Bacow told the Council that he was “concerned” and “disappointed” by the incident, Howell said. “I think until now his sense was that, however much we may disagree with one another, that we gave each other the chance to speak,” Howell said. “He wasn’t able to speak at all, even after the protestors were acknowledged, and their right to protest was acknowledged, and they were asked to then let him speak on the topic at hand at that meeting.” Howell said the Council agreed that the incident was “not desirable,” though some
members noted a lack of trust between administrators and students may have led the protestors to “assume a kind of malice on the part of their interlocutors.” “I don’t think we reached any solutions, but he expressed concern about finding ways of having dialogue and mutual trust, I guess that maybe has weakened, maybe not even particularly at Harvard but in our society in general,” Howell said. Bacow also pointed the Council members towards his recent op-ed in The Crimson addressing the incident at the forum, in which he wrote the students’ protest was an effort to “obstruct the rights” of himself, Long, and audience members. Ilana A. Cohen ’22, a member of Divest Harvard, previously said in an interview with The Crimson immediately after the Thursday event that an open dialogue between administrators and students calling for divestment is vital to upholding the University’s position as a
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Scientists Capture First Image of Black Hole By JULIET E. ISSELBACHER and ISABEL L. ISSELBACHER CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
A research group led by a Harvard scientist unveiled the first-ever image of a black hole Wednesday morning, drawing praise from both the scientific community and the general public. The Event Horizon Telescope group, led by Shep S. Doeleman, the assistant director for observation at Harvard’s Black Hole Institute, presented the historic picture at 9:07 am EST, along with scientists a various parallel press conferences around the world. The image marked the culmination of years of work undertaken by a team of 200 sci
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HMS’s Gordon Hall sits across the HMS quadrangle. JONATHAN YUAN—CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
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entists in 59 institutes across 18 countries. The project, to which other scientists at Harvard’s Black Hole Institute also contributed, drew on data collected by eight telescopes whose locations range from Hawaii to the South Pole. Scientists had long struggled to capture a photograph of a black hole — a region of space with a gravitational pull so strong that not even light can escape it. The image revealed Wednesday is comprised of a glowing orange ring on a black background. “This particular galaxy has a jet that emanates from the vicinity of the black hole,” said Abraham “Avi” Loeb, the
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Scientists revealed the first-ever image of a black hole. PHOTO COURTESY OF EVENT HORIZON TELESCOPE COLLABORATION ET AL
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