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The Harvard Crimson THE UNIVERSITY DAILY, EST. 1873 | VOLUME CXLVI, NO. 66 | CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS | FRIDAY, MAY 3, 2019
EDITORIAL PAGE 4
NEWS PAGE 3
SPORTS PAGE 8
Harvard should be more intentional in notifying students of the activities fee.
Poet laureate Tracy K. Smith was awarded the Harvard Arts Medal.
Men’s hockey player Adam Fox signs with the Rangers.
Gov Affiliates Review Department Climate UC Backs Student Activist By JONAH S. BERGER and MOLLY C. MCCAFFERTY CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
More than 60 Government department affiliates met Thursday to discuss a report released by a departmental committee tasked with analyzing internal climate that recommended a slate of policies to improve sexual harassment reporting and prevention procedures. That report, released Tuesday, called for the department to “urgently” take steps to “foster trust, open up channels of communication, and create a safer and more inclusive workplace.” It offered 19 major recommendations, including the authorization of two new faculty searches and the creation of a faculty Title IX liaison position within the department. The committee’s recommendations are not final, and the full Government department faculty must vote to approve the proposals. The department formed the
Committee on Climate Change in March 2018 after more than 20 women came forward to accuse Government Professor Emeritus Jorge I. Dominguez of instances of sexual misconduct spanning multiple decades. Attendees at Thursday’s meeting largely supported the committee’s proposed changes to the department, according to Government Professor and Climate Committee Chair Steven R. Levitsky in an interview after the off-the-record town hall. Nonetheless, many students voiced concerns about items they felt were missing from the report and the “sustainability” of the recommendations, according to Levitsky. Multiple students declined to discuss the concerns they raised at the meeting. “I think there was a fair amount of support for the initiatives in the final report, but a bunch of pretty valid concerns that it would be taken up
SEE GOV PAGE 5
HMS and MIT to Study Cannabis
By KEVIN R. CHEN and LAURA C. ESPINOZA CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
The Undergraduate Council issued a statement Thursday supporting Danu A. K. Mudannayake ’20, an activist who was involved in a confrontation with a Winthrop House tutor last month. The statement, which passed by an online vote late Wednesday night 20-9, denounced the tutor’s response to the incident and issued a number of demands, including a public response from College administrators and the dissemination of
Government students leave a town hall held Thursday afternoon. At the town hall, attendees discussed the final report of the Government Committee on Climate Change. MIA B. FROTHINGHAM—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
SEE UC PAGE 3
Law School Orientation Enters Second Year By CONNOR W. K. BROWN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
A pilot pre-matriculation program at Harvard Law School designed to prepare incoming students from varying academic and professional backgrounds for their programs’ academic rigor will become an annual part of law students’ experiences. Introduced in summer 2018, the “Zero-L” program is a 10hour long online course that covers the necessary academic grounding for law degrees including topics like the stages of civil litigation, how to read a legal case, and how to use the Socratic method — the Law School’s teaching style that often includes cold calling. Though the program is now permanent, it will be reformed as needed to adapt to incoming students’ changing needs. Dean John F. Manning ’82 proposed the initiative and said he was inspired to create the Zero-L program based on his own experience as a student at the Law School. Manning — who was a first-generation college and law school student — said he often felt “completely clueless,” and wanted to ensure students from all backgrounds started with the same foundational legal knowledge when
By ALEXIS K. BOLNER CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
A Harvard and MIT graduate who is heavily invested in the Canadian legal cannabis market donated a combined $9 million dollars to Harvard and MIT to fund neurobiology research on the plant. The donation, given by Charles R. Broderick, is the largest independent donation ever made to fund biological study of cannabinoids on the brain and behavior. The donation will fund research on the medical uses of cannabis to create treatments and better inform societal and political attitudes towards medical cannabis. Harvard Medical School professors Bruce P. Bean ’73 and Wade G. Regehr will lead Harvard’s half of the research. Broderick said he decided to donate the funds because he saw a dearth in cannabis-related research. “There wasn’t as much research on cannabis from the lack of funding and social taboos around it,” Broderick said. “I realized I could take personal leadership in helping to kickstart this.”
Broderick said efforts to pass legislation related to cannabis have often been hindered because there has been little authoritative research conducted on its medical use. “A lot of the times in the policy discussion that has been occurring around the world, there is this desire to fall back to science to help illuminate the answers, and when they would go back to illuminate the answers they were finding that there wasn’t very much research,” Broderick said. The donation was made following roughly six months of conversation between Broderick and Harvard scientists to explore what kinds of research might be stimulated by funding in this area, according to Bean. Bean said in an interview that the goal of the donation will be to encourage new research in labs with expertise on cannabinoids, and to bring young researchers and postdoctoral fellows to this research field. “The idea with the gift will be to call for applications from people around Harvard
SEE CANNABIS PAGE 5
The Harvard Law School’s Pre-Matriculation Program, which was piloted to incoming law students last year, is now set to be permanent. VIRGINIA F. TIERNAN—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
they matriculated. The program’s title reflects the common term for law school students who are identified as 1Ls, 2Ls, or 3Ls, depending on their class year. Manning appointed a committee led by Professor I. Glenn Cohen to oversee the program’s implementation. Cohen said his
academic and personal background put him in a good position to create something suited for incoming Law School students. “I’ve taught an online course before on reproductive technology genetics I made with HarvardX a few years ago, so I’m very familiar with it,” Co-
hen said, in reference to one of the University’s online learning platforms. “I am the son of two high school dropouts, and I am a Canadian, so I came to Harvard Law School really with little background in what it is lawyers do and what the law does.”
SEE HLS PAGE 3
Vesalius to Van Gogh: Art and Medicine By JULIET E. ISSELBACHER and SHRUTHI VENKATA CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
MICHELLE CHEN—CRIMSON DESIGNER
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
Harvard Today 2
News 3
Arts 6
Sports 8
TODAY’S FORECAST
The “Mona Lisa” may have had a thyroid condition. The “Vitruvian Man” may have had a hernia in his groin. The “Gypsy Girl With Mandolin” may have had rheumatoid arthritis. The distinguished subjects of art sometimes had diseases, and often, so did the artists themselves. Their symptoms — whether of physical ailments or mental illnesses — are in their art. Rembrandt, who depicted himself in self-portraits with an off-centered eye, likely had stereoblindness, which impedes depth perception. Van Gogh, who painted with color combinations and an extreme productivity characteristic of epileptics, suffered seizures.
RAINY High: 55 Low: 51
Toulouse-Lautrec, who painted several portraits of desolatelooking women drinking at café tables, coped with alcoholism and absinthe abuse. Increasingly, keen doctors are bringing their diagnostic tools to bodies of art to revitalize old conversations about canonical works. But the relationship is symbiotic: art can also make physicians more in tune with their senses, improving their diagnostic acuity and ability to empathize.
The Visuality of Medicine in History
The mutualism of art and medicine is a long-standing tradition that traces back to the Renaissance and even earlier. Andreas Vesalius, who is widely regarded as the father of anatomy, published his richly
SEE ARTS PAGE 6
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