THE HARVARD CRIMSON THE UNIVERSITY DAILY, EST. 1873
| VOLUME CL, NO. 7 | CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
LIEBER
HOUSING DAY
OP-ED
MEN’S BASKETBALL
Housing Day Midterms and the Culture of Non-Fun
From Harvard Men’s Basketball to Mayor of Honolulu
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FRIDAY, MARCH 10, 2023
Embattled Chemistry Prof. Lieber Retires QUIET RETIREMENT. Charles M. Lieber, the Harvard Chemistry professor convicted in 2021 of lying to the FBI, retired early last month, a Harvard spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday.
Housing Day Festivities Consume Campus
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IOP
JFK Jr. Forum Chairs Aim to Expand Reach FORUM CHANGES. The student co-chairs of the John F. Kennedy Jr.forums at the Institute of Politics will aim to diversify guests at forums this fall. The events are usually offered at least once per week. SEE PAGE 8
HOUSING DAY CELEBRATIONS erupted on campus Thursday morning, as upperclassmen woke up early to alert freshmen of their home for the next three years in a tradition known as “dorm storming.” House Committees can spend several months planning the day, from ideating and designing creative merch to producing Housing Day videos in a competition for clout. SAMI E. TURNER—CRIMSON DESIGNER
HUFPI
Former HUFPI President Denies Financial Misconduct, Club Says Some Funds Still Missing BY J. SELLERS HILL AND SAGE S. LATTMAN
EVENTS
CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
F Margaret Atwood Speaks at Sanders MARGARET ATWOOD. The author of the 1985 book The Handmaid’s Tale discussed her new collection of short stories at an event hosted by the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard. SEE PAGE 8
ormer Harvard Undergraduate Foreign Policy Initiative President Sama E.N. Kubba ’24 denied recent reporting of financial misconduct in a statement on her personal website Wednesday — though club leaders said they are still awaiting the return of more than half of the approximately $30,000 she transferred to her personal account. Kubba wrote in the statement that she no longer has access to any of the funds, having returned the approximately $15,000 she said she could transfer. The rest, she wrote, remains frozen by Bank of America at the request of HUFPI. As of Thursday evening, Kubba has not provid-
CRITICISM
CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
SQUARE
CAMPUS FAVORITE. Students expressed disappointment and sadness following news that Lê’s Vietnamese Restaurant is set to depart Harvard Square due to renovations in The Garage building. SEE PAGE 11
wrote in the statement on her website. “No money is missing; nothing is unresolved. The only money not ‘returned’ is held by Bank of America at HUFPI’s request.” Kubba did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Crimson following the release of her statement, and declined a telephone interview Thursday evening. Kubba sent the club a cashier’s check for $11,483 last month, according to Kubba and three sources familiar with the situation. HUFPI Co-Presidents Cosette T. Wu ’25 and Joyce Chen ’25 acknowledged that some funds had been returned in a Thursday statement on behalf of the club. “Regarding the wrongfully converted $30,000, HUFPI has secured a total of just below half of the original outstanding balance from the relevant actor,” Wu and Chen wrote.
In a follow-up statement on behalf of HUFPI, Wu and Chen denied that HUFPI is responsible for the hold on Kubba’s bank account. “On January 13th, HUFPI canceled all pending fraud claims on its bank accounts,” Wu and Chen wrote. “HUFPI was later notified by Bank of America that these cancellations were completed on January 17th. The organization maintains no current claims on any of its accounts.” According to a January email from HUFPI leadership to Kubba obtained by The Crimson, the organization had previously pursued a fraud claim regarding the initial approximately $30,000 transfer, after they discovered the funds were missing.
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RETRACTIONS
Former HUFPI PresiHMS Researchers’ dent Criticizes Crimson Articles Retracted BY NIA L. ORAKWUE
Lê’s to Leave Harvard Square
ed any supporting evidence for her statement on the website. A two-month investigation by The Crimson published last week detailed allegations of internal conflict and financial misconduct surrounding Kubba’s tenure at HUFPI. The investigation found that Kubba transferred approximately $30,000 from the organization’s bank account to her own in early January, weeks after departing from the presidency. Kubba acknowledged the initial transfer in the statement on her website Wednesday, though reiterated her position that she did so to prevent funds being “lost to fraud.” “HUFPI got half of the money returned a month before the article’s release, and the other half is held by Bank of America due to a hold initiated by HUFPI ($15k) – not something I have control over,” Kubba
ama E.N. Kubba ’24, former president S of the Harvard Undergraduate Foreign Policy Initiative, released a statement on her personal website Wednesday addressing what she said were inaccuracies in a recent article published by The Harvard Crimson, which detailed the disputes and allegations of financial mismanagement surrounding her tenure as HUFPI president. On March 3, The Crimson reported that Kubba transferred almost $30,000 from HUFPI’s bank account into her own, held complete control over the organization’s finances, and practiced improper spending habits with club funds — among other issues. In her response published on a personal website, titled “Resolved: No Money is Missing, The Truth Is,” Kubba claimed
The Crimson inaccurately portrayed her time as HUFPI president. She also outlined the contributions she made to HUFPI during her tenure and recounted her experience since The Crimson released its original investigation. At the start of Kubba’s response, she questioned The Crimson’s objectivity and the integrity of its reporting and described the March 3 article as “inaccurate” and “filled with lies.” “The Crimson offered themselves as a platform for HUFPI’s smear campaign and chose to ignore evidence I provided in favor of dramatic gossip,” she wrote. In a Wednesday statement, The Crimson’s president Cara J. Chang ’24 wrote she believes the reporters of the original article were “in line with standard journalistic practice.” “The reporters repeatedly sought comment from all parties mentioned in the story, including Kubba, who had ample
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BY AMMY M. YUAN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
wo medical journals, Surgery and OnT cogene, retracted five articles by Harvard Medical School professors Edward E. Whang and Stanley W. Ashley, Medical School emeritus professor Michael J. Zinner, and two other researchers earlier this month and late last year. The retractions were the result of an investigation by HMS and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, which identified discrepancies in several figures used in the articles. Oncogene — a journal for cancer-related research that shares a parent company with the scientific publication Nature — issued retraction notices for three of the five articles last month, saying, “there was no underlying research data available to resolve these discrepancies or to validate the reported results.”
Ashley, Zinner, and one of the five co-authors, Hiromichi Ito, a general surgeon affiliated with Sparrow Hospital, agreed to the three retractions, according to Oncogene. Whang and another co-author — Mark S. Duxbury, a consultant surgeon based in Glasgow — did not agree with the retractions by Oncogene. A spokesperson for Elsevier, the company that publishes Surgery, said that after an investigation last year, HMS alerted them to two papers published in Surgery by Ito, Duxbury, Zinner, Ashley, and Whang that had invalid figures, recommending that they be retracted. “After reviewing the materials, the Journal of Surgery Editors reached out to the corresponding authors and asked for a response,” they wrote. “The Editors were not satisfied by the explanation and the papers were retracted at the end of last year.” Ashley, the other HMS professor who
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