The Harvard Crimson - Vol. CLII, No. 11

The Harvard Crimson

HARVARD SUES

Harvard Sues Trump Admin Over $2.2

Billion

Funding Freeze

Harvard sued the Trump administration in federal court on Monday over its multibillion dollar cuts to the University’s research funding, accusing the White House of undertaking an arbitrary and unconstitutional campaign to “punish Harvard for protecting its constitutional rights.”

The move comes just one day after the Trump administration reportedly planned to cut another $1 billion in federal grants and contracts from Harvard, on top of an existing $2.2 billion cut that was announced last week.

And it sets in motion a historic legal clash as Harvard attempts to combat the Trump administration’s devastating multi-agency campaign to slash the University’s funding in exchange for deep concessions — including federal audits of Harvard’s programs, agreements to screen international students for their beliefs, and the installation of administrators who will ensure the White House’s demands are carried out.

“The tradeoff put to Harvard and other universities is clear: Allow the Government to micromanage your academic institution or jeopardize the institution’s ability to pursue medical breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, and innovative solutions,” Harvard’s lawyers wrote in the Monday filing.

The 51-page complaint, filed in a United States district court, asks for the court to halt and declare unlawful the $2.2 billion freeze, as well as any freezes made in connection with “unconstitutional conditions” in the Trump administration’s April 3 and April 11 letters outlining demands to Harvard.

“We stand for the truth that colleges and universities across the country can embrace and honor their legal obligations and best fulfill their essential role in society without improper government intrusion,” University President Alan M. Garber ’76 announced in a message to Harvard affiliates Monday afternoon.

In the complaint, Harvard accused the administration of unlawfully freezing billions in research funding to pressure the University into restructuring its governance, academic programs, and hiring practices. It argued that the freeze violates the First Amendment by “imposing viewpoint-based conditions on Harvard’s funding.”

The University also accused federal agencies of bypassing legally required procedures under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, alleging that the Department of Health and Human Services cut off grants without fair legal justification. The freeze, Harvard’s lawyers wrote, “has nothing at all to do with antisemitism and Title VI compliance.”

“Under whatever name, the Government has ceased the flow of funds to Harvard as part of its pressure campaign to force Harvard to submit to the Government’s control over its academic programs. That, in itself, violates Harvard’s constitutional rights,” the lawyers added.

In his message, Garber alleged that the Trump administration’s second — and more aggressive — set of demands on April 11 were part of a campaign against Harvard that used concerns of campus antisemitism as a pretext.

Garber Asserts New Authority Over Protest Discipline

BY DHRUV T. PATEL AND GRACE E. YOON CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Garber also pledged in his message to “soon” release the long-anticipated final reports of the two presidential task forces on combating antisemitism and Islamophobia. Although the reports were originally slated to be released during the fall 2024 semester, they remain unpublished — a delay that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services slammed in a letter to Garber on Saturday.

Harvard will be represented by Robert K. Hur ’95 and William A. Burck, both lawyers with deep ties to President Donald Trump. Hur was appointed to the United States Department of Justice by Trump in his first term, and Burck has served as counsel for the Trump Organization. Lawyers affiliated with law firms Ropes & Gray and Lehtosky Keller Cohn will also represent Harvard, according to the lawsuit.

The Monday announcement follows a week-long salvo last week against Harvard.

After Garber decided to defy the Trump administration’s aggressive set of demands on Monday, the Trump administration responded with the initial $2.2 billion funding cut, a series of probes, and threats to strip Harvard of its tax-exempt status.

The Monday lawsuit names the Department of Education, Department of Justice, General Services Administration, Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the HHS, and the National Institutes of Health as defendants.

“Before taking punitive action, the law requires that the federal government engage with us about the ways we are fighting and will continue to fight antisemitism,” he wrote. “Instead, the government’s April 11 demands seek to control whom we hire and what we teach.”

Harvard will create a process for University President Alan M. Garber ’76 to call a faculty panel to investigate and impose penalties in cross-school disciplinary cases, Garber announced in a Thursday evening email to Harvard affiliates.

The panel — which would consist of faculty members of the University Committee on Rights and Responsibilities — will have the power to oversee cases involving possible violations of two University-wide policies governing protest and the use of campus spaces.

Garber wrote that the change, which was approved by Harvard’s governing boards, was made to standardize disciplinary procedures after students “have participated in the same disruptive activity but received significantly different discipline” from their schools’ disciplinary bodies.

The announcement comes two weeks after the Trump administration asked Harvard to adopt “a disciplinary process housed in one body that is accountable to Harvard’s president or other capstone official” in exchange for its federal funding.

Harvard rejected the administration’s demands as “unconstitutional” and sued nine federal agencies over the demands on Monday. But Thursday’s move signals that Harvard may be willing to accede to some demands that its leaders see as in the University’s own institutional interest.

At the same time, the decision to center the new process in a faculty body could limit backlash from professors who have asserted their authority over disciplinary decisions.

“Details will need to be worked out, but the procedures will be designed to ensure continued faculty agency in the disciplinary processes affecting their students and will ensure due process for all our students,” Garber wrote in his Thursday email.

Garber will be able to ask the faculty panel to investigate cases brought under the University-wide Statement on Rights and Responsibilities, a Vietnam War-era policy governing speech and protest at Harvard, and under Harvard’s new campus use rules. Rolled out in August, the campus use rules require approval for signage and gatherings and limit tactics — including the use of chalking and sound amplification — favored by participants in the pro-Palestine Harvard Yard encampment last spring.

The names of members of the UCRR — which was created in 1970 to enforce the USRR — are not public, but the group consists of two faculty members and one student from each Harvard school.

The Thursday announcement comes after the University received intense criticism over its handling of disciplinary cases involving students who have taken part in pro-Palestine demonstrations on campus since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel and Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza.

When eight students staged an occupation of University Hall for one day, but were not suspended or put on probation — only “admonished because of inappropriate social behavior” — top Harvard administrators worried that they had little oversight of or power over disciplinary cases.

During a transcribed interview with the House Committee on Education and Workforce in August, Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Penny S. Pritzker ’81 acknowledged that the “uneven enforcement of rules” posed a major challenge for University administrators.

“The Corporation finds that unacceptable,” Pritzker said. “It’s not fair. It’s not right. And so it’s something that we have – have been very clear about with the people who need to now rectify this.”

The decentralization of Harvard’s disciplinary processes — and the possibility that students from different schools would receive radically different outcomes — became

a flashpoint after the pro-Palestine encampment last spring. Harvard College’s Ad Board suspended five students and placed 20 others on probation — preventing 13 seniors from graduating during the University’s Commencement ceremony in May. Graduate students largely received slaps on the wrist or were let off without punishment altogether. The differing disciplinary sentences were a focal point of criticism from Harvard’s top critics in Washington. In September, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce alleged that five of Harvard’s graduate schools had not issued “meaningful sanctions” on protesters and that the University had “failed to enforce its own rules and impose meaningful discipline.”

Garber, who began his term in the tumultuous months after Claudine Gay’s resignation from the Harvard presidency, has repeatedly amended protest and speech policies at Harvard to address concerns about non-uniform procedures — and to quell outrage from the University’s fiercest critics in Cambridge and Washington. Within three weeks of being appointed to Harvard’s top post, Garber clarified the forms of protest and dissent that violated the USSR.

In July, Garber revised the fact-finding process for disciplinary cases involving students from multiple schools, adopting a standardized 11-step process that included using a fact-finding committee and an independent investigator. Shortly after, Harvard rolled out the campus use rules. In his Thursday message, which was also signed by Provost John F. Manning ’82, Garber pledged to “soon release provisional procedures” to allow the UCRR to begin enforcing the new policies. Garber will also establish a process for reviewing and updating the procedures every two academic years.

DARTMOUTH ONLY IVY TO ABSTAIN FROM SIGNING LETTER AGAINST TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

the letter because these open-form letters are ineffective in defending Dartmouth’s mission and values. Kennedy referred back to a previous statement President Beilock wrote in a letter to campus, claiming that Dartmouth is an educational institution, “not a political one.”

NIH STAFF TOLD TO FREEZE ALL GRANTS TO COLUMBIA, PEERS

According to internal emails, the National Institute of Health has been given directions to freeze grants to Columbia and other institutions, such as Brown, Harvard, Northwestern, and Cornell, until further notice, the Columbia Spectator reported. These cuts halt funding for current research projects ongoing within the University. Researchers may be able to continue their work if they request approval to use the existing funding. HHS was also instructed not to provide any disclosure to these schools about why funding is frozen, but in a statement to the Spectator, the NIH wrote that it would review and possibly terminate research if it does not coincide with the NIH and HHS’s priorities.

THE COLUMBIA SPECTATOR

VISAS OF ONE GRAD STUDENT, ONE POSTDOC REVOKED AT PRINCETON IN EARLY APRIL

Princeton is the only member of the Ivy League to remain silent on the topic of visa revocations, according to the Daily Princetonian. The first instances of visa revocations at Princeton happened to a graduate student and a postdoctoral researcher in early April. However, this information was not disclosed by the University itself but rather by a student with “direct knowledge of the situation”.

THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

PENN UPDATES GUIDANCE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS AMID ONGOING VISA REVOCATIONS

With eight Penn affiliates having their immigration statuses terminated by the Department of State, Penn added additional information for international students, whose immigration statuses have changed within the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System. These updates include an FAQ within the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System website to address topics like public safety, academics, and housing for those impacted by SEVIS terminations.

THE DAILY PENNSYLVANIAN

BY CLAIRE A. MICHAL, IKE J. PARK, AND PAVAN V. THAKKAR — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHERS

What’s Next

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

POPE FRANCIS DIES AT 88

Pope Francis, the first Latin American pope, died at age 88 on Monday after suffering a stroke and heart failure. Francis was known for his advocacy for the poor, migrants, LGBTQ+ rights, and the environment. His final public appearance was on Easter Sunday. A global outpouring of mourning followed his death. His funeral will be held Saturday in St. Peter’s Square, with nine days of mourning in the Vatican. He will be buried at St. Mary Major Basilica in Rome. In the 15 to 20 days after Francis’ death, a papal conclave will begin to elect his successor. All cardinals under 80 years old will gather for a private and secretive process, voting until a two-thirds majority in favor of one candidate emerges.

Friday 4/25

IOP OUR NARRATIVES SHOWCASE

JFK Jr. Forum, 6 pm

Join the Institute of Politics for its biannual “Our Narratives” showcase, featuring IOP student leaders’ stories and lived experiences. The event will highlight personal stories of resilience from seven undergraduate students. Topics range from overcoming grief to advocating for marginalized communities.

ELEGANZA 2025

Bright-Landry Hockey Arena, 8 pm

Monday 4/28

VISITAS ACADEMIC FAIR

Science Center Plaza, 10:30 - 12:30 pm

This event provides the opportunity to meet faculty and students from each academic department and learn more about each of Harvard’s concentrations. Light refreshments, including warm drinks and sweet treats, will be provided at the activity.

Tuesday 4/29

AGRARIAN ELITES AND DEMOCRACY IN LATIN AMERICA

CGIS South, 12:00pm- 1pm

Wednesday 4/30

PAPADOPOULOS LECTURE WITH PROF. ALEXANDER CHEN

Cambridge Queen’s Head Venue, 3:00-5:00 pm

Sponsored by the Women & Gender Studies Department, Office of BGLTQ Student Life, and the Harvard College Women’s Center, the annual Papadopoulos Lecture will be given by Professor Alexander Chen of Harvard Law School LGBTQ+ Law Clinic.

Thursday 5/1

REJECTS TRUMP’S RUSSIA-LEANING PEACE DEAL

ZELENSKY

On Wednesday, President Trump proposed a peace plan granting Russia control of occupied Ukrainian land and blocking Ukraine from NATO membership. President Zelensky rejected it, calling it unconstitutional and a betrayal of Ukraine’s sovereignty, even as the Trump administration threatened to withdraw U.S. support for the talks if Ukraine refused the deal. Critics say the plan favors Russia, undermines U.S. allies in Europe, and compromises Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Following President Putin’s declaration of a 30-hour cease-fire over the Easter weekend, both Ukraine and Russia signaled openness to peace talks under pressure from Trump.

TRUMP SIGNS EXECUTIVE ORDER TARGETING COLLEGE ACCREDITORS

On Wednesday, President Trump passed a list of executive orders targeting higher education and K-12 schools. The White House says college and university accreditors have “abused their authority by imposing discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)based standards,” and its order directs Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to “overhaul” the system. Federal law already requires schools to disclose gifts and contracts worth more than $250,000 from foreign entities, so the new order does not provide new rules but re-demands that universities “provide the American people with greater access to general information about foreign funding.”

PRINT CORRECTIONS

The photo essay “From Clay to Pots: The Harvard Ceramics Program,” which ran in The Crimson’s April 18 print issue, misspelled the names of Jamie M. Stamm and Darrah Bowden.

The photo essay also incorrectly stated that a photo described students lathering clay slabs with a sodium oxide mixture. In fact, the mixture contained alumina hydrate and kaolin clay.

This list may not be comprehensive. For the most up-to-date versions of articles in The Crimson, please visit thecrimson.com.

Eleganza is an annual show celebrating the identities of students and explores the range of beauty and aesthetic styles on campus. The night encompasses a fashion show, dance performances, and giveaways from sponsors for the event that draws over 1000 attendees annually.

SPOTLIGHT TOUR: VISIONS OF AMERICA, WITH HANNAH GADWAY ’25

Harvard Art Museums, 11:00-11:50 am Interested in learning more about how visions of America are depicted through visual art? Join Hannah Gadway ’25 as she gives a tour of the past, present, and future of the artistic visualization of America at the Harvard Art Museums.

Dr. Belén Fernández Milmanda, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Trinity College, will discuss how agrarian elites in Latin America have adapted to democracy.

Friday 5/2

FLOWER POWER

RACHEL CHAN— CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

JOEY HUANG— CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

TO CAMPUS

Visitas, Not Veritas: Reinvention Time

Congratulations on making it this far and getting into Harvard!

This is a whole new chapter in your life and the perfect opportunity to start anew. Here, you can leave behind any baggage or unmet expectations that have been plaguing you since you didn’t get the lead role in your fourth grade play. For those of you who might find this fresh start daunting or in case you’re feeling a little uninspired, here are some ideas for the new identity you can take on, whether for the weekend or for the next four years.

1. Direct descendant of John Harvard

Tell everyone that you are the great-great-great-greatgreat-great-great-great-greatgreat grandchild of John Harvard. You took a 23andMe test to prove it, but unfortunately, since they’re going bankrupt, you can’t provide the receipts. However, everyone who sees you says the resemblance is uncanny — you look straight out of the 30s. The 1630s. But you worked just as hard as, if not harder than, everyone else to be here, and you don’t believe in freebies. Ignore the bulging complimentary tote bag full of free merch.

2. (Rumored) CIA agent

Carry around a personal paper shredder, have an AirPod in your ear at all times, and give vague answers in response to small talk questions. Soon, rumors will start spreading that you’re actually a CIA agent going undercover for a top-secret mission. It’s not that you don’t want to grab a meal, it’s that for their safety, you shouldn’t. It’s not that you are undecided about your concentration, it’s that it’s classified information, and they don’t have the clearance.

3. Genovian royalty

What do you mean, Americans don’t believe Genovia is a real country? If it’s not a real place, then how come you’re the heir to the throne of Genovia? Anne Hathaway? Who’s that? Julie Andrews? Never heard of her. All you’ve ever wanted in life is to be a normal teenager having the quintessential American college experience. You promise you’re, like, really down-toearth and humble, so you don’t want anyone to treat you differently — even though you’re royalty… like, heir to the throne of Genovia… like, did you mention that you were real royalty… like, the heir to the throne… of Genovia, which is a real country.

4. PhD candidate

As a new admit, you know what it takes to achieve big things. That’s why you’re on a mission. You’re not satisfied with just a bachelor’s degree — you need more. You’ve already researched professors and are ready to collect recommendation letters like Pokémon. Now, all you have to do is convince them that you have been working under them for the past few years. Sneak into their lab, make sure you’re in PPE (iykyk), and act natural. When you “coincidentally” run into the PI, let them know you’ll email them updates by EOD. If they question

‘We Know a Spot’

Places You Will Be Forced Told to Go During Visitas.

Welcome to Harvard’s campus, prefrosh! We know you’ve probably been eagerly looking forward to exploring all of the photo-esque parts of campus you’ve seen online. But there is so much more that Harvard has to offer… at least if your so-called tour guide (read: other prefrosh or overly invested current student) has anything to say about it. Unfortunately for you, their suggestions are a bit lacking. If you’d like to avoid walking ten thousand miles this weekend for no real reason, you’ll listen to us.

Tasty Basty

If you think this has something to do with turkey basters, you’ve somehow managed to fall behind on your readings before committing. Something will probably happen in the basement of Tasty Burger this weekend, but trust us, you don’t need (or want) to be there.

Holworthy Basement

If Tasty Basty wasn’t small or sweaty enough, boy, do we have something in store for you! Once you get access to Sidechat, you’ll undoubtedly scroll past posts reading, “roll Holworthy basement!” more times than any of us would like to admit; save being traumatized by visiting the basement till then.

The Student Organizations Center at Hilles (SOCH)

who you are, act really offended, and congratulations! You’re on your way to a PhD, no bachelor’s degree necessary.

5. Be yourself… no, seriously.

Remember the person you applied as? The one that founded two nonprofits, volunteered at the local animal shelter every weekend, AND won a gold medal at the most recent Olympics? Yeah, you set the expectations really high for yourself so now you have to live up to them. You thought you could rest after getting into Harvard? This is just the beginning. Oh, and you’re pre-med? Sure you are. Maybe you’re feeling a little bit of imposter syndrome? Don’t worry, you’re not special. Everyone is just trying to be the best version of themselves. Maybe it’s not a fake identity after all. You really do care about those nonprofits. In all seriousness, you’ve already done the hard part by getting into Harvard. Take Visitas as an opportunity to relax, reap the fruits of your labor, and meet a bunch of new people, whether as yourself or someone completely different. No matter where your future takes you, remember that you can always fake your identity be whoever and whatever you want to be.

annette.kim@thecrimson.com raymond.wu@thecrimson.com

29 Words for the Class of 2029

BY WYATT G. CROOG AND MIRIKA J. JAMBUDI CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Dear Class of 2029 (aka future Flyby writers), Welcome to Harvard! We are so glad that we get to be your linguistic guides for your Visitas experience, so make sure to pull out some of these terms to make you blend in as a true… Harvardian? Cantabrigian? Crimson? We might not have a word for a student of Harvard College, but here are 29 words that we know that the Class of 2029 definitely should, too.

1. Berg — Short for Annenberg, where all the first-year students dine on meals ranging from one big boom to five big booms. You’ll make a lot of awkward eye contact here as you search for an open seat. It’s also the site for a much more enjoyable rite of passage: sitting down with random strangers and meeting your new besties!

2. Block — Also known as a blocking group. The group of friends — or hodgepodge of acquaintances — you’ll enter the rising sophomore housing lottery with in the spring. It’s a twisted social experiment that sometimes ends well, sometimes not so much.

3. Brain Break — Free nightly snacks, served from 9 to 11 p.m. on school nights, aka “emotional support carbs.”

4. Cabot — A House in the Quad (see below), but it’s also a library in the Science Center. We know, it’s very confusing.

5. Comp — Allegedly short for either competition or completion (or both!) — the ritual that crushes dreams and builds résumés.

6. Concentration — A fancy word for major. Also a reminder of what you lose during midterms.

7. Consulting — Where half of you will end up, no matter what

your concentration or dreams once were or are at the moment.

8. CV — Your résumé, constantly evolving and never emotionally fulfilling.

9. Dhall — Abbreviation for dining hall. Each upperclassman house has its own dhall, though… Some are definitely better than others.

10. Entryway — People who share your door to the outside world (read: brick sidewalks) and your suffering. 20 to 40 souls, one shared WiFi router.

11. Flyby — Misspelled as “FlyBy,” refers to grab-and-go food in the basement of Berg, but it really means the best board of The Harvard Crimson.

12. Gem — A great class you take when your GPA is falling faster than your hopes of a relationship. Low commitment and low effort but high reward.

13. House — Your upperclassman home. Comes with friends, tutors, and more networking opportunities.

14. HUDS — Harvard University Dining Services. Serving food, feelings, and an occasional identity crisis.

15. Lamonster — A creature rumored to live on Lamont Library’s third floor, fueled by sheer desperation and LamCaf (Lamont Café) coffee.

16. MBB — McKinsey, Bain, and Boston Consulting Group. The Holy Trinity of consulting that you will want to sell your soul by sophomore fall, if you don’t already. Or Mind, Brain, and Behavior.

17. Meese — The (non-grammatically correct) plural of “moose.” Also Dunster’s mascot. Don’t question it.

18. Noch’s — Short for Pinocchio’s Pizza. Open late, judgment-free, and tastes like salvation at 2 a.m.

19. PAF — Peer Advising Fellow. Paid to be your friend… and somehow (sometimes) actually are.

20. Prehab — Drinking electrolytes before setting out to fight the Sunday Scaries like a champ.

21. (Freshman) Quad — The Radcliffe Quadrangle is for upperclassmen, but the so-called Freshman Quad is composed of three dorms that sit outside of Harvard Yard: Greenough, Hurlbut, and Pennypacker, also known as the Union Dorms. Harvard’s version of exile… with charm.

22. SEC — Science and Engineering Complex. Sleek, shiny, and a soul-sucking Wi-Fi vortex.

23. Section — A mini-class where participation counts for 50 percent of your grade and confusion multiplies.

24. Smith — The Smith Campus Center, the only place where tourists, students, and locals all (at times) peacefully coexist under a single roof. You can find a rooftop garden, a cityscape view, and like five different places to get coffee — the side quests are endless.

25. Stacks — The 57 miles of rows of books and catalogues in Widener Library (or the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library, if you ask Google Maps). Come for the books; stay for the silence that screams.

26. Tasty Basty — The legendary basement of the Tasty Burger establishment in the Square, where the most frighteningly sad epic parties are thrown.

27. TF — Teaching Fellow. Roughly equivalent to a TA at less pretentious other institutions. Knows everything and also nothing. Honestly more helpful than the professor…

28. Tutor — Fancy word for RA. They’re your guide, therapist, and emergency printer all in one.

29. When2Meet — A scheduling tool. Also the reason you now have three overlapping meetings on Wednesdays.

wyatt.croog@thecrimson.com mirika.jambudi@thecrimson.com

The only thing we’ve ever done in the SOCH is count down the minutes until we can leave. There are no redeeming qualities to this building. It makes us upset.

The Charles River

You cross this to get to the Harvard Business School. That’s about it.

Harvard Business School

Unnecessary detour. But now that you’re here, you can get ahead on McKinsey recruitment! Small mercies. MIT

Undoubtedly, someone will suggest hopping on the T as a dangerous, rebellious excursion. Ah yes, nothing is more thrilling than leaving Cambridge to go to… Cambridge.

Newbury Street

Someone will find an aesthetic TikTok of places to visit in Boston, and Newbury Street will be the first to pop up. Is it basic? Yes. Is it overpriced? Yes. Will you still keep visiting over and over again throughout all your four years at Harvard? Also yes. At least you’ll be ahead of the game?

Smith Rooftop Garden

On the second floor of the Smith Campus Center lies a beautiful side quest venue where you

The name is a lie. No student group has ever met in this building. (Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration, but we’d never choose to meet anyone but our worst enemies here.)

can enjoy a late night or a casual brunch. Real plants exist here, and it feels like a true escape from the hustle and bustle of Harvard life. Unfortunately, you (or one of your Visitas “besties”) will inevitably catch sight of the infamous TikTok chairs while on the second floor, so good luck actually making it onto the rooftop.

Smith Tenth Floor

If you still can’t get enough of the Smith Campus Center, take a trip to its top floor! Here you’ll be able to view all of Harvard’s campus from a bird’s eye view — yes, this includes all of the prefrosh with their blaring red lanyards. (Seriously, you guys stand out like a beacon.) You’ll also be able to see other, more focused prefrosh attending the four simultaneous events you’d bookmarked on your calendar. If you love the feeling of FOMO, we suppose this spot might be worth the trip.

The Harvard Crimson Jokes aside, this is a must-see part of campus during Visitas. How else would you be able to sign up to join the funniest and coolest and smartest and awesomest group of people as a writer for Flyby Blog? Comp Flyby.

In all, there is so much more to Harvard’s campus than its beautiful red brick aesthetic. These places, though? Not it. You’re lucky you have us to save your time, steps, and energy so that you can fully enjoy your weekend!

VICTORIA CHEN — CRIMSON DESIGNER

Probing Harvard History, Unauthorized

Richard J. Cellini directed the Harvard Slavery Remembrance Program until he was laid off in January.

He’s spent the last three months telling people that Harvard affiliates enslaved their ancestors — without Harvard’s knowledge.

Cellini says his work, unlike Harvard’s, is “independent scholarship” and derides the official effort as “work-for-hire.”

He believes Harvard’s decision to not contact descendants until a later stage of the research is just a “relatively silly restriction.”

“What exactly is Harvard waiting for? Who benefits from this policy of control and delay?” Cellini wrote in an email.

“If Harvard had your family history in its files, wouldn’t you want to see it immediately?”

In January, Harvard outsourced its own research to American Ancestors, the largest genealogical nonprofit in the country. American Ancestors used to work with Cellini’s team to help construct enslaved individuals’ family trees, but it has now taken over the research in full.

Vice Provost for Special Projects Sara N. Bleich said in February that the University would reach out to descendants with “humility” and establish a “long term relationship.” She added at the time that Harvard wanted descendants “to hear from us first” — a goal that Cellini’s efforts may render impossible.

What exactly is Harvard waiting for?

Who benefits from this

Cellini is just one of several parties researching Harvard’s historical ties to slavery, though he is the only one doing it in such a bold, unsanctioned manner.

In 2022, Harvard launched an initiative to reckon with its ties to slavery on the recommendation of its landmark Legacy of Slavery report. It joined institutions like Georgetown University, the University of Virginia, and Brown University in redressing its historical ties to slavery. Before the outsourcing, Harvard’s internal team had identified at least 913 enslaved individuals and 403 of their living descendants. Both American Ancestors and Cellini have that full list — and they’re working to find more. And there are at least three other groups doing the same

work. Some aren’t focused on Harvard alone, researching enslavers in the Boston area or at the colonial colleges more broadly. But the University is implicated in each. The searches could have far-reaching consequences — on the lives of the people who learn they might be descended from someone enslaved by Harvard affiliates, and on the institutional responsibility some of them may demand of the University.

At other schools, similar work has led to reparative measures; Georgetown, for example, gives preferential treatment in admissions to the descendants of enslaved people owned by the Society of Jesus’ Maryland Province — 272 of whom were sold to pay off the school’s debts.

With Harvard’s internal team disbanded, its research being shared, and the effort happening in at least five places, it remains to be seen how the work will conclude — and by whom.

HSRP ‘2.0’

Harvard’s initiative wasn’t Cellini’s first foray into descendant research.

Before the Harvard Slavery Remembrance Program, Cellini founded the Georgetown Memory Project, an independent initiative that traced the descendants of enslaved individuals sold to pay off the school’s debts.

At Harvard, unlike Georgetown, Cellini started off with the school’s backing. He was recruited to identify people enslaved by the University’s faculty, staff, and leadership, as well as their direct descendants.

Yet, even as he worked for Harvard, he didn’t hesitate to criticize the institution.

Cellini alleged on several occasions that, as HSRP’s director, Bleich instructed him “not to find too many descendants.” Af-

ter his team was laid off in January, he wrote in a Crimson op-ed that Harvard had “flunked History of Slavery 101.”

Harvard has vehemently denied Cellini’s accusations, saying no such directive had been issued.

Now, Cellini hopes to replicate what he did at Georgetown by starting an “independent, privately funded” inquiry into Harvard’s historical ties to slavery. He plans to name it “slaverytruth.org,” though the domain is currently empty.

Cellini called his new research effort “version 2.0 of the Harvard Slavery Remembrance Program.” He said he has reached out to nearly 50 descendants so far and he views the initiative as a “collaborative exercise” with them.

“Best practice calls for radical transparency in the research process,” Cellini added in response to an emailed follow-up. “Harvard should contact descendants as soon as they have been identified, and not wait until ‘the effort to identify them is further along.’”

Technically, Cellini is still a Harvard affiliate despite his distaste for the institution. After he was terminated as HSRP’s director, he remained an associate of Harvard’s Safra Center for Ethics, though he emphasized in a text that he is “NOT a member of staff.”

And though he has condemned Harvard’s new partnership, he also maintains ties with American Ancestors. Since

You can just feel the

2023, Cellini has been the founding executive director of American Ancestors’ 10 Million Names project, which aims to identify every African American enslaved in the United States.

Cellini said he is open to working with Harvard and that he has contacted several affiliates about collaborating on descendant research. However, he has not attempted to notify University administrators about his descendant outreach or asked to collaborate with them on that effort.

University spokesperson Sarah E. Kennedy O’Reilly emphasized in a statement that Cellini’s effort was unsanctioned: “Any direct descendant research or engagement being done outside of our partnership with American Ancestors has not been authorized by the University,” she wrote.

‘Cousin Richard’ For Cellini, his outreach serves two purposes: to let people know and to further his work. In many cases, Cellini said, you can’t obtain personal information like birth, death, and marriage certificates for research “unless you’re talking to the family itself.”

After identifying descendants, Cellini finds their contact information through sites like LinkedIn and Facebook and relies on word of mouth to expand his outreach.

In his view, descendants are not just subjects — they’re potential partners.

But, he said, they don’t always respond immediately, and often do so with “a lot of suspicion and a lot of mistrust.”

When he first speaks to them, Cellini said, they often pause after he tells them about their ancestors: “You can just feel the ice breaking and the conversation goes from complete silence to genuine curiosity.”

Descendant families have varied reactions and none, he said, “jump for joy” after learning that a Harvard affiliate enslaved their ancestor.

So, he tries to build trust with descendants to help get “the vital information” he needs. Without their trust, he claimed, “they might give you misinformation just to throw you off the track.”

Cellini believes his public statements on Harvard — in his opinion pieces and to reporters — will help build trust with descendants when they Google him after his outreach.

“Some people said, ‘Well, why when you were HSRP director did you write op-eds that were critical of the administration?’

And I would say, ‘Well, those opeds weren’t written for the Harvard administration. They were written for tens of thousands of Black families across the country who will ultimately make a decision whether or not they trust me,’” Cellini said.

“One way I can demonstrate that I’m trustworthy is by publicly declaring my principles

and my approach to this work even at the cost of potentially offending members of Harvard’s central administration,” he added, referring to both his op-eds and his statements to reporters.

For Cellini, this trust is more than professional — it is personal. Cellini said he’s built “dozens” of close relationships with the descendants of enslaved people through his work at Georgetown and Harvard. Many of them, he added, are now his “Black cousins.”

“Frequently, they call me ‘cuz,’ and I call them ‘cuz.’ So, they’ll call me cousin Richard,” said Cellini, who is white. “We become some part of the extended family at that point.”

He said Harvard’s “segmented, stratified” research process — taking place without actively reaching out to descendants — was not “very human or very natural” by contrast.

“You can’t really study Black families without engaging with Black families,” he said. “It would be like studying cancer without engaging with cancer or it would be like studying art without engaging with art. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense.”

For instance, Cellini said descendant families sometimes have “kin keepers,” often middle-aged women that maintain the family’s history and can help fill gaps in his research.

Cellini declined to answer questions about which descendants he had contacted or to share any of their contacts with The Crimson, citing privacy concerns.

Efforts Outside Harvard

But Cellini isn’t the only outside researcher interested in Harvard’s legacy of slavery.

A group at the Fine Cacao and Chocolate Institute, which includes several Harvard affiliates, has also made forays into Harvard’s legacy of slavery, and they plan to publish a report later this summer. Their research is being conducted in collaboration with the descendants of Tony, Cuba, and Darby Vassall, who were enslaved by the Vassall family of Cambridge. The Vassall family, which consisted of several Harvard alums, owned several plantations in the Caribbean which relied on enslaved laborers.

It’s impossible to talk about slavery in Boston and not talk about people affiliated with

Wayne

The project aims to catalog the history of “enslaved and formerly enslaved individuals” at Longfellow House, accord -

ing to a document obtained by The Crimson. The house, built for John Vassall Jr., was briefly George Washington’s headquarters during the Revolutionary War and was the longtime home of famed poet and Harvard professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Their project lists the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery initiative as one of its partners, according to the document.

The team, led by Harvard African and African American Studies lecturer Carla D. Martin, has visited Jamaica and Antigua and Barbuda, where the Vassall family enslaved individuals at sugar, rum, and cacao plantations. Martin declined to be interviewed for this article, citing funding uncertainty and a desire to get permission to publicize from descendants. F. Warren “Ned” Benton, a co-director of the Northeast Slavery Records Index, is also interested in studying Harvard’s ties to slavery. His initiative, housed at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, is trying to identify those enslaved by the alumni of the colonial colleges, including Harvard. NESRI publishes its findings on its website, including a report specifically about individuals enslaved by Harvard alums.

Benton said the project’s “whole attitude is towards transparency” and that, because it is funded through grants and an endowment that supports its technological needs, it is set up “to be resilient and survivable.”

Though NESRI focuses on Harvard alums as opposed to Harvard faculty, staff, and leadership — as Harvard itself is focusing on — there is considerable overlap between those groups. And a third effort is from the government itself.

In 2023, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu ’07 convened a task force on reparations, composed of six prominent lawyers and activists. The group aims to trace the impacts of slavery on the city since 1638.

Historical researchers at Tufts University and Northeastern University will compile a report for the task force, which its members will then consult to provide recommendations for “reparative justice solutions for Black residents.”

Wayne W. Tucker, a former HSRP researcher who is now working with the task force, said that even though the work isn’t focused on Harvard, it is “absolutely” related “given that almost all of the upper class white people in Boston and the surrounding area were Harvard alumni or Harvard overseers or whatever.”

“It’s impossible to talk about slavery in Boston and not talk about people affiliated with Harvard,” Tucker said.

In January, Harvard outsourced the work of the Harvard Slavery Remembrance Program to American Ancestors, a Boston-based organization that

COVER STORY

Harvard Sues the Trump Administration

be

Harvard Asks Judge To Expedite Lawsuit Against Trump Admin

cross-motions for a final ruling.

BY DHRUV T. PATEL AND GRACE E. YOON

Harvard asked a federal judge to fast-track its legal challenge against the Trump administration’s decision to freeze more than $2 billion in grants and contracts, calling for quick action to mitigate harm to research and academic projects.

“Until set aside by this Court, the Freeze Order, as well as the looming threat of additional cuts, chills Harvard’s exercise of its First Amendment rights and puts vital medical, scientific, technological, and other research at risk,” Harvard wrote in the filing.

The request comes two days after Harvard sued the White House, accusing the Trump administration of mounting an “unconstitutional” campaign to pressure the University into accepting sweeping federal demands — including federal audits of its academic programs and the installation of administrators who would ensure the White House’s directives are carried out.

In a court filing submitted Wednesday, Harvard requested an expedited resolution through summary judgment — a decision issued without a trial — and declined to seek a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction, which would have temporarily blocked the White House from enforcing the funding freeze while the lawsuit progressed.

In its Monday complaint, Harvard alleged that the Trump administration’s move did not abide by due process protections under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and amounted to unlawful overreach of power into a private institution.

But instead of pursuing emergency relief to immediately halt the freeze, the University is pushing for an expedited resolution that could bring a final decision in weeks instead of months.

The decision to forego a TRO is a sign that Harvard is betting on a legal strategy focused on the administrative record — the internal government documents and communications leading up to the freeze — and has asked the judge to set a schedule for both parties to file

Burroughs Will Oversee Harvard’s Suit Against Trump

Massachusetts District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs, a Barack Obama appointee who ruled to uphold Harvard’s race-conscious admissions policies in 2019, will oversee the lawsuit Harvard brought on Monday against the Trump administration’s federal funding freeze.

Burroughs was appointed by Obama in 2014 — and during her decade as a U.S. district court judge, she has repeatedly overseen high-profile litigation involving Harvard.

She oversaw a case brought against the first Trump administration by Harvard and MIT over the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s attempt in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, to force all international students who were enrolled online in U.S. universities to leave the country. ICE eventually walked back its policy without a ruling from Burroughs, allowing international students to study online in the U.S.

In 2019, when Students for Fair Admissions sued Harvard, claiming that its admissions practices were discriminatory to Asian Americans, Burroughs upheld Harvard’s admissions policy. SFFA appealed the case, and it eventually reached the Supreme Court — which overruled Burroughs in 2023, declaring affirmative action in higher education admissions unconstitutional.

During the SFFA trial, Burroughs garnered notice for not unsealing sidebar discussions that contained a joke that included anti-Asian remarks. She chose not to compel Harvard to hand over information on its history of discriminatory admissions practices against Jewish applicants in the case, arguing that 1950s-era records would not be relevant to the plaintiffs’ claims.

Burroughs was assigned to Monday’s suit after Harvard’s attorneys submitted a filing arguing that it was related to an earlier lawsuit brought by Harvard’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors and currently pending before Burroughs. The filing

asked that the new lawsuit be assigned to the same judge.

The AAUP chapter sued Harvard in early April to block the Trump administration’s review of Harvard’s federal funding, arguing that its proposed conditions were unconstitutional.

Burroughs has previously been sympathetic to plaintiffs who argued that other attempts by the Trump administration to cut research funding were illegal on procedural grounds.

On April 16, she temporarily blocked the U.S. Department of Energy from cutting more than $400 million in annual spending in federal funding to universities after the Association of American Universities — of which Harvard is a member — led a lawsuit against the proposed cuts.

The proposal attempted to sharply limit the maximum rate at which the DOE can reimburse universities for indirect costs —research-related expenses that are not tied to a specific project or lab.

Burroughs is expected to call the case’s counsel to an in-person hearing April 28, during which she will decide whether or not to issue a longer-term freeze on the DOE’s funding slash.

Before Burroughs’ appointment as a federal judge, she worked as a federal prosecutor focused on economic crimes in Boston and also spent time in private practice. She graduated from Middlebury College in 1983 and attended law school at the University of Pennsylvania.

The freeze remains in place for now, and the White House can continue to pull or suspend additional research grants and contracts.

The Department of Justice, which is representing the Trump administration in the case, has not yet filed a formal response to Harvard’s complaint. But in a Monday letter to the DOJ cited by Harvard in its filing, the University made clear that it expects DOJ attorneys to begin compiling the full administrative record behind the freeze — a process that could become a focal point for dispute in the legal battle.

Under federal law, the government must submit all materials it “directly or indirectly considered” when making the decision to freeze

billions in funding. Harvard’s attorneys wrote that that includes internal emails, memos, agency discussions, communications with White House officials — and potentially even remarks President Donald Trump made privately on April 1 threatening Harvard’s funding.

“We expect the government to be prepared to explain the manner in which it searched for and compiled the administrative record in order to determine whether that search was adequate and the record is complete,” wrote Harvard attorney Steven P. Lehotsky in the letter, adding that Harvard may request deposition if it believes the record is incomplete.

Lehtosky also named several federal officials believed to be involved

in the funding decision, including members of a multi-agency antisemitism taskforce. By requesting that all communications from those individuals be included in the record, Harvard is signaling that it plans to challenge the freeze not only on constitutional grounds, but also on procedural ones — arguing that the decision was arbitrary and rushed.

“The government has moved swiftly in its actions toward Harvard,” Lehtosky wrote in the Monday letter. “We therefore expect it to move with comparable dispatch in litigating this matter, including submitting the administrative record in this case.”

dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com

Harvard Spends Record Amount on Lobbying in First Quarter

BY AVANI B. RAI AND SAKETH SUNDAR CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Harvard spent $230,000 on federal lobbying in the first quarter of 2025 — its highest quarterly total since George W. Bush’s presidency — as the University tries to fortify itself against attacks from Congress and the White House.

The total includes $90,000 to Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm with ties to several of President Trump’s top advisers. The filing period, which runs from January to March, predates a series of major attacks launched by the federal government in April — including a multibillion dollar federal funding freeze and two congressional investigations into compliance with civil rights laws and potential antitrust violations.

The administration’s recent actions against Harvard span many of the issues that the University was al-

ready lobbying on in the first three months of 2025, per filings released on Tuesday, including student visas, endowment taxation, academic freedom, and most prominently, research funding.

Most prominently, the Trump administration paused $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in multi-year contracts April 14 after Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 issued a rebuke of its demands of the University.

Pauses in federal research funding came as the National Institute of Health had already terminated research grants worth more than $110 million to Harvard and its affiliated hospitals from February 28 to April 1.

The Trump administration also reportedly revoked hundreds of student visas throughout April, including those of 12 Harvard affiliates, and directed the IRS to investigate Harvard’s nonprofit and tax-exempt statuses on April 16.

In response to the freeze — and

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just one day after the Wall Street Journal reported that the administration planned to cut another $1 billion from Harvard health research funding — the University sued the administration. In 2024, Harvard’s annual lobbying spend climbed 17 percent from the previous year to $620,000, marking its most aggressive federal advocacy push in over a decade. But the 2025 first-quarter filings suggest the University is not merely maintaining that trajectory — it is escalating it. The surge in expenditure — representing a 35 percent increase from the previous quarter — follows a trend across the Ivy League. Yale and the University of Pennsylvania each spent $250,000 on lobbying the federal government in the same time period, a 38 percent increase for both universities from their highest single quarter expenditure in 2024. University spokespeople did not respond to a request for comment on the increase in spending. When Harvard last spent a similar amount of $235,000 in the first quarter of 2008, the list of policies the University lobbied for included tobacco regulation, Native American grave repatriation, and patent reform. Although Harvard also lobbied on issues relating to student visas and endowment taxes in 2008, the lobbying filings from that year did not heavily feature topics of research funding or academic freedom.

The Education Department, GSA, and HHS have led the charge against Harvard and their heads were listed as signatories on the April 3 and April 11 letters. The other departments have cut off grants and con-

tracts to Harvard researchers in the wake of the funding pause. In

Harvard Has Strong Case in Legal Battle

Legal experts agreed that Harvard is likely to fair well in its case against the Trump administration.

BY ANNABEL M. YU AND SHEEREA X. YU CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

After Harvard sued the Trump administration Monday afternoon, legal experts and scholars say Harvard’s legal team has a strong case that may secure the University quick relief from the administration’s order to freeze federal funding.

In the lawsuit, which came nearly a week after the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in research funding to the University, Harvard’s lawyers argued that the freeze violated procedural requirements and represented unconstitutional interference with Harvard’s academic freedom.

Seven legal experts said in interviews with and emails to The Crimson that Harvard’s claims were likely to fare well in court. Michael J. Gerhardt, a professor at University of North Carolina School of Law, called the Trump administration’s demands “egregiously illegal.”

“The Trump administration is disproportionately penalizing Harvard for whatever it thinks Harvard has done wrong, but the remedies and sanctions that the administration has sought are themselves outrageous,” said Gerhardt, who studies constitutional conflicts between presidents and Congress.

Harvard’s complaint cites three laws: the Administrative Procedure Act and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — whose procedural requirements, Harvard alleged, the Trump administration ignored — as well as the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The complaint lists six counts against nine federal departments and agencies listed as defendants: the Department of Education, Department of Justice, General Services Administration, Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the National Institutes of Health.

“I think Harvard will win all of them,” said Geoffrey R. Stone, former dean of the University of Chicago Law School, who studies constitutional law, including the First Amendment. The National Science Foundation declined to comment, and the other eight departments and agencies did not respond to requests for comment.

“The gravy train of federal assistance to institutions like Harvard, which enrich their grossly overpaid bureaucrats with tax dollars from struggling American families is coming to an end. Taxpayer funds are a privilege, and Harvard fails to meet the basic conditions required to access that privilege,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields wrote in a statement to The Crimson.

Next Steps

Harvard has asked the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts, where the suit was filed, to vacate the funding freeze and block agencies from cutting any more funds. The suit also requests the court to expedite its resolution.

Now, the court could choose to rule that the Trump administration’s actions violated the constitution. A final ruling in Harvard’s favor would nullify the freeze order, but the court could take months to a year to arrive at a decision. Or Harvard could ask for a preliminary injunction, which would stop the Trump administration from freezing grant funding while the court waits to make a final ruling — which could possibly end with a permanent injunction.

Harvard could alternatively request a temporary restraining order, which typically lasts for 10 days but can be extended. That could be the fastest option — but might be the least likely to succeed because Harvard would have to “show that basically the court has to intervene right away before the government even has time to respond to the allegations,” according to Andrew F. Sellars, a law professor at Boston University.

Harvard’s case will be heard by Judge Allison D. Burroughs, a Barack Obama appointee who issued a 2019 ruling in favor of the University’s use of race-conscious admissions.

a continuing and immediate cost being imposed upon the university, and therefore, the university has a strong case for saying to the court: decide this quickly,” Stone said.

Kenneth K. Wong, a professor of education policy at Brown University and a former advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Education, said it is likely the district judge will pause the administration’s funding freeze “in the next month or so.”

“Harvard’s case is powerful on the merits and the federal district court is likely to be receptive to the request for expeditious preliminary relief,” Peter M. Shane ’74 — an emeritus professor at the Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law — wrote in an email.

Constitutional Claims

After issuing an initial set of demands to Harvard on April 3, the Trump administration sent a second, expanded list on April 11 — with which Harvard has repeatedly said it cannot comply.

The April 11 demands to Harvard included reforms to its admission and hiring procedures to prioritize ideological balance among students and faculty. The letter asked Harvard to limit the institutional power of junior faculty, along with faculty “more committed to activism than scholarship.”

And it asked Harvard to screen international applicants for their beliefs, demanding that the University reject candidates who are “hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence.”

Harvard’s lawsuit took aim at the fact that the funding freeze came as punishment for Harvard’s refusal to accede to demands that the University regulate its scholarship, admissions, and hiring in line with government criteria.

“The Government’s demands on Harvard cut at the core of Harvard’s constitutionally protected academic freedom because they seek to assert governmental control over Harvard’s research, academic programs, community, and governance,” the Monday complaint reads.

Stone said the fact that the Trump administration has already stopped the flow of federal money — issuing stopwork orders on research grants worth tens of millions of dollars — means the judge will likely act swiftly in the case.

“Because the administration has withheld funds, there’s

Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos ’01, a professor at Harvard Law School, said that threats to withhold federal funding if Harvard does not capitulate to these demands are “quintessential First Amendment violations.”

The administration asked Harvard to hire “a critical mass” of students and faculty who can provide “viewpoint diversity,” which would be subject to the government’s review, according to the administra -

tion’s letter.

“That would also be a pretty conspicuous violation of the First Amendment,” said Shane, the retired Ohio State law professor. “The government cannot insist that any particular combination of viewpoints be represented at some quantitative level to satisfy the government’s standard for what qualifies as intellectual diversity.”

Punishment Without Trial?

But Harvard also argued that the Trump administration’s swift imposition of the $2.2 billion funding freeze — which did not leave time for standard notification or investigation procedures — was illegal.

The complaint argues that Title VI of the Civil Right Act — the body of law around that the Trump administration has wielded most persistently in its pressure campaign against Harvard — requires a detailed administrative process before it can be used to revoke federal financial assistance over alleged civil rights violations.

Title VI states that federal assistance may only be terminated “to any recipient as to whom there has been an express finding on the record, after opportunity for hearing, of a failure to comply with such requirement.”

The law requires a thorough investigation along with “a full written report of the circumstances and the grounds” for revoking funds. In the case that failure to comply with Title VI is found, any financial penalty may not take effect until 30 days after a report is filed.

The administration’s multibillion dollar funding freeze came only a few hours after University President Alan M. Garber ’76 announced Harvard’s rejection of the Trump administration’s demands.

Shane, the Ohio State law professor, said the speed of the Trump administration’s freeze order made it “a non-starter under federal law.”

“There’s no such thing as, legally speaking, that: ‘We, the federal government, think you are hostile to a legally protected group, and therefore we’re just summarily stopping the flow of grant funds that have already been awarded to your institution,’” Shane said.

Wong, the Brown University professor, said a proper procedural approach would involve a full investigation with a “laser focus” on alleged antisemitism violations. Along with several other experts who spoke to The Crimson, Wong said the Trump administration’s actions seemed geared toward controlling Harvard — not just investigating antisemitism.

Harvard also argued that the

Trump administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act — a major federal law that provides the procedural framework for any regulatory action taken by a federal agency, such as revoking federal funding grants to universities.

The Act empowers courts to find federal agency actions unlawful if they are “arbitrary” or “capricious,” “contrary to constitutional right,” “in excess of statutory jurisdiction,” or “without observance of procedure required by law.” Essentially, it requires federal departments and agencies to follow their own regulatory procedures.

The Administrative Procedure Act has become a key tool in multiple lawsuits fighting the Trump administration’s funding cuts. It was cited by a group of universities that sued to block a new cap on Department of Energy grants. And Harvard’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, which sued the federal government on April 11 over their review of $9 billion in Harvard’s federal funding, argued that the review violated the APA.

we’re going to put you in jail without giving you a trial,’” Stone said.

Setting a Precedent

The outcome of Harvard’s suit could have effects far beyond its own gates — especially as the University emerges as a leader in colleges’ fight to prevent Trump from conditioning their funding on far-reaching demands. Gerhardt, the UNC law professor, said Harvard’s case “serves as a model for other institutions, because, again, Harvard’s situation, though it’s not good, it’s not unique.” A ruling for Harvard could draw sharper lines around how the government can intervene in university affairs. And a ruling against Harvard could expand the range of actions that lawmakers can compel universities to take.

“I think this will definitely define the boundary of appropriateness in terms of governmental investigation and the boundary where an independent private university may be able to draw the line in terms of protecting their autonomy,” Wong said. But even success for Harvard in its ongoing lawsuit does not mean the University will necessarily be able to protect its funding in the long run — especially as the Trump administration attempts to radically overhaul the structure of government funding for universities.

Harvard’s lawyers argued that the listed agencies neglected to follow their “own agency regulations” before withholding funding.

For instance, before grants from the Department of Health and Human Services may be revoked from a university, federal law requires the department to notify the school of “the reason why the additional requirements are being imposed” on grant funding along with “the method for requesting reconsideration” of the grants.

But Harvard began receiving rs almost immediately after the Trump administration issued the freeze order. And HHS officials told staff at the NIH to cut off grant payments to Harvard and other universities without giving an explanation.

Wong said he believes the Administrative Procedure Act is “a very good vehicle” for the University’s strategy.

“If somebody’s going to lose funding, there’s a process for that, and there’s been zero process conducted by the Trump administration,” Gerhardt said.

“The government can’t say: ‘You committed the crime, and

Stephanopoulos, the HLS professor, said that the Trump administration still has extensive discretion over future grants and contracts, meaning the government could limit future funding even if a judge rules against its attempts to rescind grants and contracts that have already been awarded.

“Even if we can win this lawsuit and unfreeze the existing funding, it’ll be substantially more difficult to challenge potential future grants that were never made,” Stephanopoulos said.

Amid Feud With Trump, Harvard Delayed Task Force Reports

has released an update on the status of their work — a delay that Harvard’s top critics in Washington have noted.

A person briefed on the matter said the final report on antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias went through several drafting stages before being completed by late March and has not been changed substantially since.

Police responded to reports of gunshots at the Harvard Square train station on Sunday afternoon, according to a series of alerts from the Harvard University Police Department. Richard Sullivan, an MBTA Transit Police superintendent, confirmed that officers responded to

Harvard intended to publish the long-awaited reports of its task forces on combating antisemitism and Islamophobia in early April but delayed their public release, four people familiar with the matter said.

The delay came as the Trump administration escalated its pressure campaign against Harvard, demanding that the University accept a set of sweeping conditions to keep more than $8 billion in federal funding.

The reports were first scheduled to be released last fall. After issuing preliminary recommendations in June, neither task force

The report, which spans approximately 100,000 words, includes multiple pages recounting anecdotes of affiliates facing antisemitism at Harvard, the person said. The report also recounts a history of antisemitism at Harvard and analyzes how the Harvard College Administrative Board has handled antisemitism complaints.

The reports were distributed to deans and senior administrators to verify the descriptions of incidents included in the reports, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.

In a letter to Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 on Saturday, the Department of Health and Human Services demanded that Har-

vard turn over all drafts of reports and findings from all of its task forces, explicitly naming the two presidential task forces on combating antisemitism and Islamophobia.

In a Monday message to Harvard affiliates announcing that the University had sued the White House, Garber pledged to release the reports “soon” in what seemed to be a response to the HHS’ demands from two days before.

“The reports are hard-hitting and painful,” Garber wrote. “We believe adoption of the recommendations and other measures will go far toward eradicating those evils on our campus.”

A Harvard spokesperson referred to Garber’s statement but declined to comment further.

Garber first announced the twin task forces in January 2024.

Over time, the groups’ focus expanded to include evaluation of anti-Israeli and anti-Palestinian bias as well as antisemitism, anti-Muslim bias, and anti-Arab bias.

In their preliminary findings released in June, the task forces found that both pro-Palestine and pro-Israel students reported facing harassment and discrimination. The Islamophobia task force recommended that the University fund a visiting professorship in Palestinian studies, and both groups urged Harvard to take steps to address discrimination against students. Several of the initial recommendations have already been implemented.

Last July, Harvard standardized the fact-finding process used in disciplinary cases

across the University after the antisemitism task force urged Harvard to address “significant disparities across units” in their handling of such cases. A month later, Harvard University Dining Services introduced hot kosher lunches to undergraduate dining halls. But the June recommendations drew quick criticism from top House Republicans. In a July letter to Garber, nearly 30 House Republicans — including Rep. Elise M. Stefanik ’06 (R-N.Y.), one of Harvard’s fiercest critics in Congress — accused the task forces of taking “six months to reinvent the wheel.”

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HKS Revokes Fellowship to Human Rights Activist

Once the dean’s office completed the review process, HKS chose to reverse course and withdraw the fellowship offer, Harsha said.

The Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights offered a fellowship to Columbia University professor and Human Rights Watch staff member A. Kayum Ahmed — and then, weeks later, withdrew the offer. Ahmed was notified on Tuesday that his fellowship was revoked after the Kennedy School realized it made the offer without completing a full review process. But he alleged online that the revocation was retaliation for his pro-Palestine beliefs. The dispute plunges the Kennedy School’s fellowship programs back into debates over campus free speech — just three years after a former Human Rights Watch director alleged that his own Carr Center fellowship offer had been pulled over his criticisms of Israel.

According to HKS spokesperson Daniel B. Harsha, Ahmed’s offer — for an unpaid, non-resident position at the Carr-Ryan Center — was extended “prematurely without going through Harvard Kennedy School’s full review and vetting process.”

Ahmed, who teaches on public health and is a vocal critic of Israel, accused the Kennedy School in a LinkedIn post of withdrawing his offer under “pressure from pro-Israeli groups — because of my vocal and principled support for Palestinian liberation.”

Harsha emphatically denied Ahmed’s allegations in a statement to The Crimson, writing that the school does “not disqualify candidates because of their views or because they are controversial.”

“This process is independent, and we do not under any circumstances take direction on appointments from outside groups,” Harsha wrote.

Ahmed was offered the fellowship on April 3. On Monday, less than three weeks later, Carr Center faculty director Mathias Risse notified Ahmed that the fellowship offer had been extended prematurely.

“As a result of this mistake – for which I take responsibility, and which by itself does not turn on the content of your application – there needs to be another level of review at the level of the dean’s office,”

Risse wrote in an email shared with The Crimson.

A day later, Risse informed Ahmed by email that his fellowship offer had been withdrawn.

Risse did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.

The reversal comes after a series of personnel shakeups — including the dismissal of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies’ director last month — drew accusations that Harvard was trying to protect itself from the Trump administration by clamping down on pro-Palestine speech.

Those allegations have faded from the spotlight as Harvard mounts a historic challenge to the White House, but Ahmed’s rescinded fellowship could draw them back to the fore.

And the situation drags HKS Dean Jeremy Weinstein — who has been a popular leader among faculty during his first months on the job — into the same kind of controversy that dogged the end of his predecessor’s tenure.

In 2022, Risse planned to offer former executive director of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth a Carr Center fellowship, only for former HKS Dean Douglas W. Elmendorf to veto the proposal sev-

eral weeks later. Roth alleged that Elmendorf had blocked the offer because Roth had been critical of Israel, and the move drew accusations of censorship and calls for Elmendorf’s resignation.

Elmendorf eventually reversed course and allowed the Carr Center to extend an offer to Roth. He also appointed a faculty committee to evaluate fellowship appointments — an apparent attempt to head off similar fiascos in the future.

But this April, Risse extended the fellowship offer to Ahmed without approval from that very faculty committee.

Ahmed left his position at Columbia in July 2024 after a public health course he taught at Columbia — and his activist approach to teaching — became the center of a high-profile controversy.

In lecture recordings obtained by the Wall Street Journal and described in a March 2024 article, Ahmed identified Israel as a settler-colonial state and used the experiences of displaced Palestinians as an example of how colonialism harms the health of indigenous populations.

The article included accusations from some students that Ahmed’s course was “indoctrination.” Ahmed responded, in a state-

ment to the Journal, by deriding them as “a handful of privileged, white students” unused to examining how they benefit from white supremacy and capitalism.

Shortly after the article’s publication, Ahmed was removed from the teaching team for Columbia’s Core Curriculum, and his health and human rights course was canceled. His contract at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health was not renewed past the end of 2024.

Both Risse and the Carr Center have supported pro-Palestine scholarship at Harvard — a fact which has not gone unnoticed in Washington. The Carr Center was named in Trump’s April 11 letter to Harvard as among a list of University groups that allegedly “fuel antisemitic harassment or reflect ideological capture.”

Risse has defended the Center, rebuking claims that Carr is “hyperfixated” on Israel in a recent letter to the editor. The Center’s work spans from researching mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo to training LGBTQ rights activists, and includes programming on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

elise.spenner@thecrimson.com tanya.vidhun@thecrimson.com

ly after 2 p.m., then saw a man running out of the train station holding a handgun.

Marcos Garcia ’28, who was in the Red Line station during the shooting, said that he saw the man run from the T station and into Harvard Square towards Brattle Street.

“I already talked to the police, and they are looking for him right now in Brattle Square and the Yard,” Garcia said. An MBTA train passed through the Harvard Square station at roughly the time of the shooting. Aaron E. Beaulieu, a Leominster resident who was on the train, reported hearing three or four loud noises from outside the train. He said the train stopped, then the conductor walked through all the cars “telling everybody just to bear with us for a moment.” The train moved out of the station, then reversed and stopped at the station.

“We saw nothing but police officers and people vacating,” Beaulieu said.

The turnstiles at the Harvard Square station were blocked by caution tape as of Sunday afternoon, preventing pedestrians from entering most of the station. But police were not blocking people from entering the station, according to an eyewitness. An alert from the MBTA reported that Red Line trains could be delayed by roughly 15 minutes due to “police activity at Harvard.” Some trains could remain stopped at stations, according to the alert.

matan.josephy@thecrimson.com ella.niederhelman@thecrimson.com

Students across Harvard’s campus complained they were left in the dark after the Harvard University Police Department provided late, limited information regard-

ing reports of gunshots in Harvard Square on Sunday afternoon.

MBTA Transit Police and Cambridge police responded to gunfire at the Harvard Square train station at approximately 2:15 p.m on Sunday. But in the half-hour before Harvard issued an official alert about the incident, students were left with no official informa-

tion on the active investigation into the shots.

It was not until 2:47 p.m. — more than 30 minutes after the initial police response — that a first alert was sent to Harvard affiliates, asking them to shelter in place as officers searched for a suspect. A second alert, sent at 3:09 p.m., informed affiliates that a search was ongoing and advised students to continue sheltering in place.

In the time between the incident and Harvard’s alerts, student-run tours from the Harvard Student Agency continued to run in Harvard Square. Without any official information, students learned about the gunshots through texts from peers and the anonymous social media app Sidechat, where some circulated photos from Harvard Square and the interior of a halted train.

“I found out from my friend texting me, and then I checked on Sidechat, and that appeared be-

fore the HUPD stuff came out, and I think that the promptness is really important,” Sharon Cheng ’28 said.

“URGENT: Just on the train at Harvard square, heard three shots, and there was a shooter who ran out of the train station! PLEASE be careful. He’s on the run,” one student posted at approximately 2:30 p.m.

School of Engineering and Applied Sciences graduate student Theodore “Ted” McCulloch said the delay between the reported gunshots and HUPD’s alert was “not super helpful”and “pretty bad.”

Steven G. Catalano, a HUPD spokesperson, did not respond to repeated requests for comment on this story. University spokespeople also did not respond.

Kaesyn E. Price ’28, who woke up around when the first alert went out, said the time it took for students to be alerted “definitely is worrying.”

“Obviously, you want it to go

out the second that it happened,” Price said. “In that 30-minute timespan, many things could have gone wrong.”

It was not until 3:19 p.m., when a third University-wide alert was sent out, that the shelter-in-place order was lifted.

“The search has concluded. The shelter in place has been lifted,” the alert read. No further details were included. The ambiguity of the alert left students wondering whether a suspect had been caught. Witnesses had reported seeing a man running from the train station, carrying a handgun, after the incident.

Cambridge police superintendent Frederick Cabral confirmed that there were “no suspects in custody” at 4:15 p.m., nearly an hour after the shelter-in-place order had been lifted.

MBTA Transit Police Superintendent Richard Sullivan con-

firmed that the shooting appeared to be directed at a “targeted individual,” and that there were no known victims in an emailed statement Sunday afternoon. Absent further information from HUPD, students turned to social media platforms such as Sidechat for answers to express their frustration with HUPD. “It’s embarrassing and frankly not okay that it took 27 minutes for the Harvard alert to go out. That could be the difference in saving a life or not,” one student posted. “26 mins later we get the notification! Great work Harvard emergency msg,” another wrote, in an apparent message to the University-wide alerts. Harvard had not issued further information about the incident beyond the third alert as of Sunday evening.

Massachusetts Hall houses the office of Harvard President Alan M. Garber ‘76.

BY MATAN H. JOSEPHY,

F. NIEDERHELMAN,

LAUREL M. SHUGART CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Harvard and the Rise of Kendall Square

Kendall Square was once known for churning out soap and vulcanized rubber, then manufacturing electronics as the Cold War raged. It was, at points, left desolate by deindustrialization and the loss of a planned NASA campus. But today, Kendall has been reborn — as the glittering, glassy heart of America’s biotech industry.

For many companies, Kendall Square’s status as a global center of biotechnology firms and research makes them willing to pay top dollar to be in its vicinity. And proximity to MIT — which birthed many of the industry’s foundational technologies and established Cambridge as the place to be — only enhances the draw.

Kendall is a place where Cambridge used to spend money developing its infrastructure to attract firms, noted Tom Evans, the director of the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority. Now, Kendall is so attractive that the city can require firms to develop nearby infrastructure in order to build on the land.

“We’ve actually been able to flip the formula,” Evans said.

As a new field of biotech research, born in the 1970s, morphed into a lucrative industry, the old brick halls of Harvard have come to feel distant from Kendall Square’s glass towers. Many biotech executives are careful to give their thanks to MIT, Kendall’s nearest neighbor, when touting the successes of Kendall Square research and companies.

In 10 interviews with The Crimson, Nobel laureates, CEOs, and pioneering scientists from that era said that work at both Harvard and MIT brought about the dawn of biotech. But Harvard — wary of the commercial turn in cutting-edge life sciences, wedded to its theoretical research commitments, and without any land to spare — turned away in the early 1980s.

Now, as Harvard has poured millions into its Enterprise Research Campus and Science and Engineering Complex in Allston, the University is gradually reversing that course, venturing down a path it once relinquished decades ago.

Biotech’s Beginnings

The story of modern biotechnology traces back to a single innovation: recombinant DNA. DNA recombination involves combining genes from different organisms into one DNA molecule, allowing human genes to be inserted into organisms like bacteria. This, in turn, has enabled the mass production of proteins like insulin for treating diabetes or alpha interferon for cancer treatment.

The recombination breakthrough, made by pioneering scientist Paul Berg at Stanford University in 1971, soon spread to the other two leading institutions of biology research in the U.S., Harvard and MIT. Harvard at the time had one of the strongest biology departments in the nation — between the 1950s and 1980s, it was home to ten current or eventual Nobel Laureates in chemistry and medicine, all of whom worked or trained at Harvard’s Biological Laboratories. Walter Gilbert ’53 at Harvard and Philip A. Sharp at MIT, who each won Nobel Prizes in the 1980s, were leading the charge in recombinant DNA research on the East Coast. As scientists began to raise concerns about the dangers of creating unknown DNA molecules, through forums like the famous Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, Gilbert developed a method for sequencing DNA, for which he shared half of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Sequencing created clarity about which genes were being moved around.

“And so there begins to be, during the late 70s, an effort to move genes around deliberately,” Gilbert said.

“It was a revolutionary time, largely because of recombinant DNA, and Wally played a very key role in connecting recombinant DNA with actually sequencing,” said George M. Church, a Harvard professor of genetics who worked with Gilbert’s lab as a graduate student at the time.

Despite Kendall Square’s association with MIT — owing to a history of joint development —Harvard’s biology department played a pivotal role in advancing the industry’s most foundational research in the beginning. Eventually, events at Harvard would push Cambridge to emerge as the first city in the world to regulate recombinant DNA research — and thus, the frontier of the emerging biotech industry, as the one place in the United States that had the necessary stability for companies and banks to invest in the risky new venture.

A Safe Home for Investment

When Harvard eventually sought to build new labs for its recombinant DNA research, Cambridge Mayor Alfred E. Vellucci — at the time already hostile to Harvard as an institution — jumped at the chance to antagonize the University, raising serious safety concerns about the research.

“Al Vellucci, who was mayor at the time, was hoping to make himself a national reputation based on the recombinant DNA,” Gilbert said.

Receptive to the mayor’s concerns, the city council soon imposed a six-month moratorium on recombinant DNA research and assembled a commission with professors from Harvard and MIT to study the safety of inserting foreign genes — including potentially dangerous viruses — into living organisms.

Wild, highly publicized stories about recombinant DNA incited panic in the public, who worried that well-meaning experiments might go horribly wrong.

“In Dover, MA, a ‘strange, orange-eyed creature’ was sighted and in Hollis, New Hampshire, a man and his two sons were confronted by a ‘hairy, nine foot

creature.’” Vellucci wrote in his letter to the National Academies of Science, referring to sensational reports in the Boston Herald American.

The commission’s efforts culminated in the passage of the Cambridge Recombinant DNA Technology Ordinance by the city council 1977. The ordinance was critical in creating a stable, predictable business environment that would be the backbone of the industry soon to come.

The ordeal was catalyzed by Harvard’s need to build a new lab to house the research — which required city approval and permitting — in order to receive its NIH grant of about $500,000. The NIH, citing safety concerns, had demanded the new lab as a condition for its grant.

The ordinance was the structure provided by Cambridge’s regulations for university research that made the city ideal for the new endeavors of Biogen, the first biotechnology company to move to Kendall Square.

The company was founded in 1978 by Gilbert, Sharp, and British biologist Kenneth Murray, and became the first to obtain a commercial license for DNA recombination.

“Why do we set up the laboratory in Cambridge? Well, we do it because Cambridge already has a discipline about how to handle recombinant DNA,” said Gilbert.

“Biogen was assured that this issue wouldn’t flare up politically and close them down,” Sharp said.

The founding of Biogen represented a first instance of the relationship between academia, which provided the scientific foundations for novel biotech, and a burgeoning biotech sector, which translated these discoveries into commercial technology.

“All this technology was only found in universities,” Sharp said. “There was almost none in the private sector.”

Sharp emphasized that proximity to Harvard and MIT was “a tremendous advantage” allowing Biogen to “keep their professional relationships” to the scientists developing the technology, who “could also be involved in direct translation.”

Two Paths Diverge

By the 1980s, many faculty at

both Harvard and MIT were now reckoning with the idea that their research could be turned into marketable products, sparking new debates around the ethics of commercializing federally funded research.

Though it would be years before Biogen successfully developed their first drug — Avonex, used to treat multiple sclerosis — the excitement following their incorporation spurred the growth of other biotech startups at the time.

“For a long time, there was a group called the ‘Bygones’, which were people who’d been at Biogen and then went on to other companies,” Gilbert said.

Mark S. Ptashne and Tom Maniatis, two biology professors at Harvard who were looking to establish a new genetic engineering firm called the Genetics Institute, had an idea: give the university an active role in a company that emerged from its research.

Ptashne reached out to Harvard for help, proposing that in return for support with recruiting scientists and attracting venture capitalists, the University would be given a minority stake in the company, earning royalties on its profits.

But the idea that the University would make money off a private venture was controversial. When other faculty caught wind of the plans in 1980, then-President Derek C. Bok came under fire, and the issue quickly made national headlines.

Faculty voted to forbid Harvard from moving forward with the proposal. They feared such ventures would create unhealthy competition for trade secrets among professors and conflicts of interest for the university.

“Harvard should not take such a step unless we are assured that we can proceed without the risk of compromising the quality of our education and research,” Bok said at the time.

Bok’s withdrawal of the proposal — which The Crimson at the time declared “The Ptashne Fiasco” — was a turning point in the university’s still-uncertain relationship with the biotech industry that it had helped create.

While Harvard continued to sponsor biotech research, and many individual faculty maintained private sector affiliations, the institution as a whole

remained relatively detached from fast-growing local industry.

That moment was a watershed. Even as Harvard drew back, MIT — which until that point was largely co-equal with Harvard in the new sector — leaned in.

Oriented around applied sciences that translated easily into commercial applications, MIT was far better positioned to take advantage of the emerging new sector. The school took the opposite tack from Harvard, founding a center for entrepreneurship in 1990 that was meant to commercialize technology created by its students.

MIT also had the benefit of well-positioned land holdings. The university had been proximate to industry that it was meant to foster since its founding in 1818, when it was strategically placed next to the earliest factories in East Cambridge.

When Kendall Square and East Cambridge deindustrialized as part of a national trend 150 years later, the area became run-down and populated by vacant industrial sites. But the empty and cheap land surrounding MIT was just the thing new biotech companies were hoping to base themselves on.

“The fact that there was developmental open space available to develop immediately across the street from MIT meant that this was a very attractive place,” said Sharp.

Brian Kavoogian, CEO of National Development, pointed to Harvard’s lack of proximate land as another key obstacle further preventing them from matching MIT’s industrial success.

“There’s many entrepreneurial Harvard faculty members. So I think, once again, it’s a lack of just simply a lack of buildable land,” Kavoogian said. MIT’s land investment company began leasing land in its north campus — originally meant for academic expansion — to commercial tenants, primarily biotech companies. Today, it reaps hundreds of millions from its prime real estate in Kendall Square. By the 1990s, MIT had taken the spotlight in the story of Kendall — and of the biotech industry. Even as essential theoretical and medical research at Harvard continued, the University itself faded into the background.

Harvard’s Return

But, ever so slowly, Harvard is trying to change course. At the turn of the 21st century, new leadership at Harvard argued the university should shift its willingness to embrace the private sector, and began to oversee expensive new projects that may catch Harvard up to MIT. In 2001, President Lawrence H. Summers declared in a speech to several hundred physicians, nurses, and administrators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center that the University hoped to make a new foray into applied science.

“We need, as science evolves, to continue to think about how we make sure that our research finds maximum application with maximum rapidity,” Summers said.

The then-president’s speech emphasized the need “to work with the private sector,” “support entrepreneurship,” and “make sure research moves from the bench to the bedside.” Then, over the first decade of the 2000s, Harvard founded a string of new institutes aimed at translating biomedical research into commercially viable technologies.

“To do actual real drug discovery in university would be very difficult, complicated, because you have to bring all those different disciplines together, which is often counter to how universities are structured,” said John Tallarico, Global Head of Discovery Sciences at Novartis Biomedical Research. In 2003, Harvard and MIT together founded the Broad Institute, with the goal of transforming medicine through genomic research.

“A place like the Broad Institute or the Whitehead, they bring together many different disciplines of science together into a single organization with the aspiration to help create the beginnings of drug discovery,” Tallarico added.

In 2009, the university founded the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering near Boston’s Longwood Medical Area, marking another venture into research with direct practical applications.

“The vision was to have the intersection of biology and engineering. Harvard at the time was pretty poor at engineering,” Church, one of the center’s founding members, said. The year before, Harvard proposed creating a School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. It would become the first new school Harvard had added since the School of Government in 1936, which later became the Harvard Kennedy School.

SEAS’ location in Allston represented a realization of Summers’ original vision from the early 2000s — and anchors what many see as an effort by Harvard to create its own kind of Kendall Square, or at least an extension of it a few miles away.

Harvard has spent 30 years gathering hundreds of acres of land in Allston, although its prolonged transition into biotech there will not be fully complete for at least another 20 years, with the completion of Beacon Park Yards.

“It is already time for Allston, given the lack of capacity in Kendall Square,” said Kavoogian. Now, Harvard is in the process of constructing its Enterprise Research Campus, which is meant to be a new “innovation district” — while serving other mixed uses — where Harvard will lease lab space to companies from startups to giants. The venture will almost certainly be profitable, though many wonder if Harvard can ultimately catch up to what it missed in the 1980s.

“People joke about having to get a passport to cross the river,” Maggie O’Toole, CEO of LabCentral, said. “People want to be near where their founders are. So obviously, you know, that’s on the Cambridge side of the river, where MIT and Harvard are.”

DHS Letter Likely Unlawful

DEMANDS. Experts said Harvard would have a strong legal case to sue — again.

BY SAMUEL A. CHURCH

Harvard has taken the Trump administration to court over federal funding, but the University has given no indication about how it will respond to the Department of Homeland Security’s request for information on international students.

The DHS threatened to revoke Harvard’s ability to host international students in an April 16 letter unless the University agrees to submit information to the agency pertaining to international students’ disciplinary records and protest participation.

Harvard has until Wednesday to respond. Though the DHS was not on the list of federal agencies named as defendants in Harvard’s 51page Monday lawsuit against the Trump administration, several legal experts told The Crimson that the University should seriously consider a second lawsuit — this time targeting the threats against international students.

New York Law School professor Lenni B. Benson, a specialist in immigration law, said the DHS demands to Harvard likely go beyond the scope of existing regulations governing Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification.

The requests in the letter include information regarding each visa holder’s “known deprivation of rights of other classmates” and “obstruction of the school’s learning environment,” along with any disciplinary actions “taken as a result of making threats to other students or populations or participating in protests.”

American universities cannot host international students on F-1 and M-1 visas — the most common

types of student visas — unless they have SEVP certification. More than 6,500 international students are currently enrolled at Harvard.

“I would hope that Harvard is going to either amend its current complaint to specifically address this or file a separate lawsuit to protect its international student designation,” Benson said.

Benson said that Harvard could respond by affirming that it has information about students’ class enrollment and other specific criteria stipulated by legal code, but not on broader requests of the letter such as visa holders’ “known dangerous or violent activity.”

“If I were advising, I would say the information we have about our students is their enrollment in classes, their payment of tuition, their progress toward graduation, their authority to work on campus, their authority to work off campus,” Benson said.

Both Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana and the Harvard International Office have said the University will comply with federal law when responding to the DHS, but neither said which requests the University considers to be within legal bounds.

Jeff Joseph, the former vice president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the demands are beyond the department’s statutory authority and could also conflict with laws governing student privacy.

Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a student’s disciplinary records — including some of those requested in the DHS letter — cannot be shared without consent from the student.

According to the DHS website, universities must file a SEVIS report when a student is disciplined for a criminal conviction. But the website explicitly instructs officials not to report non crime-related actions, such as student life infractions or academic probation.

“I’d first respond to this letter and basically ask the request be quashed because it’s not compliant with the regulations,” Joseph said. If the DHS did decide to follow through and revoke Harvard’s SEVP certification, Joseph said the effects would be “debilitating.”

“They would not be able, theoretically, to accept foreign students for a period of one year,” Joseph said. “ICE has to come up with a plan for existing students that are already in the SEVIS system at Harvard.”

According to the ICE website, if a university loses its SEVP status, currently enrolled international students must choose between transferring to a different university, seeking changes to their immigration status, or leaving the country.

Emory University adjunct law professor Charles Kuck said the DHS requests to Harvard were so obscure and outside the bounds of existing policy that the Univer-

sity has “no functional way of responding.”

“How are they supposed to track that information?” Kuck asked. “We have free speech rights in America and we don’t track people’s speech activities.”

“There is no doubt that their lawyers are twilling away in some boiler room somewhere right now lighting up that complaint,” he added.

But Ian A. Campbell, an immigration lawyer and 2016 Harvard Law School graduate, said Harvard should not immediately file suit, instead submitting the information it is required by law to retain.

“The letter asks for information that Harvard has and maintains records of, and they could simply respond by saying, ‘This is the information we have,’” Campbell said.

“They could come back and say, ‘Well, we don’t think that information is enough,’ but then I think Harvard is in a stronger position, because they literally complied with what the letter literally asked for,” he said.

Campbell said he believed an initially compliant response from Harvard may curb retaliation from the Trump administration toward international students.

“If they’re going to fight it, they have to accept that it may be for nothing — it may not work in the end,” Campbell said.

The HIO has been the primary source of information and advice for international students, but Joseph said students should speak with an immigration lawyer if they have concerns about their status.

“That immigration lawyer is going to be able to sort through the hysteria and chaos and get to the truth,” he said. Students can seek legal assistance from the Harvard Representation Initiative, a pro bono legal clinic that provides consultation and representation.

samuel.church@thecrimson.com cam.srivastava@thecrimson.com

Tune Out Turmoil, Khurana Tells Students

BY SAMUEL A. CHURCH AND CAM N. SRIVASTAVA CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

As Harvard takes center stage in a legal showdown against the Trump administration, outgoing College Dean Rakesh Khurana said students should try to block out the noise and go to class.

Since Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 publicly rejected the Trump administration’s demands for funding, the University has occupied a front page slot in national newspapers — seen by many observers as a symbol of noble and costly resistance. In the eye of the storm, Khurana said students should tune it out.

“Continue to focus on your work and your education,” Khurana said in a Tuesday interview with The Crimson. “The context is obviously something people pay attention to and it’s good to be aware of, but our primary focus at the College is to make sure that our students are able to make the full use of their academic, social, and personal experiences here.”

But Khurana also acknowledged that Harvard College will be affected by cuts, if the University is unsuccessful in its legal challenge against the Trump administration’s $2.2 billion funding freeze.

“Many faculty and staff and students will work creatively to make sure that our students are able to realize their full academic ambitions and intentions,” he said.

“It may require more creativity than we’ve used in the past, and some pathways need to be reconsidered, but our focus is on ensuring a transformative experience for our undergraduates,” Khurana added.

The direct impacts of the funding cuts on the College’s budget remain unclear, but several Harvard schools, including the T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School, have begun preparing for layoffs and reductions in programming in the face of the freeze.

Even before the Trump administration announced its initial re-

view of nearly $9 billion in federal funding, Garber announced a University-wide hiring freeze, which has sent ripples through Faculty of Arts and Sciences departments and left professors scrambling to fill vacancies and rearrange courses. Khurana suggested the College might evaluate which programs are essential to its core mission.

“It could also involve thinking about those aspects of our experience which were nice to have but not necessary to have so as to allow a greater number of students to participate in certain programs,” he said.

Several Harvard-affiliated researchers have received stop-work orders on contracts worth tens of millions of dollars. Undergraduates, as a result, could face more limited opportunities to join labs or find positions that are still being hired for amid the hiring freeze.

Addressing this reality, Khurana said the classroom may take a larger role in training students.

“We are also looking to make sure that our classes can provide certain skills that students might otherwise have gotten through a paid opportunity,” he said. In the hours following Garber’s announcement that Harvard would not accede to the White House’s demands, the University experienced a surge in individual alumni donations. Though the gifts made up a tiny fraction of the billions in funding slashed by the White House, Khurana said he was grateful for the show of support.

“We’re fortunate that we have a lot of people who want to support our community at this time,” he said. “At this moment, many people believe that the right to pursue truth without threat and reprisal is a fundamental right, not only for universities, but for our society.”

“Harvard, being older than the country, I think has a particular role in setting the tone for this fundamental right that all of us as Americans enjoy,” Khurana added.

Affinity Celebrations Up in the Air As ICE Rumors Spread Across Campus, Harvard Stays Quiet

As the Trump administration targets Harvard’s diversity programming, it remains unclear whether affinity celebrations for this year’s Commencement will occur as usual. Several affinity group leaders said they have yet to hear from the Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging — which coordinates the celebrations — regarding the status of this year’s affinity celebrations. Outreach to affinity groups typically occurs around early April, according to affinity group leaders and previous years’ speakers. But events like Harvard’s affinity celebrations have drawn fire from federal officials who accuse them of violating civil rights law, including in a February letter from the Department of Education, which warned grimly that “many American schools and universities even encourage segregation by race at graduation ceremonies.”

A University spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment on the status of this year’s celebrations.

Last year, Harvard hosted ten affinity celebrations for the Class of 2024 — including celebrations for Arab, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, first-generation, low-income, and Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Desi graduates, as well as LGBTQ+ graduates, Jewish graduates, veterans, and graduates with disabilities. While the celebrations are promoted as events co-hosted by affinity organizations alongside the OEDIB, several student and alumni leaders pointed to the OEDIB as the main organizer behind the celebrations.

The uncertainty and lack of communication regarding the celebrations comes as Harvard faces a multibillion dollar federal funding freeze for refusing to submit to the Trump administration’s demands, which included

dismantling diversity programming across the University.

But Harvard’s leaders — including University President Alan M. Garber ’76 and College Dean Rakesh Khurana — have maintained their support for diversity initiatives, calling them integral to the University’s academic mission. On Monday, Harvard sued the Trump administration over the federal funding freeze, accusing the White House of punishing the University for “protecting its constitutional rights.”

Still, current affinity group leaders said they have yet to receive any notice from the OEDIB regarding organizing or hosting celebrations — leaving it unclear whether this year’s celebrations are happening or not.

Several Latinx student groups, as well as the Harvard Latino Alumni Alliance, have received “zero information” about whether the Latinx affinity celebration will happen, according to Fuerza Latina co-President Sarita Plata ’27.

“Currently, the Latinx affinity graduation is up in the air,” Plata wrote in an email statement last Sunday.

“The ambiguity of the graduation raises questions and concerns from the Latinx community,” she added. “For many, the Latinx graduation is an extraordinary moment.”

Kristen G. Shipley, a Harvard Business School graduate who was honored during the 2024 celebration for Black graduates, said communication from the OEDIB went out around late March to early April of last year to invite graduates to apply for speeches.

Shipley added that as someone who attended a historically Black college, “finding and connecting with the Black community at Harvard was really important to me.”

For many other Harvard affiliates, the affinity celebrations are an important way to celebrate graduates’ achievements in the context of their backgrounds and shared experiences. Plata wrote that receiving the

Harvard Latinx stoles, which are given out during the affinity celebrations, represents “the sacrifices we and our parents have made to be at Harvard.”

“It represents our strength and power to persevere,” she wrote. “In an institution where Latinxs are historically underrepresented and marginalized, the Latinx graduation advocates for Latinxs to take up space.”

Oluwatosin “Tosin” Odugbemi, a speaker at the 2024 Black affinity celebration, said the event allowed her and other Black graduates to “reflect on this big accomplishment,” talk about specific struggles, and “do the specific dances and things that belong and are fostered in a certain culture.” She added that there is “misinformation” surrounding the purpose of the celebrations.

“No one’s getting a special graduation. It’s just a party, right?” Odugbemi said. “In the end, it’s just a party to celebrate the specific group.”

Katherine Necochea Tinco, the graduate student speaker at the 2024 Indigenous affinity celebration, said that these celebrations were about “bringing community together.”

“It was a wonderful time to be in community and be with other graduates, our families, and everyone — from mentors to professors — that celebrated us,” Necochea Tinco said.

Armughan-e-bu T. Syed, who spoke at the 2024 APIDA celebration, said the celebrations are a signal that graduates and affiliates of various backgrounds are “welcome” and “have a part to play in shaping how these institutions function.”

“My hope is that these celebrations continue,” Syed said. “My hope is that the University and the larger community sees value in celebrating these — in creating celebrations that uplift communities.”

BY LAUREL M. SHUGART AND CAM N. SRIVASTAVA CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Rumors of Immigration and Custom Enforcement activity have permeated college campuses across the country. But while other universities’ administrators have jumped to dispel rumors, Harvard has largely stayed quiet.

Whispers of ICE activity — without evidence — reverberated throughout Harvard’s campus last week as more than 500 people protested the Trump administration. Though two HUPD officers present at the protest said that they were not aware of any ICE officials present on campus, HUPD and the University did not issue any clarifying statements.

Five international students interviewed by The Crimson said they were frustrated by the University’s lack of communication, adding they would like to see increased transparency from leadership.

“Harvard says that they’re committed to protecting international students, but they won’t inform us if it was actually ICE or not ICE on campus,” Devangana Rana ’25, an international student from India, said. “That has been kind of sad to see.”

While Harvard’s Executive Vice President Meredith L. Weenick ’90 sent an email two days after the protest sharing resources from the Harvard International Office, she did not address the ICE rumors.

“The Harvard International Office (HIO) will continue to provide the international community with regularly updated guidance,” Weenick wrote, pointing students to their HIO advisers and the office’s guidance page. Similar rumors have circulated at Yale, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the University of California, Berkeley in the past month. In each

case, administrators publicly dispelled the rumors — with administrators at Yale and at UMass Amherst responding within 24 hours.

A Harvard spokesperson declined to comment on wheth-

er the University will notify affiliates of ICE presence — or lack thereof.

The federal government’s continued revocations of thousands of student visas and the arrests of multiple graduate students at other universities have fueled rumors at Harvard, though none have been substantiated.

After ICE agents arrested Rumeysa Ozturk — a Turkish national and graduate student at Tufts University — last month, administrators were quick to notify affiliates. An initial email sent just hours after her arrest confirmed that the University was not told of her arrest, and publicized available campus resources. A week later, Tufts administrators released their declaration supporting Ozturk’s immediate return to Massachusetts.

Seven current students and five recent graduates have had

their student visas revoked as of Monday. Still, no students have been arrested on Harvard’s campus. In an April 16 letter, the Department of Homeland Security threatened to revoke Harvard’s eligibility to enroll international students unless the school sub -

Students walk through the lawn of Tercentenary Theater. BARBARA A.

SHEEHAN — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

STUDENT GOVERNMENT

How the HUA Spends Half a Million Dollars

idents said they’re the people for the job.

“The student body, residents, and organization at Harvard is not functioning too well, and it’s evidenced by the fact we’ve had the same things that have been emphasized in the last five campaign cycles by our candidates, and they’re not being done,” Thompson said.

Most undergraduates will complete their four years at Harvard without ever directly interfacing with the Harvard Undergraduate Association, the College’s student government — except when the HUA disburses funding to student organizations.

Student leaders of Harvard’s more than 400 recognized clubs, which range from affinity groups to the Harvard Undergraduate Beekeepers and the Harvard Undergraduate Psychedelics Club, can apply for funding from the HUA at the start of each semester.

The HUA subsequently divides around half a million dollars — a portion of the Student Activities Fee, an optional annual $200 charge for undergraduates — among these groups, weighing the clubs’ proposed events and additional sources of income.

Student organizations’ funding applications are usually only partially fulfilled. This spring, the HUA allocated only a fraction of more than $1,000,000 in requested club funding.

Recent years have seen a growing deficit due to an increase in SAF opt-outs. Still, new HUA Co-Presidents Abdullah Shahid Sial ’27 and Caleb N. Thompson ’27 said students can expect increases in club grants at the HUA co-presidential debate earlier this month.

“I think that not enough funding is going out,” Thompson said of club funding allocation. “Although there was a lot of funding this year, we need to increase it, because only 50 percent of the need is currently being met.” But as the SAF fund continues to dry up each year, the HUA may be forced to think creatively about their current financial model. The body’s new co-pres -

“The reason why we’ve come is because we think there’s a lot of room for change,” Sial added.

The Club Cash Flow Under former Co-Presidents

Ashley C. Adirika ’26 and Jonathan Haileselassie ’26, the HUA voted to allocate roughly $468,000 — 85 percent of its overall budget — to fund student organizations, the largest proportion ever set aside by the body.

“We as administration have been really fighting to give as much as possible to clubs here on campus as possible, because we really think that clubs make

Caleb N. Thompson ’27 HUA Co-President Although there was a lot of funding this year, we need to increase it, because only 50 percent of the need is currently being met.

this campus life alive,” said Elbs, a former co-treasurer.

When reviewing club funding requests, Elbs and Sood said they eliminated any proposed budget lines that did not align with the HUA’s finance guidelines, which prohibit reimbursement of alcohol purchases and cap venue reservations at $200 per event.

This semester, the total amount of eligible requests totaled to $570,000, despite the HUA only having around $260,000 to give, but Elbs and Sood said no clubs with eligible requests were shut out entirely.

“As long as you do the application, we guarantee that you

get some money, just to be equitable. Because, as the HUA, we’re not necessarily the arbiters of picking one student organization over another,” Sood said.

“We think they’re all equally important to campus life,” he added.

How the final decisions are made then falls to an “algorithmic cut” across the board, which Elbs and Sood said aims to keep things as equitable as possible.

Elbs and Sood, however, recently introduced more manual steps into the process, looking at factors such as the quality of the application in order to discourage club leaders from over-requesting funds.

“There is this rumor going on that as long as you just request $20,000, you’re gonna be better off in this funding system, receiving more money, compared to a club who is being maybe more realistic and saying ‘Okay, we want $4,000’,” Elbs said.

“We’ve been cutting more down by hand manually, based on what we think were well-written applications and less leaving it all to the computer,” he added.

This spring, the Harvard Society of Arab Students received the largest amount of HUA funding, at $3,243. Additionally, the HUA constitution stipulates that the Phillips Brooks House Association, which contains more than 70 organizations, must receive a fixed $35,000 of funding per year.

As an accountability measure, all clubs are required to submit receipts for expenses funded by the HUA and return any unspent funding at the semester’s end.

The Leftovers

After the HUA distributes club funding, nine of its internal teams use the remaining 15 percent of the budget of around $81,000 to fund the association’s projects and operations.

Some of the top-line expenses include $10,000 to support two upcoming senior class events, a gala and Altitude Trampoline Park outing, and

$9,000 to fund the HUA’s inaugural Celebration of Impact set to take place next week.

In February, the HUA’s executive team also spent approximately $4,000 on an AirBnB, Coach bus, and food for an off-campus retreat to New Hampshire, of which $2,200 in funding was reimbursed by the Dean of Students Office.

The HUA has not held an off-campus retreat for at least the last two administrations, though the Harvard Undergraduate Council — which preceded the HUA before it was dissolved in a 2022 election — held internal retreats, according to a Harvard Risk Management & Audit Services audit of the body.

Sial and Thompson have not yet determined how much of their budget they will spend on club funding — but they inherit an HUA already spreading its resources thin.

For the 2024-25 academic year, the HUA received $522,500 in total funding from the SAF fund, which is the required source of funding for Harvard’s student organizations in order to ensure the groups can maintain operational independence from the College.

Low numbers of SAF payments meant that this year, the DSO “nickled and dimed” its budget to provide an additional $43,000 to keep the SAF fund stable. Administrators maintained that the funding would not jeopardize the clubs’ inde -

As long as you do the application, we guarantee that you get some money, just to be equitable.

pendence, specifying that the additional funds would be for “baseline charges.”

In a recent interview, Sial and Thompson acknowl -

edged the decrease in SAF funds and proposed establishing channels for alumni donations to supplement club funding. Thompson said Assistant Dean of Student Engagement and Leadership Andy Donahue “seemed quite optimistic about the potential” for the idea.

“We understand that the new HUA officers are exploring alternative sources of funding to support student clubs and organizations, including alumni engagement,” College spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo wrote in a Thursday statement. “The

The HUA, like other recognized student organizations, does have the ability to fundraise.

Jonathan Palumbo Harvard College Spokesperson

HUA, like other recognized student organizations, does have the ability to fundraise.”

Checks and Balances

Ensuring the proper allocation of the HUA’s funds is not a task left solely in the hands of the two co-presidents and a few officers. The body is required to report all of the funds allocated throughout the year to the University’s Risk Management & Audit Services, which assesses the transactions.

“There are some guidelines that go with our finance guidelines and also with the SAF conditions that we are bound to as the HUA, and which also have been reviewed with the risk management department throughout the past year,” Elbs said.

According to Elbs, this past term, the HUA underwent its first “regular tri-annual audit.”

“It was a good audit. It was a very good cooperative assessment of what is going on with the internal expenditures,” he said. “We performed much better than the UC did,”

Adirika, Haileselassie, and Palumbo all declined to comment on the results of the audit and whether the HUA plans to publicly release them. The UC was openly condemned by students for its poor financial management and delayed disbursement of Wintersession funds.

On April 11, 2022, following the dissolution of the UC, the Office of Risk Management & Audit Services released an audit of the organization requested by the DSO and former UC president Michael Y. Cheng ’22. The audit concluded that internal financial control at the UC was “inadequate,” stating that “key financial and operating control weaknesses were identified that increase the risk of errors or spending that is not in accordance with the UC’s mission.”

The assessment revealed that the UC lacked financial control over cash expenditures, financial reporting, and budget tracking. The audit also provided several recommendations to improve financial management under the HUA. These recommendations included the formation of a co-treasurer role, the establishment of rollover funds at the end of each academic year, consultation with and approval from the DSO before fundraising campaigns, and the review of receipts collected from student organizations — all measures that have since been implemented.

nina.ejindu@thecrimson.com claire.simon@thecrimson.com

THC

Read more at

New HUA Co-Presidents Promise Transparency and Takes

BY NINA

Abdullah Shahid Sial ’27 and Caleb N. Thompson ’27 officially took office as the new Harvard Undergraduate Association co-presidents on Monday — the first pair of complete HUA outsiders to assume the role.

As they prepare to lead Harvard’s student government, the pair has their sights set on increasing engagement with undergraduates and improving transparency — despite what they called the HUA’s usual “black box” procedures. Sial and Thompson also intend to be more vocal than past HUA administrations. Under a new constitutional amendment, they plan to make official statements on behalf of the body about “student issues.”

“These are issues where we feel it’s appropriate and necessary for the student body government to stand up and say something — with a high degree of care and a high degree of thought that’s going into it,” Thompson said. Such student issues include the impacts of the Trump administration’s ongoing battle with the University — like international students’ ability to retain their visas — according to Sial and Thompson.

“If the new administration will be insanely involved at the level which they are right now, with student issues which affect us directly, then we’ll be the ones taking stances on that,” Sial said. But the co-presidents insisted that their administration will not take stances on more divisive po -

litical issues that they see as unrelated to the Harvard student experience, like calls for Harvard to divest from companies in Israel.

“Their ability to protest, that being protected, is a student issue,” Sial said. “What they’re protesting is not a student issue.”

‘A Disconnect’

Originally from New Castle, Colorado, Thompson is a sophomore in Mather House studying Statistics and Economics with a secondary in Government. Like Thompson, Sial is also a sophomore in Mather House, double-concentrating in Economics and Applied Mathematics.

In their freshman year, Sial and Thompson first considered running for the HUA co-presidency — but their initial idea did not become a serious plan until last November, when many international students were unexpectedly denied winter housing.

Dissatisfied with their predecessors’ response to the crisis, Sial and Thompson said they were compelled to make a change.

“There wasn’t any statement, there wasn’t any call to action. We didn’t hear anything from them when we needed them the most,” Sial said.

“This is something that is fundamentally wrong with the student government at Harvard, because this would never happen at any other school. That was my main drive.” Thompson said his inspiration came from a desire to “create an undergraduate experience accessible to everyone from different backgrounds” and form a student government that directly acts on students’ concerns.

“A huge problem with the HUA now is how little people know about it — there’s such a disconnect,” he said.

“It’s very much a black box, because it ends up being the leadership meeting with these individuals in the administration, and then you never really hear much about it,” Thompson added.

Though neither Sial nor Thompson attended HUA meetings in the 2024-25 academic year, they said conversations with the former presidents and reading over the body’s constitution have prepared them to take on their new role.

“I feel very comfortable with our familiarity and think that we understand the requirements of this office very well, with a lot of it being club-facing,” Thompson said.

‘Representing Everyone’

After campaigning on the platform of not being the “administration’s mouthpiece,” Sial and Thompson also clarified how their commitment to representing students will impact their working relationship with administrators.

“Our role is to make sure that people feel represented,” Sial said.

“When the administration has a certain point of view and the student body has a distinct point of view, and they’re at odds with each other, we’re saying we’re going to take up the student point of view,” Thompson added. “We see that as our mandate, and that is our job as HUA presidents.”

The new co-presidents said they plan to gather student opinion to inform their positions, but

expressed dissatisfaction with the HUA’s current approaches — such as optional surveys and referenda — which they called “historically quite ineffective.” Instead, they favor more compulsory methods.

“For us to do a good job of representing everyone, we need more data points, and we don’t have them right now,” Sial said. “But how do we get more data points? You get them to answer questions. You get students to answer questions when they absolutely have to.”

The pair said that they recently pitched administrators on several ideas for gathering this additional data — including adding questions to the Harvard College semesterly “check-ins,” which are a prerequisite for course reg-

istration. Thompson said the pair suggested the plan to Faculty of Arts and Sciences Registrar Erika McDonald, who was “very amenable” to the idea.

“We talked with Erika McDonald about this, perhaps just adding a few brief questions, saying, ‘Hey, if we had this amount of money, or we had to make a choice between this policy or that policy, which would be your priority?’ Just to gauge student interest,” he said.

Allocating funding to the College’s more than 400 student organizations is a primary part of the HUA’s responsibilities. Thompson said the body will establish channels for alumni to donate to student organizations, as increases in the num-

ber of students opting out of the Student Activities Fee and overall funding cuts may affect the HUA’s budget.

“The Student Activities fee is funding the HUA at this point. The DSO was generous enough to cover a lot of the people who waived that fee. I don’t know the extent to which we’ll have access to that again or if the DSO is going to cover that in the future,” Thompson said. Since taking office, Sial and Thompson have not announced a date for their first general assembly meeting — but they said they hope to “run them differently and have more students involved.”

EDITORIAL

Harvard’s Lawsuit Is a Stand Worth Taking

VITAL DEFENSE. From students who have witnessed the devastating effects of Trump’s attacks on high education, Harvard’s lawsuit is the right path forward — now others must join them.

BY THE CRIMSON EDITORIAL BOARD

Harvard’s lawsuit may not fix everything. But it’s a damn good place to start.

Last Monday, University President Alan M. Garber ’76 announced that Harvard would not give in to the Trump administration’s demands. Since then, the administration has frozen $2.2 billion of Harvard’s federal funding. Billions more hang in limbo.

The Trump administration has given us every reason to turn our back on the values of our University and accede. But any financial costs pale in comparison to the values the White House would have us sacrifice. It appears Harvard agrees: Yesterday, it sued the Trump administration.

When Trump came for our funding, we heard from our lab principal investigators and graduate mentors about its effects. When he came for our classmates, amid fears our international peers would be deported, rumors of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on campus spread. Our University has been abruptly thrown into chaos and fear, all under the pretext of combating antisemitism. Take it from the students who have borne witness to the devastating effects of Trump’s assault on higher education firsthand: Harvard is doing the right thing.

Burning Harvard down will harm far more than tweeded professors or a coastal liberal elite. Its research offers global benefits, and the values at stake in the lawsuit — free expression and academic independence — matter to every American. Harvard’s research is too important to be tossed around like a bargaining chip at the whims of the White House. The smallpox vaccine was introduced to the United States by a Harvard Medical School professor. Ether anesthesia was first used publicly at a Harvard-affiliated hospital — a hospital whose funding the White House now potentially threatens. And in 1914, a Harvard-affiliated cardiologist brought the electrocardiogram — a key test to detect dangerous heart conditions that Trump himself took last week to confirm his “excellent” health — to the United States.

Today, similar breakthroughs — from detecting ALS to treating tuberculosis — have come to a screeching halt thanks to stop-work orders driven by

the Trump administration. As discussions with the White House drag on, months or years worth of scientific work on neglected experiments could be irrevocably lost in the interim. Yesterday’s lawsuit presents the only viable path towards insulating this invaluable research from the caprice of the president.

Moreover, Harvard’s legal battle isn’t just meant to safeguard its scientific researchers — the lawsuit represents a vital defense of the very value of free expression. In recent months, we’ve bore witness as international students were abducted by federal agents, apparently for their political speech, and heard from many more afraid to speak up as a result.

Trump’s demands on Harvard only intensify this threat to free, dissenting speech on campuses. From federal audits of academic programs — presumably to ensure their teaching and research align with the exact specifications of the Trump administration — to apparent ideological screen-

ing of international college applicants, it’s clear the White House’s agenda is about far more than research funding or combating antisemitism.

It’s about control — over what professors teach, what students learn, and what ideas are fit to be thought. Because there’s no reason to believe that this dire threat to open inquiry will stop at our campus’ gates, Harvard’s lawsuit matters, not just for the academy, but for anyone committed to living in an open society.

So to those watching from Cambridge and across the country, we implore you: Here’s what must come next.

First, to Harvard: This fight is just beginning. Trump’s campaign against higher education isn’t limited to this lawsuit. We look forward to seeing Harvard stand behind its most vulnerable students, including our international peers, and take further legal action if necessary.

Second, to our fellow students: Harvard’s resis-

tance will require our solidarity. The pressure will mount. We must be prepared to support our community, each other, and those at greatest risk. Third, to our peer institutions: Join the charge. The stakes have never been higher. If Harvard stands alone, the assault on higher education, on truth, and our basic freedoms will only accelerate. The only way to beat back coordinated attacks is coordinated resistance. The line has been drawn. Now it’s time for higher education —

– This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

Could a Major Advertising Push Fix Harvard’s Image Problem?

BY TOMMY BARONE

Last week was Harvard’s first excellent press in at least a decade.

After the University announced it would defy the Trump administration’s outrageous demands, posts on X fawned over Harvard’s press team, the Times ran several top-of-site stories about the University’s bold resistance, and New York Magazine suggested that University President Alan M. Garber ’76 could be higher ed’s “wartime leader.”

Harvard has a golden opportunity right now to become an institution people love again and make this assault much more painful for the Trump administration. To take advantage of it, the University needs to think and invest big in getting its story to the American people. Harvard should be an institution that advertises, aggressively. It always should have been.

Though responsible for some of the greatest advances in American prosperity over the past century, elite universities hardly advertise their work to claim credit in the conventional corporate sense. Whether because full-fledged marketing campaigns feel too profane for our staid old institutions of learning, because it’s expensive, or simply because there is felt to be no major need for it, you will not find glossy ads online or on TV touting just how much Harvard does for the world.

Harvard’s relative silence about its immense achievements has been a hidden variable in the Republican smear campaign against higher education. Yes, liberal excesses in the academy, real and imagined, provided fodder for higher ed’s critics. But low public awareness of elite universities’ contributions resulted in too few thinking, “well, but they do a lot of good.”

Last week bucked the trend. Harvard made a bold decision, announced it with an excellent letter and some glossy web pages about the importance of its research, and earned loads of positive press mentions. That so many people dissatisfied with President Donald Trump have been waiting for America’s institutions to stand up to him super-charged the story, making the University something of a media darling. It’s a good start, but there remains much to do. Harvard very likely won some support on the left and in the center last week, but it must go further to make Trump’s assault politically painful and address the image problem that produced it. To do so, the University needs to adopt a much more active media posture than ever before.

An easy place to begin is Massachusetts Hall. Even as he’s been touted as higher ed’s wartime leader, Garber has not done an interview with the press since announcing Harvard’s defiance. That’s a mistake. In a media environment as fast-paced and fragmented as today’s, it helps for your campaign to have

a face. The University has a fast-closing window to make Garber a spokesman for higher ed — it should take it.

More broadly, rather than focus on quietly lobbying in Washington, Harvard should spend big on advertising that reminds the public how much good it does.

The administration just froze billions of dollars dedicated to projects that could help cure cancers, eradicate diseases, and save our planet. Many of those projects have already worked miracles. Reporters will tell some of their stories, but eventually they’ll lose interest, and they mostly won’t go so far as to argue against the measures outright.

Harvard has much to gain by telling those stories itself. The University should spend big on digital and broadcast ads that feature the most impactful research done by affiliates in recent years and state clearly that recent and oncoming financial penalties will stop such progress. These ads should be care -

ful to maintain a non-partisan tenor — for political and strategic reasons, we can’t be seen as out to get Trump — but they must make the dynamics of the situation crystal-clear and should perhaps be targeted to red or purple states.

Meanwhile, the University should continue trying to get the message out that it has stepped up academic rigor, cracked down on the more obvious examples of left-wing excess, and taken real action on antisemitism. (It wouldn’t hurt, for example, to point to Harvard Hillel’s recent statement opposing the Trump administration’s extreme measures.)

Such a campaign could deter the administration from stepping up its attacks by persuading critical swing voters of their foolhardiness and begin to rehab Harvard’s image with more skeptical Republicans.

Over a decade, this strategy — better yet, a unified effort pooling the resources of peer universities and national organizations — could meaningfully address the PR problem that has made higher ed so vulnerable.

A major press push would be pricey, but it may be the best investment the University and higher education could make. If it could constrain further funding cuts or stave off an endowment tax, it would pay for itself many times over. In the long run, if Harvard could use this moment to begin a sustained rebrand into an institution people love again, it could avoid costly situations like this in the first place. Hundreds of millions in advertising could conceivably save billions in the war chest. For universities, advertising is like insurance: You don’t need it until you do. If there was a time when it was fine for higher ed to help the world in stately silence — and the past decade inspires little confidence that there was — it has surely now passed. Harvard has to take its resistance viral.

–Tommy Barone ’25, a former Crimson Editorial Chair, is a Social Studies concentrator in Currier House.

PAVAN V. THAKKAR— CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Trump’s Attacks Have a Human Cost.

threats from the Trump administration.

First, Trump came for our federal funding.

Now he is coming for our students.

In a letter sent to Harvard last Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security threatened to revoke the University’s eligibility to host

international students unless it shares their disciplinary records and protest participation. The letter came only days after Harvard publicly rejected the Trump administration’s expanded demands and the federal government’s $2.2 billion funding freeze. This move reveals the human cost of Trump’s attack on higher education — a cost that has manifested as dehumanizing cruelty towards our invaluable population of international students — while simultaneously threatening Harvard’s academic mission. Still, Trump’s siege will not stop there. For the sake of universities nationwide, Harvard must continue to fight and ensure

the barrage from the White House is withstood.

If Harvard refuses to capitulate to the demands outlined in the Wednesday letter, the DHS will rescind the certification that allows the University to host international students on visas. Our friends, roommates, and peers will be forced to transfer universities, find another option to keep their immigration status legal, or leave the country.

International students are irreplaceable parts of our Harvard community. Now, we’re hearing from some of these very students that they’re canceling summer plans, scared to return home and see their families, afraid to pen op-eds, and pressured to clear their internet presence — all out of fear induced by

Why Harvard’s Lawsuit Matters — For All of Us

BY CHARLES R. NESSON

he Department of Health and Human Ser-

Tvices — along with other federal agencies — issued Harvard a list of conditions on April 11 it must satisfy in order to receive funding that had already been promised and budgeted. These conditions went far beyond any legally authorized enforcement of civil rights protections. Harvard rightly refused. In a letter dated April 14, Harvard responded plainly: “Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government.” If we do not

resist, Harvard ceases to be a university governed by veritas.

Hours later, the federal government froze $2.2 billion in research funding for Harvard. Not because of financial impropriety or failed research protocols. Not even because of a formal finding of discrimination under federal civil rights law. Instead, it froze the money because Harvard refused to comply with its political ultimatum.

The demands that the federal government imposed on Harvard more closely resemble a desire to bend Harvard to the Trump administration’s liking than a genuine effort to enforce the law. They ordered Harvard to completely restructure its gover-

nance, fire all DEI staff, conduct ideological audits of students and faculty, and hire and admit according to a government-prescribed formula for “viewpoint diversity” — as determined by an “external party” approved by none other than the government itself. The message was blunt: surrender institutional independence or lose the ability to pursue lifesaving research.

Alongside the potential damage Trump’s ire will cause our pers, the DHS letter represents a new threat to Harvard’s academic mission by harming the ability of our international scholars — students and researchers alike — to contribute to the intellectual work of our University. In the face of heightened scrutiny from the federal government, international researchers may slow or cease research in critical subject areas due to fear of retaliation by the Trump administration. Federal research grants may already induce scrutiny for a mere mention of words like “bias,” “equality,” “LGBTQ,” “race,” and “women” — international researchers with precarious legal statuses might feel additional pressure to modify their scholarship to stay out of the limelight. Simultaneously, international students may hesitate to protest, write, or engage in any activity that could be deemed oppositional to the White House, stifling their ability to fully contribute on campus.

If Harvard capitulates to Trump’s most recent demands, future generations of international students and scholars may not see a place for themselves at Harvard. For a school touted for its international community, that would be a devastating loss. There is little reason to believe Trump will stop his assault at international students. It seems as though once Washington discovered withholding funding would not force compliance, internation

and

The

of the administration’s crusade — which implies international students are

and deserving of intense scrutiny — is

Harvard must respond with legal action while providing comprehensive support to international students. The University has offered increased resources since Wednesday — including legal information sessions and a lengthy set of immigration FAQs — and it must continue to support the most vulnerable members of our community. The battle to keep the American university alive starts in Cambridge — it can’t be won until all institutions stand shoulder - to

Since Harvard’s refusal to become the Trump administration’s political pawn, federal agencies have ramped up threats and even signaled intent to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status. What is unfolding is a coordinated campaign to force elite universities into ideological submission through financial coercion. This is not about whether Harvard has done enough to combat antisemitism. The University acknowledges its responsibility and has taken substantive steps — disciplining students and staff who violated protest guidelines, adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism, and convening a task force to issue ongoing recommendations.

But that’s not what this freeze is about.

It is a political move dressed up as civil rights enforcement. As Harvard’s complaint compellingly argues, no process under Title VI — the civil rights statute being invoked — was followed. As far as I’m aware, there was no finding of noncompliance. No hearing. No opportunity for voluntary correction. Just a demand and a punishment.

In legal terms, Harvard’s complaint argues that the freeze violates the First Amendment, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the text and procedures of Title VI. But the stakes are bigger than the law. They’re about what kind of institution Harvard is — and what kind of country we want to live in. When the government starts conditioning basic institutional survival on compliance with its preferred speech, its preferred pedagogy, its preferred admissions and hiring policies, we have crossed a line. We are not in the realm of debate or deliberation. We are in the realm of coercion.

This is not only Harvard’s fight. Research institutions across the country — Brown, Columbia, Penn, and others — are caught in similar crosshairs. What Harvard does now sets the precedent. If we yield quietly, if we treat this as just another skirmish in a culture war, we risk normalizing a vision of governance in which intellectual independence exists at the mercy of political power.

Harvard wisely recognized the gravity of the situation and responded accordingly. What’s next?

In the coming weeks, Harvard will likely seek a preliminary injunction to lift the freeze. The government will presumably try to dismiss the case. If the court allows it to proceed, discovery will follow — an opportunity to examine the motives, communications, and internal justifications for this unprecedented move. And we may see, for the first time, a direct legal confrontation over whether the government can force ideological compliance through the lever of research funding. The issues are technical. The stakes are not.

This case is about the freedom of a university to think, teach, and govern itself — without fear of political retaliation. It’s about whether federal dollars become a leash to force conformity. And it’s about whether students, faculty, and researchers across this University can continue to do their work in a space shaped by principle, not power. Harvard is fighting back. So must we.

Turf War Over City’s Alternative Policing

CAMBRIDGE. Two police alternatives, developed in tandem, have struggled to work together.

BY MATAN H. JOSEPHY

When the Cambridge City Council voted unanimously in June 2020 to develop an “alternative public health response” to policing, it was heralded as an ambitious effort to reimagine what public safety could look like in the city.

After then-City Manager Louis A. DePasquale created a task force to recommend how to implement the order, the Cambridge Community Safety Department was first proposed. Then, in 2023, came the department’s Community Assistance Response and Engagement Team: a group of unarmed social workers and mental health clinicians, trained to de-escalate without an armed police presence.

By July 2024, the CARE team was dispatched to its first 911 call.

“We are really so grateful to have the opportunity to be on these calls,” CSD director Elizabeth Speakman said in a July 2024 interview. “We’ve already just seen the impact of having a different response that has a little bit more time, a little bit more capacity, and a little bit more of that expertise around mental health assessment.”

But as the CARE team launched, so too did a second alternative response team pioneered by the Cambridge Police Department.

The Cambridge Police Department began developing its own co-response program as early as late 2022, department leadership confirmed — nearly a year before the city’s CARE team announced its first staff. The co-response team, modeled after other examples nationwide, jointly dispatches a licensed mental health clinician and armed police officers to many of the same mental health calls as CARE.

Even as co-response remained in development for years, CSD officials were informed of its formal plans only weeks before its launch, multiple department employees confirmed. Ever since, city officials have struggled to reconcile the two teams whose efforts have often been seen as duplicative.

“They’re these two organizations who are focused on similar work have been pitted against each other by these two ends of the political spectrum — one which is calling for less policing, and one who’s calling for more policing, or at least a continuous of the status quo,” Niko Emack, a consultant for the CSD, said in an April interview. Internal city data and emails obtained by The Crimson through a series of public records requests — as well as separately obtained, unredacted meeting notes and correspondence — detail how the overlapping mandates have catalyzed tension between the departments.

And interviews with nearly a dozen current and former Cambridge officials, city councilors, employees, and affiliates of both CSD and CPD revealed that the relationship between co-response and CARE has been strained ever since. Co-response, backed by the muscle of the police department’s $81 million budget and CPD’s longstanding clinical infrastructure, is now taking on calls that the CARE team is also equipped to handle. CARE staff now find themselves without room to grow — and, CSD employees and affiliates say, without the means to compete.

In a Thursday afternoon statement, City Manager Yi-An Huang ’05 acknowledged that there has been conflict between the two teams. “I believe there is a role for Police Co-Response, in addition to Community Safety,” he wrote, “though I recognize that there is a need to better clarify some potential areas of overlap.”

‘Operating Like A Startup’

After the policy order in 2020 kicked off efforts to launch the CSD in Cambridge, it would take more than four years until the CARE team was dispatched to 911 calls. Meanwhile, the police department’s co-response team began to take shape.

A 2021 report by the city’s Public Safety Task Force first recommended that Cambridge create a “Cambridge Department of Community Safety” with “primary responsibility” over 911 calls related to certain mental health emergencies, homelessness, crisis counseling, and nonviolent drug use, among others.

The city announced Speakman as head of the department in Feb-

ruary 2023. She built up CARE to a team of five responders by September of that year, with a plan to dispatch 911 calls by the spring of 2024.

“With any new organization, there’s going to be a lot of growing pains, and a lot of things you discover. In a lot of ways, the Community Safety Department is operating like a startup,” Emack said.

Simultaneously, and much more quietly, the police department’s co-response team was also taking shape. CPD began discussing ways to set up its co-response team in November of 2022, Superintendent Frederick Cabral confirmed in an early April interview.

But the police department didn’t announce the move immediately. Among the first public disclosures of co-response’s development came in a February 2024 report written by the nonprofit Police Executive Research Forum following the 2023 police shooting of Sayed Faisal. In the report, PERF recommended that the city “consider implementing a co-response system for certain types of mental-health calls.”

A note appended at the bottom of the report — which, according to a draft of the report obtained through a public records request, was added within days of its final publication — acknowledges that report staff were later “advised that CPD is piloting a co-response system” in January 2024.

In a Thursday night email, director of CPD’s Clinical Support Unit James Barrett clarified that the police department “was planning for co-response” in January 2024.

‘Stunting the CSD’s Ability To Grow’

Both the CARE and co-response teams were formally dispatched to 911 calls in the summer of 2024. But even as both teams — one armed, one unarmed, and both aiming to respond to often-identical calls — proceeded in parallel, they rarely coordinated.

Staff from CSD, CPD, the Emergency Communications Department, the Cambridge Fire Department, and unions representing police and communications dispatchers met often in the months preceding both CARE and co-response’s formal launches.

The goal of these meetings was “coordination between departments,” said Cabral, the police su-

perintendent. But as city staff spent months scrutinizing the CARE team ahead of its formal launch, co-response went hardly mentioned across more than a dozen meetings, according to unredacted minutes obtained by The Crimson.

The earliest documented mention of a co-response team between CSD and CPD came at a meeting between staff from the two departments on March 14 2024, three months before CARE first launched, according to notes taken about the meeting.

As the CARE and co-response teams approached their respective launches in the summer of 2024, CSD staff were caught off-guard by CPD’s initiative, two department employees confirmed. Both were granted anonymity to speak candidly about private discussions and decisions within the department without fear of retaliation.

CSD staff were only informed about co-response’s structure and launch in late June 2024, according to an internal email obtained by The Crimson.

According to Jeremy H. Warnick, a city spokesperson, CPD shared an internal announcement with CSD in July 2024 prior to launching at the beginning of August.

But CSD was not notified prior to a November 2024 citywide email from CPD publicly announcing the launch of co-response, according to correspondence obtained by The Crimson through a public records request.

“Did Community Safety have a heads on this announcement? I expect you might get some questions on how co-response will work with and/or supplement CARE and vice-versa,” Warnick wrote in an email to former CPD spokesperson Robert Goulston shortly after the citywide alert was sent.

“I probably should have sent to the CM’s alert list that we do for news events,” Goulston responded, referencing the City Manager’s email list.

Because of co-response’s quiet development, Emack said that CPD’s involvement in negotiating CARE’s call responses formed a “conflict of interest.”

“Community Safety can’t expand without the blessing, for lack of a better word, from the police department,” Emack said.

“You have this conflict of inter-

est, because they’re growing and doing similar work while also at the same time stunting the CSD’s ability to grow,” he added.

‘Undermining The Work of the Community Safety Department.’

Concerns about the overlap between the CARE and co-response teams — and the effect that such overlap would have on the work of both CSD and the police department — have been voiced to city leadership for months.

Councilor Patricia M. “Patty” Nolan ’80 expressed her concerns in a December email to Huang, the City Manager, after CPD released a video highlighting the co-response team, which featured a social worker in a bulletproof vest.

“I was distressed and disappointed to see that there was no mention of CARE, and other resources for people to call if in need of mental health,” Nolan wrote. “For the video to show only staff in bullet proof vests and the social worker accompanied by an officer in uniform goes against all the work we have done to ensure that 911 and 988 and other calls where a police officer is not warranted will be sent to CARE - or HEART.”

Nolan further requested that “CPD be asked to be more collaborative in addressing the need for the city to respond to mental health and other calls.”

In an emailed response, Huang acknowledged an “underlying tension” between CSD and CPD over the police department’s “commitment to do this kind of work well,” in an apparent reference to the police department’s clinical support efforts.

CARE is eligible to respond to a set list of call codes, including needle pickups, wellness checks, and nonviolent mental health calls. Co-response — which sits as a unit within the police department — can dispatch to any police call.

Out of a list of 191 partially redacted 911 calls directed to co-response between August and December 2024, nearly 10 percent were calls eligible for a CARE response.

“I would hope that the police is fully supportive of it, and I am concerned that it’s been a very slow rollout,” Nolan said in an interview. “There’s a number of emergency calls that are not going to CARE that I believe should be go-

ing to CARE.” Emack recognized that Cambridge’s extensive network of unarmed response options requires a “compromise” between CSD’s CARE and CPD’s co-response. “But I think in order to honor that compromise, community safety has to exist with the ability to grow and expand and ultimately be given the space to try and fail,” Emack added.

Warnick wrote in a statement that Cambridge is committed to providing support to both initiatives.

“The priority is helping and supporting those in our community who need it most – to best accomplish this, the approaches to best and safely do so can vary,” he wrote.

Samuel M. Gebru, a Tufts University professor who served on the initial steering committee for the CSD, said he did not “assume malicious intent on the police department’s part.” But he noted that the overlap between both teams may come at the expense of CSD.

“Whether the police department realizes it or not, they are indeed undermining the work of the Community Safety Department,” Gebru added. For some CSD affiliates, hope for CARE’s growth may be stifled by a potential increase in co-response’s resources.

“Even if the police and community safety are getting along, hypothetically, the nature of their work and their overlap is going to cause concerns for who gets money and who gets funding,” Emack, the CSD consultant, said.

Meanwhile, CPD officials indicate that co-response also intends to expand. Both Cabral, the superintendent, and Barrett, the clinical support services director, said that they hoped to expand co-response to run “16 hours a day, five days a week.”

But Warnick, the city spokesperson, defended the existence of both teams in an emailed statement.

“Having these types of valuable resources – with very specialized skills and training — provides an opportunity to help the City of Cambridge enhance its overall outreach for our most vulnerable community members,” he wrote.

matan.josephy@thecrimson.com

After Communication Breakdown, DOJ Does Not Come To Boston

Officials from the Department of Justice task force on antisemitism were set to meet with Boston city leadership on Wednesday, but without communication from Washington, a city official confirmed that the meeting is no longer scheduled for this week.

Representatives from the task force, which the Trump administration created in February to “root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses,” met with Boston officials on April 9 ahead of a broader meeting the DOJ had scheduled at City Hall on Wednesday. While multiple news outlets reported definitively that a meeting between DOJ and Boston officials was planned for this week, local officials have yet to hear back

from the task force. The meeting in early April was “primarily to scope out venues for a future meeting,” James Borghesani, a spokesperson for the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office, wrote in a statement. “Very little occurred” there, he added.

A city spokesperson confirmed that staff from the Suffolk County DA’s office also attended the meeting, alongside Jeremy Burton, chief executive officer of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston.

“During the meeting, both the representatives of the Mayor and of District Attorney Hayden requested additional information about specific incidents of antisemitic harassment and violence (as referenced in the original DOJ meeting request) in order to best prepare for the proposed upcoming meeting,” Burton wrote.

He added that “neither the Mayor nor D.A.’s representatives

refused to meet with the federal antisemitism task force.”

Immediately after the April 9 meeting, Boston city officials repeatedly requested that the task force provide details on specific incidents of antisemitism.

“We continue to seek information prior to accepting a meeting with the Task Force,” a city spokesperson wrote in an April 9 statement.

But even before the meeting, Boston officials sent the DOJ a March 21 letter requesting that the task force specify incidents of antisemitism that they were investigating.

“In order to ensure that we are prepared for a productive discussion with you and your team, we ask that the division share with us any information on the incidents of antisemitic conduct in Boston referenced in your letter,” the letter read. The city was waiting to con-

firm the April 23 meeting until receiving this information. But as of Tuesday night, the task force has not responded. Borghesani wrote that the task force has yet to take steps to confirm the second meeting.

“We have not been contacted by the task force regarding a followup meeting,” he wrote. The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the meeting and its apparent delay. The task force announced on March 13 that it would be visiting Boston, along with New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles, “to discuss their responses to incidents of antisemitism at schools and on college campuses in their cities over the last two years.” The task force has also taken aim at Harvard and nine other universities.

Bernie Sanders Introduces Clairo

CULTURE.

stage to introduce Clairo.

BY RACHEL A. BEARD CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

On the evening of April 13, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-V.T.) appeared onstage at Coachella — not to perform, but to introduce singer-songwriter Clairo. The Vermont senator addressed a packed crowd with a short speech that emphasized youth power, condemned political inaction, and praised Clairo’s ongoing advocacy for women’s rights, including her vocal support for civilians in Gaza.

“The future of what happens to America is dependent upon

your generation,” Sanders said. He followed up this statement by urging the audience to take action on issues like climate change and women’s rights.

When he referenced President Donald Trump, the crowd re -

children are being killed.”

In retrospect, the moment was unexpected but not entirely out of nowhere. Sanders has been traveling the country as part of his “Fighting Oligarchy Tour,” aimed at mobilizing

And with many disillusioned by traditional political institutions like Congress and the presidency, moments like this offer a more compelling kind of engagement.

sponded with boos. In response, Sanders said, “I agree.”

“Clairo has used her prominence to fight for women’s rights,” he said, “to try to end the terrible, brutal war in Gaza, where thousands of women and

young voters and challenging corporate influence in American politics. Just a few days earlier, he drew a crowd of over 36,000 at a Los Angeles rally with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

‘Henry, come on’ Single Review: Ethereal Vulnerability

BY LAURA B. MARTENS

Within one week of its release, Lana Del Rey’s newest single “Henry, come on” garnered over 3.36 million streams and debuted at no. 16 on the Global Spotify chart. Often lauded for her nostalgic appeal, Del Rey has cultivated a distinctive mixture of Old Hollywood glamor and retro country aesthetics since the early 2010s through popular releases like “Young and Beautiful,” “Summertime Sadness,” and “Blue Jeans.” In this new country ballad, Del Rey softens her mature image into something quieter and more vulnerable, allowing emotion to strengthen her vocals rather than distract from them. If Del Rey’s voice had a color, it would be cinnamon brown. Warmth suffuses each of her lyrics, even if they are about heartbreak and abandonment. The gentle exasperation in the ballad’s opening lines, “I mean, Henry come on,” immediately draws listeners into a relationship that is affectionate but doomed, as Del Rey mourns that her lover is not the “settle-down type.” Her voice moves fluidly from a rich contralto into a higher register, with a vibrato that is delicate but not tremulous —

this transition to her mezzo-soprano range reminds listeners that Del Rey is an 11-time Grammy-nominated singer. The lyrics of “Henry, come on,” are simple but effective. The line claiming that God has destined Del Rey “To hold the hand of the man / Who flies too close to the sun” is a clever nod to the legend of Icarus and the double-edged nature of ambition. Although Del Rey’s references

al weight during the build up to her devastating line: “And it’s not because of you / That I turned out so dangerous.”

“Henry, come on” is so classic, it sometimes veers into eerily familiar territory. The chorus and orchestra breaks in the ballad are very reminiscent of the lines “We clawed, we chained our hearts in vain / We jumped, never asking why” from Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball.” The

Ultimately, Del Rey’s newest single is an ethereal triumph, embracing both trembling vulnerability and a mature sense of disillusionment.

to cowgirls and blue jeans are somewhat generic, moments of brilliant lyricism elevate “Henry, come on” into a single that is both enjoyable and meaningful. Strings add a classic touch to the ballad. Cellos complement Del Rey’s voice and emphasize particular lines, such as “I’ll still be nice to your mom / It’s not her fault you’re leaving.” Violins support Del Rey during the pre chorus, adding emotion

balance of nostalgia and banality ultimately lands in Del Rey’s favor, but creators on YouTube have noticed the similarities and even posted “Henry, come on” x “Wrecking Ball” mashups. In spite of the conventional melodies, there is an element of “Henry, come on” that truly stands out. Namely, Del Rey shines in the brief moments when she speaks instead of sings, like when she whis -

Bringing that message to Coachella — one of the largest and most visible youth gatherings in the country — was a calculated move. The festival may be better known for unique outfits and surprise musical guests than it is for political speeches, but it’s also a space where young people gather in massive numbers. And with many disillusioned by traditional political institutions like Congress and the presidency, moments like this offer a more compelling kind of engagement. The speech wasn’t long, but it landed. Sanders didn’t try to adapt his tone or language to the setting — he simply delivered his usual message in a new venue. That authenticity likely helped it resonate. Instead of feeling like a political stunt, the moment came across as a genuine attempt to speak directly to the next generation of voters in a space where they were already

listening. It also worked because of the artist he was introducing. Clairo, whose work often explores vulnerability, identity, and womanhood, has built a dedicated following among young listeners. Her public support for human rights issues, particularly in Gaza, has only strengthened that bond. In that context, Sanders’ praise didn’t feel performative — it felt earned. So what does it mean for a sitting U.S. senator to show up at a music festival and be met with applause? At the very least, it suggests that younger audiences are still paying attention, just not always in the places politicians expect. What happened at Coachella was more than a guest appearance — it was a glimpse into the evolving ways political messages are shared and received.

rachel.beard@thecrimson.com

pers “they just fly away” as if she’s on the phone very late at night, telling her closest friend a heartbreaking memory. Del Rey excels at creating a deeply personal, confessional tone in her music, and nowhere is this ability stronger than in “Henry, come on.” Ultimately, Del Rey’s newest

single is an ethereal triumph, embracing both trembling vulnerability and a mature sense of disillusionment. In some secret vault of Tumblr that is still active, black-and-white photos of women with flowers in their hair are just waiting for the italicized lyrics of “Henry, come on” to grace them.

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-V.T.) took to the Coachella

ARTS 17

BY CASSIDY C.

Jean-Louis, whose work has been featured in major publications like The

and who has completed a residency at the Museum of

and Design in

is best known for her photography, paper textile design, and sculptures. Having immigrated to the United States at a young age, Jean-Louis created “Waters of the Abyss” not only as an artistic representation of Haitian culture but also as a personal and spiritual reconnection to

the importance of the self. This method forces visitors to gaze at themselves, prompting mental and spiritual self-reflection.

“The only way to get to that other place is to look at yourself,” Jean-Louis said in a press release by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Another captivating aspect

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COURTESY OF ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM, BOSTON

Q&A: CARISSA CHEN ON POETRY, FAMILY TREES, AND HARVARD’S HISTORY WITH SLAVERY

Designs Behind Goalies’ Custom Helmets

Freshman women’s goalkeep-

One player stands out amid a swarm of crimson helmets zipping up and down the ice. Not only are ice hockey fans mesmerized by the Harvard goalkeepers’ skills and ferocity at the net, but also by their unique, custom-designed helmets.

A hockey tradition straight out of Boston, goalies have been integrating their style into their protective gear since the late 1960s.

According to the National Hockey League, Boston Bruins legend Gerry Cheevers pioneered the idea, painting black stitches to mark shots deflected by his mask.

Harvard goalkeepers have embraced this creative outlet for many years, but only this past season did the program offer to pay for a helmet wrap for each goalie.

Junior women’s goalkeeper Emily Davidson’s parents funded the first helmet she designed her freshman year and used again during her sophomore season. She opted for a paint job, which is more expensive but also more durable than wraps.

“My parents were always like, ‘We’re not paying for that growing up. If you play NCAA D1 hockey, then you can get a helmet painted,’” Davidson said. “So, that was something I was really looking forward to.” The process of designing a mask can vary from two weeks to two months, depending on the complexity of the design and how many edits are made.

Goalies and the artists they select — either on their own or through their equipment managers — constantly communicate throughout the production of the helmet. Back-and-forth digital mockups, progress photos,

and small changes occur that ultimately lead to the final product. The painting process takes longer, while a wrap can simply be printed and placed on a blank helmet like a sticker.

Goalies rarely waste the opportunity to create a piece of gear that’s entirely their own. Significant, meticulous work goes into many aspects of Harvard goalies’ designs.

Freshman men’s goalie Ben Charette, inspired by another goalie’s stained-glass helmet, wanted to include an element of an iconic building at Harvard. Charette thoroughly researched Annenberg’s 19 stained-glass windows and eventually landed on the 1900 “Honor

er Ainsley Tuffy, also wanting to incorporate campus architecture in her design, placed a photo of Johnston Gate on the chin of her helmet, with many buildings in the yard, like Widener Library, faded into the helmet’s background.

She chose Johnston Gate because she and her freshman teammates often pass under it together on their way out of Harvard Yard.

A Boston College goalkeeper partially inspired Tuffy’s design, but she added her own twists to make it more quintessentially Harvard.

“I kinda changed it up and made it my own,” she said.

and Peace” by Sarah Wyman Whitman, depicting a soldier heading off into battle with Honor watching over him.

“It’s a mental battle for sure on the ice,” he said.

Thick crimson lines with bold

“Harvard Crimson” lettering run across the sides of her mask, and the overhead views of campus buildings occupy the whitespace.

“The front and everything is

Harvard-related, and then the back is usually something personal,” Tuffy said. “I added my old teams I used to play for.”

Her previous team logos are arranged around a picture of the John Harvard Statue — a suggestion from her teammate — which she made certain would have its golden foot.

On the back of Davidson’s helmet, she recognized the love and respect she has for her parents.

“I have a Canadian maple leaf engraved with ‘Mom and Dad’ to thank them for all the support they’ve given me,” she said.

As for the back of Charette’s helmet, there is only a wolverine — reminiscent of his time before Harvard with the Whitecourt Wolverines — biting the Veritas shield.

His design focuses on properly executing a few features, such as the stained-glass look, and does not include much else. His attention to detail applies to both his creative vision and gameplay — simple yet effective.

“I don’t really have a flashy style of play,” he said.

Tuffy and Davidson also included the Veritas shield in their designs.

Above the shield, Davidson added photos of three inspirational Team Canada goalies: Sami Jo Small, Erica Howe and Lesley Reddon.

“I actually asked Howe and Sami Jo for their favorite action shots of themselves, so to get to incorporate that was really fun,” Davidson said.

Sprawling across her helmet is an intricate neural network, symbolizing her concentration in Neurobiology.

“This helmet was pretty simple. My last one was a little bit more intricate,” she said. When she was a rising fresh-

man, Davidson eagerly awaited the opportunity to create her own helmet. Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief’s garden scene sparked her creativity. She reimagined Medusa’s snakes turning enemies to stone and applied it to her position.

“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this is brilliant because if I was goalie and this happened, I would turn the other team to stone and they would never score,’” Davidson said. “I’m a goalie nerd.”

The hissing snakes slithering across her helmet and the crackedstone pattern on the back drove her theme home.

She also included small details, adding not only to the personality of the helmet but also to pay homage to her former teams and home city of Ottawa. The artist also blended the organic molecule responsible for the taste and fragrance of vanilla bean into the stone’s cracks.

“Because I’m nerdy — and, I love vanilla,” she said.

For many goalkeepers, the custom helmets are an opportunity to represent their interests, honor

Harvard Falls to No. 1 Cornell, 20-12

On a sunny, warm day in front of the

crowd

bled at Jordan Field, the No.

assem

Harvard men’s lacrosse

(9-3, 3-2 Ivy) welcomed the No. 1 Cornell Big Red to Cambridge in a highly-touted matchup between the two top-10 programs. Despite the fanfare of the team’s senior day celebrations and alumni day festivities, the team was unable to complete its upset victory, falling to the powerhouse by a score of 20-12. Quarterbacked by Tewaaraton Award favorite CJ Kirst, the Cornell squad came out firing on all cylinders, and showed why it deserves to be ranked not only the top team in the Ivy League, but the top team in the nation. In what was the last home game for the Harvard senior class — which is composed of 18 members — the team was unable to protect its home turf against the fast, confident, and slippery Cornell offense.

The Crimson defense held Kirst — who is ranked No. 1 in total points and No. 1 in goal production, sitting just onegoal shy of breaking the career goal record following yesterday’s game — to zero points in the first 24 minutes of play. But once the senior got hot, he stayed hot, scoring three backto-back goals from entirely different spots on the field in the second quarter. Quieting Kirst, and turning attention to the senior, left room for Cornell’s high-IQ offense to work off-ball, exploiting the slow rotation on the second slide that resulted from the defense’s jumpiness in sending the quick double-team to lock down the all-around threat. Striking four minutes into play, the Cornell attack took advantage of Harvard’s slow substitution game — which provided the Big Red with numerous opportunities throughout the afternoon as the defense scrambled to cover the mis-match

— as Cornell attackman Michael Long sent one squarely past freshman goalie Graham Stevens as the Harvard bench tried to get offensive middie junior Logan Ip off the field. The next strike fell for Cornell as the shot clock hit zero, with Willem Firth hitting the buzzer-beater as he split a sliding Harvard double at the top of the fan. Going berserk, the Cornell bench cheered as Firth stared down the baffled white jerseys. A minute later Cornell had cause to cheer as Ryan Goldstein made light work of junior SSDM Owen Guest, beating the Brunswick School product on a crafty right-to-left split dodge behind the crease before burying it home with no angle along goal-line-extended. While Harvard certainly relies on the strength of its shorty-matchups, against a team like Cornell the slide — or lack thereof — came too late. Firth and Goldstein would each add one more tally during the first, both on feeds from attackman Andrew Dalton, to race ahead to a commanding 5-0 lead. Looking flustered and

uneasy on the defensive end, the Harvard team allowed its nerves to get the best of it as it failed to rely on the fundamentals that have served it so well this season.

“We just didn’t have enough possessions,” said Harvard Head Coach Gerry Byrne. “Whatever skill you have offensively, you tend to settle and not take the great shot. When you don’t have the ball a lot you can get a little impatient and I think we got a little impatient offensively.”

Providing the much-needed answer was sophomore attackman Jack Speidell, who notched the only Crimson goal in the first 15 minutes of play on a feed from senior attackman Sam King. Ending the first quarter down by four, Harvard re-grouped at the break and narrowed Cornell’s lead to just two with goals from junior middies Ip and Andrew Perry at the 14 and 13-minute marks, respectively.

For every hard-earned Crimson possession and success, the Cornell offense seemed to have a quick reply, and less than five seconds after Perry’s snipe, Big Red FOGO Jack Cascadden —

who helped Cornell go over 70 percent at the X — took it himself and sailed one past Stevens. Not sending a body to pick up the FOGO, the goal was a too-easy reply to Harvard’s pair of goals. Two minutes later, the squads traded goals, the first coming from junior middie John Aurandt IV. Aurandt took advantage of a late slide from the Cornell defense, dipping around a Big Red LSM and getting a shot off in the fan before snagging his own rebound and burying the second attempt with a cross-hand twister.

Responding to Aurandt was LSM Eddie Rayhill who found himself unmarked in front of the cage on the fast-break off the face off. Whipping it top-shelf, the Harvard defense got caught in the fray on another unsettled play. However, Malone was able to truncate the deficit to two just 20 seconds later on a tictac-toe FB, finishing on the onemore look from Speidell.

The next four would fall in favor of Cornell, with middie Brian Luzzi striking at 7:10, and Kirst finishing the next three straight in the span of 40 sec -

onds. Kirst found himself twice guarded by shorties, something that he immediately exploited, letting one rip down the left alley against Finn Jensen with no angle, before taking advantage of a late slide while covered down low by Guest. The third strike for the senior came quickly on the fast break as Kirst found himself unguarded on the right wing — a fatal mistake by the Crimson defense — before sniping it past Stevens while using a sliding senior defenseman Martin Nelson as a screen.

The rest of the second quarter proved to be more backand-forth play between the two squads, with Harvard notching three goals — one from King, one from Speidell, and one from senior middie Owen Gaffney — and Cornell’s Firth tallying his third on an extra-man opportunity.

The beginning of the third seemed like it was painting a whole new script, as Harvard came out guns blazing following the 10-minute half-time break. With the first three falling in favor of the Crimson — with Malone scoring on a manup opportunity that carried over from the last 0.2 seconds of the first half, and Aurandt and Ip each tallying their second — it seemed as though Byrne’s guidance at the half had proved the antidote to the Cornell squad’s dominance. Down by just one, 12-11, with over 11 minutes to play in the third, it seemed like the game would come down to the wire. However, that was not the case as the next eight-straight goals would fall for the Big Red. A lack of offensive possession time resulting from an inability to clamp the ball at the faceoff X would prove the thorn in Harvard’s side as Cornell was able to string together possessions and tire out the Crimson defense.

“We struggled at the face off,” Byrne said. “We were in a time of possession disadvantage and defense gets tired. It’s just the

teams who have helped them reach their goals, and hone in on their game-day mentality.

Tuffy and Charette, both freshmen, are already looking forward to designing their next helmets. Harvard goalies are even able to choose from several types of padding. Tuffy said she wants to keep the same vintage-style pads she wore this past season, so her next helmet may embrace the same look to make it a cohesive kit.

Charette is contemplating many designs and looking at what other goalies have done, but he is consider-

compounding effect of them having way more possessions than we had. So, you get tired and you give up some things. You fail to clear, you don’t escape with the ground ball — all those things compound upon each other.”

Capping off the scoring for the day was Perry, but his valiant effort on the man-up with just under four minutes on the clock proved too little too late, and the Big Red headed home to Ithaca victorious. The win by Cornell has solidified the location of the postseason Ancient Eight tournament, with Head Coach Connor Buczek’s squad claiming the top seed and home field advantage. While the tournament has been previously held on neutral ground at Columbia, this year the Ivy League reverted to granting the top-ranked of the four included teams the title of host.

“I don’t think anything is really going to change for us,” said Byrne about what the squad needs to do to clinch a win against Brown. “This is a really important game for us in our league and for seeding, and you have to take the lessons from this. As I told the team, ‘The score is final, but it’s not fatal.’” Barring any major upsets this weekend, as Cornell is expected to handily take care of Dartmouth, and Princeton is expected to best Yale — who just lost an always-scrappy rivalry game to UAlbany 15-14 in OT — the Harvard squad will assume the No. 3 seed, which means it will re-match against Princeton in the first round. Before the postseason action kicks off, however, the teams will need to battle through one final week of league play. The Harvard squad will travel to Providence, R.I. to take on the Brown Bears next

Former Players Look to Future in MLB

From Harvard to the MLB

While their former teammates on the Harvard baseball team prepare for their next game, seniors Sean Matson and Tanner Smith have something else on their minds: preparing to play in Major League Baseball.

Unlike most other teams at Harvard, the baseball team regularly has players drafted — racking up 63 draftees over program history.

With Matson and Smith both signing professional contracts with their draft teams, their NCAA eligibility is terminated. However, as they close the chapter on their collegiate careers, they’ve been dedicating their time to their craft, training and keeping up with their skills as they await professional-level play.

Matson, who was drafted by the Cleveland Guardians, and Smith, who was picked up by the San Diego Padres, join the ranks of professional players who got their start with

For both Matson and Smith, education and earning a Harvard degree still remains a priority despite their futures in professional baseball.

Still, Matson described how his life at Harvard changed after the draft, as his focus on baseball increased.

“A year ago at this time, I would be waking up, going to class, going to practice, coming home, making sure I was prepared every day to get ready for baseball and still do well in school,” Matson said. “And then now it’s more I wake up and the priority at all times is baseball.”

“Because now, with it being the career path I’ve chosen, the career path I’m going down, that’s the priority,” he added.

Despite knowing baseball will be his career, Matson explained how his education is still important. While he’s taking this semester off from school to train for the MLB, he plans to return to Harvard to complete his studies in the fall.

the Crimson.

In interviews with The Crimson, Matson and Smith expressed their excitement about what awaits in the MLB while reminiscing about the Harvard baseball memories they will “remember for years to come.”

“I always get the question, if I’m done or if I’ve graduated,” Matson said. “I’m going back in the fall and the organization actually has been really great about that, giving me that leash to go back and finish school so that I can just focus on baseball, not worry about finish-

ing my degree at the same time.”

Another Crimson baseball alum, Jay Driver ’24, is currently affiliated with the Guardians, giving the team experience helping a player through the transition from Harvard to the MLB.

“They’ve been super understanding, especially with Jay Driver being in the same organization, they get he was another Harvard baseball grad, and they get that I’m going to follow a similar path that he did, where he finished first semester and second semester that he needed just back to back,” he said. “They just know that finishing now is a pretty big deal, especially with the weight of a Harvard degree.”

Smith is also training this semester, spending his spring in Arizona with the Padres, but while he’s focused on baseball right now, he too said he will return to Cambridge in the fall.

He shared how his life training in Arizona has been different from his days at Harvard.

“It’s definitely a lot different than the home I created in Cambridge, with my teammates and coaches and staff,” he said. “So it’s been a big adjustment, but I’d say it’s definitely worth it. I’m having a blast out here, doing what I love, chasing what I want, and just having a great time overall.”

Smith stated that during his training, his life is “100% baseball.”

But that doesn’t take away from his academic priorities.

“I planned for this so I did most of my classes freshman fall through senior fall,” he said, “That’s something I’ve always wanted to do is graduate college. And getting a degree from Harvard, you can’t really trade that for anything. So that’s something I’m looking forward to doing at some point in my life, which will probably come in this upcoming fall.”

Matson and Smith’s commitment to baseball and academics has been evident to Harvard baseball coach Bill Decker, who spoke about their work ethic both on the

field and off.

“Both of them were in the athletic training room all the time, just trying to do the little things that it takes to be successful. From an academic standpoint, both very good students,” he said. “I think the important thing is that they handled both facets of being a student athlete as best they can, and they always represented the program, teammates in a first class way.”

‘Incredible Leaders and Role Models’

Even though Matson and Smith can no longer be part of the baseball team, their impact remains, with current players looking up to them as enduring examples of what it means to be a Harvard athlete.

“I think they’re both incredible leaders and role models, even without being on the team, [they are] showing guys that it is possible to get a Harvard education and pursue things at the next level,” said junior pitcher Callan Fang, who worked closely with the duo during his first two seasons with the team. “Beyond baseball, they’re some of my closest friends here,

and I’m sure a lot of other people on the team could say that as well.”

Senior captain George Cooper, who came into the program with Matson and Smith in the spring of 2022, also said he looks up to the two players.

“Both Sean and Tanner were big lead by example guys. I don’t know if you could find a single other guy that worked as hard as they did in the weight room, on their craft, off the field,” said Cooper. “It was just undeniable how bad they wanted it, and it was really a cool thing to learn from and be pushed to be better, and they definitely had a big impact on me”

As Matson and Smith move on into their professional careers, their influence on Harvard baseball will continue.

“I just think they were great people,” Decker said. “They were just fun to be around. And they both handled themselves very well. They never took themselves too serious. And I mean that in a really positive way. They just did whatever they could to try to support. Being successful, but also being a good clubhouse guy, just being a good teammate.”

As an exciting MLB career

Harvard Loses in EIVA Quarterfinal

tie the score 4-4. . The Nittany Lions took a brief lead 8-11 before freshman outside Sawyer Nichols delivered an effective kill. The Crimson continued its energy with

from the Nittany Lions, which found its way to the back corner and gave Penn State set point. Though Harvard slid a point to give Penn State a run for its money, the Nittany Lions took

challenge by coach Brian Baise flipped the point to Harvard. Harvard extended from there with kills from senior outsides Owen Fanning and Logan Shepard, giving the Crimson a 15-12

and led to a Penn State timeout. The Crimson tied the set at 24 out of the timeout following a good block touch by Shepherd and a kill by Woolbert.

awaits, Matson and Smith close the chapter of them playing as the Crimson.

“I definitely will always miss those really good times in the dorm or in the locker room or on the field with all of the people, because they were all big parts of my life. It’s something I’ll never forget,” Matson said

connor.castaneda@thecrimson.com tiffany.oh@thecrimson.com

5-7 EIVA) finished off its season with a 0-3 loss to formidable foe Penn State (12-15, 8-4 EIVA) in the quarterfinals of the EIVA Tournament. The Crimson came back to New Jersey on Wednesday for its fifth straight game in the Garden State. The Nittany Lions entered the game with revenge on its mind after the Crimson ended Penn State’s 38 game win streak in EIVA play with a 3-0 victory earlier this year. Penn State came back the next day with a victory, splitting the series in Cambridge. Still, while the Nittany Lions entered the year as highly ranked foes, Penn State’s inconsistency pulled them down the rankings compared to last season. In two incredibly close sets, the two teams battled neck-andneck — but Penn State got a leg up on the Crimson both times. In the third set, the Crimson lost its chance at redemption as the score difference only widened. According to senior outside hitter Logan Shepherd, the team struggled to follow through at the end of sets.

“I think it really came down to finishing sets,” Shepherd said. “That was a story last weekend. We have to be able to close out sets.”

Harvard 0, Penn State 3

The Nittany Lions proved their prowess early in the set, taking the first point from the Crimson with a firm center-court kill, which set them up to lead the game early on 2-4. After a service error on Penn State, the Crimson forced a clean block to

junior outside Zach Berty — who was named All-EIVA Honorable mention — behind the service line for an ace followed by a clean serve that set the team up for a kill to tie the game 11-11. Nichols, who had been sidelined much of March due to illness, continued a strong oncourt presence as the teams went back-and-forth in scoring and timeouts. After a reset, a nice left-side kill from sophomore middle Owen Woolbert, followed by a block from the Crimson brough the set to 1718. The blocking game was aided by the serving of sophomore outside Quinn Bishop, who tortured the Nittany Lions earlier this season. At 22-23, Harvard built a strong wall at the net to block Penn State, but was unprepared to face another attempt

the set 23-25 with a powerful hit that the Crimson couldn’t keep on the court. Harvard started off the second set strong with a good set that allowed Woolbert options in the middle on the attack. Woolbert ultimately chose to bury the kill down the right side to take the lead.

After two quick Nittany Lion points, senior setter — and All EIVA second-teamer — James Bardin tied it up with a wily second touch kill.

A crafty offspeed kill from Nichols got the Crimson to double digits first before a scramble drill by Penn State ended with a tip out of bounds from Harvard allowed the Nittany Lions to catch up.

Penn State believed it claimed the lead on a missed kill by the Crimson, but a smart

lead. A service error and a wide set that gave Penn State a good blocking angle let the Nittany Lions right back in the set, but mature play from the young Nichols helped Harvard extend its lead back to three at the 1815 mark. Penn State refused to fold and used its strong offense to tighten up the score to 21-20. An exchange of points and an attack error by the Crimson knotted up the score at 22.

Out of a Harvard timeout, a Penn State kill was deflected by the Crimson but still found paydirt. Now down 22-23, Baise burned another timeout for Harvard.

Bad net luck on an attack gave the Nittany Lions a match point. Harvard’s defense allowed it to survive the first match point

A powerful Penn State kill put the Nittany Lions back in the lead, but it was once again Woolbert who stepped up to knot the set after a long battle of a point. Penn State received its fourth match point off of a Harvard service error. Shepherd broke the set point this time with a strong kill that careened out of bounds off of the block. A kill by Penn State followed by a service error tied the set at 27.

After a Penn State attack error and timeout, a long diagonal kill from Penn State was called out on the court before the Nittany Lions’ coach challenged. The challenge overturned the call and tied the set back up at 28. A wicked lefty serve gave Penn State yet another set point. The Nittany Lions finally claimed the set with a massive block for the final point. The 2830 loss for Harvard was deflating following what the team had thought to be a marathon victory just points before.

Harvard was unable to get back in the race in the third set, as Penn State came in to take the first two points before Harvard reentered the match. Penn State was unrelenting. While Harvard made a series of efforts to keep the ball up, it couldn’t stop the Nittany Lion from a four-point run that brought the score to 4-8 and forced a Crimson timeout.

The Crimson came back from the timeout with a point, but Penn State didn’t let Harvard encroach on its lead, eventually widening the gap to 7-13. Harvard worked its way forward to gradually eat away at the Nittany Lion’s disparate lead, but was unable to get a

strong run. Harvard used its final timeout in a last-ditch effort to redeem itself, but Penn State came back with two more points. Harvard placed a consecutive three strong kills on Penn State to begin closing the score 14-21. After a service error was called on Penn State, the Nittany Lion challenged the call successfully to raise the score to 15-23. With an attack outside the court lines, Harvard ended its EIVA tournament and Penn State took the game with a ten point gap 15-25. The loss ended a season of many ups and downs for the Crimson. At its peak, Harvard was the team that ended Penn State’s gargantuan win streak and was within two good weekends of finishing as a top two seed in the EIVA. In its valleys, Harvard failed to close out sets when it mattered and dropped too many matches against top teams 0-3. Between those peaks and valleys are the memories. The team played in two of the top venues in the sport, Hawaii and BYU, according to Shepherd. Moments like those are what Shepherd will most take away from his time with the Crimson.

“It’s like a family.” And that family does not end, though Shepherd time in uniform may have ended. “We’re still gonna be creating more memories, just outside of the volleyball court.”

Despite losing seven stellar seniors, the Crimson maintain hope for the future behind especially strong sophomore and freshman classes.

“They’re really good players. Makes me excited to come back and watch them,” said Shepherd.

elyse.goncalves@thcrimson.com reed.trimble@thecrimson.com

Harvard took on Penn State in the EIVA tournament. MAE

Smith with the Harvard team during a game against Dartmouth. COURTESY OF HARVARD ATHLETICS

Sean Matson pitches against Dartmouth for Harvard. COURTESY OF HARVARD ATHLETICS

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