The Harvard Crimson - Vol. CLII, No. 19

The Harvard Crimson

Harvard Instructors Adapt to AI

FOUL

Brook has flooded regularly for decades after heavy rains. Sometimes, the water mixes with raw sewage from the combined sewer system below the brook, leaving residents to wade through the filth that runs over the sidewalks for days after a storm.

‘THE RESPONSIBLE

THING.’ Harvard Medical School Dean George Q. Daley ’82 said HMS was “on track” to cut 20 percent of its research enterprise under Unviersity guidance.

Harvard Ends Undergraduate Minority Recruitment Program

BY CASSIDY M. CHENG AND ELIAS M. VALENCIA CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Facing pressure from the Trump administration to eliminate any consideration of race in admissions, Harvard quietly ended its Undergraduate Minority Recruitment Program in May — shuttering a more than 50-year-old initiative to encourage minority high school students to apply.

Harvard’s efforts to connect prospective applicants with current undergraduates will be housed under a new program, called the Harvard Recruitment Ambassadors. A webpage for the program lists few details and no names of undergraduate employees. Since 1971, the UMRP guided minority middle and high school students through Harvard’s application process. As of 2012, the UMRP reached out to between 75 and 90 percent of minority students who matriculated to Harvard, according to Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 at the time. The UMRP was not involved in making admissions decisions.

seniors who identified themselves as minority students and received high scores on the PSAT.

The UMRP’s undergraduate coordinators would then answer questions and staff a dedicated phone line for recruits. Roughly 10 coordinators each year would travel to around a dozen high schools near their hometowns to provide Harvard application advice.

A 2018 article in the Harvard Gazette, a University-run publication, described similar UMRP initiatives, including contacting underrepresented minority students, fielding emails and phone calls, coordinating campus visits, and hiring students to recruit applicants from their hometowns.

FAS spokesperson James M. Chisholm wrote in an email that the UMRP “wasn’t doing any of these activities in recent years.”

“None of the roles mentioned in the 2018 article were occurring in 2025 when the program ended,” he wrote. “The activities that were no longer occurring when the UMRP ended will continue to no longer occur in the unified undergraduate admissions group.”

Chisholm declined to specify which activities had ceased in recent years, why Harvard cut them back, or what the UMRP’s work involved shortly before it was dissolved.

The change, made without any public announcement, follows years of scrutiny over the role of race in Harvard’s admissions process.

In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled against Harvard and struck down its use of race-conscious admissions — but did not eliminate targeted recruitment and outreach programs, as long as they were not solely based on race.

Since the ruling, Harvard has walked a careful line, fearing repercussions if it either saw sudden drops in its Black and Latino enrollment — or demographic continuity that could raise suspicions it was not complying with the Supreme Court’s order. Black and Latino enrollment in Harvard’s freshman class fell slightly last year, and Harvard Law School’s entering class saw larger drops.

Harvard has yet to release data on the race of admitted or enrolled students for the Class of 2029.

Recruitment programs like the UMRP were one way for Harvard to navigate competing demands — potentially expanding the pool of qualified applicants from underrepresented minority backgrounds, without drawing accusations that the College’s admissions decisions were discriminating against white and Asian applicants.

Franke said. “And we’ve been advised to stick with that plan until further notice.”

Harvard School of Public Health professor Walter C. Willett helps run the Nurses Health Studies I and II, a nearly 50-year-long project studying chronic disease risk factors in nearly 300,000 participants, which has received more than $200 million from the NIH since its inception. Willett said he received notices of grant reinstatement last week but still has not received any money.

Willett said the study has been running on a “skeleton staff” since the cuts. Researchers initially feared they would have to destroy their samples — which cost $300,000 a year to chill using liquid nitrogen — but they have secured interim funding to keep the specimens frozen.

100 students and faculty gathered on the steps of Widener Library for a Saturday night vigil to honor the rightwing activist’s life and condemn his slaying last week.

5

THE NETHERLANDS. Speaking in Amsterdam on Sept.

The program employed a team of undergraduate coordinators who answered questions about Harvard’s admissions process and life as a Harvard College student. Around 2012, UMRP student employees began their recruitment efforts in the summer, using a list provided by the College Board to contact rising

The new, unified program allows prospective applicants to contact current undergraduates with questions about life at Harvard, but currently does not include in-person outreach to high schools or target specific groups of students, according to Chisholm.

“I would say that these recruitment programs are really a form of soft affirmative action, where they’re designed to increase the pool of of highly qualified applicants,”

SEE UMRP ON PAGE 7

Adams Removes Racist Fireplace

BY ELYSE C. GONCALVES AND AKSHAYA RAVI CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

In 2019, Adams House leadership carried out a cover-up. The House boarded up racist caricatures carved into a century-old fireplace in Westmorly Hall, hiding the sculptures behind a pair of bulky pillars. But when the Hall reopened this year, the makeshift pillars — and the racist caricatures underneath — were nowhere to be seen. The fireplace, which sits in the A entryway of Westmorly Hall, formerly depicted derogatory sculptures of African, Native American, and Asian figures that were rediscovered in a Crimson investigation in 2022.

Aaron M. Lamport ’90 — an architect with the firm Beyer Blinder Belle who worked on the Adams renewal project — said that the sculptures were “surgically taken out” and replaced by new pillars. The fireplace now features laurel and oak leaves, acorns, and the Massachusetts state flower. The old sculpture has been effectively erased from the House. Neither the new

fireplace nor the Adams House website acknowledges the former pillars or their complex history.

Lamport said he believed the old pillars were given to a Harvard museum collection. But Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesperson James M. Chisholm wrote in a statement that the pillars will not be preserved, instead given to a local arts organization to be used for materials.

“We intend to donate the pillars to a local arts organization and allow them to repurpose the materials for their art programming,” Chisholm wrote.

Chisholm did not comment on where the pillars were currently located, and did not name the organization to which the pillars will be sent.

Lamport is not the only one who thought the pillars would be preserved.

Former Adams House Faculty Dean John G. “Sean” Palfrey ’67 said that he worked with multiple University committees that ultimately decided to preserve the original pillars.

“It’s a complex history of race and whatever, so they have not disposed of them, but hopefully they will be available to historians

to see what history wanted to pose it and now what we’re doing,” Palfrey said. “I actually was very pleased with that resolution.”

Chisholm declined to comment on the internal processes leading to the pillars’ removal.

Adams Faculty Deans Salmaan Keshavjee and Mercedes C. “Mercy” Becerra ’91 did not respond to a request for an interview about the decision.

When Adams House alumni returned to campus this weekend to see the new renovations, many who were undergraduates during the time of The Crimson’s investigation said they were curious to see what the house had done with the fireplace.

Liam H. De Monaco ’24 lived in the A entryway of Westmorly Hall while the pillars were uncovered. De Monaco said he was glad that the house decided to remove the carvings.

“We were always like, ‘Ugh, that fireplace,’” De Monaco said. “I think they got rid of it, though, which is good.” “It seems for the best,” De Monaco said.

elyse.goncalves@thecrimson.com akshaya.ravi@thecrimson.com

“We’re supposed to keep working, but there’s no money to support that,” Willett said. “Our project staff at NIH say, according to them, nothing’s been terminated — so we’re having to send in progress reports, financial reports, as though there’s actually real money flowing, but it’s not.” The NIH has been awarding grants to some Harvard researchers since at least July after an earlier court order reversed a separate round of grant cuts. But the funds did not reach Harvard labs, because federal employees did not allow them to flow through a payment system that is controlled by Department of Government Efficiency officials. The funding freeze has hit the life sciences, which pull in hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government each year, especially hard.

HMS lost grants and contracts worth $230 million as a result of the Trump administration’s funding cuts, according to the school’s website. At HSPH, research funding was reduced from $200 million to $100 million for the 2025 fiscal year — essentially cutting the school’s federally funded research portfolio in half. To replace lost federal dollars, HSPH has drawn on its own reserves, debt and loans taken out from the University, and bridge funding out of a $250 million pool allocated by Harvard’s central administration. Harvard School of Public Health Professor Sarah M. Fortune, who is chair of the Department of Immunology and

FLOODING. Alewife

ZHANG — CRIMSON DESIGNER

In Photos: The 53rd Annual An Evening With Champions

BY GRACE E. YOON AND

SEPTEMBER 19, 2025

IN

THE REAL WORLD

TRUMP MAKES STATE VISIT TO THE UNITED KINGDOM

President Donald Trump began a two day state visit to the United Kingdom Wednesday, meeting with King Charles and members of the royal family. Trump appeared with the king to observe troops and watch a military parade. Trump also attended a banquet with the royal family and several tech CEOs, like Tim Cook of Apple, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, and Sam Altman of Open AI, according to the Associated Press. During the banquet, Trump spoke about the close relationship between the US and UK. On Thursday, Trump met with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to talk about issues such as trade and technology. Trump’s visit drew thousands of protestors in London, which also happened during Trump’s first state visit back to the UK back in 2019.

ABC SUSPENDS JIMMY KIMMEL SHOW

ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show Wednesday evening over remarks Kimmel made about the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. On his show, Kimmel said that Republicans were trying to distance themselves from Kirk’s shooter, Tyler Robinson, who he implied is a supporter of Trump. Republicans, however, said that Kimmel’s comments were inaccurate, as private messages from Robinson contained criticism of Kirk’s beliefs, according to The New York Times. Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, criticized Kimmel’s comments and threatened to take action against ABC before the suspension was announced.

UNITEDHEALTHCARE CEO SHOOTING SUSPECT LUIGI MANGIONE TERRORISM CHARGES DROPPED

A New York judge dismissed two state terrorism charges—including first-degree murder—against Luigi Mangione citing insufficient evidence, according to Bloomberg News. Mangione, who was accused of killing UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, Brian Thompson, still faces federal charges on top of New York State charges, which include second-degree murder. Prosecutors initially pursued terrorism charges to reflect the shooting’s societal impact, but the dismissal narrows the case without addressing broader societal implications. The dismissal of the highest state charges allows him to avoid a life sentence without parole, but his other charges can still place him in prison for up to 25 years each.

RESERVE CUTS INTEREST RATES

The Federal Reserve voted to lower interest rates Wednesday by a quarter percentage point. Fed chair Jerome H. Powell cited the recent slowdown in job growth this past summer as their reason for lowering interest rates. The Fed has kept interest rates steady this past year over concerns that inflation would rise resulting from President Donald Trump’s tariffs, though Powell said the impact on inflation has been minimal so far. Most officials expect that the Fed would cut interest rates further in their next meeting.

NEXT WEEK 3

What’s Next

Start every week with a preview of what’s on the agenda around Harvard University

Friday 9/19

MEET THE BEES WORKSHOP

Smith Campus Center, 2:30-3:30 p.m.

A beekeeping expert from Alvéole joins Harvard Common Spaces, the Food Literacy Project, the Office for Sustainability, and Harvard Real Estate to lead a workshop on all things bees, from Beekeeping 101 and an inside look at the active apiaries to an overview of the honey production process.

Saturday 9/20

GALLERY TALK: GERMAN EXPRES-

SIONIST DRAWINGS IN SKETCH, SHADE, SMUDGE

Harvard Art Museums, 1-1:30 p.m.

Curatorial fellow Peter Murphy presents a selection of drawings from German expressionist groups in this exploratory talk.

Sunday 9/21

MATERIALS LAB WORKSHOP: UN-

VEILING THE SCENTS AT THE COURT OF VERSAILLES, WITH ALEXIS KARL

Harvard Art Museums, 10am-1pm Inspired by two infamous figures from Versailles, Madame de Pompadour and Marie Antoinette, this workshop first takes a tour to François Boucher’s portrait in the galleries.

Monday 9/22

RELUCTANT HEROES? THE ETHICS OF PRAISE

Zoom Webinar, 5pm-6pm

Come hear Zoe A. Johnson King lecture on the ethics of public praise and the complex workings of gratitude, especially as it relates to the outpouring of public support for essential workers during COVID.

Tuesday 9/23

TASTE OF HARVARD SQUARE

Queen’s Head (lower level of Memorial Hall), 6pm-8pm

This event, sponsored by the Dean of Students Office, is a sampling platter of several Harvard Square food spots. This week’s head to head is bubble tea! Come for free Gong Cha and Kung Fu Tea, and cast your vote for which is best.

Wednesday 9/24

WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE?

Berkman Klein Center, Multipurpose Room, 12:30pm-1:30pm

Blaise Agüera y Arcas discusses his new book What is Intelligence? and unpacks his group’s research into how advanced technologies like AI can shed light on new ways to model relationships.

Thursday 9/24

Friday 9/25

ADELINE S. KIM — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Medical School Cuts 20% of Research Funding

STATE OF THE SCHOOL.

Dean

was instructed to cut back on research funding in address.

Harvard Medical School

Dean George Q. Daley ’82 said the University’s central administration had instructed him to cut spending on the Medical School’s research enterprise by at least 20 percent by the end of the fiscal year in his annual State of the School address Wednesday morning.

The school is “on track” to hit that target, Daley said.

Daley’s speech was a public nod to the continued uncertainty facing HMS even after a judge struck down the Trump administration’s funding freeze to Harvard at the beginning of the month. HMS has spent the past seven months reeling from funding cuts that froze approximately $230 million in grants to the school, which relies heavily on federal dollars.

Weeks after the judge’s order, with researchers still waiting to receive funds and the Trump administration vowing to appeal, the school has yet to see relief from the cuts. And the administration may try to slash budgets at agencies like the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation — or redirect funds toward its own political priorities.

Daley said he was reassured by bipartisan efforts in Congress to head off President Donald Trump’s proposals to decimate agency budgets, but that grim prospects for federal funding over the next few years meant the school would not back off from planned austerity measures.

“Given the dark clouds hanging over — not only Harvard’s federal grant dollars, but all of NIH — reducing our research spending and focusing on our most critical research is the responsible thing for us and other institutions to do,” he added.

Daley said he also worried the government would impose new limits on the reimburse -

ment rate that universities receive from the NIH to cover overhead costs — on the heels of a failed effort this spring to limit indirect cost reimbursements to 15 percent of direct research spending. If the lower cap had been in place last year, Harvard, which receives an average indirect cost rate of 69 percent, would have lost more than $100 million compared to what it actually took in.

An increase in the endowment tax, which Congress hiked from 1.4 percent to 8 percent this summer, will also cut into HMS’s revenue, Daley said.

He said that with federal sponsorships in limbo, HMS will place a “greater priority on securing non-federal sources of support.”

After federal funding for HMS’s M.D.-Ph.D. program was terminated, the school raised more than $8 million to support the program, according to Daley. He added that HMS received donations from almost 4,000 individuals since April — 700 of which had never donated to the school before.

Those contributions include a $30 million gift from philanthropist K. Lisa Yang to establish a new center to research

Memorial Church Reduces Programming Amid Budget Cuts

cuts are not off the table.

brain-body signaling, announced by Daley on Wednesday, and a roughly $19 million gift from billionaire Leonard V. Blavatnik, announced over the summer.

“As we contemplate the future of our research enterprise, we must bear in mind that the model of support from the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies is no longer a given,” Daley said. “Nor is it the only way that we will be able to succeed in the future.”

But lost federal funding will be hard to replace. In fiscal year 2024, HMS took in more than

$230 million from federal grants — representing 73 percent of research funding and nearly a third of operating revenue. The projected total for fiscal year 2025 increased to $251 million.

Over the short term, HMS is also drawing on bridge funding from Harvard’s central budget.

The University is set to contribute $90 million in research sustainability funding, which HMS plans to match with $120 million in bridge funds from the school’s level.

HMS projects that bridge funds — in combination with labs’ rainy day funds and de -

partmental discretionary funds — will make it possible for the school to sustain an average of 74 percent of federal sponsored research activity through the upcoming fiscal year. The funds will also allow HMS to support its M.D.-Ph.D. students and junior faculty for the rest of the year.

“I wish it could be more,” Daley said.

The Medical School is taking “proactive

Daley

“I

Daley did not refer to Trump by name. But he criticized the administration’s funding cuts and attacks on the credibility of scientists.

“When scientists are not respected, when scientific reasoning is not the basis for rendering sound policy on matters of public health, we again collectively become susceptible to the return of diseases which science itself had long eradicated,” Daley said.

Daley described the uncertainty and anxiety at HMS as painful, but said that restructuring would be necessary to confront a future where HMS could no longer rely on the federal government for support. “As heartrending as this is, we have to adjust,” he said.

Harvard’s Austerity Measures Put Library Renovations on Hold

Memorial Church will limit its student programs and public events as a result of University-wide budget cuts, Memorial Church Pusey Minister Matthew Ichihashi Potts wrote in his annual fall newsletter released in August.

The church will continue to hold worship every Sunday in addition to morning services during the week. But many of its student-oriented events will be held less frequently, Potts wrote. Public events, lectures, and volunteer projects will also be reduced, though Potts did not specify which events could be cut.

“The Memorial Church is not unimpacted by the severe budget pressures Harvard has experienced from external forces,” he wrote. “We have had to make cuts, and we will have to make many more throughout the year.”

Potts is the latest in a series of Harvard administrators who have announced cuts triggered by the University’s federal funding fight with the White House. Though a judge ruled on Wednesday that the freezing of over $2.6 billion in federal funding to Harvard was unconstitutional, the Trump administration is expected to appeal the decision.

The University is also under at least a dozen other congressional and department-level investigations for its response to antisemitism, ties to other countries, admissions practices, and broad accusations of racial discrimination — all of which threaten Harvard’s funding. Most damag-

ing, the University is now subject to an 8 percent endowment tax as part of Trump’s new tax law. That law alone could cost Harvard more than $2oo million every year. In the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, academic hiring has been paused and the Arts and Humanities division cut their non-personnel spending by roughly $1.95 million. Course CAs have also taken a pay cut, and undergraduate positions are being reduced. The Harvard Kennedy School has also laid off staff and ended office space leases.

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 said in July that the combined effect of grant cuts and the endowment tax will likely cost Harvard up to $1 billion annually.

But Memorial Church is unique among affected programs for being a spiritual and religious, rather than academic, space. Most campus religious leaders volunteer their time, according to Potts. Other religious leaders are affiliated with independent organizations like Harvard Hillel that do not rely on University funding.

“I don’t see the University turn away from supporting students in their religious lives or in their spiritual and moral and ethical formation,” Potts said in an interview. “But University-at-large, there are new budgetary pressures, and depending upon the way these pressures interface with the budgets we have, each of our respective offices and organizations are having to figure out how to respond.”

The University has not laid off any Memorial Church staff yet, but Potts added that personnel

“It will depend upon continuing conversations with other colleagues and with what we determine to be the full impact of the budgetary pressures,” he said.

But the church has already made changes to popular student programs in the first wave of cuts.

They reduced the frequency of regular programming such as “After School Snack,” an event where Potts and his family invite students to their residence in the afternoons to socialize and enjoy baked goods. These gatherings were held every week in past years, and will be scheduled less frequently now, according to Potts.

The church will also reduce spending on event catering for events such as monthly communion service dinners.

“Dinners might be not quite as fancy as they’ve been in the past,” Potts said. “But we’re still going to gather. We’re still going to eat and share time together and share a meal together, which really is the heart of the thing, right?”

Potts added that, despite the cuts, there are also new initiatives the church will be supporting this year, including a new presidential initiative on Interfaith Engagement led by Rabbi Getzel Davis.

“These pressures are pressures, but we’re going to continue doing the work that we believe in and that we believe serves the student population at Harvard and the larger Harvard community and the broader mission of the University,” he said.

sebastian.connolly@thecrimson.com julia.karabolli@thecrimson.com

BY SOPHIE GAO AND ALEXANDRA M. KLUZAK CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Harvard has paused plans to renovate four University libraries ahead of its 400th anniversary in 2036 as part of a temporary halt to capital projects amid an ongoing fight with the White House over federal funding.

Renovation plans for Widener, Lamont, Pusey, and Houghton libraries were announced in April 2024, but construction had not begun on the first project before Harvard’s funding battle with Washington caused the project to come to a halt.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences paused spending projects deemed “non-essential” in April after the Trump administration paused $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard.

Harvard Library Spokesperson Tenzin Dickie wrote in a statement that as a result of the capital projects pause, no additional steps have been taken toward construction after library administrators completed a feasibility study for the project in 2023.

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 warned over the summer that a combination of federal challenges to the University’s finances, including a drastic increase to the endowment tax and research funding cuts, could cost up to $1 billion each year. While researchers were notified on Wednesday that some funding would be reinstated, top officials are negotiating a legal settlement with the administration said to include a $500 million payment

from Harvard. According to the 2024 project announcement by Vice President for the Harvard Library Martha J. Whitehead, the plans include a new “discovery center” at Widener, updating Lamont’s infrastructure and furnishings, and making Pusey and Houghton more accessible.

The pause on capital spending also impacts the Harvard-Yenching Library — the largest American academic library for East Asian studies housed in a building on Divinity Avenue built in 1930, according to the Harvard Property Information Resource Center — which has struggled for years with aging facilities.

Staff at the library had hoped to launch a capital campaign for the library’s renovation, but Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute James Robson said any possible renovation campaign for Harvard-Yenching is also indefinitely delayed.

“If I walked into the President’s office now and started discussing this large project, which would be somewhere in the $200 to $250 million range — it’s a big project — I would probably be given a polite exit to the door,” Robson said, adding that the institute would be prepared to make a sizable financial contribution.

In a 2024 memo detailing the building’s renovation needs, Harvard-Yenching librarian Yang Jidong wrote that the space lacks functional air conditioning to prevent mold growth on books, in addition to missing office space and an elevator.

“The aging building at 2 Divinity Avenue poses many challenges to the operation and future of

this world-renowned library and the largest ethnic and non-Western language collection on the Harvard campus,” Yang wrote in the memo, which was obtained by The Crimson. Robson, also a Harvard professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, said that while the institute contributes $2 million each year to expand the collection, Harvard has a responsibility to maintain the facilities.

“I think anybody now would agree that that’s just not the case,” he said, describing the library as “dilapidated.”

“There’s also no way for it to showcase the real gems of the collection,” Robson said of the library.

“It’s just — no study spaces. It’s just not a welcoming library, or well known to the undergraduates, either,” he added. In a statement, Dickie highlighted the library’s ongoing outreach programs — including semesterly research orientation sessions for the library’s collections.

“Like many historic facilities, the 2 Divinity Avenue building poses challenges for both Harvard Library and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences,” Dickie wrote. “In partnership with FAS, Harvard Library continues to address these challenges and is committed to stewarding the Harvard-Yenching Library collection, maintaining proper environmental conditions, and planning for longer-term improvements for students, faculty, researchers, and staff.”

Harvard Medical School Dean George Q. Daley ‘82, pictured here in 2012, delivered the address. FARHEEN J. MUKARRAM — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Daley said he

COLLEGE ADMIN

David Deming on Harvard Admissions

EXPERT TURNED DEAN.

David Deming researched admissions policies as an economist at HKS.

Before he stepped into his new job as Harvard College dean in July, David J. Deming was a vocal scholar of elite institutions’ admissions processes, investigating how legacy preferences, athletic recruitment, and testing policies benefit wealthier students in admission to Ivy League schools like Harvard.

But Deming — leading admissions expert turned undergraduate administrator — has given no indication that he will apply his expertise in advising Dean of Admissions William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 while serving as College dean. Deming declined to comment on whether he would play a role in the College’s admissions process. Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesperson James M. Chisholm also declined to comment on Deming’s involvement and wrote in a statement that Fitzsimmons will continue to report directly to FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra.

But as a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and Graduate School of Education, Deming became a leading voice on how to create equal opportunities for applicants to top universities, especially as calls to overhaul

Harvard’s admissions practices intensified after the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against affirmative action.

Documents released in the lawsuit — filed by anti-affirmative action group Students for Fair Admissions — detailed the extent of Harvard’s preference for legacy applicants, athletes, and children of Harvard employees, leading to a wave of backlash from lawmakers and politicians in Washington, D.C.

Since then, several states across the country have passed bills intended to ban legacy admissions — Massachusetts has been a notable exception — and recent incoming Harvard classes have consistently reported an unfavorable outlook on legacy admissions in The Crimson’s annual survey of freshmen. Without a concrete mandate, Harvard has neither announced nor publicly indicated that it plans to get rid of its skew toward legacy applicants and athletes. And while Deming has advocated for changes to Ivy League admissions practices, his scholarship does not recommend a ban on legacy admissions.

Deming, an economist who studies social mobility, economic inequality, and the labor market, specializes in researching the effects of higher education. His team’s studies have shown that the effect of banning legacy admissions would lead to a similarly wealthy class of admitted students — only with fewer family ties.

In a study published in July

2023, Deming and his co-authors — Raj Chetty ’00 and John N. Friedman ’02, economics professors at Harvard and Brown University — found that when applicants from the top 1 percent of family incomes have comparable standardized test scores to those from low-income families, Ivyplus colleges are almost twice as likely to admit the wealthier candidate.

cants as representative of “unearned intergenerational privilege,” but wrote that abolishing it would not level the playing field at schools like Harvard. If legacy admissions were banned, he argued, elite institutions would merely supplant rich legacy applicants with rich non-legacy applicants — who still have disproportionate opportunities to become a recruit-

The discrepancy, they wrote, could be attributed to three factors: legacy admissions, “non-academic” factors such as extracurriculars or leadership capacity, and athletic recruitment — all of which tip the scales in favor of the wealthiest students who can afford to boost those aspects of their application.

Months later, Deming discussed the implications of his research in the Atlantic. He labeled the preference for legacy appli-

Dean Deming Vows to Protect Conservative Students

Harvard College Dean David J. Deming condemned the murder of Charlie Kirk and pledged to protect conservative undergraduates on campus at a gathering of Republican and right-leaning student groups on Friday.

“I’m sure Charlie Kirk was an important figure to you — you may be grieving, it may be something you’re thinking about,” Deming said to a crowd of roughly 30 students. “I want you to know that we at the College are here to talk with you and to support you in any way we can.” Planned over the summer as a celebration for incoming conservative students, the event took on a more somber tone after Kirk, a right-wing activist, was shot on Wednesday during a rally at Utah Valley University.

The assassination sparked fears that political animosity could erupt into violence on other campuses and in public spaces. College Republican groups across the country pressed administrators for increased protection. At Boston University, the student Republican group issued an open letter demanding “appropriate security” at the club’s events. During his speech, Deming affirmed the University’s commitment to safety precautions at events and said that incidents of violence on campus were “extremely rare.”

“We want you to feel free not just to speak your mind, but to be physically safe,” Deming said. “I hope you will always feel that way despite what’s going on in the world.” Kirk built his political brand by taking aim at liberalism in American universities, but Deming said Kirk’s enthusiasm for publicly debating his opponents could be a model for Harvard’s own civil discourse initiatives.

“What most stands out in the context of the College and what we’re trying to do here at Harvard is, here’s a person who went out of his way to find people he disagreed with, bring them forward, give them a platform, and have a conversation with them,” Dem-

ing said. Evan J. Doerr ’28, chair of the Conservative Coalition at the Institute of Politics, said in an interview at the event that, while he was grateful for Deming’s remarks, administrators should put their energy toward combating the social and academic isolation of conservatives on campus.

“I don’t think most conservatives feel physically unsafe on campus,” Doerr said. “I do, however, think there’s work to be done to help accommodate conservative students broadly around the university.”

Kirk’s death incited a wave of calls for open dialogue from both Democrats and Republicans, who said the murder imperiled the tradition of civil debate across partisan divides.

But it also spurred heated rhetoric from some Republican politicians, who denounced perceived enemies on the left and urged the punishment of anyone who celebrated Kirk’s death. In a video address Wednesday night, President Trump said it was a “dark moment for America” and linked Kirk’s killing to “radical left political violence.”

The Harvard Republican Club wrote in a Wednesday statement posted to its Instagram account that Kirk was killed because he challenged “the dominance of the left in academia and youth politics.”

“Like the attempt on President Trump’s life last July, Kirk’s death is the result of a concerted media campaign against the young right,” the post read. “We urge President Trump to take immediate, decisive action to protect our people and ensure justice is served.”

Top-level administrators at Harvard — which embraced neutrality guidelines last year that caution against taking political stances or issuing “statements of empathy” — have so far steered clear of public statements on Kirk’s killing.

But it drew condemnation from Harvard student groups across ideological lines. The Harvard College Democrats condemned the killing in a statement, with organizers calling on the public to “come together to end political violence.”

“Universities in particular must be places of free dialogue

and open expression, without fear of violence or retribution,” the group wrote on its Instagram account. “Do not allow something like this to happen again.”

The IOP Executive Team, a four-member student board, also denounced the assassination in a Thursday statement and indicated they were working with HKS security staff to “ensure the physical safety and emotional wellbeing of all students and speakers” at IOP events.

And during an appearance at a John F. Kennedy Jr. forum event on Thursday, IOP Director Setti Warren mourned Kirk’s assassination and called for civility in political spaces.

“We have a tremendous amount of work to do to infuse the openness to disagree with one another without being disagreeable — or even violent,” Warren said.

After Deming’s brief address on Friday, students mingled over hors d’oeuvres with members of the Republican Club, the Conservative Coalition, and conservative campus magazine The Salient.

“We’re so grateful to the deans of the College for helping us plan this,” Salient president Julia G. Grinstead ’27 said. “I think that it’s just really amazing to have an event that shows that Harvard has a space for conservative students, and that it’s something to celebrate.”

The Friday event — which was hosted at the home of Dean of Students Thomas G. Dunne — was attended by several other College administrators, including Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh and Associate Dean for Student Engagement Jason R. Meier.

“It was nice to hear the administration talk about conservative concerns,” Evan T. Elling ’29 said. “They won’t announce it in their speeches, but it was good to hear them talk about it in here.”

Jerry A. Comar ’29, a conservative student, called the administrators’ attempts to allay concerns about safety “very comforting,” but said he was not scared by Kirk’s assassination.

“The only thing I fear is God,” Comar said. “So anything that happens, I’m not really worried. I don’t want to live with fear.”

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ed athlete or maintain stronger extracurriculars. In other words, the makeup of classes would not meaningfully change.

Instead, Deming called for greater transparency and accountability among the nation’s elite institutions in order to achieve progress on economic diversity across campuses. He wrote that the Department of Education should require applicants to report their family income on college applications,

rather than only on financial aid documents.

“Better income data would ratchet up public pressure on highly selective colleges, whose leaders care deeply about their reputation,” he wrote, adding that substantive reform would only come if the public pressured selective universities into “valuing economic diversity as much as other forms of diversity.”

“That will make a much bigger difference than ending legacy admissions ever could,” Deming wrote. In recent months, the Trump administration has increased reporting requirements for Harvard, along with all other American universities, requiring them to submit data illustrating that they do not consider race in admissions.

The White House has not directly focused on factors influencing the socioeconomic makeup of elite institutions, instead taking aim at schools that allegedly utilize “overt and hidden racial proxies” to consider race in admissions.

In addition to affirmative action reforms, Harvard College admissions has undergone a rare period of turbulence in response to sweeping test-optional policies during the Covid-19 pandemic. Harvard announced in April 2024 that it would reinstate its standardized testing requirement beginning with the Class of 2029, after four years of test-optional admissions.

In its press release, Harvard cited a study co-authored by Deming, which found that SAT

scores were a strong predictor of academic success among undergraduates.

Deming has been a vocal proponent of requiring standardized testing for college applicants, and is strongly against applicants “super-scoring” — or combining section scores across sittings for a single, higher total — their results on the SAT or ACT.

Because students from wealthier families are more likely to retake the SAT or ACT than peers of lower-income backgrounds and thereby improve their scores, colleges ought to consider requiring applicants to submit every test score, Deming wrote.

Though Harvard’s admissions office does not compile a superscore for applicants, it evaluates an applicant’s highest test scores in sections across testing dates, according to the Harvard College admissions website.

Deming argued in a March 2024 Atlantic article that when colleges evaluate applicants in the absence of SAT or ACT scores, “the remaining measures used to assess applicants are even more biased.”

“The SAT and ACT aren’t perfect, but they are the best way to identify talented low-income students who can succeed at highly selective colleges,” he wrote. “Their universality is their virtue. To make college admissions more equitable, we should test more, not less.”

Students and Faculty Hold Vigil To Mourn Killing of Charlie Kirk

sassination of Melissa Hortman and attempted killings of Trump and Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. Kirk, said Paris, did not have “particularly extreme views.”

More than 100 students and faculty gathered on the steps of Widener Library for a Saturday night vigil to honor the life of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk and condemn his slaying last week.

At the vigil, which was organized by Harvard Law School students and publicized by various conservative student groups, speakers described Kirk’s activism as a model for vigorous debate on college campuses.

Mason R. Laney, a third-year student at HLS and event organizer, said that it was particularly important to honor Kirk at Harvard because he defended conservative beliefs that were often the “minority point of view” at universities.

“We felt it important that not only we host an event like this, but we do it here at Harvard, because Harvard needs to remember Charlie Kirk,” Laney said.

“And it’s why we have to do in public — it’s why we have to own what we believe, because that’s what he did.”

Kirk emerged as a prominent voice on the American right after his 2012 founding of Turning Point USA, a nonprofit that trains high school and college students to promote conservative viewpoints in their institutions. He made frequent public appearances at conferences and schools, where he often debated liberal students, and spearheaded a “Professor Watchlist” that profiles academics for allegedly spreading “leftist propaganda” in their classrooms.

After Kirk was shot during a public debate at Utah Valley University on Wednesday, public figures on both sides of the aisle hastened to condemn his killing as an act of political violence. But Kirk’s death also turned up the rhetorical heat in some quarters, with some posters celebrating his assassination on social media — and nearly two dozen congressional Republicans joining President Donald Trump in blaming the “radical left.”

Benjamin R. Paris, a third-year student at HLS, said in a speech at the Saturday vigil that Kirk’s death joined a “lamentable” trend of political violence, including the as-

“If somebody cannot go to a college campus, the place of learning, the public square, the most reasonable public square there should be, and speak his mind, say things that people have believed for thousands of years, say simple, honest truths the Founding Fathers have laid as the moral foundation of our society — if you can’t say that without risking life or limb, America is in a very dark place,” Paris said.

Top-level administrators at

target of opprobrium or disgust,” said Sachs, who is the faculty adviser of the Harvard Federalist Society, one of the groups that promoted the vigil.

He argued that affiliates should not have to adopt or defend Kirk’s viewpoints in order to speak out against the killing.

“I feel that no one here should feel it their burden to defend everything that other people might believe in order to mourn his unjust death,” he said.

HLS professor Randall L. Kennedy — an advocate of free speech at Harvard who teaches criminal law and race relations — did not speak to Kirk’s political legacy, but offered condolences to the group.

Harvard have not issued public statements on Kirk’s killing, but several student groups across the University condemned it as an act of political violence. On Friday, College Dean David J. Deming pledged to protect conservative undergraduates and ensure their safety at a gathering of right-leaning student groups.

The motives of Kirk’s suspected killer, 22-year-old Tyler J. Robinson of Utah, remain obscure. Robinson inscribed his bullet casings with phrases drawn from video game slang, including a sexual meme and the words “hey fascist! CATCH!” — but it is unclear whether his killing of Kirk on Wednesday was driven by political beliefs.

In a speech at Saturday’s vigil, HLS professor Stephen E. Sachs ’02 said he was initially unsure whether to accept the invitation to speak, in part because of the predominantly liberal makeup of Harvard’s students and faculty.

“I was apprehensive that in a place like Harvard, mourning Charlie Kirk would make one a

“It’s my great hope that in the days, in the weeks, and in the months to come, we can offer one another solace in this deeply troubled moment,” Kennedy said. Economics professor Jason Furman ’92 attended but did not speak at the vigil. He said in an interview afterward that he joined the vigil to better understand the pain students on campus may be feeling in the wake of Kirk’s murder. He said that his own views are “rather different” from those embraced by conservative groups at Harvard, but he approved of what he described as the groups’ new prominence in campus life over the past year.

“My perception is there are more conservatives who are out, loud, and proud,” Furman said. “And I think that’s a very constructive thing.” Before dispersing, organizers held a moment of silence for Kirk and lit candles as dusk settled over Harvard Yard.

BY CASSIDY M. CHENG,

CAM N. SRIVASTAVA, AND ELIAS M. VALENCIA CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

BY SAMUEL A. CHURCH AND ELISE A. SPENNER CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

BY CAM N. SRIVASTAVA AND TANYA J. VIDHUN CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Harvard Faculty Are Adapting to AI in the Classroom

BY WILLIAM

When students traipsed back into Harvard’s lecture halls this fall, some encountered a newly analog campus: seated exams, no-laptop policies during class, and assignments handed in on paper.

The changes were the accumulated result of three years that have tested academic integrity policies at Harvard and nationwide, ever since ChatGPT opened up a Pandora’s box of summarized class readings, churned-out code, and on-demand term papers.

And if there was any doubt that artificial intelligence is on the mind of Harvard’s faculty and administrators, David J. Deming — the College’s new dean — greeted freshmen at Convocation by urging them to prepare for a world revolutionized by generative AI.

“Young, educated people like you are already the heaviest users of AI, and you are creative and open-minded enough to figure out the best ways to use it, too,” Deming said.

There’s no question that AI has become ubiquitous in Harvard classrooms. Nearly 80 percent of respondents to The Crimson’s annual Faculty of Arts and Sciences survey in spring 2025 said they had seen coursework they knew or believed was produced with AI — a sharp rise from two years before, when more than half of respondents said they hadn’t received AI-generated work.

But it can be hard for faculty to spot AI-made work; just 14 percent of respondents to the FAS survey said they were “very confident” in their ability to distinguish between AI and non-AI submissions. A Pennsylvania State University study found that humans can only identify AI-generated text roughly 53 percent of the time — barely better than flipping a coin. AI detection programs can be unreliable. And as large language models become increasingly powerful, students have become open about how constantly they use them. Now, three years after ChatGPT was launched, Harvard professors are reimagining how they teach. Some are encouraging students to embrace AI to crunch data, translate primary sources, and brush up on course material before exams. Others are trying to AI-proof their classes with in-person exams and assignments. Whatever their approach to AI, many Harvard instructors say there’s no going back to how they

used to teach.

“It doesn’t make sense to prohibit AI and then assign take home essays,” Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh wrote in an email. Claybaugh, who has used her position to lead a push to make Harvard’s undergraduate curriculum more rigorous, wrote that it would now fall to faculty to prepare students for a future shaped by AI. “AI is a powerful tool in the hands of someone who knows how to evaluate its work — and that means, someone who knows how to do that work themselves,” she wrote. “We need to make sure that students are learning that.”

No Blanket Policy

“There have always been shortcuts,” then-College Dean Rakesh Khurana told The Crimson in December 2022, less than a month after ChatGPT was released. Khurana said it would be up to students to decide whether to use the new technology as a shortcut — or to keep learning the hard way. As for penalties, he said, “we leave decisions around pedagogy and assignments and evaluation up to the faculty.”

But behind the scenes, administrators were puzzling out a strategy for Harvard to adapt to an invention with unpredictable impacts and ever-expanding applications.

In 2023, FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra — still in her first semester in the role — turned to Physics and Astronomy professor Christopher W. Stubbs as an adviser on artificial intelligence. According to Stubbs, the FAS has approached generative AI as “an experiment in progress.”

“The fact that it is moving so fast imposes on the faculty the need to stay current and stay up to date,” Stubbs said, “and if it is changing too fast, I think that, again, argues against trying to issue a blanket policy.”

Though College administrators have said submitting AI-generated work without attribution violates its Honor Code, it gives instructors flexibility on how to treat AI use in their own classrooms. The University’s initial guidelines on AI, issued in summer 2023, also nod to academic integrity concerns but provide no specifics on what to do when students use AI for their coursework.

A set of FAS guidelines address classroom AI use more directly, providing three draft policies with varying levels of tolerance: a “maximally restrictive” policy, a “fully-encouraging” policy, and a pol-

icy somewhere in between.

Since they were introduced in summer 2023, the template policies have since proliferated across College syllabi. The Crimson analyzed AI policies from the 20 most popular courses at the College in fall 2025 that have been taught every fall since 2022 and have syllabi from each year available online. In fall 2022, none of the 20 sampled syllabi included any mention of AI or ChatGPT. Three years later, the numbers have flipped; all but two of the sampled courses now have policies regulating use of the technology.

Most of the sampled course policies allow students to use AI, at least to some extent. For instance, the syllabus for Stat 100 says the course “encourages students to explore the use of generative artificial intelligence” in order to “gain conceptual and theoretical insights, as well as assistance with coding.”

Six of the sampled courses — Chemistry 17, GenEd 1074, English 10, Life Sciences 20, Mathematics 55, and Spanish 10 — include outright bans on the use of AI. And the majority of the courses discourage AI use on at least some assignments.

Some faculty have even changed how they evaluate students to AI-proof their assessments. History professor Jesse E. Hoffnung-Garskof ’93 said he swapped out the final paper he used to assign in his undergraduate course on immigration law in favor of an oral exam.

“I realized that the assignment that we were using for many years was just too easy to create a response to with a large language model,” he said.

Making Harvard ‘AI-Resilient’

Three weeks into his popular undergraduate course on Bob Dylan, Classics professor Richard F. Thomas asked a generative AI model to produce lyrics that mimicked the famed artist, whom he calls a “modern classic.” The output, Thomas said, fell far short of Dylan’s masterpieces. But that was the point.

“It could never — it will never, in my view — be a substitute for what the human mind at its highest and most interesting level produces,” Thomas said.

Thomas isn’t the only Harvard professor adopting AI. Some instructors have rolled out chatbots that were fed specific content to tailor them to their courses. Computer Science 50 professor David J. Malan ’99 began offering a chatbot for CS50 students in fall 2023. Since then, other popular un-

dergraduate courses have followed suit. Economics lecturer Maxim Boycko, who teaches Economics 1010a: “Intermediate Microeconomics,” said he introduced a chatbot this fall so students can ask questions without worrying whether they are “asking a stupid question before your peers or in front of a tutor.” Life and Physical Sciences A: “Foundational Chemistry and Biology” also introduced a tutor chatbot in 2024.

Other instructors have asked students to use AI as homework.

Peter K. Bol, a professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, asks students to complete a weekly AI assignment in his course Gen Ed 1136: “Power and Civilization: China.” One entailed using an AI platform to translate a centuries-old Chinese text, then ask the model follow-up questions to better understand the topic. Then the students discuss their experiences in class.

“Everyone is going off and doing something slightly different, and so they got exposed to each other’s ideas,” Bol said. In some fields, instructors see training students in AI as an essential part of preparing them to conduct their own research. Statistics lecturer James G. Xenakis, who said he encourages his students to use the technology, said that no other technology has accelerated his research more than OpenAI’s GPT models because they can rapidly process and reinterpret data.

“My biggest concern with AI is that kids aren’t learning how to use it as well as they could be,” Xenakis said.

The Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, which provides ped-

agogical training and resources for instructors, has spent the past several years helping instructors craft AI tools, develop new assignments, and running workshops on how to effectively leverage AI for teaching.

One of the most popular requests from faculty has been help with creating AI tutor chatbots tailored to their courses, according to Madeleine Woods, a project lead for AI at the Bok Center.

Lately, there has been a trend away from requests for all-purpose tutor chatbots toward more specialized applications of AI, like transcribing oral exams or debugging code, Woods said.

“Increasingly, we’re finding people can be frustrated with the quality of the output,” Woods said. “So people are kind of moving away from this anthropomorphic one-size-fits-all.”

The Bok Center has also fielded requests to make assignments AI-proof — though Woods said the center prefers the term “AI-resilient.” Those asks reflect how some professors remain deeply skeptical about whether AI belongs in the classroom.

For some faculty, the concern is that students will use AI to cheat.

In The Crimson’s annual senior survey last spring, 30 percent of respondents said they had submitted AI-generated work as their own.

Some also said they were concerned that using AI would undermine the learning process for their students.

“With a three hour in-class exam, we test memorization, speed, and to some extent luck. These skills are not well aligned with the skills our graduate students need to be successful in research,” Schwartz said. Hoffnung-Garskof, the History professor, said he thinks Harvard students have been driven to AI not because they trust the work it produces, but because they’re juggling too many demands on their time — a common concern among faculty who worry that students are prioritizing extracurriculars over coursework.

“They feel overwhelmed. My sense here is that it’s about increasing the amount that you want to accomplish in a period of time,” Hoffnung-Garskof said.

“The Harvard students that I encounter don’t really think today AI can write a better paper than you all can,” he said. “Most of you are too committed to your own excellence to trust a machine.”

“It’s interesting to think about, just as Frankenstein’s monster is interesting to think about. But giving it a central role in education — at least, in humanities education — seems to me a terrible mistake,” English professor Deidre S. Lynch said. “A denial of everything that makes human beings humans.” In his quantum field theory course, Physics professor Matthew D. Schwartz used to give take-home final exams. One problem asked students to compute the effect of supersymmetry on the muon magnetic moment. But AI platforms’ increasing capabilities have forced him to administer in-person exams instead — to the detriment of students’ learning.

BRIANA HOWARD PAGÁN — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

C. MAO, VERONICA H. PAULUS, AND VICTORIA D. RENGEL CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Police Union Says Harvard Withheld Report on Officers’ Dispute

NLRB. Harvard’s police union went before the National Labor Relations Board for public arguments.

BY MEGAN L. BLONIGEN, AMANN S. MAHAJAN, AND LAUREL M. SHUGART CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

The union representing Harvard’s police officers accused the University of withholding the report from an investigation of a dispute between two officers, making their first public arguments in front of the National Labor Relations Board since the complaint was filed last year.

The Harvard University Police Association’s complaint stems from a dispute last April between HUPD Captain John F. Fulkerson and former detective Kelsey L. Whelihan over the handling of a reported sexual assault between a Harvard undergraduate and non-student. After she said that Fulkerson mishandled the sexual assault case, Whelihan left the department this March.

The University launched an investigation into the procedural handling of the response after the officers’ dispute — contracting investigators from the Ed Davis Company, a Boston-based private security firm, to compile the report.

But when the HUPA requested a copy of the report in October, the University refused.

The HUPA’s NLRB complaint accuses Harvard of “failing and refusing to bargain collectively and in good faith” by refusing to provide the report from the investigation, according to an unredacted copy obtained by The Crimson.

The complaint asks the NLRB to require Harvard to provide the union with the full report, and lawyers for the HUPA argued that it was a “fairly straightfor-

ward case” in the Tuesday hearing. Zachary See, the University’s associate director of the Office of Labor and Employee Relations, claimed that the union’s requests

were too broad. See asked HUPA to provide a more specific reason for requesting the report in March, but was unsatisfied with the union’s answer. According to See, the union provided “a reiter-

ation of the initial broad request.”

The HUPA argued that they needed the report “to ensure Detective Whelihan’s current and prior rights in the matter are protected,” according to a March

College Reviews Students Under Hazing Policy

BY SAMUEL A. CHURCH AND

C. GONCALVES

After the federal government enacted an anti-hazing law late last year, Harvard College stepped up its enforcement of hazing policies — and launched at least one investigation into a student organization.

The Stop Campus Hazing Act, passed by Congress in December 2024, requires universities nationwide to compile reports on hazing incidents, formalize hazing investigation processes, and name student organizations investigated for suspected hazing. College spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo wrote in a statement to The Crimson that the College will investigate every report of hazing and“administrators will intervene if they witness something” suspected to be hazing. Palumbo cited existing state requirements that require witnesses to report instances of hazing. While the reporting requirement is not new, the federal law may expand the range of conduct that could be investigated as hazing, which it defines as any potentially risky actions “committed in the course of an initiation into, an affiliation with, or the maintenance of membership in, a student organization.” Both laws also stipulate that activities may be considered hazing even if students participate in them willingly.

Many Harvard student organizations have long traditions of initiation tasks, ranging from being led through Harvard Yard while blindfolded to jumping into the Charles River to making students wear costumes in public. It remains unclear which activities Harvard will classify or investigate as hazing — and

how that determination will be made.

Since rolling out its new policies, the College has already conducted at least one investigation into a student organization over suspected hazing. At the start of the fall semester, College officials looked into the practices of the Crimson Key Society, a recognized student organization that leads orientation events and campus tours.

While participating in a back-to-school scavenger hunt in Harvard Yard during orientation, CKS members dressed in costumes were approached by two proctors who reported the interaction to College administrators, according to a student affiliated with the organization.

The students involved were then asked to meet with College officials, who later determined the situation did not constitute hazing under updated government guidelines or Harvard policy, according to a different CKS member.

The two students were granted anonymity to share information about the incident because they were not authorized to speak by CKS.

A spokesperson for CKS wrote in a statement to The Crimson that the club opposes hazing “in every form.”

“Two members of our organization were stopped in the Yard because of their goofy outfits. Upon investigation, the DSO definitively cleared Key of any wrongdoing,” they wrote. “We have always acted in accordance with Harvard and Massachusetts guidelines, and we greatly appreciate the work the College is doing to keep this campus safe and fun.”

Palumbo, the College spokesperson, declined to comment on the specific investigation into CKS, citing a standing policy not

to comment on student matters.

Under the new federal law, the College and Harvard’s other schools will publicly release the names of all student organizations that violated hazing policies between July and December 2025. The report — which will be published in January 2026 — will include the date and nature of suspected hazing incidents as well as the findings of Harvard’s investigations.

Hazing incidents will also be reported to the federal government under the Clery Act each year.

Harvard also launched a new hazing prevention website that enables students to immediately report incidents. Affiliates can also report suspected hazing directly to the Office of Academic Integrity and Student Conduct, the Office of Student Engagement, or by notifying resident deans and proctors.

The website includes several links to pages created by StopHazing, a private anti-hazing advocacy group. One infographic provides examples of potential hazing, including threats

and verbal abuse, sleep deprivation, “greeting others in a specific manner,” and “expecting items to always be in one’s possession.”

Harvard College debuted its new policies at a mandatory training for student group leaders earlier this month. During the hour-long session, College officials walked attendees through new federal law, College policies, and reporting requirements.

While Harvard required leaders of the more than 500 recognized student organizations to attend the training, the policy did not apply to unrecognized clubs.

Still, members of final clubs — Harvard’s exclusive unrecognized social organizations, which have a long history of hazing — may still individually be found responsible for hazing in incidents reported to the College, according to Associate Dean of Student Engagement Jason R. Meier.

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email from HUPA’s labor representative Alan J. McDonald. Whelihan is no longer a HUPA member.

See also argued that the union was not entitled to the full report because many of the details were confidential due to the reported sexual assault. He claimed the HUPA did not provide sufficient justification for his office to disclose confidential information.

“There was no confidentiality agreement that would have sufficed for this,” See said.

Joseph P. McConnell, a labor lawyer representing Harvard, supported the claim — arguing that Harvard did not have to furnish a copy of the report because its sensitivity outweighed its relevance to the union. Whelihan was a member of the HUPA at the time, but has since resigned from HUPD. Fulkerson, a commanding officer, is not a union member.

“The scales tilt in favor of confidentiality in a case like this, your honor,” McConnell said in the Tuesday hearing.

Still, HUPA intends to move forward with the case — despite not representing Whelihan or Fulkerson. The union argued that obtaining the report is still necessary, citing that it may contain comments on the performance of union members that they may need in the future.

Spokespeople for the HUPA and HUPD did not respond to requests for comment.

Though the judge did not issue a ruling on Tuesday, he requested briefs from both parties by mid-October, and will likely make a ruling in the weeks after. Either party can decide to appeal the judge’s final decision to the NLRB — but the wait could be long, since the Board currently lacks a quorum to issue decisions.

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and Infectious Diseases at HSPH, says she has been advising faculty in her department to assume that money from federal grants is not coming back.

“The government does not show us any intent of honoring financial commitments that they made previously,” Fortune said.

Despite the promise of restored funding, researchers say it may be hard to rebuild trust in their projects as long as funding sources remain unstable.

Fortune said that the funding freeze had jeopardized Harvard’s ability to attract and retain post-doctoral and graduate talent, since postdoc and grad student salaries are largely funded by federal grants.

“When those people disappear, even if the money comes back, that expertise does not come back, and it is extremely damaging, and it will take us years to recover,” Fortune said.

HMS otolaryngology professor

Jeffrey R. Holt is a principal investigator at a Boston Children’s Hospital lab that conducts research on the genetics of hearing loss and develops related treatments. He estimates that 75 percent of the lab’s funding comes from the NIH, with the remaining coming from philanthropy and private foundations.

At least in the short term, Holt said, his lab’s work will continue — but the postdoctoral research program that fed into his lab is slated to be cut next year because of funding losses. The continued unpredictability of access to federal funds, he said, was making researchers “uneasy.”

“We’ve been doing this for 25 years now, and we’re really at the cusp of making a big difference in people’s lives,” Holt said. “It’s like the rug is being pulled out from under us.”

“It’s just gut wrenching,” he added.

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Charisma Chen ’26 Elected First Marshal

Charisma W. Chen ’26 and Mohan A. Hathi ’26 will serve as the first and second class marshals for the Class of 2026, according to five people familiar with the decision.

The pair were selected after two rounds of voting, which were open to all members of the Class of 2026. Chen, a Government concentrator in Lowell House, and Hathi, an Integrative Biology concentrator in Mather House, will lead the Senior Class Committee, which is responsible for organizing class-wide events in May leading up to Commencement.

Chen and Hathi, a Crimson News editor, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about their selection. Six other seniors, those who placed third through eighth in the class marshal election, will serve on the Committee as program marshals.

expected until later Thursday or on Friday.The results will be announced to the Class of 2026 on Friday afternoon. Harvard College Fund Marshals, which who had to apply through a requires a separate application process, were also notified on Thursday. The fund marshals for the class are Said El Kadi Paluan ’26, Ethan P. Hsiao ’26, Cassie B. Liu ’26, Isabella S. Mandis ’26, Shukria Yassin ’26, and Andrew J. Zonneveld ’26. In the coming weeks, the class marshals will interview candidates to determine the rest of the Senior Class Committee, which will also consist of a secretary, treasurer, media team, and house representatives. After graduating, the committee will plan reunion events and manage several fundraising efforts. The election process kicked off in early September with interested seniors campaigning through social media platforms. 16 candidates advanced past the first round, eight of whom were selected after an all-day voting round on Wednesday. BY

The program marshals are Toluwaniase T. Ademola ’26, Jade M. Stanford ’26, Kritika Nagappa ’26, Kirthi Chigurupati ’26, Arezoo Ghazagh ’26, according to four people familiar, and Emma S. de Jong ’26 — a Crimson Sports editor — according to one person. It was not immediately clear whether additional program marshals were named as a result of ties.

Ademola, Nagappa, and Ghazagh, a Crimson Blog Chair, declined to comment on Thursday afternoon, and the rest did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Winners were notified over the phone early Thursday morning, according to two people, but an official announcement is not

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The Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr. Federal Building is located at 10 Causeway St. BY SAMUEL A. HA — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Harvard Erases Trans Athlete Protections

STUDENT ATHLETE

HANDBOOK. Harvard Athletics removed protections for transgender student athletes from its handbook.

BY ELYSE C. GONCALVES

RAVI CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Harvard Athletics removed policies protecting transgender athletes from this year’s Student Athlete Handbook following a series of orders by the Trump administration and the University’s own scouring of public messaging on race and gender.

The handbook, released at the beginning of every school year, enumerates regulations and resources for athletes across the College’s 42 teams. The changes in this year’s edition are the most significant in the five years that Harvard Athletics has been led by director Erin McDermott. Previous editions of Harvard’s handbook spelled out protections allowing transgender students to access facilities, such as restrooms or locker rooms, aligned with their gender identity. The old handbook stated that protections were maintained in accordance with University policy as well as Cambridge, Boston, and Massachusetts law. Neither the University’s non-discrimination policy nor the local and state laws have changed. But those protections no longer exist in the handbook. Additional protections — including a commitment to locating private facilities at away games, an expectation that coaches and staff make a “reasonable effort to honor a student’s name and gender pronouns,” and gender-inclusive uniform policies — were also removed from the handbook.

A Harvard Athletics spokesperson did not respond to a Wednesday evening request for comment on the reasons for the amendments.

The removals come on top of changes made by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which governs most of Harvard’s varsity

sports, earlier this year in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order banning transgender women from competing in women’s college sports.

The new NCAA policy blocks any athletes assigned male at birth from competing on women’s sports teams, though it allows all athletes who identify as male to compete on men’s teams. Previous policies had specific regulations in each sport for transgender female athletes to compete on women’s teams, including on the basis of their hor-

Harvard Ends UMRP After 54 Years

said Lisa M. Stulberg ’92, an education sociology professor at New York University. But pressure from the Trump administration has destabilized that balance. In February and March, the Department of Education issued two rounds of guidance that expanded the government’s interpretation of impermissible “race-based decision-making” beyond the previous scope of the Supreme Court’s ruling. The Trump administration’s letters rescinding Harvard’s federal funding repeatedly questioned the role of race in its admissions processes.

In July, months after Harvard scrapped the UMRP, the Department of Justice issued guidance describing “recruitment strategies targeting specific geographic areas, institutions, or organizations chosen primarily because of their racial or ethnic composition rather than other legitimate factors” as “potentially unlawful proxies” for race.

Recruitment programs similar to the UMRP are neither new nor unique to Harvard.

Stulberg said that minority recruitment programs “have been around at least since the 60s, and maybe even since the late 40s, in elite higher education and in schools like Ivy League schools and their sister schools at the time.”

Kevin D. Brown, a professor of law at the University of South Carolina who studies race and education, said that recruitment programs “have been absolutely critical in increasing both the quality and the number of underrepresented minority students going to college.”

Though the UMRP was specifically targeted towards minority students, other recruitment conduct outreach to rural students and other underrepresented groups. Harvard is a member of the Small Town Outreach Recruitment and Yield

consortium, a group of 25 to 30 to colleges that send staff to rural areas each semester to teach students about the college application process.

Stulberg said that recruitment programs can play a major role in convincing students that they could have a future at Harvard.

“Even just the idea of recruiting is a symbolic one that indicates to students that they are welcome on campus and that Harvard wants them there,” Stulberg said.

“Taking away those tools, I think, is really going to impact who sees Harvard as being open to them, which I do think will impact all kinds of diversity at schools like Harvard,” she added.

Brown said that programs like the UMRP can be valuable resources for minority students during the application process.

“The thing about having targeted minority recruitment programs is they know how best to communicate with minority students, what media outlets that they’re going to listen to — that they want to get the advice from — and in what to say and to respond to their particular needs, which really do tend to be different,” Brown said.

Harvard’s dismantling of diversity programs, which the Trump administration has accused of being illegal race- and gender-based discrimination, has extended beyond admissions. Over the summer, Harvard’s graduate schools renamed and restructured their diversity offices, and the College took apart its centers for minority students, LGBTQ students, and women in July.

“I understand what Harvard is responding to,” Stulberg said. “I wish it would have a different response.”

mone levels.

In response to the NCAA policy update, Harvard Athletics removed its Transgender Inclusion Policy from its website in February, replacing it with a link to the new National Collegiate Athletic Association policy that adhered to the executive order.

The new handbook now links directly to the NCAA website for more information.

No current Harvard varsity athletes have publicly identified as transgender.

Breaking

Access to facilities has been a flashpoint in the battle over transgender women’s participation in college sports. Trump’s executive order promised that federal agencies would “take all appropriate action to affirmatively protect all-female athletic opportunities and all-female locker rooms.”

A lawsuit attempting to penalize Harvard for allowing a transgender woman from using women’s locker rooms during a championship swim meet was dismissed in July.

The new handbook also omitted

Harvard Athletics’ Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Statement, which previously described the principles as “integral to the Harvard Athletics experience.”

Now the updated document includes a statement on “Community and Team Culture,” saying that the department “seeks to create a space that is welcoming and inclusive to all identities.”

The language change lines up with a University-wide purge of mentions of diversity, equity, and inclusion. In April, Harvard renamed

its central diversity office to the “Office for Campus and Community Life,” before closing school-level offices and shuttering three centers for women, LGBTQ, and minority undergraduates.

But the new Harvard handbook expanded its list of protected identities from last year’s version, now making explicit mention of gender expression, genetic information, and caste as protected categories.

Harvard has explicitly encouraged athletes to speak to the press in previous handbooks, noting that doing so “can generate positive coverage for the athletic program and our school.” This year, Harvard Athletics omitted that language from its media policies — in line with efforts the athletics department has made over the past year to caution students against speaking to the press. Athletics communications staff circulated a message to a number of teams last spring discouraging athletes from speaking with The Crimson without contacting the athletics department first.

The handbook also took a harder stance on student attendance policies, including an additional reminder that “course instructors are not expected or required to excuse absences for interviews and extracurricular activities, including athletics,” and that an athlete’s absence does not relieve them from their work responsibilities.

The language is consistent with an amendment to the Harvard College student handbook passed by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences last December — part of a campaign to strengthen attendance requirements, which could pose a challenge for athletes who are frequently expected to travel for competitions.

The Harvard Athletics handbook instructs athletes who need to miss class for competition to ask professors’ permission and bring any issues to coaches and sport supervisors to determine a best course of action. Identical instructions were included in last year’s handbook.

elyse.goncalves@thecrimson.com akshaya.ravi@thecrimson.com

Silence, Claudine Gay Blasts Harvard for ‘Compliance’ With Trump

BY DHRUV T. PATEL AND AVANI B. RAI CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

In a rare address two years after her resignation, former University President Claudine Gay issued a blistering rebuke of Harvard in Amsterdam on Sept. 3, accusing her successor of surrendering to Donald Trump.

Gay, the University’s shortest-serving president, warned in an address at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study that Harvard was adopting a stance of “compliance,” according to a recording shared with The Crimson.

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 has been engaged for months in a legal back-and-forth with the Trump administration over federal funding and international enrollment. Though Garber rejected Trump’s demands to influence faculty hiring and curriculum in April, he soon went back to the negotiating table. And Harvard has taken steps that mirror the administration’s demands since the spring — such as closing its diversity offices and shaking up leadership at programs studying the Middle East.

“The posture of the institution seems to be one of compliance,” Gay said. “This is distressing, not only for those of us who are on campus and facing the consequences directly, but also for all of those in higher ed who look to Harvard for leadership and guidance.”

Gay also weighed in on the terms of a possible settlement with the Trump administration, urging Harvard not to pay the $500 million that Garber reportedly was open to in August as part of a potential deal. Those talks have since stalled.

“The number of $500 million is completely arbitrary and it will solve nothing,” Gay said. “There is

no justification.”

Gay’s own tenure was filled with unprecedented pressure from Washington. International backlash over Harvard’s response to Hamas’s attack on Israel and a student group statement placing blame on Israel created a perfect storm for a leadership crisis. She resigned in January 2024 after stumbling during questioning by a congressional committee and facing allegations of plagiarism in her scholarship.

Former presidents traditionally reserve criticism of their successors, but in the speech, Gay was sharply critical of Garber, who served her second-in-command as provost in 2023. Though she did not cite specific cases, Gay condemned recent program changes. Those have included suspending its partnership with the largest university in the West Bank, rebranding diversity initiatives, and removing faculty and staff from positions at centers studying the Israel-Palestine conflict.

“There has been an elimination of programs, offices, activities that, for at least 20 years, the University has insisted represent institutional imperatives,” Gay said to hundreds of NIAS affiliates. “But now they’re gone.”

“At best, that’s disorienting, and at worst, it really undermines trust in the institution,” she added.

A Harvard spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment Thursday evening.

Prior to the talk, Gay had avoided public statements on Harvard’s political pressures. She did not join an April letter that condemned the Trump administration’s attacks signed by nearly 90 former university presidents, including former Harvard presidents Derek C. Bok and Drew Gilpin Faust.

In fact, since 2023, she has appeared in public very rarely — once to accept an award from the Har-

vard Black Alumni Association, and again to moderate a book talk with a friend, the anthropologist Rich Benjamin.

But in the Netherlands, Gay pulled no punches in her condemnation of the Trump administration, accusing the federal government of “destroying knowledge institutions because they are centers of independent thought and information.”

“I would encourage us all to take note of the throughline of misdirection that has been a central feature of this political moment, getting us to argue about supposed excesses of academic jargon and excesses of the progressive left,” she said. “It’s all about getting us to focus on that and not paying attention to the power grab that is underway.”

Beyond Trump, Gay argued that universities have “invited” undue influence by allowing donors to shape academic life.

“Administrators imagine opposition and act accordingly, a form of institutional self-censorship that preserves the appearance of independence while undermining

acceptance,” she said, briefly condemning Harvard for its ties to disgraced child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein as a case study.

Harvard’s biggest donors were especially vocal during Gay’s final months in office, protesting her response to protests by withholding donations and calling for her resignation. Garber and Penny S. Pritzker ’81, chair of the governing board, have regularly confided in high profile donors in responding to the White House since Trump took office.

Gay pointed to protests over the war in Gaza and efforts to expand diversity and inclusion, saying public ultimatums have become “a central feature” of donor influence in higher education.

“By going public, they force institutions to choose between donor preferences and public integrity,” Gay said.

“And when the stakes are that transparent,” she added, “there’s a good chance — though not a guarantee — that integrity will prevail.”

Former Harvard President Claudine Gay speaking at her inauguration ceremony in 2023. FRANK S. ZHOU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

The Murr Center, Harvard’s athletic administration building, is located in Allston. TIMOTHY R. O’MEARA — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Kirk’s Death Isn’t About College Campuses

SENSELESS TRAGEDY. Charlie Kirk’s murder at a college in Utah has put a spotlight on campus discourse — but online radicalization and gun violence must remain central to the conversation.

he tragic murder of prominent right-wing ac-

Ttivist Charlie Kirk at a Utah university has ignited conversations about polarization, political violence, and discourse on college campuses.

Sadly, this type of noxious political violence has become all-too-familiar in the last few years. Our country has borne witness to violence affecting both sides of the political aisle. Besides Kirk’s brazen murder, we all recall U.S. President Donald Trump’s survived assassination attempt that befell him during his campaign. Across the aisle, two of Minnesota’s Democrat state representatives fell victim to a targeted shooting.

Situating Kirk’s savage murder in the context of other high-profile acts of political violence divorces the event from the college campus and makes clear what such events — including the assassination of Kirk — are really about. This isn’t a story of universities. Instead, it’s about two other deep-rooted issues: gun violence and internet radicalization.

In Kirk’s case, the suspect was far from a typical college student, completing just one semester of a traditional, four-year college schedule back in 2021 before dropping out to pursue a technical apprenticeship program. On the contrary, he was an internet troll who decorated his violence with motifs of meme culture. If discourse is at fault, it’s of the internet — not campus — ilk. The problem is not college curricula or campus culture, but instead a lack of support for isolated individuals who find homes in dangerous online communities.

Moreover, at the time of writing, it is not yet clear that this shooter had a consistent, intelligible ideology motivating his actions. What we do know is that on the same day that Kirk was a victim of gun violence, two Colorado high school students were too.

When things are all-the-more polarized, we must return to the simple fact that guns care neither for the identity of their wielder nor their target. In many ways, the tragedy of Kirk’s death has touched more corners of our polarized political spectrum than the devastating nearly-daily din of mass shootings and school shootings have. We hope that this tragedy can be a moment of reflection and a force for change.

Salient, too, is the location of the shooting. In a world where political violence is a real threat, Kirk’s shooting underscores the vulnerability of college campuses. Outside of the horror of Kirk’s

death itself, Students seeking to engage in spirited debate witnessed a murder instead. Sensible gun reform and help for the troubled individuals who often carry out such attacks — coupled with campus safety measures — are essential. As young Americans, we are exposed to a deluge of violence and inhumanity every day — from

social media, domestic, and world affairs alike. Politics arrive in our feeds as constant scrolls of spectacle. Outrage has become the currency of attention, breeding barbarity and polarization. We all must resist reproducing or inhabiting the modern world’s online radicalization — in our communities at Harvard, at home, and beyond.

I Was Wrong About Denaming Winthrop. Here’s Why.

BY MATTHEW R. TOBIN

After a petition that garnered over 1,000 signatures, a 42-page denaming request, and almost two years of deliberation by a University committee, Harvard finally announced this summer that it would be renaming John Winthrop House to… Winthrop House.

The decision is the sort of moderation likely to please neither side of the debate. The choice seemed binary — either dename the house or leave it be. I myself had previously written that Winthrop House should be denamed fully. But instead, the Review Committee did something I — and I imagine many others — couldn’t have anticipated: keeping the Winthrop family name while trimming the specific reference to “John” Winthrop.

As unconventional and unpopular as this decision may be, it provides us the perfect opportunity to remember and reflect on — rather than erase —

Harvard’s history. To give a quick crash course: Winthrop House was named after the John Winthrop who served as a professor and acting president of Harvard. Not to be confused with his great-great-grandfather, also named John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Among other controversies, both of them enslaved people. Interestingly, the Review Committee showed that the house was intended to be named only for the younger Winthrop, not his ancestor — even though the governor did serve on Harvard’s Board of Overseers.

Harvard’s relationship with the Winthrops is twofold. There is the initial relationship — i.e., their respective services as an acting president and overseer for Harvard. The relationship I find more important, however, is the fact that over one hundred years after both of them had died, Harvard decided to name a house after the younger Winthrop.

While Harvard shouldn’t simply honor either

man, the University’s historic relationship with the family shouldn’t be forgotten either — especially because that family included enslavers who Harvard honored anyway.

Winthrop is not the only name worth remembering. University President A. Lawrence Lowell, who created the undergraduate house system, tried to limit the number of Jewish students, remove Black students from University housing, and persecute gay students. President Charles W. Eliot was a eugenicist. President Increase Mather enslaved at least one person. So did important members of the Leverett and Dudley families.

Though some reference relatives rather than the actual offenders, when the University established houses with these names in the 1930s and beyond, it was choosing which legacies to honor. We should remember — not simply efface — these individuals’ horrific actions, especially those done in Harvard’s name.

There’s a laundry list of other buildings on cam-

pus with complicated namesakes — the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Wigglesworth Hall, Stoughton Hall, and Agassiz Theater come to mind. They, too, must be reckoned with.

We should also extend this scrutiny to more recent decisions. The entire Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is named for Republican megadonor Kenneth C. Griffin ’89. Just last year, the Kennedy School named a professorship after Henry A. Kissinger ’50. Harvard’s present may not be far less controversial than its past.

One thing is clear: The University has a lot of complicated history — history that it has chosen to honor time and time again. How can we deal with these disappointing realities? By remembering them.

As the nation’s oldest, richest, and putatively best university, Harvard has housed many of the world’s most impactful leaders — good and bad. It’s no surprise, then, that it has been directly connected to many of the country’s gravest sins as well. Harvard should teach its students about its foundation and legacy, not only so that we remember these atrocities, but also so that we consider our place as current students at the University. If we dename buildings, it makes it substantially harder to remember these uncomfortable but important truths. Consider Harvard Law School’s seal. It was originally the crest of the Royall family, who reaped wealth from enslaved labor and donated money to establish Harvard’s first law professorship.

In 2021, the Royall shield was replaced with what I can only describe as a gaudy, modernist, corporate logo — not that aesthetics should be our main consideration. Despite the Law School’s assurance that the new shield has symbolism, it is personally hard for me to identify anything meaningful.

No longer will students wonder why the shield displays three bushels of wheat — and organically discover the troubling history of the Royall family. Instead, they must seek out or stumble upon the library exhibit to learn the story behind the former shield.

While an exhibit is a good way to preserve our history, I don’t imagine Harvard will create a museum for all of its institutional failings anytime soon, at least not in this political climate. (Just look at the layoffs in the Slavery Remembrance Program.) But in the meantime, perhaps the silver lining of Winthrop’s “non-denaming denaming” is that we can each remember what Harvard used to — and still chooses to — honor.

ELLEN P. CASSIDY— CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Harvard Should Implement a Public Service Requirement

BY VICTORIA L. DOLAN

If Harvard wants its students to serve the world, it must require them to serve their community first.

As students stress through club comp season or begin coffee-chatting their way into finance internships, it’s easy to become entranced with the many doors Harvard opens. Large salaries, influential connections, and all-expense paid trips to tropical climates seem to be hallmarks of the so-called “Harvard dream.” Yet these paths are antithetical to the idealised purpose of a Harvard education.

Broadly speaking, we should expect Harvard to equip students to lead meaningful lives for the greater common good. While calling attention to the preponderance of finance, tech, and consulting job-seekers isn’t new, a novel approach could consist of implementing a public service requirement

within the College. Doing so will benefit students, who will gain leadership, empathy, and interpersonal skills; and community members, who will be the beneficiaries of Harvard’s efforts.

Research has demonstrated the benefits of volunteering in college. Those who volunteer exhibited growth across a wide range of interpersonal skills, including leadership. Additionally, volunteering was associated with higher degree aspirations.

There’s also qualitative benefits: Doing unpaid work with the primary purpose of helping others is character-building in a manner separate from that of leading a campus organization. It’s often difficult to learn empathy or humility in a classroom, but Harvard could teach these skills by asking students to meaningfully serve individuals they might never otherwise encounter.

Previous efforts have attempted to institutionalize service. An initiative to include public service in

the undergraduate curriculum was opposed by administrators in 2014, when the discussion centered around whether students should be required to take a course with a public service component. At the time, some felt the College lacked a sufficient platform of courses with service elements, and a consolidated requirement would have required drastic and hasty restructuring. Today, even with restructuring efforts, simply adding a new “public service” class requirement to a list of other Harvard College-mandated courses would still be a bad idea. The College’s course requirements are already over-complicated, and adding a new class to the mix would further convolute a frustrating system. When taken in the context of Harvard students’ overall disengagement with coursework, it is highly unlikely that students would take a service-based course seriously. Instead, Harvard could require students to com-

COLUMN

Harvard’s AI Use Harms Communities Like Ours

BY L.A. KARNES AND IRA SHARMA

As Harvard students enjoy University-provided access to generative artificial intelligence, communities around the country are suffering.

The rapid expansion of infrastructure powering artificial intelligence has wrought serious environmental damage Harvard must align its guidance for AI usage with the technology’s devastating impact on the environment, discouraging its use for non-essential, non-academic purposes. In our hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, the impact of AI isn’t just academic. The world’s largest supercomputer (per its creators), aptly named “Colossus,” currently stands on hundreds of acres near the predominantly Black community of Boxtown. Its company is contracted to burn through enough electricity to power 100,000 homes a year, consume up to a million gallons of water per day, and is potentially leaking toxic chemicals into our air.

The environmental impact is both a looming threat and an immediate concern, leaving Memphians scrambling for a solution. And this isn’t just a Memphis problem. Data processing plants are popping up across the country, fueled by massive demand for AI.

There are several consequences to this trend. A recent UC Riverside and Caltech study estimates that the total public health impact of data centers in the U.S. in 2030 is up to $20 billion per year, comparable to the impact of on-road emissions in California. Concerningly, some of the data centers using large amounts of water for cooling are operating in regions already stressed for water.The MIT technology review concluded that in 2024, American data centers used around 200-terawatt hours of electricity — enough to power the country of Thailand for a year.

Yet Harvard’s Guidelines for Using ChatGPT and other Generative AI Tools, along with many of Harvard’s AI policies and resources, focus primarily on concerns like “information security and data privacy, compliance, copyright, and academic integrity” while omitting environmental implications. Meanwhile, students and faculty use AI casually and frequently, often for non-essential creations: proctor door tags, replying to simple emails, or summarizing facts that could easily be searched. These seemingly-harmless uses are contributing to the expansion of AI supercomputers. By taking a public stance on the clear environmental impacts of this technology, Harvard can support those most affected, many of whom are Harvard students, and create a more conscientious group of future AI users. We’re not calling for an outright ban on AI. These tools can present a unique opportunity to further academic inquiry and experimentation. But, as students and academics, we have a responsibility to use them thoughtfully and only when they add value to academic inquiry. We should foster a campus culture that recognizes and challenges the hidden cost of convenience. Harvard must revise its AI guidelines to include environmental considerations, encouraging greater awareness in the classroom. As students, we must reflect on our AI habits. As you use AI for tasks that can be done manually, consider the climate cost of your actions. Use the vast

plete a set number of community service hours over their four years. Many institutions have already implemented such a plan. Harvard Law School, for instance, requires students to complete 50 pro bono hours to graduate. At the undergraduate level, Tulane University asks students to both complete a service learning course and a service-related internship or project. Harvard is a leading institution; instituting a service requirement would set a standard for emulation across higher education. Existing channels could be leveraged to help students meet the requirement. Many students could fulfill it through campus organizations in which they already participate. More than one thousand students join the Phillips Brooks House Association — Harvard College’s main volunteer hub — each year. Almost another thousand applied to join The Institute of Politics — Harvard College’s main political and public service hub. Both offer community service initiatives. These organizations connect Harvard student volunteers with the broader Boston area, allowing many of them to engage with perspectives and backgrounds that differ from their own. There are other methods, too. Perhaps students could be required to participate in Harvard’s existing “Global Day of Service.” The event boasted over 1,100 volunteers in 2024, but those numbers included staff and alumni in addition to students, meaning less than a sixth of the undergraduate population participated —

array of academic resources available to you before you turn to AI. Harvard provides for Course Assistants, Teaching Fellows, the writing center, and House tutors that support students, encourage critical thinking, and are much more environmentally conscious. AI is simply not a necessity for a school with so many resources. As Memphians, we carry our city’s struggles with us anywhere we go, including here on campus. It is frustrating to see our peers rely on AI without regard for the impact it has on neighborhoods close to those we grew up in. We are consistently angered by the injustices that our community experiences while we remain untouched here in Cambridge, removed from their struggle. As long as Harvard hopes to be a sustainable institution, we must address these pressing concerns. We shouldn’t ask communities all over the nation to shoulder the cost of our convenience. Harvard must lead the way in using AI sparingly, thoughtfully, and only when it truly advances academic inquiry.

ELIJAH R. BARTHOLOMEW— CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

SAMI E. TURNER— CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Immigrant Services Adjust to ICE in Allston

EXPANDING

Allston residents and civic leaders are mobilizing to help undocumented immigrants in the neighborhood.

As the Trump administration conducts a nationwide deportation campaign against undocumented immigrants, long-standing support infrastructure for immigrants in Allston-Brighton is now adapting to a climate of fear after straining to support influxes of immigrants over the past few years.

With one of the highest immigrant populations in Boston, Allston-Brighton saw its residents, civic leaders, and elected officials mobilize to respond to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents when they zeroed in on the Boston neighborhood in May.

In response, local leaders helped staff a hotline run by the LUCE Immigrant Justice Network of Massachusetts to review and confirm crowdsourced footage of potential arrests and train residents who encounter federal agents. Nonprofit groups also organized a protest with over a hundred attendees to demonstrate against ICE’s actions in the area.

Now, in the four months since that sweep, both the city and nonprofit services have begun to more systematically marshal resources to support immigrants living in fear of ICE.

In late May, the Boston Mayor’s Office of Immigration Ad -

vancement announced it would more than triple the grant money it awards to organizations serving vulnerable immigrant populations, especially as immigrants face increased federal enforcement.

Carolline P. Hickey, who teaches adult education at the Jackson Mann Community Center in Allston, said that the leaders of several local nonprofit organizations — including the Allston-Brighton Health Collaborative and the Gardner Pilot Academy Adult Education Program — now meet monthly to discuss the state of ICE activity and immigrant services in the neighborhood.

Heloisa M. Galvão, executive director of the Brighton-based

Brazilian Women’s Group, said that she created a WhatsApp group to answer immigration questions and circulate information about ICE among fellow Brazilian immigrants. Since June, more than 100 residents have joined.

Galvão also added that natural-born citizens have begun working with her organization in a volunteer capacity.

“We have a group of mostly women. I think there are some men also that offer to accompany people to the doctor’s, to school, to shopping,” Galvão said.

The adjustments these and other service providers in the neighborhood are making in response to the new reality for immigrants may soon be tested as

Cambridge City Council Asks for New Resources for Immigrants

BY SHAWN A. BOEHMER AND JACK B. REARDON CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

The Cambridge City Council directed City Manager Yi-An Huang ’05 on Monday night to design and implement resources to address emergency immigration incidents in Cambridge, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement cracks down on the Boston metro area. The policy order, which was approved unanimously, calls for the creation of a “24-hour immigration emergency hotline” to direct city staff in relevant situations, a larger interpreter network, a legal directory, and specific protocols for handling ICE-related incidents.

Cambridge’s existing multilingual helpline is available on weekdays during business hours. The city also maintains a 24/7 phone interpretation service designed for use by city staff assisting residents, according to spokesperson Jeremy H. Warnick.

Mayor E. Denise Simmons said she proposed the policy order after an incident on Wednesday night, in which she was contacted by a Cambridge family seeking help with a situation involving ICE officers.

According to Simmons, the urgent call came in the evening after many city offices and non-profit aid groups had closed for the day.

“The parents were already wearing ankle bracelets, and their passports had already been confiscated by ICE, and detention seemed imminent,” Simmons said. The incident unfolded as Simmons was scheduled to appear at a candidate forum hosted just steps away from city hall. She briefly appeared to announce the reason for her absence and to urge attendees to be patient as the city worked to develop an adequate response.

“As we all know, we’re living in some very dark times right now, and unfortunately, those dark times are getting closer and closer to our front door,”

she said during her brief appearance.

Simmons believes the provisions would have been useful as she sought ways to help the family navigate an immigration enforcement crisis.

“A lot of the city departments that we would have automatically called were closed. Legal resources and community partners were closed,” Simmons said.

“We didn’t have a protocol or hotline or interpreter on standby, and no system to escalate, just a terrified family and a staff doing its best,” she added.

The Council approved the policy order as the Boston area experiences an increase in federal immigration officer presence after the Trump administration began an immigration crackdown across Massachusetts called “Operation Patriot 2.0.”

At last week’s Council meeting, Police Commissioner Christine A. Elow informed the council that ICE had contacted the police department asking for information on undocumented immigrants at least six times so far this year. According to Elow, CPD consistently declined to cooperate with ICE given the city’s

sanctuary status. Huang said he agreed with the order and believes that the City could make its immigration resources more accessible, promising to have an update on the progress by early October.

“I think we can improve the way that we’re coordinating with residents’ families in Cambridge that are showing up in our community and are looking for information,” Huang said. “They are struggling with a really tragic situation, and I do think there is real opportunity for us to put more of this on paper.”

Councilors said that the city should focus on curating and providing resources to residents as soon as possible.

“The message is, do this, make sure we can provide people with the support and services, and make sure that we’re not duplicating efforts or recreating and reinventing the wheel, because we don’t have the time to do that,” Councilor Patricia M.

“Patty” Nolan ’80 said.

“This is happening right now,” she added.

shawn.boehmer@thecrimson.com jack.reardon@thecrimson.com

federal officials threaten a second major ICE sweep in the city.

Last Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security announced “Operation Patriot 2.0,” pledging to “target the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens” in the state — particularly singling out Boston for its sanctuary city status.

Last week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents made a return to Allston-Brighton, making at least one arrest last Wednesday morning.

According to Boston City Councilor Elizabeth A. “Liz” Breadon, agents detained an adult just outside of Brighton High School who had a child in the back of the car. It’s often difficult for resi -

dents to know whether their loved ones have been taken or which agency was responsible.

“I got asked for help from one Brazilian that know a woman whose husband and son disappeared yesterday. They left to work in the morning, and they never came back,” Galvão said on Sunday. The woman believes they were taken to New York, she added. While fears of deportation are not a new problem for immigrant service providers in the area, ICE activity has brought such anxieties to unprecedented levels in recent months — a contrast to the very different conditions that providers faced only two years ago, when thousands of new arrivals to the state

left services scrambling to find them shelter, documents, and work.

The state-funded Family Welcome Center in Allston that opened at that time to help settle newcomers to the state — many from Haiti and Venezuela — has since closed down, with far fewer immigrants now entering the country. That center was operated by the Brazilian Worker Center, who did not respond to a request to interview for this story.

Hickey said that some undocumented immigrants have reached out to local leaders with questions or fears about ICE. But others worry that seeking help will expose their undocu -

taking your kids to school, feel safe going to the doctors,” Breadon added. “All of those things have an impact on people’s health and well being.”

angelina.parker@thecrimson.com emily.schwartz@thecrimson.com

Cambridge Education Association

Endorses

6 Challengers

BY ANN E. GOMBINER AND DIONISE GUERRA-CARRILLO CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Six challengers seeking seats on the Cambridge School Committee received endorsements from the Cambridge Education Association on Wednesday — the latest indication that the union is fed up with the current district leadership.

Candidates who completed a questionnaire from the CEA and attended their forum last Wednesday were eligible for endorsement. The two incumbents who met those requirements — Elizabeth C.P. Hudson and David J. Weinstein — did not receive endorsements.

The CEA offered endorsements to candidates committed to transparency, fully funding education, including educator and caregiver voice in decisions, providing living wages to all staff, and creating a school choice policy based on racial and social justice.

Their endorsements included Luisa De Paula Santos, Caitlin E. Dube ’05, Jessica D. Goetz, Lilly Havstad, Jane S. Hirschi, and Arjun K. Jaikumar.

The CEA criticized incumbents for their work on the school choice policy, superintendent search, and educator pay.

“None of the incumbents have shown a commitment to including educator or caregiver voice in decision making. They haven’t done their job when it comes to school choice. They have opposed living wages for paras during contract negotiations,” CEA president Christopher Montero said. “When it came to all of our top issues, they’ve had a chance to do the right thing, and they haven’t.”

Many parents blamed Cambridge’s school choice system — created to increase diversity in schools — for the closure of the Kennedy-Longfellow Elementary School at the end of last year. While the School Committee has not reformed the system since its closure, they have worked to increase paraprofessional pay — bumping it up by 20 percent in

July 2024. The lack of incumbents on the CEA’s endorsement list is not a surprise. The union published a statement in August urging Cambridge residents to vote all current School Committee members out of office.

“It is clear we need to elect new School Committee members on November 4,” the CEA wrote in an August statement calling for a halt to the superintendent search.

But Hudson said she is not worried about the lack of support — going so far as to say she was not seeking the CEA’s endorsement despite filling out their questionnaire and attending their forum.

“I’m never going to stand down from a question that the faculty ask,” Hudson said about her choice to attend the forum.

“I didn’t get their endorsement last time, and I don’t expect it this time,” she added.

Only one current School Committee member — Caroline M. Hunter — received a CEA endorsement in the last election cycle.

Weinstein did not respond to a request for comment on the CEA’s endorsements. Endorsed challengers were generally not surprised by the

CEA’s lack of incumbent endorsees and have positioned themselves as a needed change from the current committee.

“I think that there is a pretty widespread desire among educators and among voters for new leadership in the district,” Jaikumar said. “If I didn’t think the district was in need of at least some new leadership, I would not have run, and neither would the other 12 challengers who have run this cycle.”

Candidates are running in one of the most crowded races in recent memory, with eighteen candidates vying for six seats. Endorsed candidates see the CEA’s support as recognition of their commitment to supporting educators in the district.

“When you have 18 candidates running for School Committee in a historic election, that signifies a desire for change,” Dube, a former Crimson magazine contributor, said. “I hope the voters see and value the endorsement of educators, and that that plays a vital role in who’s elected on November 4.”

in Allston. SAMI E. TURNER — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

How Raw Sewage Floods Homes on Alewife Brook

Rixey, who is a board member of environmental advocacy group Green Cambridge, added that the storms often flood a large unhoused encampment, whose residents often don’t know that the water flooding their tents is sewage.

When water flooded the home of Alewife resident Kristin Anderson in April of 2022, she waded through her basement to salvage some of her belongings and waited for the water to retreat.

Several days later, when the water finally receded, she found debris — toilet paper, condoms, and tampons. She realized her home had not just been flooded with water after a combination of melted snow and heavy rain overwhelmed the nearby Alewife Brook, but with raw sewage.

“The flood water came right in through the back door,” Anderson said.

Alewife Brook has flooded regularly for decades after heavy rains, sometimes combining with sewage water from the combined sewer system below the brook, leaving residents to wade through the sewage that runs over the sidewalks for days after a storm. This year alone, the Alewife Brook area has flooded with sewage water more than a dozen times.

And while residents have advocated for help from the city for years, governmental action has stalled due to the scale of the project. To completely end the sewage-contaminated flooding would require a reconstruction of the sewer system in Alewife, an infrastructure project that would cost “hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, if not two billion dollars,” according to Cambridge City Councilor Catherine “Cathie” Zusy. But now, after three years of advocacy, the city has finally initiated planning to address the combined sewer overflows.

“I feel like the situation is so bad that I’m filled with hope that it can be improved,” Anderson said.

‘Seeing It Up Close’ After storms in Alewife, resident Eppa Rixey said he can see toilet paper floating down the street and “smell the shit” from the sewage water that floods the area.

“Yes, there’s pollution all over this world, but, like, seeing it up close and having that type of a visceral reaction to it in a city is really jarring,” he said. The issue is Alewife’s outdated sewer system, which was built in the 1800s. The system carries both storm water and sewage in the same pipe and discharges overflow into waterways to prevent flooding at the end of the pipe, which is the Deer Island Wastewater Treatment Plant.

According to Environmental Protection Agency estimates, the Alewife Brook received 13.4 million gallons of sewage water in 2024 — nearly double the amount of water the brook could receive without flooding.

Of the four discharge sites along Alewife Brook, known as combined sewer overflows, residents say the one closest to the T station is the worst offender — flooding 16 times in 2024 alone.

The flooding is not just a sore sight and sour smell, but also a significant health risk to the floodplain’s 5,000 residents, according to advocates.

A Boston University study found that individuals living near a CSO had a higher risk of acquiring acute gastroenteritis illness within four days of high-volume CSO flooding compared to days without flooding.

Anderson said that after her home flooded in 2021, she experienced gastrointestinal issues she believes were caused by her exposure to the contaminated water.

“I mean, I got really sick. So it was digestive, it felt like maybe a flu,” she said. “It did go away, but I really don’t want this to happen to anybody else.”

The Long Wait

After the flooding in her home in 2022, Anderson founded Save the Alewife Brook, an organization that advocates for action to address the flooding issues at Alewife Brook.

At a Joint Committee on the Environment and Natural Resources public hearing at the State House in June, more than a dozen residents affiliated with Save the Alewife Brook, the Charles River Watershed Association, and the Mystic River Watershed Associa-

tion gave testimonials about the flooding. Two attendees dressed in poop emoji costumes, and others wore bedazzled poop emoji pins to raise awareness.

Rixey said the area has struggled to receive support from the state due to Alewife’s lower socioeconomic status than other parts of Boston, adding that he feels that the Alewife Reservation is “near the bottom of the list of priorities” for the Department of Conservation and Recreation.

“It’s generally an area that’s less affluent and has historically been kind of environmentally degraded,” Rixey said.

A spokesperson for the DCR declined to comment.

When two lawsuits in the 1980s spurred the EPA to clean up the Boston Harbor, the improvements included fixing sewage systems throughout the Boston area and building the Deer Island Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Alewife, however, was carved out from certain requirements — and now has the highest concentration of sewage pollution in the Boston area, according to the Mystic River Watershed Association.

Though the pollution is in direct violation of the Clean Water Act, a variance has been in place since 1999, allowing the cities of Cambridge and Somerville and the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority to continue discharging raw sewage while they develop and execute a long-

term control plan. Advocates from Save the Alewife Brook, the Mystic River Watershed Association, and the Charles River Watershed Association have been collaborating with project planners for the last four years to produce an updated long-term control plan.

“It’s been, I think, slower than everyone would have liked,” CRWA Climate Resilience Director Julie Wood said of the planning process. “I can say for sure it’s been slower than we would have liked.”

MWRA spokesperson Sean A. Navin wrote in a statement that the department has spent more than $100 million on reducing CSO volumes along the Alewife Brook and Mystic River, resulting in a 77 percent flow reduction.

“The MWRA is proud of the progress that has been made, and remains dedicated to continuing efforts to reduce CSO volumes, which includes accounting for the impacts of climate change,” Navin wrote.

There’s movement now from the legislative side, too. Last week, the Cambridge Health and Environment Committee unanimously approved legislation to improve stormwater regulations, include green stormwater infrastructure in future planning, and create a Combined Sewer Overflow Commission. The proposal will move forward to the Cambridge City Council for a final vote at the end

of the month.

“The support from the councilors at the Health and Environment Committee meeting was so overwhelming,” Anderson said. “I feel like we need to send Patty Nolan and the entire committee a homemade peach pie.”

‘It Belongs to Us’

Over the summer of this year, the Council spotted an opportunity to improve the situation at Alewife Brook alongside a project proposed by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority to renovate the Alewife T station.

In a policy order passed in June, the Council urged the MBTA to make the elimination of untreated sewage overflow a top priority of the project and to implement green infrastructure at the Alewfie MBTA site. The order suggests that with proper design, the site can collect sewage during heavy rainfall to prevent it from overflowing into the Alewife stream.

The Council stressed that cross-agency collaboration is necessary to remedy the Alewife issue, and called for Governor Maura T. Healey ’92, the MBTA Board of Directors, the MWRA, and other relevant departments to work together on the issue.

While the sewage overflow occurs right next to the MBTA station — the site of the

main CSO sits in Commonwealth-owned land.

“It belongs to us as the people of Massachusetts. So we want the governor to recognize the importance of resolving this issue,” Zusy said.

As storm frequency increases across Massachusetts, the state government has also ramped up efforts to reduce water pollution and protect biodiversity. This past August, the Commonwealth issued a report on biodiversity goals that specifically called for eliminating the combined sewer systems in the state and expanding green stormwater infrastructure.

In addition to sewage system separation, the plan recommended upgrades to wastewater treatment facilities to better accommodate storm surges. As Alewife advocates continue to work with project planners, the city, and the state to address the issue, they acknowledged the complexity, expense and long timeline of the undertaking — but they say it’s worth the cost.

“They’re breaking the law at Alewife Brook,” Anderson said. “They should not be breaking the law, and they should not be making people sick with their untreated sewage.”

Daily Provisions is quickly becoming a daily staple in Harvard Square, attracting students and tourists alike with all-day dining, craft coffee, and study spaces. The cafe — located at 1 Brattle Square — is a small chain that recently expanded from New York City to New England. The Harvard Square location marked its first in Massachusetts when it opened in July, with another location set to open in Seaport in 2026.

Steven L. Kurland, the New England area director for the chain, says the all-day concept of Daily Provisions sets itself apart from other cafes and restaurants in the Square. Open from 7 a.m. to 9

p.m., its menu features everything from crullers to sandwiches to a whole roasted chicken.

“We get here at 5:30 a.m. We bake our cookies and bake our croissants and make our crullers, so that’s probably our most directly iconic item. We have a pretty wide variety,” Kurland said. Daily Provisions’s emphasis on its food has made it a quick standout among customers. Trish A. Zeytoonjian, a local resident, made her second visit to Daily Provisions for the “best Arnold Palmer I’ve had.”

“Consistency in food, good service, nice outdoor space, really pretty aesthetic. Those are all important things,” Zeytoonjian said. Daily Provisions has ten other locations across the country, ranging from New York City to D.C. But Kurland says Harvard Square

stands out for its diversity of businesses and residents — a key resource he hopes to tap into.

“Within half a mile, we’ve got big companies, small companies, residents, students, tourists, and a lot of local great businesses here already,” Kurland said. “So I think that made it a really logical choice.”

Kurland says that unlike other cafes, the spacious layout of Daily Provisions makes it an ideal spot for Harvard students to study.

“We want to build our business in our evenings, but it’s a great time to come in with a study group,” Kurland said.

Kurland hopes Daily Provisions will be more than a cafe, eventually becoming an integral part of the Harvard network. He hopes to partner with local businesses, organizations, and even

Harvard sports teams. Daily Provisions has already been working with Project Paulie and Spoonfuls, two local food recovery and pantry organizations. Daily Provisions has already become a reliable staple for students looking to escape dining hall food and regular Harvard Square haunts. The cafe offered Harvard students free crullers

during the first week of school — and students have been coming back ever since.

“Their bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich is, I think, what people really mess with,” Josh P. Mysore ’26 said. “That’s

Siebel Scholars Class of 2026

The Siebel Scholars program was founded in 2000 to recognize the most talented graduate students in business, computer science, and bioengineering. Each year, over 80 outstanding graduate students are selected as Siebel Scholars based on academic excellence and leadership and join an active, lifelong community among an ever-growing group of leaders. We are pleased to recognize this year’s Siebel Scholars.

JOHNS

Akshaya

BUSINESS

COMPUTER SCIENCE

CARNEGIE

TSINGHUA

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UNIVERSITY

Dua Lipa Review: A Night to Remember

DUA LIPA emerged through a veil of smoke on the stage at TD Garden for her Sept. 9 concert.

BY HANNAH M. WILKOFF CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

On Sept. 9, Dua Lipa emerged through a veil of smoke on the stage at TD Garden for the first night of her “Radical Optimism” tour’s two-day run in Boston. From the opening moment, a delicate balance between overarching confidence and earnest vulnerability set a high standard for both the production value and musical capabilities that would unfold throughout the show. As blue and white colors swirled across the backdrop and wave sounds echoed from the stage, the Garden was filled with a sea of cameras taking videos in anticipation of Lipa’s arrival. However, she kept everyone waiting for

several minutes in this scene — a theatrical pause that felt deliberately orchestrated in order to gather the anticipation of the crowd. When the beat dropped and the lights transformed to red and royal blue, she ascended, shining with confidence in her gold bodysuit during the show’s opening number, “Training Season.”

Moving into “End of an Era,” her dancers created a living tableau, concealing her between large arrays of white feathers. When she emerged in front of a backdrop of dusky pink and orange clouds, she seemed like a goddess suspended in the clouds as she sang apt lyrics — “In the clouds, there she goes, butterflies let them flow.”

Lipa’s songs featured a large variety of backdrops and energies, but many felt club-like, with strobe lights, synchronized backup dancers, and a pulsing beat. Confetti cascaded repeatedly throughout the show, and the lights frequently cycled through palettes, from pastels to primaries to neons. The changes were visually engaging but thematically disparate, capturing the audience’s attention but failing to weave

a cohesive narrative thread.

The most impactful moments of the show were unquestionably the ones that were more stripped down and intimate rather than pulsating and hyped up. The “hard goodbyes and vulnerable beginnings” which distinguish “Radical Optimism” from Lipa’s other albums — notably 2020’s disco and dance-pop album “Future Nostalgia” — achieve greater emotional resonance when in this setup. After “Levitating,” the stage was reset, repositioning Lipa and her band out on the circle at the end of the stage’s runway. Following the introduction of the band, Lipa’s rendition of “These Walls,” an indie pop, soft rock song about the emotional distance of a dying relationship, showcased her vocal ability — as well as that of her backup singers — while the bass and guitar lines in “Maria” became a high point of the musical relationship between Lipa and her band.

Lipa paused to talk about Boston, thanking the city for welcoming her across not one but two nights. At each stop on the tour, she performs a song from the city, and

Wet Leg Concert Review: On Being in Love (Again)

Midway through “catch these fists,” the opening song of Wet Leg’s show at Roadrunner in Boston on Sunday, lead singer Rhian Teasdale faced the stands, slowly raised her arms, and flexed her biceps to the roar of the crowd. In the song, the first single off their touring album “Moisturizer,” Teasdale sings about wanting to fight annoying men at the night club over sharp, simple guitar riffs and energetic drums. Bold and self-assured, Teasdale’s pumping fists, tight white briefs, and cropped matching tank top made her look like a WWE fighter. It was hot and hilarious. It only got better when she pulled out a transparent lime green guitar to strum the opening riff of “Wet Dream,” a single from their self-titled album. “What makes you think you’re good enough to think about me when you’re touching yourself?” she said. Wet Leg was founded in 2019 by Teasdale and Hester Chambers, who are both from the Isle of Wight. They quickly gained popularity for their sincere and often silly lyrics combined with catchy

indie rock riffs after the release of their first single “Chaise Longue,” which seemingly blew up internationally overnight. Their eponymous album that followed lived up to the single in every way — hilariously relatable with scream-alongable lyrics.

Compared to their first album, “Moisturizer” has a broader range.

Mid-way through the show, Teasdale pointed her microphone to the audience and asked them to reenact the scream from their hit song “Ur Mum” off of their 2022 album. The crowd happily complied and let out a fearsome, cathartic, minute-long shriek.

The band is bigger in every way since their first widely-acclaimed

The softer end of which is more about actually being in love than the difficulties of its plight, while the louder end is far more intense both lyrically (“Every time I fuck my pillow I wish that I was fucking you,” Teasdale matter-of-factly sings on “pillow talk” ) and musically (brash drums and prominent guitar). The wonderful thing is that the band members still don’t take themselves too seriously, despite having every right to.

release, and not only in terms of their stardom. Wet Leg began as a duo, in which Teasdale and Chambers shared somewhat equal footing. Now, Chambers has retreated to a less visible, although no less crucial role in the band — she played guitar with her back facing the crowd for most of the concert — while Teasdale has taken center-stage as the band’s leading persona. Perhaps it’s also because both women are now reportedly in love

for Boston, she sang Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.” While she expressed her anxiety about the song — incorporating a new cover in each performance presents a daunting challenge — the power ballad proved an incredible fit for her voice and had everyone waving their flashlights throughout the stands of the Garden. Despite the sparkly outfits, overthe-top lighting, and pop-star persona, Lipa continuously revealed her humanity throughout the night in ways that made her pop-stardom feel less superficial. She paused to talk to and take videos with many fans during set changes; several of the fans she encountered had traveled from different countries to see her. A minor costume malfunction during “Levitating” caused her to briefly stop singing, but it was a refreshing reminder that she existed not as an untouchable icon, but rather as an actual performer singing and dancing in the moment. The last two songs before the encore — “Anything For Love” and “Be the One” — represented moments when Lipa’s over-the-top set was engaging, as she donned a

white robe and ascended on a floating platform from which she commanded the crowd’s attention, raising her arms for cheers across the stadium. Particularly during “Be the One” — which she had been performing on tour for several years — her visible emotion revealed how much she loved being before the crowd and singing her heart out. Her encore outshone even this stunt, cycling through “New Rules,” “Dance the Night,” “Don’t Start Now,” and “Houdini” in quick succession. Though “Houdini” — one of Lipa’s most popular songs at the moment — didn’t provide a thematically satisfying end to the concert, any artist capable of delivering a set with as many chart-toppers as Lipa’s discography is fixed for a finale that can be enjoyed by all. Overall, the concert was a night to remember. Lipa stands apart as a singer, a performer, and a master of crowd dynamics — yet, the night fell short of an album-themed experience and relied more on her previous successful singles to tie it all together.

hannah.wilkoff@thecrimson.com

that the confessions of this new era feel more individualistic in comparison to the conspiratorial angst of the first album. Except for a moment during the concert when the women slid down to the ground together while playing their guitars back to back, you would not guess that the band started off as a duo.

Although the group has not lost their self-deprecating wit and charmingly weird lyrics — “How could I be your one? Be your marshmallow worm?” a lovestruck Teasdale sings in “liquidize” — their new songs contain less of the charming uncertainty surrounding love and relationships that defined their earlier work.

For instance, the band played a

softer song from their first album, “Too Late Now,” about not knowing the right choices to make. The guitar sounds like high pitched bells, and Teasdale stood in front of a fan in an orange-lighted cloud of fog, her hair blowing back behind her as she sang the quick, riffing bridge: “I don’t need no dating app to tell me if I look like crap / to tell me if I’m thin or fat, to tell me should I shave my rat / I don’t need no radio, no MTV, no BBC / I just need a bubble bath to set me on a higher path.” In another slower moment during the show, bubbles floated from the stage over the crowd as Teasdale sang “11:21,” a dreamy,

ARTS 15

THINKPIECE

BY KATE E. RAVENSCROFT

“Your smile is like a breath of spring / Your skin is soft like summer rain,” a wig-blonde 27-yearold Dolly Parton first sang in 1973. She has continued to sing out this country lamentation to masses of adoring fans for over 50 years, concluding with the lyrics, “And I cannot compete with you, Jolene.”

Among the hits to come out of the 1970s, “Jolene” has become an indisputably timeless classic — young women have flocked to the song and deplored the mysterious beauty with “flaming locks of Auburn hair” from car passenger seats and concert stages alike for decades.

“Jolene” is the perfect example of a narrative archetype which has informed the work of countless female artists: the “I Wish I Were Her” song. The tale of women expressing their sentiments of jealousy towards other women has been inherited through generations of storytelling. And, of course, the sexism which propagates this practice of pitting women against each other is also tried and true.

This tradition is embedded in music history not only with the eternal real-world framing of female popstars as rivals, but in the tracks themselves — the aforementioned “Jolene” being a prime example. Nina Simone’s “The Other Woman” is another enduring depiction; Lana del Rey’s cover of which went viral in recent years as women coped with their feelings of chronic inadequacy in the form of artsy edits featuring its lyrics.

In her ballad, Simone lists all of the things that a superior romantic competitor is and does. Simone comforts herself with an assertion that, while this mistress appears perfect, she cannot find permanent success with a man and ultimately “cries herself to sleep.” Thus, the narrator — the wife who is not as superficially qualified, but benefits from the valuable designation as an institutional partner — emerges victorious over the whore. Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me” offers a nearly identical, albeit contemporary, chronicle of the girl who is “not like other girls” and therefore “deserves” to win the affections of a man over a conventionally feminine adversary. The song contrasts the qualities of the supposedly dorky narrator with those of the popular-girl, offering a data-driven testimony as to why the narrator is superior, even if she claims to lack conventional attractiveness in comparison — and, of course, Swift does not actually lack beauty by any

The Most Beautiful Musician You Know Wishes She Were Someone Else

THE “I WISH I WERE HER” SONG is part of a long musical tradition where women artists singn that they’d rather be another woman.

stretch of the imagination. This irony of the stunning woman bemoaning not being even more stunning is ever-present. This sort of framing is inherently only possible through a foundation of insecurity, Swift’s expression of which went seven times platinum and sold 4.9 million copies in the US as of 2019.

Feelings of envy and indignation are obviously not a new invention of the digital age, although social media offers a breeding ground teeming with highly infectious opportunities for comparison and insecurity. With these cultural developments, the “I Wish I Were Her” song has catapulted into a resoundingly successful genre for female songwriters, with more and more iterations of this plot popping up in modern day chart-toppers. Through examining these lyrics carefully, the ways in which cultural narratives surrounding the determinants of a woman’s success have changed and stayed the same are stated in clear terms.

Olivia Rodrigo’s “jealousy, jeal-

ousy” directly confronts the ways in which social media has heightened the reach and intensity of young insecurity, even for someone who seemingly complies with all of the demands of modern femininity. Rodrigo is rich, famous, youthful, relatable, and has the very same highly-coveted body which is relentlessly celebrated across social media and pop culture. Yet, the singer still laments wanting to “throw my phone across the room / ‘Cause all I see are girls too good to be true / With paper white teeth and perfect bodies.”

A development on the “I Wish I Were Her” song, Rodrigo also alludes to the relatively recent aggregate push for women to love themselves in the face of the unrealistic expectations to which they have been generationally subjected. “I know their beauty’s not my lack,” she sings, “But it feels like that weight is on my back / And I can’t let it go.” In her sophomore album, “GUTS,” Rodrigo defines more clearly what constitutes this perfect woman she hopes to be on

‘Caught Stealing’ Review: A Descent into NYC’s Underworld

BY CAPRI S. WAYNE CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

In “Caught Stealing,” Darren S. Aronofsky ’91 swings us back to 1998, the year that he made his feature directorial debut with “Pi.” Known for his psychological thrillers and disturbing concepts, his latest picture is instead an action-packed crime caper set in his hometown of New York City. Based on the book of the same title by Charlie Huston, who also wrote the screenplay, “Caught Stealing” is the story of Hank Thompson (Austin Butler) — a thirty-something, washed-up baseball prodigy. We quickly find out that a devastating car accident in his youth ended his shot of playing major league ball. Hank is defined by his love for the San Francisco Giants: He always has his Giants hat on, sticking out like a sore thumb in the heartland of Mets fans. A devoted mama’s boy, he ends every daily phone call to his mom (an uncredited Laura Dern) with “Go Giants,” allowing the entire film to be framed by baseball and broken dreams. The interesting thing about Hank is that he seems, by all

means, like a normal guy. He bartends for a living, has a sort-of girlfriend named Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz), and lives in a Lower East Side apartment with bad plumbing and even worse neighbors. However, when one neighbor, a British punk named Russ (Matt Smith), asks him to watch his pet cat for a few days, he is unwittingly dragged into a violent world of crime and murder. Hank’s predicament is a callback to Martin Scorsese’s 1985 cult classic “After Hours,” a reference Aronofsky underscores by casting Griffin Dunne — Scorsese’s original lead — as Hank’s boss. For a film so gritty and grimy, “Caught Stealing” is delightfully slick. It was shot by Aronofsky’s long-time collaborator Matthew Libatique, who captures absurd and violent events with clean-cut frames — offering an impressive precision to such a messy series of events. The visual language particularly shines in the motif of the car crash. Twice, a closeup, slo-mo shot of a car crashing face-first into a pole is utilized to create a horrific, but enrapturing cinematic moment. As the film progresses, it dives further into neo-noir, underscor-

ing the corruption and complications within the world of law enforcement and crime. New York becomes a character of its own. Sharp on-location shooting makes all the places Hank ends up in clearly recognizable: Chinatown, Coney Island, Flushing Meadows, Brighton Beach. Within this setting, the absurdities of city living shine through. An off-kilter set of supporting characters underpins the comedy in “Caught Stealing.”

The movie offers a diverse set of rogues. It’s impossible not to notice the neon yellow mohawk on Russ’ head. The Russian goons are perfect comic archetypes. The smaller one, nicknamed Microbe (Nikita Kukushkin), is practically feral, beating Hank to the point of kidney failure. Hilariously, he taunts Hank by singing cliche American tunes like “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

There’s also the Orthodox Jewish brothers (Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio) who carry out casual murders by day but won’t drive on Shabbat — and still make time to deliver challah to their “Bubbe.” The film also features a strong performance from Regina King as Detective Roman, who notably gives a strange

the track “lacy.” Of this idol, she sings “I try, I try, I try / But it takes over my life, I see you everywhere / The sweetest torture one could bear,” describing the habit of satisfying self-flaggelation that is the constant consumption of prettier, and therefore “better,” women on the internet — a persistent phenomenon among young women today.

Laufey corroborates this opaque association between physical attractiveness and success in her August release “Snow White.” “I don’t think I’m pretty, it’s not up for debate / A woman’s best currency is her body, not her brain / They try to tell me, tell me I’m wrong,” she sings, alluding to how society insists beauty isn’t an element of her success, despite the overwhelming real-world evidence of this state of affairs. “The people want beauty; skinny always wins / And I don’t have enough of it / I’ll never have enough of it.”

Rodrigo and Laufey, however, offer “I Wish I Were Her” songs with meaningfully different context than their predecessors.

While the demand for physical beauty has not changed throughout the genre, their end goal of success has. Parton, Simone, and Swift all wrote their songs with their sights set on a man, rather than the career success or personal fulfillment alluded to by modern examples. This seems like a win — this shift embodies the celebrated feminist idea that champions women’s deriving worth outside of male validation.

However, these narratives also showcase that women have not yet been able to triumph over physical attractiveness as a requirement for success. While female singers used to aspire to be another woman because of her romantic success, they now mourn their perennially insufficient physical appearance because their beauty remains a condition of their total life achievement.

The comparative lack of “I Wish I Were Him” songs is so obvious that it need not be elucidated in detail, although the closest rendition of this genre in the musical male canon are, notably, written with overwhelming re-

gard to wanting to be a different man so that one might gain access to a desirable woman. These include “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers, “Creep” by Radiohead, and “Jessie’s Girl” by Rick Springfield. None of these entries — or any entries into this category of song by male performers with mainstream popularity — mention, or even suggest, a crippling anxiety of not being attractive enough for professional success or personal confidence. There are hopeful indicators in the music industry which suggest a cultural shift towards a more confident female canon, one predicated upon subversive power and agency from female pop stars. This includes Beyoncé’s version of “Jolene,” in which the lyrics take on an unapologetically violent and threatening tone; the narrator of this song will not be walked over, “Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene / I’m warnin’ you, woman, find you your own man / Jolene, I know I’m a queen, Jolene / I’m still a Creole banjee bitch from Louisiana (Don’t try me).” Recent sensations in the canon of girly-pop starlets, Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter, have shunned the “I Wish I Were Her” song out of their oeuvre almost completely, with many tracks tipping this very stereotype on its head, in fact. Roan’s “Giver” is more of a “You Wish He Were Me” song, in which the queer singer asserts that she is a better lover than any conventionally masculine man. Carpenter invokes a “She Wishes She Were Me” narrative in both “Taste” — “I heard you’re back together and if that’s true / You’ll just have to taste me when he’s kissin’ you” — and even in her infamous single from 2021,“Skin” — “You can try / To get under my, under my, under my skin / While he’s on mine / Yeah, all on my, all on my, all on my skin.” This shift towards empowered sexuality seems to mark an improvement upon the “I Wish I Were Her” formula with its more robust confidence. However, the correlation between the physical beauty of Roan and Carpenter and their success in the industry cannot be understated. Not a day goes by that an article about how to achieve Carpenter’s bombshell look doesn’t come out, or a post about how Roan’s “body is tea” isn’t making the rounds. So, have female musicians — and, by extension, American women — surpassed attractiveness as a prerequisite for achievement within the emboldened feminism of the 2000s onwards? Ask a teen girl if they desperately wished they looked like Carpenter — the enthusiastic “Yes” will elucidate a resounding “No,” and the persistence of the “I Wish I Were Her” song would certainly recommend otherwise.

kate.ravenscroft@thecrimson.com

monologue about black and white cookies.

On the downside, with such a colorful ensemble, Austin Butler’s everyman Hank gets lost in the mix — making it difficult to fully connect with his character. The blend of excruciating torture scenes and absurdist comedy is entertaining but disorienting. Aronofsky juggles this dichotomy well enough, but it

doesn’t leave sufficient room for a deeper emotional resonance.

COURTESY OF

Unlike “Requiem for a Dream” or “The Whale,” it lacks a core of tragedy, and without the surrealism and fantasy of “Black Swan” and “Mother!”, it loses the mythic quality that often elevates Aronofsky’s work. Nevertheless, “Caught Stealing” is a stylish, darkly funny film about a week gone horribly wrong. While certainly an entertaining watch, it — like Hank — never really makes it to the major leagues.

3.5 STARS

VICTORIA CHEN — CRIMSON DESIGNER

FIFTEEN MINUTES 16

The Cabot Professor of Mathematics sat down with Fifteen Minutes to discuss life lessons from mathematics, the challenges of formulating good questions, and his work visualizing curved space.

Professor Curtis T. McMullen received the 1998 Fields Medal, deemed the most prestigious award in mathematics, for his work on complex dynamics. McMullen is also the creator of the Illustrating Infinity exhibit that hangs in the Science Center atrium. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

FM: Explain it to me like I’m five. What have you primarily been studying the last few years?

CTM: My mathematics is as much about questions as it is about results, formulas, images. I feel that finding the right kind of question to attack is a big part of crafting a beneficial and interesting and deep research program.

It’s easy to understand a lot of the questions that I’m trying to address, but to answer them brings in some of the deepest issues in modern mathematics. There’s lots of problems which are unsolved, and there’s lots of problems which we may never be able to solve. It’s an area which has an easy entry point, but it involves all sorts of branches of mathematics, algebra, number theory, analysis, dynamical systems, and especially the complex numbers — things like the square root of minus one.

FM: The way you talk about mathematics sounds pretty different from what I heard in high school algebra and intro calculus. Given that most people’s experience with math is limited to those high school and early college courses, what are the biggest misconceptions that you run into when you talk about being a professional mathematician?

CTM: We’ve been trained from an early age to think of math as something we have to learn, as opposed to something we might want to learn.

I think that’s the major misconception — that math is some sort of computational grind. Especially these days, with access to computers, I certainly don’t do difficult calculations by hand. Formulating questions? Developing mental imagery for things? This is much more important in research.

Q&A:

CURTIS T. MCMULLEN ON SHARED TRUTH, UNSOLVED PROBLEMS, AND HOW TO ILLUSTRATE INFINITY

MCMULLEN ON MATH. McMullen, the Cabot Professor of Mathematics, spoke with Fifteen Minutes about his latest research, math courses at Harvard, and his storied career.

BY KATE J. KAUFMAN ASSOCIATE MAGAZINE EDITOR

you’ll have to come to Paris to study with me next fall.” I went from having no thesis advisor and no thesis topic to being on the verge of graduating in like four months.

FM: You are a highly decorated mathematician, from Fields Medal to Cabot Professor of Mathematics and so much more. What do you think has been the most rewarding moment of your career?

CTM: I want to mention a saying I learned from Lipman Bers, who was one of my mentors — a Latvian mathematician. He said, “Mathematics is something we do for the begrudging admiration of a few close friends.” I think I never expected more reward from mathematics than something like that. It’s something you do because you love it.

A truly amazing moment in my career was when my former graduate student Maryam Mirzakhani received the Fields Medal. To have a student be so highly recognized, and especially to become the first woman to receive the Fields Medal, was something I’m very proud to have been part of. I gave the laudation for her in Seoul, and I’m very glad to have had that as part of my life. I’m very sad that she died at such an early age. But I have to say that every time a student graduates or comes to me with a great idea, it’s almost the same as when Miriam won the Fields Medal.

FM: I love that answer, and I actually wanted to ask you more about that. You have this role as a mentor and a teacher to future generations of mathematicians, and I’m curious what it’s like to contribute to the lineage of your field’s community in that way.

CTM: One of the great things about being at the various universities where I’ve taught, including Harvard, is just coming into contact with so many students who have such incredible potential. My role is, I feel, really just to guide them into a fruitful beginning of their own research trajectory.

I’m helping my students cultivate their own creativity, pick challenges that are deep and interesting, learn how to formulate interesting questions, and learn what to do when a question is too hard for you.

Every student is different, and every student is rewarding to have.

FM: Speaking of developing imagery, I walk past the Negatively Curved Crystals exhibit almost every day between classes in the Science Center, and I think they are beautiful and fascinating. What has the reaction to this art been over the last five years?

CTM: I felt that there was no presence of the math department, or really of any department, in the Science Center — on the ground floor, in the lobby, in the atrium. I talked to the people who ran the Science Center, and I said, “Who’s in charge of this space?” They said “No one is in charge,” so I just got together some materials and guerilla-style took over the space. Every now and then, I see people standing in front of them or taking pictures, but I also think I just love having them in the space and seeing what it brings to the sense that you’re in a science center.

FM: Can you tell me more about the process that you actually used to generate the images?

CTM: I’d wanted to try this out for a long time. Of course, I had drawn computer pictures on my computer screen and printed them out on a laser printer. What I discovered right away is there’s something really different about working at a scale of, say, five feet versus a sheet of notebook paper, and seeing it from 20 feet away

versus five feet. Very luckily, I got access through a friend to a plotter at Mass Art.

This is something that’s used in architecture, and it allows you to make very large prints very inexpensively.

I used this plotter to get a feel for how things would look and to develop a lot of the parameters about cropping, about resolution, and things like that.

I decided to limit my options because there’s so many pictures one can possibly make. So, I decided to only make black and white prints and to only use circles in the images. That was the first iteration, and that was called negatively curved crystals because these circular patterns have to do with shapes in negatively curved space — shapes that form a repetitive pattern in the same way a salt crystal does.

FM: You mentioned that that was the first iteration, and I’ve also heard you describe the exhibit as ever-evolving. How has it changed in the last several years?

CTM: Every year I make some new images. I swap some images out. My own interests shift — I often like to try to introduce something that’s related to my current research.

All of the imagery aims to evoke what I think is one of the most interesting notions in mathematics, which is the idea of infinity. You see a pattern which is very

rich, but in your imagination, you imagine it going on forever. Of course, I can’t have microscopic detail in my prints, but they’re meant to evoke this — it’s like an introduction to the concept of infinity. I hope the viewer then takes over in their own imagination and can, in their own way, feel the infinite complexity that I’m trying to allude to in these images.

FM: You’ve mentioned that the creation of these images reflects your current research. I’m curious how your perspective on mathematics, or on the concept of infinity, has changed as you’ve created artwork that illustrates these geometric rules?

CTM: First let me say, I usually don’t refer to this as artwork. I refer to it as graphics or as illustration. I think that illustration is, in fact, a very important facet of mathematical communication and even of mathematical research.

What’s great is that once you’ve developed the computer skills and the computational tools to render some of these images, you can then tweak them in a minor way and produce infinitely many different images. There were many things I wanted to see when I wrote my first program that generated these patterns of circles. It was in 1995, I wrote it to make one illustration that no one had ever seen before, and I was just tremendously excited when I finally saw this illustration. But I’ve now used that precise program for 30 years, and it’s extremely versatile.

FM: When do you think you first fell in love with mathematics?

CTM: I’m not in love with mathematics — I remember very well in fifth grade talking to an adult and being asked what was the subject I liked the least in school, and I said mathematics. And then they asked what I was the best at, and it was also mathematics.

What really got me excited was not mathematics, per se, but computers.

I was allowed to go visit the high school and try programming on their 10-character-per-second teletype, and that was just tremendously exciting. So I got very interested in computation, I think, before I knew any advanced mathematics.

FM: Do you think you were destined to be a mathematician?

CTM: No. I think I’m very lucky to have become a mathematician. There were several moments in my life where if luck had gone a different way, I don’t know where I would be, but not here.

My thesis advisor was not at Harvard — it was Dennis Sullivan, who was going between New York and France at the time. I had the great fortune that the chairman here at Harvard called him up on the phone and said, “We have a graduate student who’s interested in your work.”

I flew down to meet him, he agreed to be my advisor, and he said, “Well, I guess

FM: How do you stay motivated to continue researching when you’re facing these questions that maybe you don’t even know whether or not it’s possible to solve them?

CTM: Well, you don’t just keep looking at a blank blackboard day after day. Some people talk about the obstacles to solving math problems as being psychological. I think what they mean by that is a lot of times we have preconceptions about how things work, and we have to let go of those because they may be wrong.

There’s a very simple rule about solving problems, which is that no matter what question you have, there is a simpler question which you can answer. Your job is to find that question and then answer it, and then you can formulate the next question.

kate.kaufman@thecrimson.com.

Fifteen Minutes is the magazine of The Harvard Crimson. To read the full interview and other longform pieces, visit THECRIMSON.COM/

Women’s Soccer Sweeps Weekend

Harvard women’s soccer (2-3-2) returned to the pitch on Friday in a heated Charles River rivalry against the Boston University Terriers (33-1) before clashing with the New Hampshire Wildcats (1-3-3) in the Crimson’s final non-conference game before Ivy League play begins.

In a fiercely contested match, Harvard earned an admirable 2-1 victory over Boston to land its first win of the season. The Crimson followed up its first win with another in a 3-2 win over New Hampshire.

On a crisp evening under the lights, a sense of urgency and hope was in the air for the Crimson as it chased its first win of the season while defending home field. In its previous matches, Harvard struggled to finish and put matches away. Both teams arrived ready to compete for a win after a string of draws in the previous outings. In the early minutes of the matchup, the intense possession battle between the Terriers and the Crimson set the tone for the pace of the game. Harvard carved out early opportunities in the first few minutes, attempting a few shots on goal, but could not capitalize on the possession advantages. Thus the game remained deadlocked through the first 15 minutes. This stalemate would not last much longer and neither would the balance of play tilted in the Crimson’s favor.

At the 20 minute mark, both teams were aggressive in the box, but Harvard committed a penalty with Boston in the hunt for a score. With the potential of an early deficit, Harvard placed its faith in Rhiannon Stewart, senior goalkeeper, to block the penalty kick. Se-

nior midfielder Guilanna Gianino stepped up to kick for the Terriers. Despite Stewart making the correct guess on the direction and getting a hand on the ball, Gianino scored, placing Boston ahead, 1-0. In the face of adversity, Harvard remained persistent and responded eight minutes later. Junior forward Anna Rayhill, received a phenomenal through ball from first year midfielder Elsa Santos López and raced up the right side of the field. After engaging the Boston goalkeeper towards the right side of the goal, Rayhill shot a ground ball back across to the left and into the bottom left corner of goal, tying the game and entering halftime, 1-1.

“This week we talked about the ability to come back from being down a goal. The team’s energy and determination allowed us to respond and for me to score,” said Rayhill. Harvard started the second half with a newfound purpose against the Terriers. Within ten minutes of the second half, Harvard had multiple scoring opportunities, with Boston unable to gain any advantage up the pitch. The Crimson defen-

sive output ultimately led to a corner kick on the offensive end. Junior midfielder Susie Long set up for the corner kick, while the entire team awaited the opportunity to capitalize.

“I always take a deep breath to try and put the ball in the right spot for someone to get their toe, foot, head, or something on it,” said Long. Long gave the signal and then placed the ball in the air. As everyone rushed to make a play on the ball, first year midfielder Caroline Studebaker perfectly timed a header 2ft away from the goal into the bottom right side corner of the goal, scoring her first career goal. Harvard took the lead, 2-1, with 30 minutes of play remaining.

“It felt awesome to be able to contribute to our first win, especially on a set piece,” said Studebaker. “I give credit to Susie for the textbook service and to the team for generating the opportunity on the corner.”

With a little over 22 minutes left in the game, the Terriers were gifted the chance to tie the game. A free kick was awarded to Boston junior forward Ava Maguire on a controversial fall near the box. However,

the ball was deflected by Harvard and created a quick transition for the Crimson. Ólöf Kristinsdóttir, junior forward and former Ivy League Rookie of the Year, led the push down the field. She centered the ball to senior forward Audrey Francois for a 1 on 1 with a Boston defender, but Francois was taken down by the goal and awarded a penalty kick. The anticipation swelled again for Harvard with the chance to take a commanding lead. As Francois kicked the ball towards the goal, the Terrier goalie anticipated incorrectly jumping to the right. The left side of the net was open for the goal, but Francois missed just left of the post.

As the game winded down, both teams were chippy with each other and the refs. Plenty of free kicks were drawn and cards were issued affirming the physicality of the game. Santos, a driving force of this physicality and fiery approach to the Crimson even as a first year noted that, “These games do not always appear the most fun and enjoyable because the joy is playing with the ball, but the defensive effort from the Crimson was the pivotal factor for the win”.

Harvard closed out Boston in a 2-1 victory and the tides are appearing to turn for the Crimson. The match created a defensive mentality Harvard can build on and hopefully continue to transfer into offensive opportunities up the pitch. Despite a rough start to the season, the Crimson have proved capable of weathering the storm and willing its way to a win. With incredible efforts from Stewart in the goal, along with a mix of Crimson players offensively and defensively, Harvard is gearing up for a strong back stretch to the season.

Harvard came out in control from the get-go, with Rayhill and

Francios applying the pressure early for the Crimson, as they smoothly moved the ball down the field and tested the waters of the New Hampshire defense. Despite their significant control of possession during the early minutes, the Wildcat defense held strong. The defensive dam looked poised to crack when Long placed a precise corner into the box, which was redirected by the head of Kristinsdóttir. However the striker had to work the ball around a host of Wildcats and sent the ball just left of the sidebar.

The tide started to shift toward the visiting team around the fifteenth minute when New Hampshire’s senior midfielder Abbi Maier was awarded a penalty kick in the box. The penalty slipped past Stewart. 1-0 New Hampshire.

The Crimson kept the torrent of pressure on the Wildcat backline, despite being down a goal. Throughout the later portion of the first half, the Crimson continued to move the ball down the field with skill, and continued to shoot on the goal. One shot by Kristinsdóttir sent a wave of adrenaline though the crowd before it narrowly missed over the top of the goal. Nearing the 30th minute, the game started to become choppy. First, New Hampshire’s Ricshya Walker, a freshman forward, was awarded a yellow card after escalating the competitive pushing which was occurring between both teams. Later, after successfully moving the ball down to the Wildcat’s goalbox, a host of Crimson forwards and Wildcat backs became congested near the goal in a physical battle for the ball. During this tussle, sophomore forward Lauren Muniz was able to rise to the top and send the ball through the posts and make the game a 1-1

tie going into the half. Coming out of halftime, the Crimson kept up the pressure and the game continued in a choppy fashion. Muniz got another foot on the ball and nearly missed the goal early in the second half. Long had a one on one goal opportunity but was roughed up by a defender next to her, without a call. Sophomore defender Erin Gordon sent a ball over the hands of the UNH goalie but it was barely rejected by the crossbar.

With only twenty minutes left in the game, the New Hampshire defensive dam finally seemed to be breaking. Two minutes later, a smooth series ended in Rayhill crossing to the middle and goal from Kristinsdóttir, her first goal since her long-term injury in 2023. 2-1 Crimson

The Wildcats tried to retaliate, but after a diving save by Stewart, the Crimson were back on offense with a surge of momentum carrying them.

chandler.pigge@thecrimson.com jake.swanson@thecrimson.com

Women’s soccer celebrates. CHASE W. MCCANN — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Men’s Soccer Stays Hot With Win in N.H.

In an intense defensive battle in front of the Jordan Field home crowd, Harvard men’s soccer (3-1-1) notched a tight 1-0 win against its New England opponent, the University of New Hampshire (0-3-4), improving to 3-0-1 in its last four contest and following a 1-1 draw against UConn on the road on Satur-

day, where sophomore Phoenix Wooten scored his first career goal on a second-half equalizer. “We’re just grinding these wins out,” junior midfielder Ben Kelly said in an interview with Harvard Athletics. “It’s a mentality that we have now. We are not going to lose at home.”

After a cagey start to the game and a Wildcats shot that hit the woodwork in the 20th minute, the deadlock was broken by Harvard in the 26th minute. From a right flank attacking move, ju-

nior forward Andreas Savva snuck a quick pass to junior midfielder Kelly. Kelly singlehandedly maneuvered in the box between several UNH defenders and made a powerful shot, which landed in the back of the net.

“The team is resilient. We fight for each other,” Kelly said.

“We’re not gonna win this game as a team of individuals. We win as a collective. We’re building some momentum we haven’t had in a couple years now, and I think we’re ready to

take anything that comes at us.” For the rest of the game, Harvard’s defensive line held strong against repeated UNH attacks, including a near-goal with 20 minutes left. On the contrary, Harvard’s attack failed to create enough chances in the box to force dangerous attacking opportunities. The game’s pace ramped up in the last few minutes, after UNH and Harvard players got involved in an altercation near the sideline. With one minute left to go, the Crim-

son defense deflected a shot, and senior goalkeeper Cullen MacNeil made a crucial save during a corner to seal a quality win for Harvard.

“The team really put a great shift in. A game full of grit and hard work. It was nice to make the plays I needed to, but at the end of the day the boys earned the clean sheet. It was truly a collective effort, all focus now on the Ivys,” MacNeil wrote.

When Head Coach Andrew Aurich and his top players filed into the post-game press conference at the end of last season, their disappointment was palpable — with the loss to Yale, the chance at the first outright Ivy Title in a decade had slipped through their fingers.

“We shouldn’t have shared this thing with anybody,” Aurich said during the postgame press conference.

The heartbreaking end capped off an impressive season — one where Harvard went 8-2 during Aurich’s debut head coaching year. Still, the final loss left the team hungry for more.

‘Another Level of Excitement’

This year, for the first time in Ivy League history, Harvard has the opportunity to make the FCS playoff, giving the Crimson not just a chance at redemption, but an opportunity to go further than before and for Aurich to define his legacy. First, though, they need to win the Ivy League.

“We were already preparing to put ourselves in a position to win an Ivy League Championship,” Aurich said. “So it didn’t really change the work. Obviously, I think that brings another level of excitement.”

The team is coming into the season in search of its identity, having lost much of its talent with star wide receiver Cooper Barkate transferring to Duke and key players graduating. Despite having many younger players eager to slot in and key returners in senior quarterback Jaden Craig and captain safety Ty Bartrum, Aurich acknowl -

edged at the end of spring training that his team was going into the season with less of an advantage than last year.

“We are not the same team we were,” he said. “I feel like the distance between us and a lot of teams we played, as far as talent level was sig nificantly further last year. And that’s not to say we won’t be as talented or more talent ed than a lot of teams who play, but the margin for error is much smaller.”

With the first game of the season only three days away, Aurich said he wants his play ers to be “obsessed with the ball” and focused on the challenge di rectly ahead of them.

“We go about our business and focus on one game at a time and get the results we want at the end of season,” Aurich said.

‘We’re Not a Cookie Cutter Offense’

Last season began with ques tions about Aurich filling leg endary head coach Tim Mur phy’s shoes. Now, as Murphy’s name is etched into the new turf at Harvard Stadium, the program has turned to a new chapter, firmly under Aurich’s helm.

The team, reaching a nineyear high of No. 17 in the Stats Perform FCS Top 25 poll last season, flashed its potential, but this year the team will have to rebuild its offense as it hopes to fill the shoes of past players.

The offense will certainly not resemble its unpredictable 2024 self that constantly creat ed chaos for opposing defens es. The unit lost a significant amount of talent with four of its top five receivers, running back Shane McLaughlin, and utility

man Charles DePrima — who “We’re not a cookie cutter offense where we’re the same every single year,” he added. Craig also expressed optimism about the potential for this year’s offense

“We’ve got a lot of young guys that are very talented,” Craig said at the Ivy League Media

Aurich noted that every team deals with player turnover, and each year it’s the coaching staff’s responsibility to determine the schemes and personnel that fit an offense’s skillset.

While it remains to be seen who will step up as the Crimson’s key skill players on the outside, Aurich and offensive coordinator Mickey Fein will certainly lean on Craig’s mobility, arm strength, and veteran presence as the team develops an attacking cadence.

“You develop your players to make sure they’re a different version of themselves when you get to the actual games,” he said, “And I think we did a really good job of that.”

Junior running back Xaviah Bascon, the team’s leading rusher last season, is another offensive highlight for the team — poised to carry his late-season momentum into the fall as the team’s feature back.

“I feel good about where we’re headed and what we have,” Aurich added.

‘Disrupting the Football’

On the defensive side of the line of scrimmage, the team returns two of its top tacklers in Bartrum and junior defensive back Austin-Jake Guillory.

However, the front seven took some major blows, including losing defensive end Jacob Psyk and linebacker Mitchell

The Crimson (3-0) dominated Brown (0-3) in the team’s third game of the season — defeating its first Ivy opponent 47-8. Coming off an impressive 26–7 victory over Lindenwood — a newcomer to the conference but historically one of the top rugby programs in the country — Harvard came into the weekend hoping to carry that momentum into its next matchup. The Bears, who lost their first two opening games, gave the Crimson ample opportunity to impress before a large, firedup crowd gathered for Alumni Weekend. Harvard started with some rotations in its lineup, with senior forward Amber Van Meines logging her first start for the Crimson. This lineup showcased some of the talent recruited to Harvard this fall, but also featured new players who have often never played the sport — a sign of the team’s continued

commitment to training up new talent.

As the game kicked off, an early foul by the Crimson in its defensive third led to Brown taking a quick lead only a few minutes into the game. This was short-lived, though, with Harvard responding quickly with junior forward Courtney Taylor getting the try and junior scrumhalf Ava Ference converting to put the team ahead 7–3. Freshman Madelyn Hubbell built on this quick response and drove the ball across the line for her first career try. As the Crimson lead began to open up, Van Meines got the ball between the posts in a scramble. Ference went three for three on her conversions, continuing to pull Harvard ahead.

Despite having notched her first career try in 15s, Van Meines emphasized that the offensive contributions were coming from across the field.

“A lot of the tries this game were scored by the forwards which are always group efforts,” Van Meines said, specifically cit-

ing help from Taylor and Ference. The attacking momentum continued through the first half, with the seniors able to lead the team into the half 33–3 off of tries from captain Charlotte Gilmour and wing Lennox London. The play in the start of the

second half was more evenly matched, with possession going in both directions and many turnovers from each team. Fifteen minutes went by without a try until the Bears found a way to break the deadlock against a resilient Harvard defense.

“We have a week break now, which will be good for some of us and our bodies. We’re really looking forward to every game that we’re playing,” Kelly added. The Crimson returns to action when it faces off against its rivals across the river, Northeastern, at Jordan Field next Tuesday, Sep. 23, at 7 p.m., streaming on ESPN+.

Gonser, both first-team all-Ivy selections, in addition to several other starters.

In order to replicate the success of previous years, the fundamentals of the defense under longtime coordinator Scott Larkee won’t change.

“It’s all about execution. We need to get 11 guys executing every single play. We don’t need guys who are thinking, ‘I need to make a play’, because the plays will come to you if we can get 11 guys that are executing,” Aurich said.

One player ready to step up to the task is junior defensive end Josh Fedd, who sat under Psyk for much of his first two seasons before being a preseason All-Ivy League second team selection.

“The guys who have risen up on the depth chart are the guys who are consistently on defense, disrupting the football, executing their job,” Aurich said.

“I’m approaching it from the standpoint of ‘Let’s just be as great as I can, putting in work throughout the summer,’ and then making sure I have this connection with my teammates and getting into the playbook in a way I’d never done before,” said Fedd. “Even though we do hurt to see those guys leave, I feel as though in the locker room it’s still the same mentality: we have to go make those plays.”

Bartrum — the team’s 151st captain — is ready to lead a new group of guys to the same level they were at in years past.

“I think that’s the name of the game, is next man up mentality,” said Bartrum.

“We got a lot of guys that are hungry, a lot of guys as I’ve just said, like, have not played meaningful snaps. So I’m super excited for them to show what they can do,” he added.

The game continued to go

“We really think we can win against anyone,” said Kelly. “And that’s the mentality.”

‘They Want to do Something Special this Year’ As one of the last teams to kick off its 2025 campaign, the Crimson is ready to strike. In the preseason Ivy League poll, the team was ranked 1st — with Dartmouth and Yale tailing closely behind.

The Ivy League’s season starts nearly a month after the first weekend of college football, and Aurich said watching other teams see gametime action has only made his players more eager to get on the field themselves.

“These guys are just so excited to play against somebody else, different than anywhere else in the country, because we literally walked off the field practice one, and I turned on my TV and Kansas State was playing,” Aurich said. On Saturday, the team will finally have a chance to get started with a game on the road against Stetson (1-2). The matchup marks the first time in Harvard history that the team will make the journey to Florida for a game. Last season, the Hatters didn’t pose a significant threat to the Crimson, but this year’s matchup nonetheless will be a test for the cohesion of Harvard’s squad — and a chance for the Crimson to continue its streak of never having given up a point to a team from Florida while shaking off the rust before the Ivy League season. With so much young talent hoping to redefine the offense and returning players hoping to retain their reps in this season, Aurich said the team has the motivation to succeed.

“They want to do something special this year,” he said.

ON THE GREATEST MORAL ISSUE IN LIFE LAYMEN AND EVEN MOST PROFESSIONALS MUST NOT FORFEIT THEIR MORAL REASONING TO A FEW EXPERTS

Julian W. Haydon – A 97-Year-Old Layman

Is there a more profound moral question in human life, than whether Free Will (FW) is true or an illusion? You judge if it is so:

•• Billions of Christians and Muslims are taught that how you use your FW determines whether you will suffer forever in “a lake of re” or live in bliss eternally after death.

•• For the non-religious, whether Free Will is true is crucial to our understanding of justice, ourselves and all others.

Laymen – means all non-professionals.

Most Professionals – refers to professionals in elds unrelated to the FW question such as dentists, accountants and geologists.

DEFINITIONS

Free Will – means a supposed ability to choose among alternatives, free of any hereditary and environmental inuence if either would be decisive in that choice.

Determinism – asserts that all events are caused by prior events.

Compatibilism – is the view of a relatively small but powerful few who claim what they have is compatible with FW because it means acting according to one’s motivations,

I want to make the case that most people must not forfeit their need to take a position on this portentous moral question just because they do not have expertise in philosophy or the specialized science disciplines.

Experts in science and philosophy at the deepest levels speak a language we do not understand. Furthermore, on the matter of FW, experts always disagree – especially philosophers. So how can the majority of people determine their position?

They must decide by the fair use of common sense, which means examining their own experience honestly. Then, and essential, to learn as much as they can from the relevant experts on both sides. Finally, to weigh it all and then taking the stand making the most sense to you, subject to change if your belief changes.

Why do so many believe they have FW? There are two very persuasive reasons, and some not at all:

•• We all know we choose every day between alternatives, and then do as we decided to do.

•• It is certain the world works on that premise - as it must in order to demand and expect adherence to promises and understandings, the essence of relations between family, friends, and others of every kind. [But we are also certain of other illusions too, such as the earth is standing still, though it is spinning at the equator at some 24,000 mph.]

•• We all desire to be re-united with deceased family and friends, to see the horrors suffered in this world made right, both from natural and man-caused disasters, and to punish those who caused the man-made suffering. [But, these are emotional-reaction wishes, not the way the world works.]

Do those teaching FW have motives? For most Christians and all Muslims it absolves God for the evil of his own creations. Saint Augustine, 386-395 A.D., wrote, “Evil deeds are punished by the justice of God. They would not be punished justly if they had not been performed voluntarily.” De Libero Arbitrio, translated as On FW.

desires, or reasons, without external coercion, even if those motivations are themselves determined by prior causes.

Responsible – means the decider is the only cause of a decision, except they are not responsible if acting under force, too young or mentally incompetent.

Accountable - the doer of an act, such as a ve-year-old who pulled the trigger is accountable but not responsible, because too young to understand the consequences of the act.

Stanford U., Professor David Eagleman, in his acclaimed book, INCOGNITO, said: “If you think genes don’t affect how people behave, consider this fact: If you are a carrier of a particular set of genes, the probability that you will commit a violent crime is: 4 times as high as it would be if you lacked those genes, 3 times higher for robbery, 5 times higher for aggravated assault, 8 times higher to be arrested for murder, 13 times higher to be arrested sexual offense. The overwhelming majority of prisoners carry these genes - 51 times higher to be on death-row98.1 percent are male. As regards that dangerous set of genes, you’ve probably heard of them. They are summarized as the Y chromosome. If you’re a carrier, we call you a male.”

Professor Robert Sapolsky, also a neuroscientist at Stanford U, in his thousand page book, BEHAVE explained in mind-numbing detail the science

[His moral reasoning was right then and for all time.]

Also, with glaring motives to teach FW are the hundreds of thousands of priests, mullahs, theologians and underlings who will not stand by and let the foundation of their religion, the need for a God, and Savior, collapse. I suspect compatibilists of wishing to validate their selfesteem and claim earned and deserved credit for who they are and where they are. Some are very smart and even eminent. They must be atheists since acting as you want can land you in hell to suffer forever. [My common sense tells me they are quite wrong, they were just very lucky in the stacked lottery of life – stacked because as Matthew quotes Jesus as warning “many” go to eternal suffering, while only “few” are saved.]

Though certainly not a compatibilist, I have more than once seen (on YouTube) that great biologist and atheisthero Richard Dawkins, equivocate when asked his opinion about FW. Because of his enormous prestige, this does great damage to the case against FW. I suspect his criteria for proof are too stringent, he has not yet seen what he considers conclusive science to disprove FW.

which he said he thought would pretty much settle the FW debate. It did not, so he wrote DETERMINED for nonexperts. There he tells why he is convinced that science overwhelmingly proves that FW is an illusion. He confronts the arguments of FW advocates and explains the evidence which, taken all together, he sees as proving them wrong. He focuses on claims that FW is an EMERGENT PROPERTY; those citing QUANTUM MECHANICS as proving FW; and on CHAOS THEORY, that causes are so complex they cannot be predicted.

The very premise of FW is that all - but those forced, too young and mentally incompetent - have a freedom, enabling them to make seriously deliberated decisions free of the decisive inuence of their biology and heredity. This is a BREATHTAKING CLAIM on its face but many times so, when you compare the claim to what you know was your own experience in life.

The common sense case for FW as an illusion is based on the undisputed fact that our very existence, our abilities and our experiences in life, were imposed on us without an iota of choice, much less free choice.

I hope he will consider the common sense case as convincing enough to be his opinion until and unless he sees denitive proof to the contrary.

Ponder the factors which caused each of the 8,000,000,000 now alive, the 109,000,000,000 estimated dead, and the yet unborn, each unique – truly one of a kind, ever

Who you are depends – On you mother’s behavior while you are gestating. The century and nation of your birth, mutations in your brain and body, nurture and experiences in infancy and childhood are also decisive.

You will recognize these too, as of supreme importance in your life:

•• Physical stature, looks, smile, voice and intelligence, sexual drive and proclivities, wit, personality, natural ability in sports, music and dance, early life;

•• Religious indoctrination, economic circumstances, cultural inuences, political and civil rights, and the prevailing customs of your times.

•• Add the blizzard of un-sought experiences from womb to tomb interacting with your biological self.

Do we not have you at every point in your life, always unique – and none of these were chosen by you? This is the backbone of the common sense case because you know better than anyone how these factors made you who you are

This uniqueness is the product of the continuous interaction of our biological inheritance and experiences that is our 24/7 daily life. That this common sense conclusion is supported by a vast and growing body of science pointing to FW is an illusion, as Professor Eagleman is quoted above and Professor Sapolsky has no doubt about. Another quite certain case is made by Dr. Antonia Cashmore, of the U. of Pennsylvania, in an article you can nd on the internet called THE LUCRETION SWERVE. Also, on YOU TUBE an hour-long presentation, YOU DON’T HAVE FREE WILL by the acclaimed Professor Emeritus of the U. of Chicago, Dr. Jerry Coyne

It is well established in science that all people are a bundle of wants - often contradictory. Most of these are in our unconscious minds, they compete for our conscious attention, There is no unied you or me. It is why we have no knowledge of what we will think of next.

Consider Tom’s case of conicting wants: For many years he has been happily married to Mary whom he dearly loves. He has the chance far from his home town for adultery with a younger and very attractive Emily, who has signaled her willingness several times. He lets it pass three separate and widely spaced times because he thinks it is a sin and would devastate Mary if discovered. But the fourth time he accepted.

Advocates of FW ask you to believe: That Tom’s FW operated all four times and every time without any decisive inuence from his biological inheritance and all environmental inuences as they interacted over time.

Determinists ask you to believe: The reason why Tom made his to-do decision was, determined because he was born male, heterosexual, had a very strong drive for Mary, which was turbo-charged by his certainty she wanted the affair too, thought the chances of discovery

were remote and for other reasons that neither he, we, nor all the wise men, could ever know.

Which does your common sense choose?

For all these reasons, people are not xed at birth, they are in constant ux, their biological selves interacting with their experiences changes them – two-year old piano prodigies scream biology, but not without interacting with music and a piano!

This malleability permits us to apply to others, measures, such as education, good example, praise, blame, scorn and even punishment, knowing the experience will cause changes and hoping the change will be as desired. It commonly does as with education. That it often does not, is because we do not know what experience will work with a particular individual when each is uniqueespecially not with criminals.

Finally - just logic - what has to be true if the denition of FW is true – a supposed ability to choose among alternatives, free of any hereditary and environmental inuence if either would be decisive in that choice. [People dened by their human nature must decide, free of their human nature!]

But, let’s grant it for argument. If the will is free from any tendency or tilt, any decision must be random, grounded in nothing; it will produce any logically possible outcome – which will surely NOT be your will, except by chance!

It is therefore NOT a leap for the majority of nonspecialists to fairly conclude that we can be free of external compulsion, but never free of ever-present internal compulsion, the source in our brains of all thoughts and deeds.

Our uniqueness explains why behavioral, medical, psychological, and sociological studies, reveal only fractional correlations with identiable factors; the rest of the story lies in the not-yet-identied and maybe the never-to-be identied factors. It also explains why it is virtually impossible to think we will ever have a 100% explanation for any individual’s behavior.

Despite all the foregoing, there is a great paradox with

Whether you think I am profoundly wrong or right, I would love to hear from you. E-mail me at fellowfeather@gmail.com. I will respond to each of your substantive comments. JWH PAID ADVERTISEMENT

Determinism - that determinists regularly conduct their lives as though we have FW. It is not hypocrisy, but more like humility.

It takes a non-emotional state to remind ourselves that our choices are the effects of causes over which we had no control. Determinists’ reaction to certain kinds of events is just as emotional, and when emotional, just as judgmental. It requires real effort to remember that it is a necessary ction

Albert Einstein afrmed the great benets in Determinism - in his 1922 speech, My Credo: “This awareness of the lack of FW keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper.”

••This is surely salutary for those among us who take pride in ‘not suffering fools gladly’.

•• It converts “love your neighbor as yourself” from a utopian reach to a prerequisite for fairness and justice.

•• It makes one more understanding and patient, thus, reducing tension and stress.

•• It is a cutting come-uppance to those (compatibilists, included) who confuse good luck with deserved merit as if there were any better explanation for the good luck of the George Clooneys and the horrible luck of the Elephant Men of the world.

••••

I am one month from the 98th year of life and am grateful not to be in thrall to the FW illusion, the source and begetter of judgment, condemnation and hate.

I am grateful too, that my luck caused me to conclude that the real reason we should not hate our fellows is not because it is a command from some God, but from the profound meaning entailed in “there, but for pure luck go I”.

What does your common sense tell you?