Year in Review 2025

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Year in Review

HARVARD V. TRUMP

How Harvard went from silence to reluctant defiance in the face of an administration that wants to see it bow.

EVOLVING PROTESTS

Harvard’s anti-Trump and pro-Palestine movements debate whether they can, or should, coexist.

A FRACTURED HUPD

Harvard’s police chief resigned abruptly. He left behind a divided department that did not trust him.

ROMANCE OR READINGS?

When Harvard students glance up from their books, some of them see a dreary dating scene.

RESEARCH FUNDING

Facing cuts, Harvard scientists fear for their life’s work — and the next generation of scholars.

XINYI C. ZHANG — CRIMSON DESIGNER

Year in Review STAFF

MANAGING EDITOR

Tilly R. Robinson ’26

ASSOCIATE

MANAGING EDITORS

Sally E. Edwards ’26

Cam E. Kettles ’26

DESIGN CHAIRS

Catherine H. Feng ’27

Xinyi C. Zhang ’27

MULTIMEDIA CHAIRS

Jina H. Choe ’26

Briana Howard Pagán ’26

STORY EDITORS

Madeleine A. Hung ’26

Azusa M. Lippit ’26

Neil H. Shah ’26

Jack R. Trapanick ’26

COVER DESIGNER

Xinyi C. Zhang ’27

PRESIDENT

McKenna E. McKrell ’26

BUSINESS MANAGER

Jack D. Jassy ’26

ASSOCIATE

BUSINESS MANAGERS

Claire S. Pak ’26

Matthew G. Pantaleo ’26

Table of Contents

4 Timeline

The Crimson reviews the most notable moments from a year like no other at Harvard.

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Year in Quotes

The most memorable statements, spoken and written, that made it onto the pages of The Crimson in 2024-25.

Harvard v. Trump

Inside Harvard’s battle with the Trump administration.

Protests Without Palestine?

Anti-Trump campus protesters grapple with the lasting impact of last year’s pro-Palestine demonstrations.

Harvard Lawyers Up 18

The University faces two high-profile lawsuits — and a labyrinth of federal investigations.

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A Fractured HUPD

Harvard University Police Department chief Victor A. Clay quietly resigned in May amid legal threats.

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Year in Photos

Snapshots from a year of student life and political standoffs at Harvard.

Khurana’s Deanship

After more than a decade as the dean of Harvard College, Rakesh Khurana prepares for a change of pace.

Garber in the Spotlight

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 becomes the face of reluctant bravery after months of silence.

Funding Local Elections

Super PACs in Cambridge have raised the stakes — and the price tags — for local elections.

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Romance or Readings?

Choosing study sessions over love lives, Harvard students often find themselves alone.

Research at Risk

Facing nearly $3 billion in funding cuts, Harvard researchers watch their work grind to a halt.

Diversity, Dismantled

Harvard’s sharp turn against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion under Trump.

Defense Tech

As they enter the workforce, Harvard students increasingly feel the pull of defense technology firms.

Two Tracks at CRLS

How Cambridge’s only public high school experiences de facto segregation.

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Bringing Rigor Back

Harvard is trying to make its academics more rigorous — but students’ shifting priorities pose a problem.

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Legacy Admissions

As states across the country move to ban legacy admissions, Massachusetts legislators are trying to do the same.

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Harvard’s Newest Donors

Behind the scenes of Harvard donors’ new strategy of conditional giving.

A Leader for Hard Times

Andrea Baccarelli navigates a turbulent year at the Harvard School of Public Health.

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The Harvard Name

The Crimson examines how the past two years have tested the enduring strength of one of Harvard’s most precious assets — its name.

A Timeline of Harvard’s

May 28, 2024

HARVARD REFRAINS FROM CONTROVERSIAL STATEMENTS ON PUBLIC MATTERS

Harvard announced that it would avoid taking public stances on controversial issues that do not directly affect the University, based on recommendations from a faculty-led “Institutional Voice” working group.

Nov. 5, 2024

DONALD TRUMP ELECTED U.S. PRESIDENT

Former President Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States, spelling trouble for Harvard. Republicans vowed to cut federal funding to elite higher education institutions and deport “pro-Hamas radicals.”

Aug. 2, 2024

ALAN GARBER APPOINTED PERMANENT UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT

Provost-turned-interim president Alan M. Garber ’76 was announced as the permanent University President. Garber will serve as Harvard’s 31st president for three years.

Aug. 29, 2024

COLLEGE DEAN KHURANA ANNOUNCES HE WILL RESIGN

College Dean Rakesh Khurana announced that he would resign after an 11-year tenure in an email to College affiliates.

Jan. 21, 2025

HARVARD SETTLES TWO ANTISEMITISM LAWSUITS

Harvard settled two Title VI lawsuits accusing the University of tolerating campus antisemitism within days of Trump’s inauguration. The University adopted a controversial definition of antisemitism as part of the settlement.

Jan. 23, 2025

HARVARD LAYS OFF LEGACY OF SLAVERY STAFF

Harvard laid off staff from one of its Legacy of Slavery teams, outsourcing the work to an external partner. Some of the initiative’s staff had alleged they were told not to thoroughly investigate the University’s ties to slavery.

PAVAN V. THAKKAR — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
ADDISON Y. LIU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
FRANK S. ZHOU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
MARINA QU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Year Under Fire

Sept. 11, 2024

BLACK ENROLLMENT DROPS IN HARVARD’S FIRST CLASS POSTAFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Harvard reported a 4 percentage point drop in the number of Black students enrolled in its Class of 2028, an early indication of how the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling on affirmative action will affect admissions.

Oct. 18, 2024

DONATIONS TO HARVARD ENDOWMENT FALL BY MORE THAN $150 MILLION

As billionaire donors cut ties with Harvard, total philanthropic contributions dropped by 14 percent in fiscal year 2024, with a $193 drop in contributions to the endowment but a $42 million increase in current-use gifts.

October 2024

SILENT LIBRARY PROTESTS GAIN TRACTION AMONG PRO-PALESTINE ACTIVISTS

Library sit-ins became increasingly popular among pro-Palestine campus activists who denounced the war in Gaza and criticized Harvard’s campus speech policies. Some protesters were banned from visiting libraries but retained access to library resources.

March 10, 2025

UNIVERSITY ENACTS HIRING FREEZE, PLEDGES NOT TO INCREASE SPENDING

Garber announced a University-wide staff and faculty hiring freeze, citing uncertainty under the Trump administration and long-term financial concerns. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences also committed to keep spending flat for fiscal year 2026.

March 20, 2025

HARVARD PAYS CAMBRIDGE $6 MILLION, BUT HOLDS OFF ON LONGTERM PAYMENT PLAN

In lieu of taxes, Harvard agreed to pay the city of Cambridge $6 million — a slight increase from what it paid the previous year. It did not commit to a long-term amount for the Payment in Lieu of Taxes program as asked by the city, citing federal funding uncertainties.

April 2, 2025

HARVARD PLACES PALESTINE SOLIDARITY COMMITTEE ON PROBATION

The University placed the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee on probation — prohibiting them from holding events until July — after they participated in a rally hosted by the unrecognized student group Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine.

SANTIAGO A. SALVIDAR — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
AMY Y. LI — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
FRANK S. ZHOU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
ELLEN P. CASSIDY — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
CHARLES K. MICHAEL — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
HUGO C. CHIASSON — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

April 3 and 11, 2025

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION SENDS

HARVARD LIST OF DEMANDS TO KEEP FEDERAL FUNDING

The Trump administration conditioned Harvard’s federal funding on the University’s compliance with two laundry lists of demands that included banning masks at protests, eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion programming, auditing for viewpoint diversity among faculty and students, and addressing allegations of antisemitism.

April 29, 2025

TWIN TASK FORCE REPORTS DETAIL HOSTILITY ON CAMPUS

Harvard’s twin task forces on combating antisemitism and anti-Arab bias released their reports, which described an atmosphere of fear and exclusion on campus. The reports urged Harvard to implement sweeping changes across academics, admissions, and disciplinary processes.

April 10, 2025

12 HARVARD STUDENTS AND RECENT GRADS’ VISAS REVOKED

Seven current Harvard students and five recent graduates’ visas were revoked by the Trump administration. Across the country, more than 600 international students’ visa statuses were changed.

April 14, 2025

HARVARD LOSES $2.2 BILLION IN FEDERAL FUNDING

The Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in federal grants and $60 million in contracts to Harvard after Garber rebuked the Trump administration’s demands, which the federal government claimed represented a refusal to address campus antisemitism.

May 8, 2025

HARVARD POLICE CHIEF CLAY RESIGNS

Harvard University Police Department Chief Victor Clay quietly announced his resignation. Prior to his resignation, members of Harvard’s police union overwhelmingly said that they lacked confidence in Clay.

May 13, 2025

DEMING NAMED NEXT DEAN OF HARVARD COLLEGE

Harvard Kennedy School professor David Deming was named next dean of Harvard College, nine months after Rakesh Khurana announced he would resign. Deming will assume the deanship position on July 1.

JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
PAVAN V. THAKKAR — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
PAVAN V. THAKKAR — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
GRACE E. YOON — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
PAVAN V. THAKKAR — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
PAGE DESIGN BY XINYI C. ZHANG — CRIMSON DESIGNER

April 16, 2025

JOE BIDEN APPLAUDS HARVARD’S RESISTANCE AT PRIVATE KENNEDY SCHOOL EVENT

Former U.S. President Joe Biden applauded Harvard’s decision to defy demands from the Trump administration at a private Institute of Politics event.

April 21, 2025

HARVARD SUES TRUMP ADMINISTRATION OVER $2.2 BILLION FUNDING FREEZE

Harvard accused the Trump administration of violating the First Amendment by freezing funds after the University refused to comply with what the suit deemed “unconstitutional,” “draconian” demands.

April 28, 2025

HARVARD RENAMES DIVERSITY OFFICE

AMID TRUMP DEMANDS TO DISMANTLE DEI

The Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging was renamed to “Community and Campus Life” following the Trump administration’s campaign to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programming at universities.

May 19, 2025

UNIVERSITY REMOVES TIME CAPS FOR PRECEPTORS AND LECTURERS

Harvard negotiators offered to remove limits on the appointments of lecturers and preceptors in a contract proposal to the University’s non-tenure-track faculty union.

May 22, 2025

HARVARD’S AUTHORIZATION TO ENROLL INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS REVOKED

The Department of Homeland Security

wrote in a letter to University President Alan M. Garber ’76 that Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program Certification was halted — preventing Harvard from enrolling international students.

May 23, 2025

HARVARD SUES TRUMP ADMINISTRATION OVER INTERNATIONAL ENROLLMENT BLOCK

Harvard sued the Trump administration and filed a temporary restraining order to stop the federal government from revoking the university’s certification to enroll international students.

E. MATTEO DIAZ — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
PAVAN V. THAKKAR — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
ELISE A. SPENNER — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
NINA A. EJINDU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
PAVAN V. THAKKAR — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
PAGE DESIGN BY XINYI C. ZHANG — CRIMSON DESIGNER

The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

YEAR IN QUOTES 2024-25

The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2025

From student activism on campus to funding attacks from Washington, The Crimson covered the major events of 2024-25. Read some of the year’s key moments in the words of the people making the decisions — and impacted by the stories.

MAY 2024

Let them walk.

373RD COMMENCEMENT PROTESTERS

Hundreds of people walked out of the 2024 Commencement ceremony after 13 seniors were temporarily denied their degrees for participating in a pro-Palestine encampment in Harvard Yard.

AUG. 2024

I am excited by the prospect of what we can achieve in these next years and will have more to say about our efforts on many fronts when the fall term begins.

ALAN M. GARBER ’76

Garber was installed as Harvard’s president for a limited three-year term, delaying the next presidential search until 2026.

NOV. 2024

I just can’t believe America voted that way.

RACHELE D. CHUNG ’28

In the days following the 2024 election, some instructors canceled classes as students and faculty alike processed an imminent second Trump term.

FEB. 2025

Why are we giving money to Harvard when it’s got a $50 million endowment?

DONALD TRUMP

As the Trump administration made sweeping cuts to National Institutes of Health grants — hobbling Harvard’s research infrastructure — Trump remained trained in on Harvard.

JUNE 2024

The university has a responsibility to speak out to protect and promote its core function. Its leaders must communicate the value of the university’s central activities. They must defend the university’s autonomy and academic freedom when threatened.

INSTITUTIONAL VOICE WORKING GROUP

University President Alan M. Garber ’76 accepted the working group’s recommendation to refrain from making statements on controversial issues not related to Harvard.

SEPT. 2024

We know the administrative playbook all too well by now.

VIOLET T.M. BARRON ’26

Pro-Palestine protests returned to campus in the fall, with unrecognized student groups rallying outside of University buildings — and inside libraries.

DEC 2024

We take seriously any kind of criticisms from Washington.

Harvard and its senior leadership braced for a Trump administration set on doling out punishment for the University’s response to protests and antisemitism.

MARCH 2025

We need to find ways to build financial capacity by reducing expenses.

HOPI

Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra told faculty to tighten their belts as the University braced for possible funding cuts.

JULY 2024

I am proud to support President Trump’s policies to expel foreign students who violate our laws, harass our Jewish classmates, and desecrate our freedoms.

ALEXANDER “SHABBOS” KESTENBAUM

Kestenbaum, a 2024 Harvard Divinity School graduate and plaintiff in a antisemitism lawsuit against Harvard, was invited to speak at the Republican National Convention.

OCT. 2024

Seeking attention is in itself disruptive.

MARTHA J. WHITEHEAD

Several faculty members across Harvard’s schools were banned from Widener library following a “study-in” protest against the library’s decision earlier in the month to ban students for a similar pro-Palestine demonstration.

JAN 2025

I think the plaintiffs got what they wanted, and the University got an opportunity to clarify its policies.

NOAH R. FELDMAN ’92

Harvard settled two antisemitism lawsuits days after Trump took office for an undisclosed amount, revising non-discrimination policies to protect Jewish, Israeli, and Zionist students.

APRIL 2025

No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.

After the Trump administration threatened $9 billion of Harvard’s funding, Garber forcefully rejected the White House’s demands in a University-wide message.

E. HOEKSTRA
ALAN M. GARBER ‘76
PENNY S. PRITZKER ’81

Inside

CATHERINE H. FENG— CRIMSON DESIGNER

The applause started before he said a word.

On May 10 — just weeks after Harvard filed suit against the Trump administration — University President Alan M. Garber ’76 stepped into a room of more than 1,000 Harvard rowers and alumni. According to five attendees, Garber did not bring up the case. He did not mention the billions in funding cuts. He did not mention Trump.

Instead, Garber, a former coxswain at Harvard, talked about rowing — about reading the current, staying calm, knowing when to steer, and when to hold course.

By the time he had finished, they had given him three standing ovations.

At a campus now used to crisis, Garber’s words found their mark, not for what he said, but for what he seemed to represent: control, clarity, and a kind of reluctant bravery. After trying backchannel conversations with White House officials, a letter — sent by mistake — with unprecedented demands forced Garber’s hand.

“We did not see ourselves as looking to pick a fight,” Garber said in a Friday interview. “We saw ourselves cast in the role.”

Despite his reluctance, Harvard has been met with a tidal wave of praise since the president took the extraordinary step of defying Trump demands last month.

National Basketball Association coach Steve D. Kerr praised Garber for “standing up to the bully” during an April 15 postgame press, and comedian Ronny Chieng said people should support the University though it feels like “rooting for Jeff Bezos to win the lottery.” Even right-wing influencer Candace Owens called on her followers last month to “buck up and root for Harvard.”

But the support masks a deeper reality: Harvard is still trapped in a political fight it spent months trying to avoid — and one it can no longer control.

The University has lost $3 billion in federal funding and been forced to cut degree-granting programs and pause faculty hiring. Officials are staring down a catastrophic endowment tax bill, and now, the fate of more than 7,000 international students hangs in the balance.

Though most of the Trump administration’s punishments are being challenged in court, the litigation will take months if not years. Even if a judge rules in Harvard’s favor, appeals are all but guaranteed, and some hits to funding may be irreversible.

This account is based on interviews with more than 100 administrators, politicians,

donors, faculty, and Harvard insiders with knowledge of the University’s strategy in response to its most precarious situation in decades. Many applauded Garber’s approach to the crisis so far, but warned that the standoff with Washington was far from over.

BRACING FOR IMPACT

Garber had spent the first year of his presidency trying to contain political fallout from protests and leadership instability, a mission that became far more dire after Donald Trump took office.

Just days before Trump’s inauguration, Harvard retained Ballard Partners, a high-powered lobbying firm with deep ties to Trump’s inner orbit. It was an early signal that Harvard was preparing for confrontation — even if it didn’t yet know what shape the fight would take.

By then, Garber had already met with more than 40 members of Congress, part of a coordinated outreach over the past year to rebuild Harvard’s standing on Capitol Hill. He had focused on calming the legislative front — repairing frayed relationships and reinforcing Harvard’s institutional credibility.

But the threat now wasn’t coming only from Congress, and Trump had been a difficult political figure to predict.

During a faculty meeting in early December, Garber was worried about what was to come. He forecasted what he thought would be a strenuous time for the Univer-

sity under Trump, according to a faculty member in attendance.

Harvard quickly settled two federal Title VI antisemitism complaints just one day after Trump took office, agreeing in the process to adopt Republicans’ preferred definition of antisemitism and formally clarified that Jewish and Israeli students were covered under its nondiscrimination policies.

The settlement resolved a monthslong legal dispute — but also sent a message: to the plaintiffs, to University affiliates, and perhaps most of all, to Washington. Harvard was trying to show it understood the moment.

At first, the message seemed to land. When the Trump administration returned to power, it issued a broad, vague freeze on federal funding — a move that seemed aimed more at higher education as a whole than any one institution. When the administration started attacking individual universities, it was Columbia University that appeared to be the biggest target.

By early March, Harvard had landed on a list of universities flagged by the administration’s new federal antisemitism task force. Soon after, the White House escalated the pressure, publicly naming Harvard as a target of the inquiry. What began as a vague, sector-wide threat had become a formal Title VI investigation.

Harvard scrambled to get ahead of it.

Harvard administrators were “proactive” in reaching out after the investigation was announced, according to a person familiar with the task force. University offi-

cials held multiple meetings with members of the task force in an attempt to answer questions, demonstrate cooperation, and avoid becoming the administration’s first enforcement example.

Even as pressure mounted externally, top Harvard officials moved to reassure key internal stakeholders. In late February, senior administrators — including Provost John F. Manning ’82 — told a private gathering of major donors that Harvard was choosing its battles carefully. Sometimes, he said, the University would take the lead in pushing back against Washington. Other times, it would step back and stay quiet.

After the White House hit Columbia with a $400 million funding cut, Garber braced himself, cancelling a planned trip to India over spring break. According to a person with direct knowledge of his thinking, Garber believed staying put would help avoid any political fallout and signal a comment to Harvard’s internal priorities.

But the outcome he tried to avoid landed at his doorstep anyway — and in a much more forceful way.

‘NO CHOICE’

At first, Harvard got a softer hand, offered an opportunity to negotiate with the White House and temporarily spared from Columbia’s fate.

When the Trump administration placed more than $8 billion in Harvard’s federal funding under review in early April, the University braced for fallout — but unlike other Ivy League schools, it first received a letter with specific demands instead of an immediate cut.

“We are pleased that Harvard is willing to engage with us on these goals,” wrote Sean Keaveny, acting general counsel of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in a press release announcing the review. “Harvard’s recent actions to curb institutionalized anti-Semitism, though long overdue, are welcome.”

The University had already begun making changes that seemed to anticipate what the federal government would soon demand, including removing the faculty leaders of its Center for Middle Eastern Studies, a center that had faced repeated accusations of hosting antisemitic programming and severing its partnership with Birzeit University, the largest institution in the West Bank.

So when the April 3 letter arrived, its demands were broad, but not entirely unexpected. It called for a comprehensive mask ban on campus protests, reforms to disciplinary policy, clearer lines of admin-

The fight began with a call for former Harvard President Claudine Gay to testify before Congress in December 2023. JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

istrative authority, and the elimination of all race- or identity-based preferences in admissions and hiring.

To some of Harvard’s officials, those demands weren’t viewed as entirely unreasonable — invasive, but not out of step with the types of accountability measures already being quietly discussed on campus.

“The Trump administration’s approach to Harvard is extralegal and extortionate,” wrote Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers in a statement. “That is why Harvard has to resist.”

“But to be credible and to be true to its Veritas mission, it has to reform much more than it has on issues like maintaining order, resisting identity politics, promoting excellence and truth seeking, and achieving intellectual diversity,” he added.

At the time, some in Trump’s orbit took Harvard’s response as a sign that a deal could be reached. According to a person

familiar with the discussions, White House officials were encouraged by Harvard’s engagement — and believed it was helping the Trump administration’s political image.

Ivy League leaders also began to take notice. According to a person familiar with the matter, a group of Ivy League presidents met to discuss the demands issued to Columbia and Harvard. The group established a bottom line — they would comply with lawful civil rights investigations by federal agencies but rebuff demands that would infringe on academic freedom.

Then came the second letter.

On the night of April 11, the Trump administration sent Garber a dramatically expanded list of demands, including orders to derecognize pro-Palestine student groups, submit to three years of federal audits, and report international students who violated University conduct policies to the federal government. The possibility of a negotiated

agreement vanished.

Over the weekend, the Harvard Corporation — the University’s highest governing body — hammered out a forceful response. The decision was not unanimous. At least one member, KKR co-CEO Joseph Y. Bae, opposed directly confronting the administration and warned that such a move could worsen the backlash, according to the New York Times.

But the Corporation moved ahead.

In an forceful April 14 email to Harvard affiliates, Garber denounced the administration’s demands as a sweeping overreach of federal power — and made clear that Harvard would not comply. That same day, the White House retaliated — pulling $2.2 billion in federal funding.

That night, members of the Corporation were informed by Harvard’s lawyers that the Friday demands letter was allegedly sent in error, according to the Times. And

while some members bought the White House’s explanation, the damage had already been done.

Retaliation over the next week was staggering. Dozens of federally funded research grants were terminated. Layoffs quietly began in affected labs. At the Harvard School of Public Health — which relies heavily on federal dollars — internal conversations turned to contingency planning.

“We were faced with a very stark situation in which the government seemed to demand an unprecedented set of demands concerning how the university operates,” Garber said in the Friday interview.

“We saw ourselves as being given the choice of standing up for fundamental rights of universities, including First Amendment rights, or letting this demand go by,” he added. “When you think of it in those terms, there really was no choice.”

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 delivers morning prayers at Memorial Church in September 2024. FRANK S. ZHOU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
Corporation Fellow Joseph Y. Bae, the co-CEO of KKR, was a skeptic of taking a hard line against Trump. ELLEN P. CASSIDY — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Jan. 10, 2025

Harvard hires Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm with ties to several top Trump administration officials, signaling preparations for heightened political scrutiny ahead of Trump’s return to office.

Jan. 21, 2025

Harvard settles two Title VI complaints over antisemitism, adopts the IHRA definition, and agrees to revise its nondiscrimination policies and training procedures.

Feb. 28, 2025

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 and Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra express their commitment to maintaining DEI initiatives, despite federal pressures to dismantle such programs.

March 10, 2025

Garber announces a University-wide hiring freeze for faculty and staff, citing financial uncertainties under the Trump administration.

March 31, 2025

Three federal agencies begin reviewing more than $8 billion in multi-year funding to Harvard, escalating pressure on the University’s governance and policies.

April 3, 2025

Harvard receives a letter from the Trump administration demanding it eliminate DEI programming and restrict campus protests as conditions for continued federal funding.

April 11, 2025

A second, more aggressive set of demands arrives from federal agencies. Harvard officials call the directives unconstitutional; the White House later claims the letter was sent in error.

April 14, 2025

Garber publicly rejects the administration’s demands. In response, the White House freezes $2.2 billion in federal research funding and $60 million in contracts to Harvard.

‘YOU CAN’T BOW’

As support swelled in public, pressure built in private — and Garber set out to contain both.

In the weeks after Harvard filed its first lawsuit against the Trump administration, Garber launched a second campaign — not in court, but across the country. Early this month, he traveled to Washington for a round of private conversations on Capitol Hill.

According to a spokesperson, Garber met with lawmakers to discuss issues affecting Harvard, including funding for research — but declined to comment on who he met with.

On campus, he’s met in small groups with some of the University’s most influential benefactors, many of which have buildings in their name, according to a person familiar with the conversations in Massachusetts Hall. Some have urged Harvard to take a more careful, less confrontational approach, worried that the conflict could needlessly escalate.

Garber also traveled to New York in early May, where he met with Harvard alumni and donors at the Harvard Club of New York. His message there was simple: the conflict was escalating, and Harvard needed their support.

Even as Garber became a media darling — profiled in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NBC News, and The Boston Globe — the pressure had not eased. More than $2 billion was still frozen, and a menacing letter from the Department of Homeland Security had set up a bigger problem for international enrollment.

“I grew up in a blue-collar district,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said in an interview with The Crimson. “The people I represent don’t wake up in the morning thinking, ‘Oh my god, Harvard’s in trouble.’”

Still, Smith said, Harvard’s strategy was the right one — and had the backing of Democratic legislators in Congress.

“They are standing up and fighting back against it,” he said. “You cannot bow to what the dictator is asking you to do and you have to build support for that.”

Garber’s effort to shore up support only grew more urgent last week.

On Thursday, the DHS revoked Harvard’s ability to enroll international students — a stunning move that sent shockwaves across campus and entrenched the standoff between Harvard and the White House. Harvard quickly filed a second lawsuit in response.

What had been confined to federal funding became a far more personal battle for

students’ futures.

“My message to international students is that they are a vital component of our community,” Garber said on Friday. “Under no circumstances will we abandon them.”

THE LONG GAME

There is no quiet off-ramp — and Harvard knows it.

With two lawsuits pending, billions in federal funding slashed, and a wave of escalating threats from the Trump administration, Harvard has found itself locked in a battle it didn’t choose — and increasingly, can’t escape.

The administration cut another $450 million in grants and paused all future grants earlier this month. The U.S. House of Representatives also passed a bill to impose a 21 percent tax on Harvard’s endowment — a measure that has long been a nightmare scenario for the University.

And while Harvard has not publicly tied any of its recent decisions to growing federal pressure, the timing is hard to ignore.

In an abrupt move late April, Harvard renamed its Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging to “Community and Campus Life,” citing a new mandate to support free expression and expanding cross-cultural engagement.

That same day, Harvard also announced that it would suspend funding for affinity group celebrations during Commencement, including events held for veterans and first-generation, low-income students.

The decisions came less than two weeks after the White House called for a complete dismantling of DEI infrastructure at Har-

vard — and in the wake of its longstanding crusade against diversity.

When asked to explain the rationale for the changes in a Friday interview, Garber said he was involved, but directed further questions to Chief Community and Campus Life Officer Sherri A. Charleston — an administrator who does not answer emails from reporters.

Garber also declined to comment on Harvard’s interest in pursuing an outof-court settlement. But several faculty members believe it’s a likely scenario — or at least, one that remains actively under deliberation.

Behind the scenes, Harvard is preparing for a long road ahead. The University did not seek a temporary restraining order when it filed its first lawsuit, meaning that the $2.2 billion freeze will remain in place through at least the summer.

“The speculation that happens among faculty is that Harvard is under a lot of pressure to come to some kind of settlement,” said government professor Ryan D. Enos.

“One of the questions is whether Harvard would ultimately settle in a way that they think would give the Trump administration something that they could call a win without giving up the things that Harvard values like its independence,” he added.

In the meantime, congressional investigations are still arriving in droves. Internal audits have begun. And additional funding cuts are on the horizon. When asked what comes next, Garber paused.

“We are making preparations along a very broad front,” he said.

dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com grace.yoon@thecrimson.com

The University’s governing boards meet in Loeb House. E. MATTEO DIAZ — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

April 16, 2025

The Department of Homeland Security sends a letter threatening to revoke Harvard’s ability to enroll international students unless it turns over protestrelated disciplinary records.

April 22, 2025

Harvard sues the Trump administration, alleging the funding freeze is unconstitutional retaliation against protected academic expression and institutional autonomy.

April 25, 2025

Harvard announces a new process allowing the president to convene faculty panels to investigate and sanction cross-school protest-related misconduct.

April 28, 2025

Harvard renames its Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging to “Community and Campus Life” and cuts University funding for affinity group graduation celebrations.

April 29, 2025

After more than a year since their creation, Harvard releases final reports from its antisemitism and anti-Muslim bias task forces, pledging support programs and policy changes.

May 13, 2025

The Trump administration freezes an additional $450 million in Harvard’s federal funding, expanding the scope of its complaints to include race-based discrimination alongside antisemitism.

May 22, 2025

The DHS revokes Harvard’s ability to enroll international students, citing concerns of campus antisemitism and race-based discrimination and “insufficient” responses to record requests.

May 23, 2025

Harvard files a second lawsuit, alleging that the DHS’ directive was retribution for its stand against the White House. A federal judge issues a temporary restraining order halting the policy.

The clock on Massachusetts Hall, home to Garber’s office. JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
On Election Day, a flag lies across the John Harvard statue in Harvard Yard. FRANK S. ZHOU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Harvard Activists Have a New Reason To Protest. Does Palestine Fit

In?

CLASHES AND COMMON CAUSE. As Harvard students and faculty protest the second Trump administration, they sometimes coexist uneasily with the pro-Palestine activists who defined protests last year. Is the campaign for academic freedom inseparable from Palestine, or will the two movements find themselves at odds?

MARINA QU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

“Can you move a little bit?’”

Avi S. Steinberg ’02 — a Radcliffe fellow — and a few colleagues had just unfurled a banner reading “Free Speech Includes Palestine” at an April rally organized to call on Harvard to protect international students.

Within moments, a member of the Harvard chapter of the American Association of University Professors organizing the rally asked him to shift their banner out of the spotlight. Steinberg refused.

“I was like, ‘No, we’re not moving,’” Steinberg recalled. “‘It’s not your message, but it should be, and that’s why we’re here,’” he said.

Steinberg’s banner — meant to draw attention to the University’s suppression of pro-Palestinian protest on campus — was a reminder that the coalition of affilates angry with the Trump administration is an uneasy one, divided on which messages to center, which to avoid, and how much fault to assign to Harvard.

On the heels of a year dominated by pro-Palestine activism on campus, the new group of activists united over research funding and international student protections has had to make decisions about how to engage with the active and controversial campus movement for Palestine, whose supporters have long argued that war in the Middle East and divestment should take center stage.

“It’s tactically unwise to, if there is a particular cause, alienate potential supporters by bundling it with some other cause that people might oppose,” said Psychology professor Steven A. Pinker, a co-president of the Council on Academic Freedom. Activists often argue issues are interconnected under a “cabal of oppressors,” he added.

Pro-Palestine organizers vehemently disagree.

“There’s no such thing as tackling Palestine and tackling immigration and tackling health care as totally separate spheres of existence,” said Olivia G. Pasquerella ’26, an organizer for Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine — the central coalition that organized an encampment for divestment last spring.

“If it is true that these groups think that they can fight for the rights of international and non-citizen students without thinking about Palestine, well, clearly that’s wrong,” they added.

The new combination of student and faculty groups that have taken up the protesting mantle in recent months could represent an end to the era of dominant pro-Palestine organizing, but tensions in the campus activ-

ism scene are likely to persist.

‘A SENSE OF COMMON UNITY’

Protests in 2025 are only beginning to resemble the explosion of campus activism during President Donald Trump’s first term, when students rallied around racial justice and immigration reform en masse.

Starting in January 2017, Harvard students hosted rallies regularly to voice anger at several Trump policies — the travel ban that targeted Muslim-majority countries, the revocation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and Trump’s nominations to the Supreme Court.

“Folks across the organizations had this sense that we are stronger together,” said Anwar Omeish ’19, a former campus activist. “I don’t think any of us were in competition or opposition.”

Daishi Miguel-Tanaka ’19 said there was “a general buy-in” to care about the Trump administration’s stance toward immigrants.

“I think there was a sense of common unity that the Trump administration was causing a lot of harm, especially to immigrant communities,” he said.

The unexpected President-elect gave activists a reason to band together — giving rise to the Harvard Student Power Network. The coalition served as a system of communica-

tion between circles of activism on campus to share “tactics and political education.”

Another student-led group, Act on a Dream, ramped up efforts to organize rallies on campus specifically focused on immigration advocacy.

Hundreds of students regularly attended the group’s protests throughout the Trump presidency, drawing support from a range of other activist groups including Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard and Our Harvard Can Do Better, a group advocating for Title IX grievance process reform.

“Our membership exploded,” Miguel-Tanaka remembered.

But after Trump left office, the Student Power Network faded from the spotlight, and protests slowed dramatically — a trend only accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Sonya A. L. Karabel ’18, a former Power Network organizer, said that while the group was successful in the short-term of “making some connections between people,” the movement never turned into “a long-standing thing.”

Meanwhile, the Palestine Solidarity Committee had been organizing on campus since 2002, growing precipitously after 2020 alongside a renewed national movement for racial equity. The group occasionally drew ire from the Harvard administration for protest activity, but never with the participation and international attention it would later attract.

Omeish, a former member of the PSC, said that the organization’s active presence on campus swayed between a “strong core ofpeople” and a “lull in membership” throughout her time at the College from 2015 to 2019.

That changed in early October 2023, when a statement organized by the group rocked Harvard in a way not even student protesters expected.

A SINGULAR MESSAGE

After Oct. 7, 2023, protests unrelated to conflict in the Middle East largely disappeared, replaced by at times daily pro-Palestine protests across Harvard’s schools with hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of attendees.

Instead of going quiet following a lightning rod statement that placed blame entirely on Israel for Hamas’ attacks, the PSC organized protests on a new scale, aided by several unrecognized student groups including HOOP and the graduate student union’s pro-Palestine caucus.

Groups that had been active just months before — advocating for affirmative action and labor reforms — were absorbed by pro-Palestine advocacy. Their members were pushed to join or fall out of the activism world.

“We understand that all of our historic movements for freedom and justice are intertwined,” HOOP organizers wrote in their

Demonstrators gathered outside Johnston Gate for an April 2025 protest organized by Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine and other unrecognized student groups. MAE T. WEIR — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Act on a Dream organized “UndocuGraduation” to honor undocumented members of the Class of 2019. More than 50 people

PAGE DESIGN BY LAURINNE JAMIE P. EUGENIO — CRIMSON DESIGNER
HUA co-presidents Abdullah Shahid Sial ’27 and Caleb N. Thompson ’27 speak at a Students for Freedom rally in April 2025. SAMUEL A. CHURCH — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
The Harvard International Socialists protested Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 Supreme Court appointment. AMANDA M. DIMARTINI — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
Reclaim Harvard Law organized a rally against Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election. That winter, the Harvard Student Power Network banded together to unite student groups against Trump. GRACE Z. LI — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
attended. AMANDA Y. SU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

spring 2024 mission statement. “The Palestinian cause is not for Palestinians alone — it is a cause for people of conscience, concerned with humanity, freedom, and justice.”

Despite their insistence on shared values, the new wave of activism drew more controversy than ever before. As organizers faced widespread accusations of antisemitism and support for terrorism, students became hesitant to even discuss the conflict openly.

“People won’t even talk about it because they’re so scared about having any little disagreement about it,” Nuriel R. Vera-DeGraff ’26, a pro-Palestine activist, told The Crimson in November. “Caution manifests in the sense of people not sharing their full set of beliefs.”

Under pressure to respond, the University also instituted new restrictions on protest, including clarifying rules about permissible use of space and volume levels — which the PSC and HOOP labeled as repression.

“Universities in the past, the response was always like, ‘Oh, that’s cute, we’ll just kind of pass — basically just ignore it,’” said Karabel, the Power Network organizer, adding that while Harvard has rarely met protesters’ demands historically, the basis for discipline has undergone a major transformation.

Former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers, an especially vocal critic of the PSC and former Harvard President Claudine Gay, said the wave of protests that followed Oct. 7, 2023, carried an inherently personal tone that previous protests had not.

“Many in the community — Israelis and many Jewish students who identify with Israel — experience themselves as targeted by the protests and disruption in a way that no one felt targeted by protests, for example, against South African apartheid,” Summers said.

As the student population became more educated about Israel, they also became

more divided.

In May 2023, half of graduating seniors who responded to The Crimson’s annual senior survey had either no opinion or not enough information to express an opinion on the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. A year later, that percentage had fallen by half; the rest of the senior class was split with 34 in favor of divestment, and 48 percent opposing.

Half of the class of 2025 was in favor of divestment, with 14 percent in opposition.

Richard F. Thomas, a professor in Classics and a PSC faculty adviser, acknowledged that the pro-Palestine protests on campus raised “tension within the student body.”

“I think the difference in the current situation is fairly obvious in that there is a body of students who identify, understandably, very closely with Israel — not necessarily with the current government, but with Israel for various reasons,” Thomas said.

Phoebe G. Barr ’24, a fossil fuel divestment activist who was temporarily prevented from graduating because of her involvement in the Harvard Yard encampment, said that some people equated the pro-Palestine movement with terrorism, which led to a persistent “chilling” of activism.

“I would say that the major difference is that Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine has always been seen as more controversial, even among people who are liberal,” she said.

‘STUFF

THAT 80 PERCENT OF CAMPUS AGREES ON’

Trump’s second term and the scaled up attacks on Harvard’s funding have triggered a resurgence of broad-based activism, energizing students who may never have participated in a protest during their time at Harvard.

Under a new group, Harvard Students

for Freedom, undergraduates have rallied against the Trump administration’s cuts to federal funding and threats to international enrollment, drawing crowds in and around Harvard Yard.

Joined by Harvard Undergraduate Association Co-Presidents Abdullah Shahid Sial ’27 and Caleb N. Thompson ’27, the group has both celebrated Harvard for its public challenge to Trump and condemned the University for a series of administrative actions scaling back diversity programming.

The swift mobilization of activists into a broader student group has been reminiscent of how Act on a Dream and the Harvard Student Power Network gained influence. But amid the tense climate of pro-Palestine activism, the group faced immediate questions of how closely aligned they would be to HOOP and the PSC — and whether they could control the narrative enough to choose.

Leo Gerdén ’25, an international student from Sweden and organizer of Students for Freedom, said he would like speakers at the group’s events to focus on academic freedom rather than the war in the Middle East.

“We ideally want them to stand by our message of freedom of speech, of academic freedom, rather than focus specifically on what is happening in the Middle East right now,” Gerdén said. “That is always going to be a balancing act.”

“If people want to show up and they have Palestine flags, there’s nothing that we can do about that,” he added.

But not all student protesters share the same vision. Some have argued that administrative interventions into the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Harvard Divinity School prove pro-Palestine speech has been specifically targeted.

“Why has the ongoing presidential show-

down between Donald Trump and Harvard President Alan Garber been framed as one between opposing forces?” pro-Palestine organizer Violet T.M. Barron ’26 said at an April rally sponsored by HOOP. “Harvard’s Zionism and Trump’s fascism are not at odds. They are two sides of the same coin.”

Gerdén said he has told other Students for Freedom organizers that “all of the messaging from our side should be stuff that 80 percent of campus agrees on.”

Yet some of the most committed attendees of their protests remain pro-Palestine activists, and organizers will have to assess which issues they think can unite the student body moving forward.

Sial, who has attended meetings with organizers and given a speech at a Students for Freedom event, said the presence of pro-Palestine voices at rallies does not inherently pose an issue for the group.

“Many of these protests were painted as, ‘Oh, some of it was a mistake by having a lot of pro-Palestinian voices as well,’” Sial said. “I wouldn’t say that’s an issue. I think that is inevitable. That happens. I think that is something which, if you think about it, that’s what the movement is fighting for — being able to say anything you want.”

He added that Students for Freedom leaders have “very, very varying views on the Israel-Palestine conflict,” but that it has not stopped them from uniting behind the group’s mission of protecting international students.

“This part of Harvard reflects a very mature side of the undergraduate body where people advocate for something and can work out their differences and stand in for a common cause,” Sial said.

caroline.hennigan@thecrimson.com cam.srivastava@thecrimson.com

Steinberg and colleagues unfurl a “Free Speech Includes Palestine” at the April rally for international students. NNENNA C. IJOMANTA — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
Protesters rally in Harvard Square in 2017 against Donald Trump’s order suspending visa applications from six majority Muslim countries. RYOSUKE TAKASHIMA — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

The Government Inquiries Hounding Harvard

UNDER INVESTIGATION. Harvard and its expanding legal arm are challenging 12 federal agencies in court. Beyond the high-profile lawsuits, Harvard faces at least 10 federal investigations.

Donald Trump has kept Harvard’s lawyers busy.

Over the past four months, the University has found itself facing at least 10 new federal investigations and fighting 12 federal agencies across two high-profile lawsuits. In Trump’s Washington, the federal bureaucracy has become a weapon to aim at higher education — and Harvard in particular.

“They’re engaged with the government on so many different fronts at the same time right now,” said Joyce P. Jacobsen ’82, a former president of Hobart College and William Smith College. “That obviously isn’t a situation that really has ever happened before.”

In response, Harvard has retained lawyers from white-shoe firms and mobilized its own legal office. Its two lawsuits accusing the Trump administration of unconstitutional retaliation — with more than $2.7 billion dollars and a quarter of the University’s student body at stake — have grabbed headlines nationwide.

Since the beginning of April, Harvard’s Office of the General Counsel has filled a newly-created position with an attorney who led an organization founded during Trump’s first term to take his agenda to court.

And the University has brought on an expanding team of outside lawyers, many with strong conservative networks and deep Washington ties, with 21 currently working on its two lawsuits against the Trump administration.

“They’ve hired the best and the brightest,” Stanley M. Brand, former general counsel to the House of Representatives, said. “Harvard isn’t lacking for legal talent — that’s for sure.”

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Harvard has handed over reams of documents to fed-

Feb. 3, 2025

The Department of Health and Human Services initially began investigating Harvard Medical School over pro-Palestine protests at its 2024 Class Day, and the probe was later expanded to a University-wide investigation of antisemitism. The HHS requested recordings of the HMS protests, and later reports from the task forces on antisemitism at Harvard Business School and the University.

eral agencies as other investigations continue to advance.

Though legal experts say that the investigations will likely be an uphill battle for the Trump administration, their outcomes are anything but certain in such a volatile political environment. And even if Harvard can maintain its innocence to the government, the inquiries may take their toll on Harvard’s reputation.

‘AN OPEN QUESTION’

Of the investigations opened into Harvard this semester, four accuse the University of failing to protect Jewish students and faculty from discrimination, and an overlapping

on international students, though the measure is currently blocked in court.

In those two cases, Harvard decided the government’s asks were unacceptable — and that it was on firm enough ground to sue.

Harvard has likewise indicated that it will take legal action if the Internal Revenue Service strips its nonprofit status, as Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have threatened.

It might be an easy victory: federal law prevents the president from ordering IRS investigations.

“It’s not to say that officials at IRS can’t, on their own, decide to proceed with some kind of tax enforcement effort,” said Brian D. Galle ’94-95, a tax law professor at Georgetown

They’re engaged with the government on so many fronts at the same time right now. That obviously isn’t a situation that really has ever happened before.

four claim that it discriminated on the basis of race or sex. Another three examine Harvard’s foreign ties or international students. Two accuse Harvard of anticompetitive admissions practices.

Some investigations have already had consequences. A joint task force between the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services, the General Services Administration, and the Education Department cut more than $2 billion in Harvard’s research funding after the University rejected a list of heavy-handed demands.

And the DHS revoked Harvard’s authorization to enroll international students after it refused to provide some requested records

Feb. 3, 2025

The Department of Justice announced a Federal Task Force to Combat AntiSemitism, including officials from the DOJ, HHS, and Department of Education. The task force later sent demands to Harvard on April 3 and April 11 asking for deep concessions, prompting the University’s first lawsuit against the Trump administration on April 15.

University. “But they can’t do it at the direction of the president.”

But most of the time, Harvard seems to have quietly complied. In a meeting with other Ivy League presidents in early April, Garber and the group came to a strategic consensus: they would comply with the requirements of civil rights investigations, but rebuff demands they saw as interfering with academic freedom.

The investigations into antisemitism and racial discrimination largely hinge on Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits race- and national origin-based discrimination at federally funded institutions. The Education Department and HHS, which

April 8, 2025

The Congressional Judiciary Committee is investigating whether Harvard and the other Ivies colluded to hike tuition prices and coordinated financial aid awards. The University was given an April 22 deadline, later extended to May 19, to provide information on admissions, tuition rates, and financial aid algorithms.

April 16, 2025

The Department of Homeland Security is investigating Harvard’s compliance with the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which enables it to enroll international students. The government revoked Harvard’s SEVP status on May 22 after the University allegedly only partially complied with the DHS’s first and second document deadlines, with deadlines of April 30 and May 14, prompting Harvard’s second lawsuit against the government.

jointly launched a probe into Harvard and the Harvard Law Review alleging anti-white discrimination, and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform all cited Title VI.

The government has broad authority to request evidence from Harvard. But legal scholars believe that actually proving the University violated Title VI by tolerating antisemitism could be a tall order for the Trump administration, especially since the provision sets the burden that Harvard must have intentionally discriminated against the affected groups.

“Discrimination has to be intentional,” said Richard Delgado, who teaches at Seattle University and specializes in free speech law. “It can’t just be statistical, it can’t be episodic.”

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is examining Harvard’s hiring practices and 13 fellowship programs for prioritizing applicants of color over “white, Asian, male, or straight employees, applicants, and training program participants,” instead cited Title VII, which prohibits employment discrimination.

Though discrimination under Title VII does not have to be intentional, legal scholars say that the data on the diversity of Harvard’s faculty is not enough to prove a pattern of discrimination.

The Trump administration’s contention that diversity programs represent a snub to white and male employees, rather than a way to equalize opportunity for disadvantaged applicants, is a sharp break with decades of precedent. Until January, federal nondiscrimination law required Harvard and other federal contractors to provide annual reports on diversity and information about their efforts to address employment barriers.

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice is investigating whether Harvard has complied with the Supreme Court’s ruling to end affirmative action, and has alleged that the use of racial preferences in Harvard’s admis-

April 17, 2025

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is investigating Harvard over allegations of violating civil rights laws, claiming that the University has a “long, consistent history of defending racial discrimination and antisemitic activities on campus.” The committee gave Harvard a May 1 deadline to provide a wide-ranging list of its communications on antisemitism, meritbased hiring and admissions reform, and cooperation with immigration officials.

sions may be defrauding the government under the False Claims Act.

Though little information has been provided about how the government would apply the law in this case, experts believe that any interpretation would be a new application of the 162 year-old provision.

“It’s a very contestable, open question as to whether the government will succeed in using the False Claims Act against schools like Harvard,” said Daniel G. Currell, a for-

mer deputy under secretary at the Department of Education during the first Trump administration.

inherently illegal, the government would have to prove that Harvard failed to disclose these relationships. The Education Department attempted a similar investigation in 2020.

The antitrust inquiry, opened by the House and Senate Judiciary Committee last month, alleges that Harvard and the seven other Ivy League institutions may have colluded to hike tuition costs using tools like enrollment management software and algorithms to calculate financial aid.

Without explicit evidence that the Ivies verbally or contractually agreed to the practices under scrutiny, like feeding applicant information into a shared database to maximize tuition revenue, it may be hard for the government to prove collusion.

If each institution was acting in its own best interests, coincidences — like using similar financial aid algorithms — may not be evidence of illegal activity, said Boston University law professor Keith N. Hylton, who specializes in antitrust law.

A PUNISHING PROCESS

Even where the powers of the federal government to punish Harvard are limited, it has broad investigative authority — which may leave the University doing damage control.

Harvard has been asked to fork over information on an unprecedented scale — including its messages with the College Board, research collaborations with Chinese- and Iranian-funded scholars, drafts of its reports on campus antisemitism, and a list of employees who witnessed pro-Palestine protests at Harvard Medical School’s 2024 Commencement.

been more “cooperative” and “forthcoming” with congressional investigations. The University turned over tens of thousands of pages of records to a House-wide antisemitism investigation in 2024.

“The congressional investigations are legal, constitutional and permitted,” Cole said.

But for executive agencies, the bar to launch an investigation is much higher, which may warrant a level of defiance.

“It may well make sense to file lawsuits and oppose those investigations, while potentially at the same time cooperating with congressional investigations, because it’s really two separate legal arenas,” Cole said.

Still, without penalties from the relevant agencies, experts say that Harvard cannot challenge the launch of these investigations. And there’s little it can do to contain Congress’ ability to publicize confidential documents and air the University’s dirty laundry.

When the House Committee on Education and the Workforce released its 325-page report on campus antisemitism at Harvard, for example, it exposed the tense internal deliberations of the University’s top officials. According to New York University constitutional law professor Peter M. Shane ’74, federal investigations that expose sensitive material may be a penalty of their own for Harvard through damaging its reputation.

“For people who are targeted by the federal government for any reason, the investigatory process is as much a punishment as a possibility of some eventual civil sanction,” Shane said.

April 17, 2025

The Department of Education is investigating whether Harvard inaccurately disclosed foreign gifts valued at more than $250,000, which it is required to report under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act. The letter gave Harvard 30 days to release a list of its financial ties with foreign sources, communications with foreign governments, and correspondence about expelled foreign students and faculty.

The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and Department of Education are each investigating Harvard’s relationship with foreign donors. Though Currell, who worked on Section 117 cases during his time in the government, explained that collaboration or funding from foreign sources, such as governments, is not

April

25, 2025

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is investigating whether Harvard discriminated against “white, Asian, male, or straight employees, applicants, and training program participants” in its hiring practices and 13 career development programs. The commission did not disclose what materials they seek from Harvard, but the EEOC has subpoena power if the University does not comply.

April

Pennsylvania State University professor L. Lance Cole, who studies the law of congressional investigations, said Congress retains broader investigative authority than the executive branch, allowing for a lower bar to request materials from Harvard — which he says explain why Harvard has

28, 2025

The Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services are investigating Harvard and the Harvard Law Review over allegations that the student publication discriminated against white applicants and authors in reviewing article submissions. The departments will examine Harvard’s financial relationship and oversight powers with the journal.

And though experts say that Harvard has a strong chance of beating the Trump administration in both lawsuits, the University still faces three and a half more years of Trump.

“Even if Harvard wins the lawsuit with respect to particular actions that the government has taken, as long as President Trump’s in office and continues this policy, Harvard will remain in jeopardy,” Cole said. The Harvard Crimson

akshaya.ravi@thecrimson.com annabel.yu@thecrimson.com

May 12, 2025

The Department of Justice is investigating whether Harvard has complied with the Supreme Court ruling to end affirmative action, using the False Claims Act to allege that Harvard’s admission policies may be defrauding the government. The government has given the University 20 days to hand over documents and 30 days to testify.

May 19, 2025

The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party is investigating Harvard’s partnerships with CCP-tied organizations, claiming that the University is using Department of Defense funding to partner with Chinese researchers affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army. Harvard has until June 2 to provide details on its collaborators with Chinese and Iranian entities.

BY XINYI C. ZHANG — CRIMSON DESIGNER
Harvard’s many investigations.
CATHERINE H. FENG — CRIMSON DESIGNER, AKSHAYA RAVI — CRIMSON WRITER

With Clay’s Exit, HUPD Is Left Fractured

UNIVERSITY POLICE. Victor A. Clay joined Harvard’s police department with a mandate to reform it after scandal. Behind his sudden resignation is a police force that current and former officers described s splintered, demoralized — and with no clear path forward.

CATHERINE H. FENG — CRIMSON DESIGNER

Victor A. Clay’s tenure as chief of the Harvard University Police Department was meant to be a new chapter for the embattled department.

The University’s longtime police chief, Francis D. “Bud” Riley, had retired in 2020 amid reports of widespread racism, sexism, and favoritism within HUPD. Outcry from students snowballed. An external review, commissioned by Harvard leadership, recommended deep, structural changes to the notoriously rigid department. And Clay, brought on from the California Institute of Technology, was meant to correct the course.

“At a moment of national reckoning about the relationship between police departments and the communities that they serve and protect, we are thrilled to welcome a leader who understands the challenges and opportunities of reimagining public safety,” then-University President Lawrence S. Bacow and Executive Vice President Katie Lapp wrote in an email announcing Clay’s appointment to lead the force.

Clay quickly restructured senior leadership and committed to bringing transparency to a department that had long since been at odds with its student body. While HUPD continued to draw criticism from student protesters and activists, Clay’s department also saw successes — instituting structural reforms and peacefully monitoring last spring’s encampment without arrests.

But when Clay quietly cleaned out his office on May 8 — leaving his position with no explanation — the chapter came to an abrupt and unceremonious end.

For many inside the department, Clay’s sudden resignation did not come as a surprise. Behind closed doors, HUPD was racked by an exodus of officers, legal threats, allegations of a toxic workplace, and labor disputes. In lawsuits and legal threats reviewed by The Crimson, officers allege Clay engaged in unfair hiring practices and unprofessional communication with his subordinates while refusing to meet with officers.

By early April, the union representing Harvard’s patrol officers held a virtually unprecedented vote of no confidence in the chief. Nearly every officer present voted against him.

Interviews with three current and former officers, alongside hundreds of pages of emails, text messages, court documents,

and unredacted legal filings obtained by The Crimson, detail a fractured police department that Clay struggled to lead.

“Since July 2021, my goals were to support and improve the department, to address the longstanding concerns of the community we serve, and to ultimately keep the campus and its diverse community safe. I believe that we have begun that journey and have made significant strides toward those goals. But I also knew that the change process would be difficult,” Clay wrote in an email announcing his immediate resignation.

“I believe it is in the best interest to give new leadership an opportunity to continue moving the department forward,” he wrote. Clay did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this article.

Hours later, Harvard Executive Vice President Meredith L. Weenick ’90 thanked Clay for his service in an email to HUPD staff. A University spokesperson declined to comment on the department’s internal turmoil.

Now, as Harvard embarks on yet another search for a leader capable of reforming its tumultuous police force, its next chief will be tasked with resolving the tensions

A NEW ERA FOR HUPD

Clay was handed a department plagued by public distrust and allegations of police brutality and racism, tasked with increasing student trust. As he worked to institutionalize reforms from the 2020 external review — as well as implementing his own,

I believe that we have begun that journey and have made significant strides toward those goals. But I also knew that the change process would be difficult.

variably successful initiatives — the chief appeared to make progress where his predecessors fell short.

HUPD drew backlash — and some of the earliest calls for its abolition — over several incidents of alleged racial profiling

under Chief Paul E. Johnson in the early 1990s. In 1992, nine years into Johnson’s tenure, the Harvard Black Students Association detailed four police stops it alleged were racially motivated in a flyer titled “On the Harvard Plantation.”

More than two decades later, policing across the country came under scrutiny during the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 — and HUPD was no exception.

Student groups like the Harvard Alliance Against Campus Cops began to call for the department’s abolition, pointing to disproportionate arrests of Black individuals logged in HUPD’s online workload and crime dashboard.

Clay repeatedly engaged with anti-police protesters, moving to close a HUPD substation in Mather House after students and faculty raised concern about police presence in an underclassmen dormitory. And as pro-Palestine protesters regularly criticized the department’s surveillance, Clay defended students’ right to protest during last spring’s encampment in Harvard Yard.

Despite Clay’s efforts to engage productively with HUPD’s critics, lapses in emergency communications consistently chal-

that proliferated under Clay.
XINYI C. ZHANG — CRIMSON DESIGNER
Officers in the Harvard University Police Department alleged Clay had not effectively led the department. MAE T. WEIR — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

lenged the department’s credibility.

HUPD was met with widespread outcry over the handling of a 2023 swatting incident in Leverett House, where four Black undergraduates were held at gunpoint by Harvard police after a false 911 call sent armed officers dressed in riot gear into an undergraduate suite.

Clay had proposed a plan for unarmed responders just a year prior to the swatting incident, but negotiations over its implementation stalled and the proposal never bore fruit.

The department saw another, more recent disconnect after a 30-minute delay in notifying students of shots fired in Harvard Square. With limited details conveyed in untimely email notices, fear and distrust reverberated across the student body.

HUPD spokesperson Steven G. Catalano, who is responsible for sending emergency notifications to the student body, declined a request for comment on the April incident.

Still, Clay’s promises for transparency and accountability held promise, with a majority of Harvard undergraduates reporting they trusted the department throughout his tenure in The Crimson’s senior survey.

But tensions within HUPD flared behind closed doors, as officers left a department which was marred by allegations of toxicity and ineffective leadership.

‘IT’S A MASS EXODUS’

Within months of arriving at HUPD, Clay restructured much of the department’s leadership: demoting several of Riley’s top officers and bringing in new faces to help helm the University’s police.

But his hiring decisions — which three officers allege elevated younger, less experienced officers to senior positions to the chagrin of longer-serving staff — depleted morale and opened the department to legal scrutiny.

Robert P. Harrington, a 75-year-old former HUPD lieutenant, sued the department in March for allegedly passing him over for a promotion to captain based on his age in 2022. He alleged that the department instead favored “four younger, less qualified, less experienced candidates” — John F. Fulkerson, Ryan J. Stanton, Amy Divirgilio Fanikos, and Jacobo “Jake” Negron.

In the months leading up to Clay’s reorganization, Harrington claimed the chief refused to meet with him. Though Clay originally touted an open-door policy, officers allege this was one of many times

where Clay cut out communication with his staff.

“On August 17, 2021, Chief Clay, after confirming and scheduling with Lieutenant Harrington a meeting with all of the staff of the Criminal Investigative Unit, cancelled the meeting and never rescheduled it,” the lawsuit reads. “At this time Lieutenant Harrington began to notice and experience negative treatment from Chief Clay.”

According to Harrington’s lawsuit, Clay refused to meet with him to discuss day-today logistics, as well as interpersonal matters on multiple occasions.

“This was a stark contrast to what occurred in the ordinary course of business under former Chief Riley,” lawyers for Harrington wrote in a court filing.

resenting HUPD’s patrol officers — voted “no confidence” in Clay.

In response to a question asking if Clay has “been an effective leader of the Police Department,” all 35 officers voted no. 34 officers also voted that Clay has not “managed the Department in an open, ethical and fair manner” or “shown respect and appreciation for the work performed” by the HUPA’s members.

On the same vote, 31 officers also responded that Clay has not “fairly and appropriately handled the promotional process and/or specialty assignments” for union members, according to an announcement by the HUPA’s executive board that was shared with department leadership and obtained by The Crimson.

“None of the responders believed that

None of the responders believed that the current chief has been an effective leader, or that he could effectively lead the Department in either the short or long term.
The board of the Harvard University Police Association, describing the results of a survey of members

Three officers interviewed by The Crimson said that, by the end of his tenure, Clay rarely showed face in the office.

A former officer, who served in the department for more than five years, said he left the department after increasing frustrations with Clay’s leadership. He said that Clay did not grant him an exit interview prior to his departure.

“There are a lot of good officers that were there for the right reasons. And it’s a mass exodus right now,” the officer, who was granted anonymity over fears of professional retaliation, said.

More than a dozen officers have left HUPD since 2021, some citing Clay’s disengaged leadership as the driving force behind their departures.

Martin E. Fay, a former sergeant who retired from HUPD in 2023 after nearly two decades, similarly said Clay was rarely accessible, but that his views of the chief were largely neutral.

“I didn’t have any real feelings about him — against him or for him,” Fay said. “He wasn’t around very much.

Concerns over Clay’s leadership came to a head in April, when the Harvard University Police Association — the union rep -

the current chief has been an effective leader, or that he could effectively lead the Department in either the short or long term,” the HUPA’s board wrote.

DISPUTES, COMPLAINTS, AND LEGAL THREATS

Even before officers issued their vote of no confidence in Clay, the department was already dealing with lawsuit threats and a host of complaints filed with the Peace Officers Standard and Training Committee — a state regulatory body that oversees police.

The POST Commission, formed in 2020, is a board tasked with regulating the certification, training, and disciplinary records for all officers in the state. Department chiefs or administrators, as well as members of the public, can submit complaints against individual officers. The complaints are then recorded in a state database without naming the complainant.

According to publicly available data from the POST Commission, there have been eight sustained complaints against four separate HUPD officers since 2021 — meaning that the commission found there

was sufficient evidence to substantiate the allegations. After the complaints were filed, officers received written or verbal warnings for their misconduct.

Fulkerson is the subject of three of these complaints, two of which claim that he “maliciously targeted” Harrington in a March 2023 roll call meeting. A third POST Commission complaint was filed against Fulkerson in June 2023, alleging that he “failed to effectively manage personnel investigating the sexual assault” and did not “respond to an incident according to standard procedure.”

That complaint refers to an alleged dispute between Fulkerson and former detective Kelsey L. Whelihan regarding Fulkerson’s handling of a sexual assault investigation involving a Harvard undergraduate and a non-Harvard student.

Fulkerson said that the POST Commission complaints were “inaccurate and fraudulent” in a Friday statement. While the complaints are now closed, Fulkerson received verbal and written warnings over the allegations.

Whelihan did not respond to a request for comment.

Eventually, investigators with the Ed Davis Company — a private security firm headquartered in Boston — drafted a report on the handling of the assault at Harvard’s request, according to Domenic Paolini, Fulkerson’s lawyer.

But a November 2024 complaint with the National Labor Relations Board filed by the HUPA claims that Harvard has “failed and refused to furnish the Union” with the report since the end of October. The unredacted complaint, obtained by The Crimson, accused Harvard of “failing and refusing to bargain collectively and in good faith” by withholding the report from the investigation.

The University denied the HUPA’s allegations in their mid-April answer to the NLRB complaint. The unredacted answer, obtained by The Crimson, claimed that the investigation was not related to HUPA’s collective bargaining abilities. The complaint will advance to a September hearing in front of an NLRB panel.

Representatives for the Ed Davis Company did not respond to repeated requests for comment. A University spokesperson declined to comment on the NLRB filing.

The situation escalated beyond the POST complaint and NLRB filing — eventually pushing Fulkerson to threaten a lawsuit of his own.

Paolini sent a letter on behalf of Fulkerson to Clay, Whelihan, and four other HUPD and Harvard officials threatening to

PAGE DESIGN BY XINYI C. ZHANG — CRIMSON DESIGNER

sue them on November 18, just two weeks after the NLRB complaint was filed. While a lawsuit has not been filed, a copy of the letter obtained by The Crimson includes allegations that Clay fostered a toxic workplace environment.

Two officers confirmed that the letter, which contains more than 150 pages of text messages allegedly sent between Clay and Fulkerson over the course of seven months, was widely circulated throughout the department.

Texts from a user labeled as Clay aired frustrations with individual department staff and HUPD at large in Fulkerson’s letter.

“I was sent here to fix this clown show. I am not to be blamed for the idiocy and dumbfuckery that goes on here. This is you and Denis and Jake and everyone

else,” Clay allegedly wrote to Fulkerson in March, referencing the current interim HUPD chief Denis G. Downing and former captain Jacobo Negron. Neither responded to a request for comment on the message.

“If you were here before August 2021 this is your fault. Not mine. Circus Clown,” the message continued.

The text messages later turned personal as the user labeled as Clay called Fulkerson a “wise guy” and “Proud Boy” in March messages.

Clay did not respond to a request for comment on these messages.

Fulkerson has not yet filed suit due to Clay and Whelihan’s resignation — but still intends to file, according to Paolini.

“Clay’s resignation most likely will affect the facts and claims of Fulkerson’s

complaint. If suit had already been filed, the complaint would have had to been amended many times to include new facts and new claims,” Paolini wrote in a Monday statement.

Paolini noted that Fulkerson also intends to file suit against Harvard, which was not named in the original letter. A University spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on the threatened lawsuit.

The officer has since upped his legal team, bringing on three attorneys from Nesenoff & Miltenberg.

The New York-based Title IX firm previously represented a Harvard Business School professor accused of data fraud in her suit against the University, as well as Harvard’s former women’s ice hockey coach who was accused of fostering a toxic environment among players and is now

suing Harvard for discrimination.

With the threat of a lawsuit hanging over his head, Clay leaves behind a department in disarray — a reality that HUPD’s new interim chief, Denis G. Downing, must confront.

Downing steps into a role that he knows well. After Riley left the department in 2020, Downing assumed the position of interim chief during the University’s extensive eight-month search for a new chief. His main task: implementing the recommendations from Bacow’s external review. Though the University has stayed silent on its plans to embark on another search, Downing will once again have to lead a fractured department — rebuilding trust and morale across the ranks.

Clay talks with HUPD officers in the Smith Campus Center. JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Year in Photos

2024-25. The Crimson looks back at the academic year in photos, from leadership change and campus demonstrations to public confrontations over science, speech, and student organizing — all alongside the day-to-day of student

FRANK S. ZHOU — CRIMSON
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JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER J. SELLERS HILL — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
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BY JINA H. CHOE— CRIMSON DESIGNER
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HOUSING DAY March 2025
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Rakesh Khurana’s ‘Transformative’ Deanship

END OF AN ERA. For Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana, leading Harvard’s undergraduate school through a chaotic decade meant becoming a campus personality — and bringing a sense of humor.

After 11 years as Harvard College dean, Rakesh Khurana is unmistakable on campus.

The Harvard College mission statement

is his mantra; he recites it to start every meeting and finds ways to declare the College a “transformative” experience in just about every conversation.

It would hardly be Harvard College Housing Day without Khurana making a viral cameo in a dance circle or being photographed with a suggestive sign

(“Big Trunk Energy,” featuring Eliot House’s mastodon mascot, was 2025’s winner).

And then there’s the memes.

In 2023, after Harvard lost The Game to Yale, Khurana made a now-infamous Instagram post — on his hands and knees alongside dogs donning the two schools’

merch. On Election Day 2024, a groggy-looking Khurana with an “I Voted Today!” sticker drew bipartisan support in the comment section: blue hearts from the Harvard College Democrats, and an American flag from the Harvard Republican Club.

In short, he has a personality.

“I always encouraged, when I was hiring deans, for them — first and foremost — to be themselves,” Michael D. Smith, the former Faculty of Arts and Sciences dean who hired Khurana in 2014, said. “Dean Khurana was exactly that.”

“He’s been a fantastic College dean,” he added.

But behind his easygoing persona, Khurana, who has worked under four Harvard presidents and three Faculty of Arts and Sciences deans, has steered the College through one of its most turbulent periods ever.

From 2016 to 2020, Khurana led the unsuccessful fight to make the College’s single-gender social organizations go coed by sanctioning their members. Then, he oversaw the College’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic — managing the shift to remote learning and the eventual return to campus.

Of late, he’s assumed a higher-profile role — as one of Harvard’s public faces as it pow-

tion’s attacks.

Khurana, who departs the deanship next month, has reshaped what it means — and looks like — to be the dean of Harvard College. In the more than a decade he spent at the College’s helm, he made the role more social, public, and spontaneous — all while advising his fellow administrators behind the scenes.

‘CALL ME RAKESH’

Khurana, the College’s first dean to moonlight as an Instagram influencer, has posted more than 2,000 times and boasts over 23,000 followers. By the end of their time at the College, hundreds of students per class can proudly point to pictures of themselves in one of his many photo dumps.

Instagram is just one part of Khurana’s strategy for reaching students. He frequents dining halls for chance meals with undergraduates and regularly stops to chat with students passing through Harvard Yard.

“He insisted that we all call him Rakesh,” Salman Haque ’18, another Cabot alum, said. “I remember friends in other Houses would find it amusing how everyone in Cabot would say ‘Rakesh.’”

Still, students said Khurana knew how to be serious when he needed to be.

I always encouraged, when I was hiring deans, for them — first and foremost — to be themselves. Dean Khurana was exactly that.

ers through one news cycle after another. He testified in favor of affirmative action in the Supreme Court, met with donors to reassure them as Claudine Gay’s Harvard presidency publicly collapsed, and has backed Harvard’s resistance to the Trump administra-

“A lot of what I’m hoping this does is encourage people to walk into University Hall [and] feel like it’s not some kind of cordoned-off place, but rather that it’s also a place that students should feel really comfortable with,” Khurana said in 2014 of his foray into social media.

Khurana’s reputation for affability predates his College deanship — back to when he and his wife, Stephanie R. Khurana, became the faculty deans of Cabot House in 2010. Christopher B. Cruz ’18, a former Cabot resident, said Khurana and his wife welcomed incoming sophomores into the House by “instantly knowing everyone’s name” on arrival.

Even as dean, Khurana insisted on keeping things casual.

Daniel V. “Danny” Banks ’17, the UC’s vice president in 2016, remembered how Khurana maintained his composure even when students yelled at him over controversial issues in meetings.

Banks described Khurana as an active listener — so much so that he inspired Banks, now a practicing lawyer, to adopt his vigorous note-taking strategy. Khurana kept dozens of Moleskine notepads in his office, Banks said.

“He’s processing things that you’re saying,” Banks said. “He brought us into the conversation like we were on equal footing with the President’s wishes — with the faculty’s wishes. That is why I think that I loved working with him so much.”

SANCTIONS SPARK OUTRAGE

But Khurana’s tenure hasn’t been without its controversies. He entered the role with a vision for transforming undergraduate life — and pursued it with conviction.

Two years into his tenure, Khurana went

Cruz — who was Cabot House’s representative to the Undergraduate Council, the College’s student government at the time — said he could “very easily” eat breakfast with Khurana, laughing with him, and then watch him tackle issues like final club sanctions in meetings that same day. (To Cruz, Khurana is still “Rakesh.”)

30 PAGE DESIGN BY CATHERINE H. FENG — CRIMSON DESIGNER
The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2025
Khurana sits in his University Hall office for a May 20 interview with The Crimson. ELYSE C. GONCALVES — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
Michael D. Smith
Former Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean
Rakesh Khurana greets students on move-in day in fall 2024. J. SELLERS HILL — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

to war with the College’s final clubs — mostly exclusive, single-gender social organizations that are central and often controversial fixtures of the school’s social scene.

The more established clubs only take men, and, at the time, a Harvard task force report found that students involved in the final club scene reported higher rates of sexual assault.

Khurana deemed their gender-exclusive policies discriminatory and wrote in 2014 that they were “rife with power imbalances.”

With then-Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust’s backing, Khurana sanctioned members of unrecognized single-gender social organizations — banning them from holding leadership roles in recognized Harvard clubs. The move impacted final clubs and the few fraternities and sororities on campus.

The administration’s actions immediately drew outrage from students, alumni, and faculty, who accused Khurana of overstepping his powers as dean.

“It was obvious Khurana had no jurisdiction over these students’ private lives,” attorney Harvey A. Silverglate said. Silverglate was one of several lawyers retained by the Fly Club, one of the all-male final clubs, after the sanctions were announced.

“It was foolish, it was overreach — vast overreach,” Silverglate added.

The sanctions roused the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, causing University Hall’s Fac-

ulty Room to overflow as faculty members turned out to debate taking a stand against them. Some professors felt the sanctions discriminated against students who joined lawful organizations, while others felt Khurana and Faust had encroached on the FAS’ authority to regulate social life.

Harvard dropped the sanctions in June 2020 after an independent Supreme Court

I wanted my family to be proud of me, and I wanted the students to feel like, even when we didn’t agree, that we were on the shared journey together .

Rakesh Khurana

Harvard College Dean

ruling established a broader interpretation of gender discrimination that the University believed was at odds with the policy.

Despite the policy’s unceremonious end — only two final clubs remained co-ed in the long-run — Khurana moved on. Even as the policy, widely seen as Khurana’s brainchild, unraveled, those around him said he not only kept his credibility intact but came out stronger.

“You just try to do the right thing, and it’s not always going to be popular,” Khurana

said when asked if he regretted taking up the issue.

Dean of Arts and Humanities Sean D. Kelly, then a rank-and-file faculty member, said Khurana was able to emerge unscathed from such a polarizing issue because his “heart was in the right place.”

“Hardly any bridges were burned as a result of that quite controversial thing,” Kelly said. “That’s, I think, a testament to his ability to maintain relationships with people, even through quite difficult disagreements.”

Kelly added that Khurana is skilled at navigating “detailed and dense” conversations, even when stress is high.

“In meetings this year, there have been times when there’s real legitimate concern about budgetary issues, financial issues, ‘How are we going to keep the institution running?’” Kelly said. “He’s been able to say, ‘Look, we’re going to make these decisions, and we have to, but we’re not going to make them absent this understanding of what we’re about.’”

Khurana said that, despite the challenges of the last 11 years, he still shows up to work enthusiastically each day.

“Sometimes, in the evenings, I would be like, ‘Oh, that was tough,’” he said. “But in the morning, I would be like, ‘Hello, handsome,’ and everything felt new to me and fresh and possible and exciting.”

“As dean, I’ve tried to do the best I could with what I had, and I wanted my family to be proud of me, and I wanted the students to

Jan. 22, 2014

Then-Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Michael D. Smith announced that Rakesh Khurana, a Sociology professor serving as faculty dean of Cabot House, would be the next dean of Harvard College.

May 6, 2016

Accepting Khurana’s recommendations, then-University President Drew Gilpin Faust announced sanctions on single-gender final clubs and Greek organizations, bringing about sweeping changes for organizations historically seen as fixtures of the school’s social scene.

March 10, 2020

After months of meeting with other College and University administrators to create contingency plans for the emerging pandemic, Khurana sent an email to undergraduates telling them they had to vacate campus within five days.

June 29, 2020

Harvard dropped its social group sanctions — which had prevented final club members from holding leadership positions in extracurricular groups or receiving fellowships — as a result of a Supreme Court decision on sex discrimination.

June 29, 2023

The Supreme Court severely curtailed Harvard’s affirmative action admissions policy, deeming the processes discriminatory and requiring the University to overhaul their use of race in decision-making. Khurana later said he was “disappointed” the College could not use race-conscious admissions practices.

May 17, 2024

The Harvard College Administrative Board, chaired by Khurana, suspended five students and put more than 20 students on probation for their involvement in a 20-day pro-Palestine encampment in Harvard Yard.

August 29, 2024

Khurana announced that he would step down at the end of the 2024-25 academic year, capping an 11-year tenure as Dean of Harvard College.

Khurana observes students staging the spring 2024 Harvard Yard encampment. FRANK S. ZHOU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
Rakesh Khurana acts with Psychology professor Steven A. Pinker in a 2015 parody of Tschaikovsky’s “Swan Lake.” ALANA M. STEINBERG — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

feel like, even when we didn’t agree, that we were on the shared journey together and we were each trying to do the best for each other,” Khurana added.

‘THE SAME PERSON IN EVERY PLACE’

In moments of campus tension, Khurana regularly faced public scrutiny from faculty and students. Sometimes, he built trust by hearing people out — even when they strongly disagreed with him.

Government professor Steven Levitsky publicly condemned the Harvard College Administrative Board’s decision to suspend students involved in the 20-day pro-Palestine encampment in Harvard Yard last spring — a decision that, as chair of the Ad Board, Khurana took part in. But despite his criticisms, Levitsky said Khurana always engaged with his perspective.

“I strongly disagreed with him. I let him have it,” said Levitsky, who served on the faculty advisory group for the College dean search that chose Khurana. “To his credit, he always listened. He always picked the phone. He always dialogued.”

Others said that Khurana’s judgment, though sometimes misunderstood, has been sound. David I. Laibson ’88, the faculty dean of Lowell House, said that he found Khurana’s judgment to be “excellent” based on his “insider’s view” into Khurana’s decision-making.

“I think often the doubt that someone might have relates to the information gap between what Rakesh knows — often something that is confidential — and what the external observer knows,” Laibson said.

The Ad Board’s disciplinary actions against pro-Palestine protesters were criticized by many faculty and students as being too harsh and out of sync with precedent. The FAS subsequently voted to add 13 students — who had been suspended or placed on academic probation — back to the list of graduates, and the Harvard Corporation, the University’s top governing body, ultimately had to step in to settle the matter. Faculty who attended the FAS meeting recalled Khurana was visibly upset at their attempt to overrule the Ad Board.

Phoebe G. Barr ’24, one of the seniors initially barred from graduating, said Khurana’s desire to connect with students rang hollow when he sanctioned student protesters.

“It didn’t feel like he was very present or concerned about his students in that moment,” Barr said, referring to when she was informed of the decision to prevent her from graduating.

Similarly, Clyve Lawrence ’25-’27 told The

Crimson in August that Khurana seems to retreat into the background whenever there are issues surrounding student activism.

“It’s ironic because he’s visible when it comes to student life, but then when it comes to decision-making over things like divestment, he kind of disappears,” Lawrence said. “When it comes to meeting with students about their concerns being doxxed, he kind of disappears.”

College spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo wrote that “Dean Khurana has regularly spoken with student activists to hear their thoughts including as recently as this semester and remains open to those conversations.”

“The College took many steps to support students who were doxed, under Dean Khurana’s leadership, including setting up a task force, meeting with students one-one-one and in groups, standing up a digital safety toolkit with HUIT, working with HUPD to talk to police departments in hometowns of students where the trucks showed up, working with the Mignone Center for Career Success to speak with employers and advocate on behalf of students, among many other steps,” he added.

Whether students or faculty have agreed with him or not, Khurana said his tenure brings him peace because he fought for the issues that mattered to him — and acted based on his interpretation of the Harvard College mission statement.

“I tried to listen to feedback and criticism and always find the truth in it,” Khurana said in a May interview with The Crimson. “But at the same time, when you lead, your job is not to be a weathervane.”

In addition to working with students and

I tried to engage with our alumni community and our donor community the same way I try to engage with our students and our faculty.

stepped up with Rakesh coming into the position,” Smith said. “I was like, ‘Yeah, let’s let Dean Khurana go out and talk to them.’”

Khurana’s fundraising abilities proved especially useful after donations dropped sharply following criticism of Harvard’s response to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel and to campus protests over the war in Gaza. Several major donors paused contributions to the University over what they saw as a failed response to antisemitism on campus.

Khurana was one of several Harvard administrators who were deployed on trips to meet with parents, donors, and alumni to allay their fears about the state of the University and raise funds to offset the University’s losses. When asked about his travel, Khurana said it wasn’t about the money for him.

“I always felt that what I was doing was not raising money in as much as trying to share with people the mission of the College and what we were doing to get advice and feedback from people — to answer questions about what was happening,” Khurana said.

“I tried to engage with our alumni community and our donor community the same way I try to engage with our students and our faculty,” he added. “I try to be the same person in every place and say the same things because I think it’s just easier to remember the truth.”

Since 2021, Khurana has tried to spearhead an initiative on intellectual vitality at the College to promote civil discourse on contentious topics. Economics professors Jason Furman ’92 and David Laibson both said separately that Khurana often fundraised on the issue, and Furman said Khurana told him donors were excited by it.

commitment that our alumni and other supporters find reassuring as they think about the future of the University,” he added.

BACK TO ‘THE BUREAUCRATIC MACHINE’

After more than a decade as dean, Khurana is ready for a change of pace.

Next fall, he will leave the University’s bureaucracy to instead teach a 9 a.m. course titled “The Bureaucratic Machine: A User’s Guide to Modern Society,” in which he will examine the growth of bureaucracy since the late 19th century.

He plans to use his experiences in various bureaucracies throughout his career — including the College — to inform class discussions.

“Very rarely do people not leave my office asking for a rule or a new office, or a new assistant dean, or some new specialized activity,” Khurana said in a February interview. “Part of what I’m really interested in and have been writing about is, ‘why does that happen?’”

“I hope somebody will sign up,” he quipped.

Khurana had initially hoped to return to teaching last year, but he decided to stay on as dean for one more year at the request of the University’s senior leaders — who were already dealing with significant turnover within their ranks.

In December, Khurana started drafting a letter with some advice for his successor. Though he did not know who would get the job at the time, he already knew what advice he wanted to share.

faculty, Khurana was one of the first College deans to extensively work with another key constituency: donors.

Michael Smith, the former FAS dean, said Khurana took on a much larger role in fundraising than previous College deans.

“I got to see a couple of different individuals in the College deanship position and they were doing some fundraising, but that really

“There’s few people as skilled as he is in describing to folks outside the University what we do, what our values are, and it turns out, when you know what we actually do and hear our actual values, most people are excited to support that mission,” Laibson said.

“Dean Khurana’s embrace of intellectual vitality as a major mission of the College in 2021, I think, is a great example of both his core values and the type of mission-based

“You shouldn’t do this job if you don’t love working with students,” Khurana said in February. “You won’t get the fullness out of the role, because the students are our purpose.”

“Life is too short, and we’re too lucky to be in a place like this not to enjoy the work we’re doing,” he added.

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

Rakesh Khurana Harvard College Dean
Khurana and Soleil E. Golden ’24 at a Safra Center for Ethics event in March. The panel was on “Campus Ethics in the Digital Era.” PAVAN V. THAKKAR — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

How Garber Became the Face of Anti-Trump Resistance

HARVARD’S MEDIA STRATEGY. After not making any media appearances for more than four months, Harvard President Alan M. Garber ‘76 has forcefully emerged from his silence.

The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2025

Students leaving morning classes on April 23 may have been able to witness a strange sight, even for Harvard — University President Alan M. Garber ’76, strolling through Tercentenary Theater with NBC Host Lester Holt, flocked by a camera crew.

The exclusive, a week after Garber declared public resistance against the Trump administration, was his first in-camera interview since becoming president and his first public media appearance of any kind in more than four months.

Despite his period of silence, the TV one-on-one with Holt kicked off an unusually active media campaign for the Harvard president. Garber gave interviews to the Boston Globe, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal in the following weeks, framing the University’s fight as one for the future of higher education and democracy.

“We cannot compromise basic principles like defense of our First Amendment rights,” Garber told Holt.

It was a sharp departure from the strategy of silence Garber had adopted for the semester after telling faculty last year that the University’s communication strategy needed a remodel.

In the preceding months, Garber and most Harvard schools deans drew back from interviews with The Crimson, the only financially independent news publication that administrators had agreed to regular interviews with. For decades, national outlets have only granted exceedingly rare interviews.

The strategy — neither acknowledged nor explained — reflected a University administration scarred by a public relations disaster that had slowly built to Gay’s resignation in January 2024, and a new president determined not to repeat past mistakes.

A University spokesperson declined to comment for this article.

A TRADITION OF ACCESS

Harvard has not always had such a complicated relationship with the media.

When former Crimson President Daniel A. Swanson ’74 reported on Harvard’s administration in the 1970s, he had an amicable, even personal relationship with then-Harvard President Derek C. Bok. Swanson knew Bok’s home phone number, and frequently talked to his wife, Sissela Bok, who would often answer the phone. Sissela Bok even initially agreed to allow a Crimson reporter to spend time at her house during parties and meetings, before her husband decided against it.

Bok briefly suspended the interviews over a dispute with The Crimson in 1986, but he reinstated the practice the same year.

Every Harvard president since Bok has sat down for regular interviews with The Crimson until the end of 2024. The University’s provost, school deans, and chair of the highest governing board also regularly agreed to wide ranging onthe-record conversations about administrative policy and controversies during their tenures.

Harry R. Lewis ’68, who served as dean of Harvard College from 1995 to 2003, said that his relationship with the media was far more “friendly and quite informal”

during his tenure than he perceives it to be today.

“I’m told that faculty are now briefed on dealing with the press. There was never a faculty meeting in my day that I can remember where we were briefed on how to deal with the press,” he said. “I don’t ever remember being told that I shouldn’t take a call from a reporter.”

A University spokesperson declined to comment on whether faculty members are instructed not to speak with journalists.

When the Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, undertook reforms in the 2010s, it committed to engage even more with the media by committing the senior fellow to biannual interviews with The Crimson and Harvard Magazine, according to Corporation Senior Fellow William F. “Bill” Lee ’72.

“We began at the time to, twice a year, have the senior fellow do interviews — once in December, once in May before Commencement, with you, with the Gazette, with the Magazine — and I actually did them,” Lee said. The Harvard Gazette is a division in the University’s communications office, and the Harvard

Magazine is an editorially independent paper owned by a nonprofit affiliate of Harvard.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, however, Lee drew back from interviews. He explained in a September interview with The Crimson that “there were so many things going on to address the pandemic that those twice a year interviews just fell by the wayside.”

The regular interview cadence did not resume after the pandemic.

Lee’s predecessor Penny S. Pritzker ’81 — the current senior fellow — has given just three interviews since taking office in July 2022. She declined to comment for this article through a spokesperson.

THE ADMINISTRATION GOES QUIET

Harvard’s relationship with the national press took a nose dive in the wake of its botched response to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel and the ensuing campus protests.

Then-President Claudine Gay released a series of emailed statements in the fall that, along with high-profile protests, kept Harvard on the front page of national papers. She was still giving interviews though the end of her ten -

ure, even apologizing for her disastrous Congressional testimony in a Crimson interview days after returning from Washington.

Garber set out to stem the flow of bad press.

He set the tone for an insular beginning to his presidency by appointing John F. Manning ’82, the then famously media-shy dean of Harvard Law School, as the University’s interim provost. As HLS dean and later provost, Manning repeatedly declined interviews with The Crimson and other media outlets — breaking the precedent Garber had set by interviewing regularly as provost. Since joining the Harvard faculty in 2004, Manning has rarely spoken publicly to journalists.

Harvard’s adoption of an institutional neutrality policy — which instructs the University’s leaders not to make statements about contentious political issues not related to the administration — added pressure on officials not to speak to the media.

Garber was still giving interviews, but he appeared to violate the new policy just months later, telling The Crimson in October that a statement by the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee was personally “offensive” while declining to comment in his capacity as president. The move angered faculty, some of whom said the comment reflected a double standard in the application of the institutional voice policy.

It also served as a warning to deans, who can speak publically, but have to tread a fine line between speaking about the administration and speaking about political issues that involve Harvard. Beyond outgoing Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana and Dean of Students Thomas G. Dunne, only two deans — Harvard School of Dental Medicine

Dean William V. Giannobile and Harvard Extension School Dean Nancy J. Coleman — have given interviews to The Crimson since Garber’s October interview.

Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean

Hopi E. Hoekstra stopped sitting for interviews after April 2024, and multiple other faculty deans repeatedly postponed or cancelled planned interviews with Crimson reporters, sometimes only minutes in advance, without rescheduling this spring.

Harvard schools frequently coordinate their media appearances with

Central Administration officials, but a spokesperson declined to comment if they had been instructed to stop speaking.

During a sit-down interview with The Crimson in December 2024, Garber was asked to address Manning’s decision to not speak publicly, but the president never got the chance to answer.

The question was interrupted by Harvard Vice President for Public Affairs and Communications Paul Andrew, who was sitting next to Garber. Andrews said the question about media relations was not on a pre-approved list of topics for the

ministrators and members of the Corporation, the University scrapped its strategy of silence for a publicity tour.

Garber slammed the White House’s demands to derecognize pro-Palestine groups, submit to three years of federal audits, and report international students who broke University conduct policies to the federal government in a blistering email to Harvard affiliates.

The message was accompanied by a revamped website that highlighted scientific research impacted by funding cuts and a flurry of posts on X advertising Harvard’s decision to defy the White House.

The University probably felt like its best bet was to pull back from any type of official communications and really just focus on trying to maintain a sense of stability.
Isra Ali NYU Media and Communications Professor

interview.

Harvard’s resistance was met with an outpouring of support from University faculty and students, peer institutions, and top Democratic lawmakers. And Garber seized the moment — appearing in a series of interviews with national outlets, where he said that Harvard would not yield to political pressures that threatened its core values.

“I think we’re not going to get to this,” Andrew said before Garber could speak.

Isra Ali, a media and communications professor at New York University, said the controversy surrounding Gay’s resignation likely prompted Harvard to pull back from the media in the ensuing months.

“The University probably felt like its best bet was to pull back from any type of official communication and really just focus on trying to maintain a sense of stability, to alumni, to the students, to the faculty,” Ali said.

Only Khurana and Dunne have kept up regular media appearances. Khurana in particular has sat for interviews with student reporters each semester for the duration of his decade-long tenure.

“You’re my students,” Khurana explained in his last interview with The Crimson on May 20. “I mean, I feel like the primary responsibility I have is to create an environment for the undergraduates’ intellectual, social, and personal transformation.”

“This is for me — I’m not saying it’s right for everybody,” he added.

GARBER’S MEDIA TOUR

But after the White House sent a list of demands on April 11 that stunned top ad -

Garber’s media tour — and the University’s more adversarial stance against the Trump administration — have proved largely successful. The Associated Press conducted a survey in May that found that 56 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s policies towards higher education.

But Harvard’s more visible media presence has not stopped the stream of funding freezes from Washington — and, if anything, has only inflamed tensions with the Trump administration. Just hours after Garber publicly rejected the administration’s demands, the government paused more than $2.2 billion in funding. And in the weeks since, the White House has tacked on more than $1.5 billion in further funding freezes.

And there are still policies top Harvard officials have been unwilling to explain in detail, including the University’s decision to dismiss the leaders of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, not fund affinity group celebrations at Commencement, and rename its Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging.

Garber’s next task will be balancing the decisions Harvard would rather keep quiet while giving the media a transparent protagonist.

“Often, the cost of staying silent is not that high,” Ali said. “Being quiet actually pays off in many respects.”

william.mao@thecrimson.com grace.yoon@thecrimson.com

Cambridge Super PACs: The Biggest Names Not on the Ballot

POWER BROKERS. As Cambridge City Council candidates prepare to throw themselves into the 2025 election cycle, a new player has taken center stage: local super PACs. Their fundraising and endorsements have reshaped political discourse throughout the city, raising the stakes — and the price tag — of local elections.

JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

In the months ahead of Cambridge’s municipal elections, postcards touting candidate slates find themselves in every resident’s mailbox. Thousands of yard signs pitch across the city as social media ads inundate residents’ feeds.

All of these are funded by the money that the Independent Expenditure Political Action Committees — better known as “super PACs” — raise throughout the year.

The three super PACs in the city — Cambridge Citizens Coalition, A Better Cambridge, and Cambridge Bicycle Safety — have become the biggest names not on the ballot. Through their fundraising campaigns and endorsements, the groups have molded discussions around hot-button issues over the last six years.

“95 percent of the work we do is not on housing or bike lanes, but those are the two issues that are really quite important to residents,” Burhan Azeem, a current city councilor, said. “Those are the two areas where Cambridge has to take a stance — and then all these PACs form around, almost entirely.”

Though strictly prohibited from coordinating their spending with candidates, super PACs can raise and spend unlimited

amounts. Cambridge’s three super PACs collectively raised and spent more than $60,000 in the last election.

Their impact is noticeable. Every current city councilor received an endorsement from at least one of the city’s three super PACs.

But the super PACs that bankroll Cambridge politics are not just fundraising arms. They take polarizing issues, a unique electoral process, and limitless contributions and turn them into rival political identities.

ELECTION ‘IMPOSSIBLE’ WITHOUT ENDORSEMENTS

Cambridge has used a ranked-choice system for its municipal elections since 1939. As the system forces candidates to vie for support beyond their solidified bases, they have tapped into super PACs to reach voters in recent years.

Cambridge has long been home to a slew of Political Action Committees — groups that have the ability to coordinate fundraising with candidates directly, and can accept up to $500 from an individual in annual donations.

But Cambridge’s three super PACs operate differently. Without the constraints of a contribution limit, the groups have larger spending power in the elections. But this comes at the cost of not being able to make direct donations to candidates.

Regardless of the constraints, current and former Councilors said the super PACs are uniquely positioned to help candidates by establishing a slate of endorsements for voters to rely on as they go to the ballot box.

“There’s actually very few people who win who are not on either of the slates,” Azeem said.

The current council reflects the power of a super PAC endorsement — as well as their ideological divisions.

Councilors Patricia M. “Patty” Nolan ’80, Paul F. Toner, and Catherine “Cathie” Zusy all took CCC endorsements in the last election, their voting records often aligning with the PAC’s reservations around the city’s ambitious housing reforms.

Meanwhile, Azeem, Sumbul Siddiqui, Jivan G. Sobrinho-Wheeler, Vice Mayor Marc C. McGovern, and Mayor E. Denise Simmons were all endorsed by ABC, pushing for increased housing development throughout their terms. Ayesha M. Wilson was the only current councilor to accept endorsements from both groups.

Cambridge Bike Safety endorses any candidate who signs their pledge —add -

A Better Cambridge Expenditure Breakdown 2021-2024

and

ing Azeem, McGovern, Nolan, Siddiqui, and Sobrinho-Wheeler to their 2023 slate.

Quinton Y. Zondervan, who served on the Council from 2018 to 2023, was the last candidate to be elected without the backing of one of the super PACs. And though he attributes his reelection to his incumbency, the growing influence of the super PACs has made it difficult for newcomers to break the ice.

“I think for new candidates, it was definitely impossible to get elected without being endorsed by one or the other,” Zondervan said, referring to CCC and ABC.

‘TWO POLITICAL PARTIES’

As super PACS have come to dominate elections across the city, the ideological divides which catalyzed their development have taken center stage for the Council.

Cambridge’s 2019 election cycle was driven by debate over the Affordable Housing Overlay — a controversial policy that gave rise to super PACs on both sides of the aisle.

The AHO, passed by the Council in 2020, allows developers to bypass existing zoning restrictions to build developments containing 100 percent affordable units with more density and height than is typically allowed.

In the AHO’s wake, residents formed the CCC’s super PAC in 2021 to platform concerns about the rapid pace of development in the city. At the same time, ABC established their own super PAC — seeking to maximize the impact of their pro-development housing advocacy.

In each election since 2021, the CCC and ABC have endorsed candidates based on their responses to a questionnaire. They generally pick a slate of at least nine, publicizing the candidates’ stances on hot button issues, from housing development to zoning reform.

“There were people that were willing to go out and talk to residents at their doorsteps about why they were supporting such a pro-housing candidate slate and actually how to vote,” Alanna M. Mallon, a former three-term Councilor, said.

But some have criticized the super PACs for hyperpolarizing Cambridge’s political discourse as ABC and CCC wage competing campaigns.

“You treat everything as a binary — as black or white, and with or against you — and the PAC encourages that type of behavior,” Ilan Levy, a four-time City Council candidate, said.

He added that the two slates embody “two political parties” in the city — the old guard of longtime residents and newcomers brought to Cambridge for professional and academic opportunities.

Source: Office of Campaign
Political Finance. STEPHANIE DRAGOI — CRIMSON WRITER
Cambridge City Councilor Burhan Azeem. JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Cambridge Citizens Coalition Expenditure Breakdown

2021-2024

“Old Cambridge wants its money and has a certain agenda, and it’s rooted in a much more conservative frame of mind, in general,” he said. “On the other side, the new people are here, and they’ve been living here and enjoying a certain quality of life and the benefit that Cambridge has to offer — and want to make sure that that remains a possibility.”

While Zondervan said the super PACs can offer a “certain complexity and richness in the conversation” by clearly articulating a plurality of resident viewpoints, McGovern believes that they have contributed to a divisive attitude around city policy discussions.

“Unfortunately, even on a local level, politics is a little bit of a dirty business,” McGovern said.

“We’re all local people who are trying to do what we think is in the best interest of the city, and that may differ. We may differ from each other on that, but nobody is a bad person. And I think sometimes these groups try to portray people as bad people,” he added.

FOLLOWING THE MONEY

As the impacts of super PACs in city politics increase, they have relied on their

extensive fundraising to market their slates — amplifying their distinct vision for Cambridge’s future.

Cambridge’s super PACs have gathered and spent more than $150,000 collectively since the 2021 election cycle, drawing funding from across the city and the country.

While the CCC primarily sources its funding from West Cambridge households, ABC sees financial support from across the city and the nation. Levy, the former Council candidate, said this is in line with CCC’s targeted advocacy around local development.

“It was born out of West Cambridge, because they had issues with development, and they realized that if community groups didn’t come together, then they wouldn’t have the leverage,” he said.

Levy said that ABC, conversely, has a more “policy-driven agenda” that draws in a broader coalition of donors.

ABC attributes their donations from across the country to social media. As members of the group posted about housing issues in Cambridge, they began to see donations from outside of Cambridge, according to Neil Miller, a volunteer organizer with ABC’s super PAC.

“ABC was one of the earliest success-

Cambridge

Bike Safety Expenditures Breakdown

2021-2024

ful pro-housing groups in America, and sometimes some of our members would post about housing politics in Cambridge and the success that we’re having, and say that people should donate to ABC to help,” Miller said.

In each election, the groups spend nearly as much as they raise. Since February 2021, CCC has spent nearly $70,000 and ABC has spent nearly $34,000. Bike Safety has spent almost $40,000 of the nearly $53,000 they raised.

You treat everything as a binary — as black or white, and with or against you — and the PAC encourages that type of behavior.

Ilan Levy

Four Time City Council Candidate

For ABC and CCC, around 80 percent of their expenditures went to what voters see — yard signs, flyers, postcards, and digital campaigns — key to communicating their endorsed slates of candidates to residents.

What voters don’t see is the other 20

percent. Among the super PACs, between $1,000 and $4,000 go to donation processing, with other costs reflecting different priorities.

Compared to ABC and CCC, Bike Safety spends less on printing and digital promotion — just under 70 percent — and more on volunteers for fundraising events and canvassing.

CCC is unique among the super PACs in its expenditure on legal fees, which it logs as “campaign management” and “political consulting,” and on “voter data analysis.” Bike Safety, similarly to CCC, spent money on obtaining voter registration information, while ABC did not log any such fees as part of their expenditures.

As each super PAC cultivates its own fundraising strategy, spending habits, and ideological mission, the organizations have embedded themselves within the fabric of Cambridge’s government for the foreseeable future.

“Democracy is a living thing. So, out of the setup and the rules that we have put together, what emanates and what drives us to the top is the PACs,” Levy said.

stephanie.dragoi@thecrimson.com jack.reardon@thecrimson.com laurel.shugart@thecrimson.com

Source: Office of Campaign and Political Finance. STEPHANIE DRAGOI — CRIMSON WRITER
Source: Office of Campaign and Political Finance. STEPHANIE DRAGOI — CRIMSON WRITER
Source: Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance. LAUREL M. SHUGART — CRIMSON WRITER
City Councilors Patricia M. Nolan and Paul F. Toner with former Councilor Quinton Zondervan at a meeting in City Hall.
JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
Former Vice Mayor Alanna M. Mallon at a City Council meeting. JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Too Rigorous for Romance: Dating at Harvard

LOVE LIVES. Some Harvard undergraduates choose p-sets over partners during their four years at the College.

KAYLA H. LE — CRIMSON DESIGNER

Carlos A. Garcia ’28 first approached his now-girlfriend Athena M. Severance ’28 during CS50: “An Introduction to Computer Science” office hours, where she was sitting with a mutual friend of theirs.

“And then we kept working together because of the class,” Severance said. Their similar academic interests and friends made it easy for them to start dating. But Garcia said that their relationship is “a rare case,” as many of their peers choose to put their grades above all else.

Severance said that the pair does not

get an A, which is why it was fine for us to be more social and lose some time to that,” she said.

As Harvard students work through their endless to-do lists of essays and p-sets, many procrastinate one particular item: finding their perfect match. Some students joke that this task comes with higher stakes — marrying a Harvard classmate might even mean better admissions odds for your future children.

“I was just talking to a friend, and she was like, ‘Oh, I’m trying to find my double legacy by senior year,’” Crystal X. Manyloun ’26 said. “And we’re like, ‘Okay, I’ll keep an eye out for you.’”

But ambitious academic and professional goals routinely get in the way of Harvard students’ romantic and social lives — leaving them without certain as -

lament a dearth of parties and stifled school spirit at the College.

In interviews, students said this problem also bleeds into the Harvard dating

2025 spent, on average, nearly 48 hours per week on academics and extracurricular activities.

Students said that this focus on ac -

More people are single here than other schools, just because I feel like people are spending more time doing a bunch of different things.

scene — which many said seems abnor -

ademics, extracurriculars, and career

Watson C. Meyer ’28 Harvard College Student

‘Okay, I can trust you,’” she added.

Without a college bar in Harvard Square or traditional fraternities and Greek life on campus, student organization events also serve as a chance for students to meet their other half.

Alma C. Russell ’25-26 said that parties thrown by The Harvard Lampoon — a semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine — offered students a new chance to connect with their peers. Non-members can only attend Lampoon parties starting at the end of their junior year, making the party attendees predominantly seniors.

“I feel like the Lampoon was such a great addition,” said Russell, who met her boyfriend at a Lampoon party. “I think that really fostered a lot of relationships because it put our entire class together.”

‘She Goes to a Different School’

When freshmen first move into the Yard, many of them bring more than just suitcases, towing long-distance relationships from across the country. Even after many of these relationships end, students agreed that Harvard’s dating scene is vastly different for freshmen.

“I feel like more freshmen date freshmen, and then once you’re a sophomore, it’s not as rigid,” Nayan I. Das ’28 said, adding that once sorted into Houses, the difference in grades is “less the barrier.”

Access to final club parties — typically granted to students during their sophomore spring semester — may also contribute to the divide.

“We go out at the clubs a lot and there’s no freshmen. You’re not really gonna be interacting with them,” Sabre M.B. Zimmer ’25 said. “Maybe that’s different at other schools because at frats and sororities, there are freshmen there.”

Many students said the large number of remaining relationships from high school is another distinguishing factor for dating culture among freshmen.

“Freshman year, I made a lot of friends who also had boyfriends from their hometowns,” Emily A. Figueiredo ’25, who is dating someone from her hometown, said. “It’s funny because every passing year, there were less and less people who were still in that situation.”

Difficulty maintaining these long-distance relationships might be a typical collegiate struggle, students said. But Chloe M. Harmon ’28 said that Harvard’s national and global appeal may also contribute to the strain — with the Class of 2028 hailing from all 50 states and 94 countries, putting a sizeable distance be -

tween them and their hometown significant others.

Harmon said that more of her friends attending state schools “are still in those

dergraduate to date students at one of the 64 Boston-area colleges and universities — like Boston University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or Wellesley Col -

It’s a trade-off. The difficulty is they’re further away. You have to travel. The benefit is, if anything goes south, you’ll see them much less than another Harvard student.

relationships, versus people that come here.”

Though freshmen are most likely to be in a long-distance relationship, students said it was common for any Harvard un -

lege.

“Because we live in Boston, there’s so many other schools, there’s so many other options,” Nate J. Tanen ’28 said.

Discussing the prospect of entering

into a relationship with a student at another school, several students constructed a cost-benefit analysis.

“It’s a trade-off. The difficulty is they’re further away. You have to travel,” Tanen said, who is dating a Wellesley student. “The benefit is, if anything goes south, you’ll see them much less than another Harvard student.”

Though the primary con is the distance from other schools, with one student calling the process of commuting a “time sink,” the separation could also be seen as an advantage — avoiding awkward post-breakup interactions and a reprieve from “the Harvard bubble.”

“It’s like an escape, like I can leave the Harvard bubble whenever I want,” Figueiredo said.

Several students at schools like MIT, Northeastern University, and Yale University said they do not associate Harvard with a robust dating scene.

Olivia Velten-Lomelin, a rising senior

Harvard seniors flocked to the Royale Club in Boston for the annual ‘Last Chance Dance’ in May. HUGO C. CHIASSON — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
Nate J. Tanen ’28
Harvard College Student

at MIT, said she believed that students do not socialize outside of Harvard, keeping to themselves instead.

chology professors and relationship experts said college dating — while not absolutely essential — can offer many

There’s a learning curve to all of our degrees of social intelligence, emotional intelligence, and wisdom.

“In our experiece, Harvard kids kind of stay to themselves. I don’t know of a lot of people at MIT who are dating Harvard students,” Velten-Lomelin said. “I know some people who have hooked up with Harvard students. But dating, I don’t know a single relationship.”

But some said they didn’t expect the dating scene to be different at Harvard compared to other colleges.

“I imagine it’s probably the same as every other school. I don’t think it’s different,” Myles K. Oakley, a rising senior at North Carolina State University, said.

‘You Don’t Have to Date’

When asked about the stakes of Harvard’s limited dating scene, psy -

social-emotional benefits from interpersonal reflection and social interaction.

Jennifer R. Gatchel ’99 — a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School — said the more social exposure one gets, the more adept they become at building meaningful connections.

Gatchel said that putting off the pursuit of a relationship completely could even be “a potentially harmful thing for your own development as a person.”

“There’s a learning curve to all of our degrees of social intelligence, emotional intelligence, intelligence, and wisdom,” she added.

“That really can only be gained through experiential learning.”

Paul W. Eastwick — a psychology professor at

the University of California, Davis — said the experience one gains while being in a relationship provides an opportunity for self-knowledge.

“Dating is valu able for people, not just because it’s a nice experience in and of itself, but you will gain self-insight along the way,” East wick said.

Academ ic pressure “seems to be escalating in high ly-selective colleges,” Richard J. Weissbourd — a senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education — said. “Research shows that anxiety and depression are signifi cantly correlated with high achievement pressure.”

But Weissbourd added that academic pressure is just one piece of the trans formed dating puzzle, among an overall national decline in college dating.

“I think it’s complicated,” he said. “My understanding of the data is there is less, with less dating and sexual activity across a range of economic classes and colleges with varying selectivity.”

Patrick “Quinn” White, an assistant philosophy professor at Harvard, was skeptical of academic rigor being a major influence on the declining dating scene, pointing to the rise in hookup culture instead. Since the 1990s, hookup culture has begun to crowd out more serious dating, according to Tulane University associate sociology professor Lisa D. Wade.

“What would it be about academic rigor that is, in itself, an obstacle to romance?” White said. “Instead, I think it’s going to be much more the way in which academically rigorous institutions, as a culturally contingent matter, pick up on other cultural trends.”

But some academics asserted that students don’t need to engage in romantic relationships in order to reap the benefits of social interaction.

Robert J. Waldinger ’73 — director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development — said it is not necessary for

piness, which began in 1938.

“You don’t have to date. You can have really good friends and be really happy,” Waldinger said. “You don’t have to have a romantic partner to be happy. That’s definitely one of the things we know from our research.”

Wade said there is value in gaining experience through interpersonal relationships, whether they are romantic or platonic.

“Meaningful, deep friendships with a lot of mutual support could be just as formative when it comes to developing the skills to be in a relationship,” Wade said.

Eastwick said that he has “never seen much evidence that it matters” when individuals begin dating.

“People who start dating early are just as likely to have a happy relationship when they’re in their 30s and beyond, as somebody who started dating in their 20s,” he said.

“Ultimately, whenever somebody decides to do that, or if they want to take four years off to study really hard — all of it is fine,” Eastwick added.

shawn.boehmer@thecrimson.com chantel.dejesus@thecrimson.com darcy.lin@thecrimson.com

The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2025

Harvard Research in ‘Survival State’

SHUTTING DOWN. Scholars face funding cuts that put jobs, life-saving research projects, and educational programs in jeopardy.

XINYI C. ZHANG — CRIMSON DESIGNER

Over the course of three decades, Harvard School of Public Health professors Shahin Lockman and Roger L. Shapiro led the Botswana Harvard Health Partnership — a research hub with more than 300 staff and 11 active clinical trials — to become a leading center for HIV research, treatment development, and public health training in southern Africa.

In just three weeks, they watched the Trump administration abruptly pull almost all federal funding from the program they had spent their careers building as officials terminated most of Harvard’s federally funded research grants. Federal funding accounts for more than half of the research partnership’s operating budget.

Lockman wrote that the grant terminations could force the program to interrupt 11 clinical trials, shed more than 150 jobs in Botswana, and halt training for more than 20 young scientists in degree programs or mentored research. More than 240 jobs have already been cut, according to Shapiro.

“This will set science and capacity and trust back in a major way,” Lockman wrote. Their story is not unique.

Across Harvard’s schools, researchers described a wave of destruction following sweeping terminations of federally funded grants. More than $2.7 billion in cuts have come as part of the Trump administration’s targeted pressure campaign against Harvard. And research began suffering even earlier, as agencies made nationwide cuts to grants that tied up billions of dollars of funding in legal limbo.

At Harvard, the loss spans disciplines, from neuroscience and oncology to global health and occupational medicine. But researchers say the impact is larger than any single lab or the University itself — it is a dismantling of the national research enterprise and the loss of a generation of scientists.

‘PLAYING

WITH PATIENTS’ LIVES’

The lifelong work of HSPH professor Alberto Ascherio is now frozen — literally. His lab has spent years and “millions of dollars in tax-payer money” to prepare “irreplaceable” blood samples for therapeutic interventions for multiple sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Ascherio wrote in an email.

As a result of the Trump administration’s funding cuts, Ascherio and his fellow researchers’ only hope is freezing those samples until funding starts flowing again.

“We had to stop all work, and we just hope to have sufficient funding to keep our freezers running to preserve the samples for better times,” he wrote.

“It is difficult to overestimate the level of waste and disruption this is causing,” Ascherio added.

Federal funding has been a political battlefront since Trump’s inauguration, leaving researchers in a prolonged state of uncertainty. Just a week into his presidency, the administration announced a nationwide freeze on federal funding — a move later blocked by a judge and rescinded.

Still, the threat lingered, with changes to the indirect cost reimbursement rate and stop-work orders issued for diversity-related projects, with Harvard-affiliated research-

ing Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, lost funding for a parent-focused course aimed at preventing teenage opioid abuse.

“We reached the final stages of production last week, when the institutional funding crisis compelled the University to make the painful decision to cancel support of the course,” Madras wrote. “The abrupt termination has left me in a grief borne not only of personal investment, but of a lost opportunity to inform, equip, and inspire those most pivotal in a child’s life: their parents.”

And dozens of postdoctoral fellows researching a range of critical conditions — including Alzheimer’s disease and more than a dozen forms of cancer — were left without a future salary after fellowship support from the NIH and National Science Foundation

Alberto Ascherio HSPH professor We have to stop all work, and we just hope to have sufficient funding to keep our freezers running to preserve the samples for better times.

ers experiencing $110 million in terminations from the end of February to April 11.

In mid-April, the Trump administration announced a $9 billion review of funding to Harvard and affiliated health care centers should the University not comply with a series of demands — from ending DEI programming to banning masks on campus.

Harvard stood its ground. Then the cuts started rolling in — with a price tag that keeps climbing toward $3 billion. The federal government terminated around 350 research grants to Harvard Medical School in mid-May and nearly all direct federal grants to HSPH, totaling more than 190 and affecting more than 130 scientists.

Harvard has committed to funding terminated research in the short term, but affected faculty said it remains unclear how long that support will last or how much of the government-backed research can be salvaged.

“The university is trying to provide some bridge funding, but it is insufficient to cover needs,” Ascherio wrote. “Being able to pay salaries day to day is not enough — we need to show that we have committed sufficient funding for at least one year if we want the best scientists to stay.”

HMS professor Bertha K. Madras, a member of Trump’s 2017 Commission on Combat-

was terminated.

Many think it will be impossible to make up for their lost federal grants because alternative sources of funding are insufficient or nonexistent.

HSPH Professor Christoph Lange has spent the last 25 years developing a software package that diagnoses a variety of chronic illnesses. Private foundations typically focus on one aspect of research, like Alzheimer’s, Lange said, meaning projects like his would not be eligible.

Rita Hamad ’03, a professor at HSPH, said that the private sector has no interest in answering the kinds of questions public health research seeks to address.

“Amazon’s not interested in that question. Pharma is not interested in that question. The government theoretically should be interested in that question,” she said.

Researchers also say private funding cannot match the scale or consistency of federal support.

University-wide, the $684 million Harvard received in federal funding made up 10 percent of its total operating budget for fiscal year 2024 — more than twice what it received from non-federal sources of sponsored support, like foundations and local governments.

The NIH, with a $48 billion budget, is the world’s largest biomedical research funder and the largest federal contributor to Harvard, while major private funders like Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Gates Foundation operate with less than $10 billion annually.

And private funding can be unpredictable. HHMI recently canceled some postdoctoral fellowships to support researchers affected by federal cuts.

“It’s basically kind of like a snowball effect,” said Silvi Rouskin, a microbiologist at Harvard Medical School.

Faculty say some of the most urgent consequences may be felt by patients enrolled in clinical trials that have been paused indefinitely.

“In the more immediate term, these cuts are actively harming patients,” HMS professor Kanaka Rajan wrote in a statement. “There are real patients with treatment-resistant conditions and no paths forward with traditional interventions who were enrolled in clinical trials affected by funding cuts.”

“These terminations put medical breakthroughs on pause, effectively playing with patients’ lives and delaying the development of treatments that could help future generations,” she added.

“With every halted experiment, we forfeit cures that might have been, lives that could have been saved, suffering that could have been spared,” HMS dean George Q. Daley ’82 wrote.

‘A SURVIVAL STATE’

While the immediate fallout from federal funding cuts has halted research at Harvard, the secondary effects are radiating outward — unraveling partnerships at institutions around the world.

When the University acts as the primary awardee on a grant, subawards to other institutions are also canceled. The same is not true in the reverse, unless the primary awardee has also had funding revoked.

“The federal effort to isolate us from our collaborative networks by creating uncertainty as to whether we will sink a grant if we are included even as a subcontractor is clearly having an effect,” wrote HSPH professor Sarah Fortune, who received a stop-work order on her $60 million tuberculosis research contract in April.

Hamad, the HSPH professor, said she had to abruptly inform collaborators at institutions including the University of California, San Francisco, Boston University, and the Louisiana Public Health Institute that their joint research was being terminated.

“For some of them, we’re actually in the

The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2025

last year or two, and we are getting close to the point of finalizing our results and publishing the papers, and it’s just very devastating for everybody,” she said.

The damage is global. HSPH professor Shoba Ramanadhan wrote in an email that she was forced to shut down a multi-year NIH-funded project involving collaborators in Madagascar and South Africa on health effects of heat stress.

“To abruptly shut down planned work in Year 1 of a 5-year grant (as we have just had to do) damages not only our relationships with partners, but the stability of healthcare and public health organizations that were relying on these funds to continue their vital work,” she wrote.

Ulrich H. von Andrian, a professor of immunopathology at HMS, said cuts to his lab had a far-reaching consequence: stopping production of a vital monoclonal antibody his lab has distributed to scientists around the world and been used for several publications.

“It’s not commercially available, and there’s really no alternative to it, and we have been providing this to academic researchers

able to do this anymore, because I won’t have funding to just simply produce this protein.”

Rouskin, the microbiologist, was the lead

To abruptly shut down planned work in Year 1 to a 5-year grant (as we have just had to do) damages not only our relationship with partners, but the stability of healthcare and public health organizations that were relying on these funds to continue their vital work.

really throughout the world, basically free,” von Andrian said. “Going forward, I won’t be

principal investigator on a pulled major NIH grant uniting her lab with MIT and two bio-

tech firms to develop RNA-based therapeutics — leaving all institutions without the funding needed.

Fortune, the tuberculosis researcher, wrote that due to a lack of relief policies, some of her collaborators “are sadly even ahead of us in terms of having to lay people off.”

“Many junior faculty at other universities who are already proven, powerful collaborators, but are struggling to maintain their labs and continue their research,” Rajan wrote. “When collaborators like these are in a ‘survival state,’ they simply do not have the bandwidth to think about novel scientific ideas or participate in new collaborations as effectively as they could.”

CHOKING THE PIPELINE

While researchers are operating in a “survival state,” they can’t help but be worried about the long-term ramifications of the funding gap: not just on their individual labs but on

Harvard Medical School researchers and professors face catastrophic cuts to their federal funding. BRIANA HOWARD PAGÁN — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

America’s scientific progress, economic health, and national security.

Lange said that cuts to public funding could deter top researchers from pursuing careers in the U.S., weakening the nation’s leadership in scientific discovery. “If I were them, I’m not sure I would bet my money at the moment on Boston or the U.S. — because what happened to us?” he said.

That talent drain, faculty say, is already beginning. For early-career scientists — particularly Ph.D. students and postdoctoral fellows — the traditional academic path is becoming increasingly untenable.

HSPH professor Laura D. Kubzansky described a bleak outlook for her team.

“The government wins regardless because by the time the lawsuit unrolls (first court date is now end of July), all of our teams will have to be folded, labs shut down,” she wrote in an email. “Our trainees are looking for jobs overseas and will go the first opportunity they have. Many will leave academia.”

A major casualty of the cuts and recent

federal actions is physician education and training. The M.D.-Ph.D. Physician Scientist Training Program — run jointly by Harvard and MIT — lost its NIH funding last week. The NIH funding provides full tuition and stipends for its trainees, who commit to nearly a decade of dual training to become leaders at the intersection of medicine and research.

“For 50 years, the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD Program has produced renowned physician-scientists who have advanced science, medicine, and public health in service to the country and the world,” the program’s director, HMS professor Loren D. Walensky, wrote in a statement. “We remain fully committed to our remarkably talented student body of 208 MD-PhD trainees.”

Daley — a graduate of the M.D.-Ph.D. program himself — wrote in a statement to The Crimson that it was “astounding that supporting these dedicated physician-scientists-in-training isn’t a solemn priority for the government.

“I remain steadfast in my support for their training. We’ll find a way,” Daley wrote.

At HSPH, the Occupational and Environmental Medicine Residency, which trains future physicians to prevent workplace injuries and chronic occupational disease, lost its funding when the Trump administration gutted the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

“Without new funding, we will be unable to continue training doctors in this essential field,” wrote the residency’s director, HSPH professor Justin Yang. HSPH will only be able to support doctors already enrolled in the program, Yang wrote.

Some early-career scientists are already exploring careers outside of science altogether. Hamad said students in her lab are being forced to pivot.

“They’re saying, ‘I’m having to apply to Amazon and Facebook to do statistics and AI’ and things that are not as focused on public health and public good,’” she said. “There are just so many fewer jobs in academia

and in science right now, and I think that’s a waste of their talent and their idealism.”

HMS professor Stephen D. Liberles ’94, who lost two research grants and the fellowships supporting his students in mid-Ma, wrote that he fears “cuts to scientific research will choke the pipeline that produces the next generation of scientists.”

“It isn’t Harvard Medical School only that suffers — these cuts interrupt the pipeline from lab discoveries to lifesaving treatments, hurt the next generation of researchers, and they erode America’s role as a global leader in biomedicine,” Daley wrote.

For junior researchers, the outlook is particularly grim.

“The advice I’ve been giving today, and in the last couple of days, is just for them to survive the next one or two years,” Lange said. “There’s no strategic advice at the moment beyond that.”

avani.rai@thecrimson.com saketh.sundar@thecrimson.com

The Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, both Harvard-affilated, have lost funds. BRIANA HOWARD PAGÁN — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

RESHAPING DIVERSITY. Over the past three years, Harvard has shifted its approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion — moving from full-throated support to abandoning the language of DEI amid threats from a hostile White House. The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT

The Rise and Fall of DEI at Harvard

Three years ago, Harvard sent its top lawyers before the Supreme Court to extol the value of diversity in higher education.

“A university student body comprising a multiplicity of backgrounds, experiences, and interests vitally benefits our nation,” said Seth P. Waxman ’73, the former solicitor general representing Harvard in a lawsuit over the University’s consideration of race in its admissions decisions. “Stereotypes are broken down, prejudice is reduced, and critical thinking and problem-solving skills improve.”

It took less than two years for the pendulum to swing.

Colleges became ground zero in American culture wars — and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs were held up in Washington as a sign of academia’s moral rot. Despite Harvard’s efforts, affirmative action fell in summer 2023. After Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and Israel’s war in Gaza, campuses erupted in protest, and some of Harvard’s most ardent critics claimed that DEI initiatives “fueled” antisemitism.

When Harvard President Claudine Gay was appointed as Harvard’s first Black president, the New York Times heralded the announcement as a “historic first.” On campus, students said they were “overjoyed” and “optimistic.”

But at the end of Gay’s presidency, which collapsed amid controversy over a plagiarism scandal and her handling of the post-Oct. 7 tension on Harvard’s campus, her detractors insinuated that she faced lower standards because she is a Black woman. “Everyone knows that she was not fired sooner because of diversity considerations,” right-wing activist Christopher F. Rufo told The Crimson last year.

By the time the Trump administration set its sights on Harvard, slashing billions in federal research dollars and demanding “merit-based” changes to its hiring and admissions practices, the national backlash to DEI had taken root at Harvard, too.

Diversity statements in faculty hires were axed. Key DEI-related positions were left unfilled. Support for affinity group celebrations at Commencement was suddenly ended. And the University’s Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging was abruptly renamed in April.

And the upper echelons of Harvard’s leadership, which has long been dominantly white and male, have grown less diverse in recent years. The University’s new president and provost are both white men. Harvard

officials once touted the growing diversity of its deanships — four Harvard schools were led by Black women in 2018, a record. Now, two are. And all four school deans appointed since Gay’s departure have been white.

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 — who is Jewish — has invoked his identity to say he is well-positioned to confront challenges on Harvard’s campus. And as president, Garber has been subject to attacks on and off Harvard’s campus, and has cited his own experiences with antisemitism repeatedly. But unlike his predecessor, Garber has not faced a drumbeat of allegations that he was an unqualified “DEI hire.”

As Harvard stares down the White House — and embarks on a legal fight over “the fearless and unfettered pursuit of truth,” as

Trump administration ordered Harvard to immediately axe all of its DEI programs in its two April demand letters, Harvard sued.

Even so, the websites of Harvard schools’ diversity offices have reflected subtle shifts in Harvard’s approach to DEI for months, according to an automated tracker maintained by The Crimson that scraped online changes since February.

Mentions of “unconscious bias” were removed from the website of Harvard Medical School’s diversity office starting in midApril. On the website of the Harvard Divinity School’s diversity office, a mission statement promoting a “restorative, anti-racist, anti-oppressive HDS” and “a world healed of racism and oppression” was scrubbed later that month.

We have gotten lost both in the thicket of debates about the First Amendment and in the swamps of particular tenets of antiracism.
Danielle S. Allen

University Professor, In a 2023 Washington Post Op-Ed

Garber wrote to affiliates in April — it is increasingly confronting an uncomfortable and divisive debate over the future of DEI on campus.

“We have gotten lost both in the thicket of debates about the First Amendment and in the swamps of particular tenets of anti-racism,” University Professor Danielle S. Allen, who served on a 2018 task force on inclusion at Harvard, wrote in a December 2023 op-ed in the Washington Post. “How do we find our way back?”

A CASCADE OF CHANGES

At first, Harvard seemed slow to react to the Trump administration’s assault on DEI programming — or perhaps more willing than many of its peers to offer a defense of diversity.

Other universities had been walking back DEI initiatives for months. The University of California, Los Angeles, renamed its DEI office in October 2024, while the University of Michigan shuttered its DEI office last March. The University of Pennsylvania removed references to DEI on official websites within weeks of Donald Trump’s inauguration.

But at Harvard, little seemed to change off the bat. University officials even offered public defenses of diversity. In April, when the

Then, in the spring, Harvard started to walk back the public face of its DEI efforts — condemning the government’s “sweeping and intrusive demands” while defending internal changes on its own terms.

OEDIB was renamed in late April. Hours later, the office sent a second email — still signed with its old name — that Commencement celebrations for affinity groups such as Black students or veterans would no longer receive University support, including funding.

Two leaders of student affinity groups told The Crimson that staff from Harvard’s former diversity offices were not permitted to provide any support or guidance — including information on previous years’ celebrations such as agendas, contractors, or attendance numbers — to student affinity groups hosting their own celebrations.

Eli M. Visio ’26, co-president of the Harvard College Queer Students Association, said a Harvard administrator told him that student affinity groups can be penalized if any University funding is used to host unofficial events or affinity spaces that are meant to replace the formal celebrations.

Another student affinity group leader said they have felt University offices beginning to distance themselves from programming.

The student said that, while their organization would typically collaborate with offices — like the Academic Resource Center, in addition to diversity offices — to publicize or sponsor events, they have stopped receiving responses regarding inquiries related to affinity event programming.

A Harvard spokesperson declined to comment on the students’ allegations.

THE WINDS SHIFT

In 2014, Black students contributed to a multimedia campaign on Tumblr – “I, Too, Am Harvard” — where they shared experiences of hurt and alienation on Harvard’s campus. Many participants held up signs displaying offensive comments — like “You Don’t Sound Black” and “You’re LUCKY to be black… so easy to get into college!”

The project went viral, and Harvard administrators noticed.

“What the students are doing is pointing out to us that perhaps we need to work even harder and that’s what we plan to do,” Donald H. Pfister, then-interim dean of Harvard College, told NPR.

Over the course of the 2010s, students and faculty were vocal in their demands for an inclusive campus — and Harvard undertook an unprecedented effort to reckon with its own history and build formal structures to support marginalized students and faculty. In 2016, Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust launched the Presidential Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging. Two years later, Harvard created its central diversity office.

In 2019, Harvard’s then-president Lawrence S. Bacow launched what would become an explosive research effort into Harvard’s historical ties to slavery. Harvard also launched an effort to return the remains of Native Americans held in museum collections. And, after the Covid-19 pandemic, Harvard ended a dorm cleaning program, which often employed low-income students looking to make some change. Many attended a dedicated pre-orientation for first-generation and low-income students instead.

Not all the efforts would be classified as DEI, but all grappled with Harvard’s complicated history in a time when it felt more pressure than ever to accommodate, and celebrate, its diversity.

The moment reached its apotheosis in 2020, after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer sparked a nationwide reckoning against racism and police brutality. University leadership responded publicly: “I believe that one measure of the justness of a society is how it treats its most vulnerable members,” Bacow, the former president, wrote in a statement to affiliates.

Khalil G. Muhammad — a professor of African American studies at Princeton University and a former Harvard Kennedy School professor — taught a class on race and racism that HKS made mandatory in fall 2020.

“Do I genuinely think that the dean, all of a sudden, had a realization that such a course like this needed to be offered because it was so important? No,” Muhammad said. “Do I think that the political climate of the country, which saw 20-plus million people protesting for racial justice that summer, changed the political calculus for resisting such a class that the students were demanding? Yes.”

But something began to change as diversity initiatives faced internal and external skepticism, and DEI became a term of derision on the right.

Harvard adopted a policy against taking public stances on political issues in May 2024, saying that they convince students and employees to fall in line with institutional orthodoxy — a stark change from the vocal positions University leadership had taken in the past on current events. Some argued the change should go hand-in-hand with an end to DEI.

Archived versions of OEDIB’s website show a log of fluctuations in the office’s mission statement, which changed in tune with the politics around DEI at Harvard.

“We will lead Harvard toward inclusive excellence by fostering a campus culture where everyone can thrive,” the website read until October 2021. “We seek to catalyze, con-

statement had become a single line: “A place where everyone can thrive.”

That motto stayed until the OEDIB website was removed, redirecting traffic to the Community and Campus Life site. That homepage has a different message for visitors: “Our work is evolving and so is our website.”

I found them to be focused, in a way that I thought was pretty encouraging, on that more fundamental issue: how do you make use of the diversity you’ve got?
Edward J. Hall
Harvard Philosophy

vene, and build capacity for equity, diversity, inclusion, belonging, and anti-racism initiatives across the University.”

The reference to “antiracism” stayed until mid-2023. By early June, OEDIB’s mission

MOVING FORWARD

When Faust’s 2016 task force released its final report in 2018, it recommended that Harvard’s vision of “inclusive excellence”

include equipping students and faculty with the “skills for difficult conversations.”

It was what W. Kent Haeffner ’18, a former president of the Harvard Republican Club who served on the task force, described as “a vision that is tailored for Harvard, that is inclusive of viewpoint” as well as other forms of diversity, such as by race, culture, or disability.”

But Haeffner said he thought that vision — of cultivating viewpoint diversity, in particular — “has fallen by the wayside” in the last seven years.

Indeed, Harvard’s pivot seems to be in part a response to criticisms like Haeffner’s that DEI has failed to promote the exchange of diverse beliefs.

In her email announcing the OEDIB renaming, Sherri A. Charleston — the head of Community and Campus Life, who until recently was Harvard’s chief diversity officer — wrote that the work ahead for Harvard “requires us to build a culture in which our differences and disagreements serve as a source of learning and growth.”

The message signals a shift in Harvard’s programming: less focus on race, more on “viewpoint diversity.”

Not everyone sees the former OEDIB as antithetical to the University’s new vision. Philosophy professor Edward J. Hall said that in his experience working with the former OEDIB, he found the office to be focused on creating the necessary conditions “for people to engage in a meaningful way with viewpoints that differ from their own.”

“I found them to be focused in a way that I thought was pretty encouraging, on that more fundamental issue: how do you make use of the diversity you’ve got?” Hall added.

Harold S. “H” Lewis ’85, president of First Generation Harvard Alumni, said he thinks some of Harvard’s diversity efforts made a real difference since his time as an undergraduate, when “there was no recognition at all for the particular challenge of a first-generation student.”

But he said, despite his own misgivings, that it made sense to rebrand the office because doing so could remove the “lightning rod” that has been used to attack and misinterpret the University’s diversity and inclusion initiatives.

“Given the overall litigious climate, and how the words diversity, equity, inclusion have been politicized,” Lewis said, “it’s fully and perfectly understandable why it is now the office of Community and Campus Life.”

Khalil G. Muhammad, now a Princeton professor, whose Harvard Kennedy School course was made mandatory. JUSTIN F. GONZALES — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
PAGE DESIGN BY XINYI C. ZHANG — CRIMSON DESIGNER
Harvard students celebrate during Commencement exercises, wearing stoles that honor Black graduates. MARINA QU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
THE WAR MACHINES TRACK. Defense technology companies are attracting Harvard students to join their ranks as the industry balloons.

At the Head of the Charles Regatta in October, a Palantir table sat on the river bank between booths supporting charity causes and hawking sports drinks.

As rowers raced down the Charles, a company recruiter approached curious Harvard students and advertised joining the company — a sprawling data analytics firm with extensive military contracts, whose work includes developing artificial intelligence targeting systems for the Pentagon — as a way to “solve the world’s hardest problems.”

For the past year, Palantir has been heavily courting students at Harvard. In the fall, the Harvard Republican Club hosted Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and Palantir was a sponsor for Harvard WECode’s annual conference for women in computer science.

And in a room at Harvard’s Northwest Labs on a Thursday afternoon this March, Eric Menser — who is the startup’s lead at Palantir — presented the company’s AI platform to more than 100 eager Harvard affiliates. Students in Harvard Ventures, an undergraduate club that organized the event, and other attendees got a preview of Palantir’s Startup Fellowship, slated for a public launch the next month.

Afterward, students stayed more than an hour to ask questions. “We had

to kick everyone out because we could have stayed all night,” Menser wrote in an email. “It just went to show that the builders at Harvard are locked in right now.”

And in April, Harvard Business School hosted its fourth annual Technology and National Security conference, featuring executives from the old guard of defense contracting, like Booz Allen Hamilton, and the new: Anduril, Epirus, and Shield AI. Former secretary of defense Mark Esper and Biden administration national security adviser Jake Sullivan delivered keynote speeches.

The conference drew more than 1,000 participants.

A small but growing stream of Harvard students are heading into the defense tech sector. Student-founded startups create tools to detect radio signals and GPS jamming, manufacture magnets from rare earth metals, and operate autonomous drones in swarms.

Many of them are drawing on reservoirs of institutional support at Harvard, from the Harvard Innovation Labs — a makerspace and incubator that sits next door to the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences campus in Allston — to the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, a hub for foreign policy power brokers since the Cold War.

“Harvard has been amazing, the resources here are generally basically infinite, and the connections we make here are priceless,” said HKS student and U.S.

Air Force veteran Artemiy V. Shlyaptsev, who co-founded a startup that builds virtual reality programs for military training with his brother Maxim. For founders, he said, there “is no better time than now.”

‘A DEFINITE RISE’

At Harvard, students are flocking to jobs developing military technologies in record-high numbers, according to a group of venture capitalists who regularly fund Harvard-founded defense startups.

Patrick S. Chung ’96, Tuan Ho ’09, and Brandon C. Farwell all work for Xfund, which Chung co-founded in 2014. The firm — which has been closely advised

defense tech spike.

“There’s a rise, there’s a definite rise,” said Chung, a former Crimson Editorial chair.

Farwell chimed in: “On both dimensions — of net new companies created, plus a keen interest in, ‘How do I get a job at Anduril?’”

It is definitely an area of rabid interest now, and its because, in some way, the country feels we need it. There’s also, obviously, capital flowing into it.

Patrick S. Chung ’96 Xfund Co-Founder

by top SEAS administrators since its founding — made its name backing student-founded startups in fields from fintech to fertility.

Sitting at a cafe on the HBS campus before the Technology and National Security Conference in April, Chung, Ho, and Farwell said they’ve seen interest in

It’s not just at Harvard that defense tech has boomed. The number of seed funding rounds for defense companies between 2018 and 2023 surged more than 80 percent compared to the prior six years, according to a report from the consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Two aerospace and defense contractors — Anduril and Shield AI — reached “unicorn” status in the last six years, hitting billion-dollar valuations.

“It is definitely an area of rabid interest now, and it’s because, in some way, the country feels we need it,” Chung said. “There’s a lot of, obviously, capital flowing into it.”

Under the Trump administration, the amalgamation of Silicon Valley and the

BY XINYI C. ZHANG — CRIMSON DESIGNER
The Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs is a hub for foreign policy studies — and national security connections. FRANK S. ZHOU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

defense world has intensified. Palantir, co-founded by longtime Trump enthusiast Peter Thiel and now led by Alex Karp, recently landed a $30 million contract with Immigration and Customs enforcement. Just last week, the Pentagon more than doubled the ceiling on its contract with Palantir to $1.3 billion through 2029. Its stock has soared since Trump’s election.

And SpaceX’s Elon Musk and Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos have deep ties with the Trump administration, which awarded more than $8 billion in U.S. Air Force contracts across the two companies in April.

Several Harvard students said that young entrepreneurs have been eager to take advantage of shifts in the Defense Department from relying on traditional military technology powerhouses, like Boeing and Lockheed Martin, toward high-tech startups.

“You’re seeing more the traditional Silicon Valley Big Tech types — the Elon Musks of the world — for better or for worse, getting directly involved in what’s happening in D.C.,” Ho said. “The collision course of those two worlds — Silicon Valley and D.C. — has definitely created more surface area, more opportunity and interest.”

“Before, those were divorced,” Farwell said. “Now, they’re almost literally married.”

But even before Musk and Trump, Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine began accelerating campus interest in defense technology, according to the Xfund investors.

“Ukraine, obviously, was an alarm bell,” Farwell said. As the war grinds on, it’s been shaped by new technologies, used in new ways — drones, cyberwarfare, and electronic attacks that jam GPS signals and disrupt communications. Now, Farwell said, the government is looking to buy from companies whose products are “scrappier, faster, truly AI native.”

Both Artemiy and Maxim Shlyaptsev said the war made people see that America’s military advantage was not as insurmountable as they had thought.

“This era of defense tech is getting bigger, bigger, bigger, because the entire world is realizing, ‘Wow, we were not prepared,’” Artemiy Shlyaptsev said.

Their company won first place at a Xfund pitch competition judged by Sam Altman last year. The U.S. Air Force and Army have both placed orders to purchase its tools.

At the pitch competition, Shlyaptsev said, Altman asked him why he was

building into defense. “We’re building into defense because we see a need,” he recalled saying in response. “We need to ensure peace and deterrence and we see this technology saving lives, first and foremost.”

Personally, I’m just really fascinated with defense tech. I think it’s badass, you know?
Johnny Ni ’27
Former Northrop Grumman Summer Intern

Caine A. Ardayfio ’25-26 took a year off from Harvard to work as a software engineer at the aerospace startup Mach Industries, where he worked on Viper cruise missiles. Ardayfio said he thought a lot of student-founded startups were “kind of boring,” but Mach piqued his interest when its founder, an MIT dropout, talked about building missiles in his workshop.

“When I met the other people who were working on the company with us, they were really passionate about helping America,” he said.

And many students going into defense tech say their work serves more than military goals. Many technologies that are part of daily life today — like touch screens, internet and GPS — were originally built or funded by the Defense Department. Now, many defense companies claim that their inventions are “dual-use.” Palantir advertises that it sells its software not only to counter-terrorism efforts, but also to hospitals and banks.

“There’s this negative association when it comes to your average layman or your average student thinking about defense. They think, ‘oh, military-industrial complex,’” said Johnny Ni ’27, who interned at Northrop Grumman for a summer. “But that is a very backwards perspective, because, even if you look beyond defense, most of the big technological milestones humanity has achieved through history has been through technology that’s been pushed out during war or during conflict.”

Ni founded a startup in 2024 that builds data-labeling infrastructure for defense contractors that sell autonomous systems.

Defense startups often describe their goals in apocalyptic terms. Mach Industries’ mission statement says “Mach must forge the unmanned future, or a totalitarian state will.” Its decentralized factories are designed to endure “when supply chains collapse” — and that’s a “when,” not an “if.”

But some students going into defense tech said another big draw for the field is, simply, because they think it’s cool.

“Personally, I’m just really fascinated with defense tech,” Ni said. “I think it’s badass, you know?”

‘A CENTER OF GRAVITY’

As its students launch careers in testing missiles and extracting rare-earth minerals, Harvard has been there to help them lift off — linking students with funding and leveraging deep connections in the national security establishment.

“Cambridge is a center of gravity for The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2025

The Technology and National Security Conference was held at Harvard Business School. PHOTOS BY ADDISON Y. LIU

The

Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2025

a lot of very intelligent people and technologies. So they’re all very drawn to this location,” said Ryan B. Holte, a Harvard Law and Business School student who interned at Anduril and worked in acquisitions at the Air Force and Space Force. “That’s where the Belfer Center and the Kennedy School comes in.”

Holte is one of the organizers of the QLab, a new national security innovation incubator housed under the Belfer

of Harvard affiliates gathered to listen to the remarks of top U.S. defense officials. Last year, the conference invited Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf. This year, former national security advisor Jake Sullivan headlined.

Harvard’s institutional ties to the defense establishment go back to the 20th century, Cambridge was a hotbed for military research and development. The MIT Lincoln Laboratory built the U.S. first

I think it’s a disservice to the United States that we go into banking, which doesn’t really make anything.

Anduril

Center’s Intelligence Project. The incubator’s launch this winter reflected “a clear and growing demand among students to apply their talents in service of national and global security,” according to Intelligence Project director Mark Pascale.

More than 75 students filled out the interest form in its first year, and the QLab ultimately took 14 teams, with many of them already raising capital and selling to government contractors.

“We, frankly, had almost too many people show up to a lot of our meetings,” Holte said. The QLab keeps running out of food.

The incubator helps Harvard and MIT affiliates pursue government funding and partnerships, including forming connections with the Belfer Center’s National Security Fellows, senior military and intelligence officials who spend 10 months.

“It’s been probably one of our most useful assets as a younger company,” said Kushan S. Weerakoon ’25, who co-founded a startup that builds software for streamlining manufacturing processes, which has both military and civilian applications.

Though the QLab incubator has only recently debuted, they have had “an incredible amount of traction,” according to Holte.

“It’s been very, very successful, way more successful than we had imagined,” he added.

And the Business School has also seen spiking interest in defense and dual-use technology. At the HBS Technology and National Security Conference, hundreds

air-defense system. During World War II, Harvard contributed to the development of napalm and sonar systems, and the Belfer Center was formed in 1973 to study arms control as tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union simmered. The CIA has a long-standing history of encouraging undercover agents to enroll at HKS to continue their education.

It’s hard to match MIT, the engineering colossus next door, or Stanford, nestled in Silicon Valley, for clout among recruiters and investors. But graduate schools like the Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School are still trying to position themselves at the forefront of military and dual-use innovation.

At the Belfer Center, the focus has never been clearer. Onetime U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, who directed the Belfer Center until his death in 2022, was particularly instrumental in cementing defense tech as a focus at Harvard.

Holte said Carter was a major figure in the push to understand Silicon Valley — and recruits from elite schools — as sources of both military technology and civilian innovations. And he was influential in bringing that ethos to campus.

The Technology and National Security Conference at HBS was started by Carter’s students, according to one of the conference’s co-chairs, Moises E. Navas.

Co-founder of aerospace defense company Shield AI Brandon Tseng, a Navy veteran and HBS alumnus, struggled with his startup before he began working with the Harvard Innovation Labs and connected with U.S. Representative Jim Matheson ’82 and eventually Carter.

“And then from there, they just freaking accelerated beyond belief,” Holte said. The Harvard-founded startup has just reached unicorn status, with a 5.3 billion dollar valuation in March.

MAKING THE PITCH

Dylan T. Driscoll ’24 graduated from Harvard last May. Now, he fixes broken parts for Anduril Industries, the autonomous systems company that produces flying drones, underwater missiles, and surveillance equipment.

Driscoll wasn’t new to the world of defense tech. He spent more than seven years in the Marine Corps before college and worked in defense manufacturing for a few months, building what he described as “spy satellites” and aircraft parts for Lockheed Martin KC-130s.

But he wasn’t always dead set on defense, either. In his first two years of undergrad, he planned to go into consulting, he said. His senior year, he was about to get a standing job offer from Tesla.

It was the Technology and National Security Conference at HBS that brought him back to defense — made him feel like he “wasn’t a crazy person” to contemplate entering the industry.

“I think it’s a disservice to the United States that we go into banking, which doesn’t really make anything,” he said.

Driscoll was inspired to go into defense tech because he found an environment that encouraged that path at HBS.

We’ve got youth enthusiasm. They want to build cool stuff, and that’s what we give them the opportunity to do. It’s like, ‘Hey, do you want to knock a drone out of the air 40 miles away? Here’s a bunch of money.’

“Skip the debt. Skip the indoctrination. Get the Palantir Degree,” the company advertised.

College activists, meanwhile, are not known for their fondness of defense contractors. Pro-Palestine student protesters disrupted a career fair last fall because it featured the CIA and Bank of America, which has worked with a weapons manufacturer that sells to the Israeli military. And the Harvard Undergraduate BGLTQ Business Society canceled a sponsorship with Palantir in 2019 after students voiced concerns.

Anduril has tried to turn that cultural and political clash to its advantage.

The words “Don’t Work at Anduril. com” are displayed on the sides of some of the MBTA Red Line trains that thunder beneath Harvard’s and MIT’s campuses. They’re part of an advertising campaign that Anduril has launched across Boston’s public transit system as it looks to fill 50 positions in the area. The messages are styled, with black paint drips, to look as if a disgruntled employee or anti-war activist had graffitied the company’s signs.

“Anduril is not for everyone,” Jeff Miller, the firm’s vice president of marketing, told The Boston Globe in an email. “That’s the point.”

Student leaders for Harvard Ventures, who held the event with Palantir and whom Palantir sponsors, declined to be interviewed because of the public’s “differing moral views” on Palantir.

At WECode, however, Natalia U. Siwek ’27 said that the Palantir sponsorship lowered the cost of attendance for the conference and enabled attendees to “understand what the company is doing and on their own, decide whether this is something they would be interested in.”

“They are doing software for drones,” Siwek said. “A big part of it is just engineering.”

But college campuses and defense companies have long harbored disdain for one another.

Thiel, the Palantir co-founder, is famous for giving $200,000 grants to young entrepreneurs on the condition that they forgo — or drop out of — college. This spring, Palantir launched a “Meritocracy Fellowship” for graduating high schoolers to choose instead of college.

Driscoll said that he saw more enthusiasm for defense tech at HBS than among undergraduates, who he described as sometimes “myopic” in their unwillingness to build weapons. For him, he said, Anduril was the place to be.

“We’ve got youth enthusiasm,” Driscoll said. “They want to build cool stuff, and that’s what we give them the opportunity to do. It’s like, ‘Hey, do you want to knock a drone out of the air 40 miles away? Here’s a bunch of money.’”

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danielle.im@thecrimson.com

Dylan T. Driscoll ’24
Industries Technical Operations Engineer
Dylan T. Driscoll ’24
Anduril Industries Technical Operations Engineer

The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2025

Two Schools Within a School: Segregation at CRLS

THE SCHOOL NEXT DOOR. Cambridge Rindge and Latin School — the city’s only public high school — is divided along racial and socioeconomic lines.

GRAPHIC BY CATHERINE H. FENG — CRIMSON DESIGNER, PHOTO BY E. MATTEO DIAZ — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

The

Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2025

When Hermela Shimelis walked into Cambridge Rindge and Latin School as a freshman, she began her high school career at one of the most racially diverse schools in the country.

But the students in her first Advanced Placement class reflected a different reality.

“When I walked into my first AP class freshman year, the class that I was in was definitely not representative of the diverse student body that CRLS hosts,” she said. “There were approximately five or so students of color in my class.”

As Cambridge’s only public high school, CRLS prides itself on the diversity of its student body. But more than a dozen students, alumni, and teachers told The Crimson that deep racial and socioeconomic divides exist in both academic and social settings — an issue that has persisted over decades.

“CRLS, as a school, is divided into two,” Shimelis said.

Jaclyn Piques, a spokesperson for Cambridge Public Schools, wrote that CRLS “works diligently” to respond to affiliate concerns, making “intentional efforts to ensure all students have access

to the most rigorous and enriching academic and extracurricular experiences.”

“We regularly adapt our curriculum and policies to provide equitable opportunities for all students,” she wrote.

But despite the school’s extensive offerings, students reported that a lack of advising exacerbates existing inequalities in the district leading to a lack of diversity across courses. While students who successfully navigate CRLS often matriculate to the nation’s most prestigious colleges, many students’ pathways look much different.

Niko Emack, who graduated CRLS in 2013, said that more than a dozen of his classmates went to Harvard after high school. At the same time, he recalled that his graduation ceremony included a moment of silence for two students shot in a drive-by.

“In that anecdote exists two realities at CRLS — one where students can go and get one of the best educations in the country, and a different reality that reflects the day-to-day struggles with gun violence and pain and suffering,” Emack said.

‘TWO SCHOOLS WITHIN IT’

Adam K. Gould, who graduated CRLS in 2023, said he “went to a school that had

two schools within it.”

“One of the academic elite of Cambridge and their children,” he said. “And then another class of students who may have grown up in affordable housing or have been in the city for generations, and don’t have the same access to wealth.”

The class that I was in was definitely not representative of the diverse student body that CRLS hosts. There were approximately five or so students of color in my class.

school, CRLS encapsulates the disparities present in the city. A 2021 report from the Cambridge Community Foundation showed that Cambridge’s wealthiest 25 percent of households earn an average of $343,000 — compared to the $13,000 earned by their less wealthy counterparts.

CRLS history teacher Lily R. Rayman-Read said that the district has not effectively insulated the school system from external, systemic inequalities.

“I feel like we have not done a good job yet in Cambridge Public Schools of figuring out ways to actually interrupt those systems and provide real equity,” she said.

The divides within CRLS begin far before students walk through its doors. Teachers, CRLS alumni, and district leadership pointed to existing socioeconomic divides in Cambridge — as well as past CPS policy — as the root cause of the divides.

“It was very apparent to me walking away that there was so much that was determined before people even showed up at Rindge,” William G. Kaufmann ’26, who graduated from CRLS in 2022, said.

As Cambridge’s only public high

Rayman-Read specifically pointed to the Innovation Agenda — a controversial 2011 policy that restructured CPS’ K-8 education system to create four public middle schools. She said the policy divided the student body by inadvertently driving wealthy students to attend private middle schools.

“There is really a stratified kind of tier system of students coming in — students who have received significant outside support away from the public education system, and students who have only had educational experiences within the public school system,” she said. “It is very, very noticeable for educators.”

Piques wrote that the district has since implemented “deliberate and sustained strategies” — including early college program partnerships, dual enrollment options, and early AP pipeline engagement — to bridge achievement gaps.

“Data demonstrates that our efforts are paying off, and more students than ever before are engaging in rigorous academic pursuits and extracurricular activities,” she wrote. “In Science, Technology, and Engineering, we have seen an increase in all test-takers, with particularly strong growth among low-income students and those who identify as African American/Black.”

While Shimelis — a CRLS senior and student representative to the School Committee — reported a positive experience at her public middle school, she recognized that her peers who attended private middle schools were afforded “certain resources that I couldn’t access.”

“They were able to enter CRLS as a freshman with almost a leg up in everything — academically, socially, college prep-wise,” she added.

Emack said the divides in CRLS are rooted in problems outside of the school — but their impacts reverberate through the classrooms.

SALLY E. EDWARDS — CRIMSON DESIGNER
Hermela Shimelis CRLS Senior

“By the time students are actually entering the high school, no matter how much good will, good programming, good leadership — again, how do you overcome a decade worth of gaps?” he said.

‘NOT A HIDDEN SITUATION’

When former School Committee member Laurance V. Kimbrough graduated from CRLS in 1998, he felt that a lot of the classes at the school were “segregated based on race and class.”

“You’d have a lot of the white and financially well-to-do kids in the honors classes, and you would have mostly students of color in the non-honors classes,” he said.

When he came back to the school as a CRLS guidance counselor in 2010, he said not much had changed.

Student achievement data confirms Kimbrough’s experience. According to the district’s student data report, only 15 percent of the 564 students who took AP exams in 2024 were Black, while nearly half were white. The school is 26 percent Black and 36 percent white.

CRLS senior Naseem S. Anjaria noted a similar pattern in his AP classes, saying there are “maybe one or two Black or Hispanic kids in a class of 25 to 30.”

“It’s the most glaring thing to walk into a school in the morning and see such a diverse array of kids, and then you go to your AP class — and it’s like you’re in a private school,” he added.

Nasra A. Samater, who graduated CRLS in 2022, said that as one of the few students of color in her advanced classes, she felt academically and socially isolated.

“Why am I not in classes with people

who both look like me or went to the same school as me?” she said. “If they were, it was very few and far between.”

School committee member Rachel B. Weinstein wrote that when she attended CRLS from 1988 to 1992, “my classes got whiter and wealthier as I moved towards graduating.”

It’s the most glaring thing to walk into a school in the morning and see such a diverse array of kids, and then you go into your AP class — and it’s like you’re in a private school.

“De facto segregation is something CRLS - and the City of Cambridge - have struggled with for many years,” she wrote.

The district has already worked to increase diversity in CRLS classrooms — implementing a “level-up” program in 2017 to enroll all 9th grade students in the same level English classes. Many students reported positive experiences with level-up classes, but they noted a decrease in diversity in higher level classes — influencing both their academic and social lives.

“A lot of times, people just are not interacting at all with people outside of their racial, socioeconomic, and the groups that are in their classes,” Alexander M. Leith, who graduated from CRLS in 2022, said.

Kaufmann agreed, saying that stu -

Naseem S. Anjaria CRLS Senior
Students at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School report sharp differences in academic support and success. E. MATTEO DIAZ — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

dents naturally “self-segregate” based on their academic circle.

CRLS math teacher Amy Dolan said that the homogeneity in higher level classes is “not a hidden situation,” and has gone unresolved for decades.

“It’s been like this for the ten years I’ve been here,” she said. “Which can be a bit frustrating from a teacher perspective.”

“We keep looking at data — well, we know the numbers. We see the numbers if you walk around the building and look into classrooms,” Dolan added.

‘FALLING THROUGH THE CRACKS’

CRLS alumni and staff said the school must improve its student support system to address the academic and social divides. But they agreed with district leadership that the complex problem requires solutions that extend beyond the school’s walls.

Rindge affiliates said the school must create a more robust advising network, helping students navigate the school’s vast resources. Adelina R. Escamilla-Salomon ’27, who graduated from CRLS in 2023, said students fall through the cracks of the current advising system.

“Not every student gets that one-onone support if they aren’t able to advocate

for themselves,” she said.

“CRLS doesn’t put in the effort to say, ‘No, you should be taking AP classes,’whereas white students already

have that in their minds,” Erwin A. Kardatzke, who graduated CRLS in 2024, said.

But the CRLS guidance network does

not fully capture the problem. Multiple district leaders said divides are exacerbated by lower expectations for students of color, widening divides from a young age by allowing them to progress through school without meeting proficient standards.

“We have to make sure we’re not doing that. We have to have high expectations for everybody,” Cambridge Vice Mayor Marc C. McGovern said. “If there are kids who are struggling, then we need to make sure we’re giving them the support to overcome those struggles as best they can.”

Emack, the varsity boys soccer coach at CRLS, has high hopes for the school’s future — so long as stakeholders across the city make use of Cambridge’s robust resources.

“I often describe Cambridge politically as like a Rubik’s Cube,” he said. “Sometimes we don’t always have the answer — it might be messed up as far as where the colors are, but it is a solvable problem.”

“It takes everyone, whether their student is the one that’s being affected by this stuff or not, to mend these institutional gaps and provide opportunity for students to do their best learning and their best work,” Emack added.

2022 CRLS graduate William G. Kaufman ’26 said disparities in middle school translated to the high school. JINA H. CHOE — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
Current CRLS senior Naseem S. Anjaria said there is a stark contrast between the student body and AP classes. JINA H. CHOE — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Can Harvard Bring Rigor Back to the Classroom?

ANALYZING ACADEMICS. Harvard’s most vocal critics — and members of its faculty — have claimed that the University’s classes have gotten easier. Now, as Harvard moves to recenter academics in undergraduates’ lives, its students’ shifted priorities are posing a problem.

The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2025

When Secretary of Education

Linda McMahon froze all future federal grants to Harvard, she justified her actions by saying America’s oldest and most selective university had lost “any semblance of academic rigor.”

“Why is it, we ask, that Harvard has to teach simple and basic mathematics, when it is supposedly so hard to get into this ‘acclaimed university’?” McMahon wrote in reference to an introductory math course launched last year that she derided as “remedial.”

McMahon is not alone in criticizing Harvard’s academic rigor.

Her argument that the University has gone soft on academics echoes long-standing conservative criticisms that Harvard has become too easy — rooted in what they argue is a practice of accepting applicants and promoting faculty for the diversity they bring to campus, rather than their intellectual merit.

Even among Harvard faculty, most of whom are not inclined to sympathize with McMahon or the logic in her letter, separate but related concerns that some students are increasingly putting academics on the back burner are widespread. A January committee report on classroom norms found that students prioritize extracurricular commitments over their classes — a trend, the report’s authors wrote, that most faculty view “with alarm.”

More than a dozen students, faculty, and administrators told The Crimson that they disagreed with McMahon’s suggestion that Harvard students are intellectually weak. But many also conceded that student priorities have shifted.

Amanda Claybaugh, the dean of undergraduate education at Harvard College, said it will take a thoughtful, targeted effort to address the factors — including pre-professionalism, grade inflation, and burnout from a highly selective admissions process — that have pulled students away from the classroom.

“These are all very real issues, and we can’t recenter academics without addressing them all,” she said.

PAST THE ‘GOLDEN AGE’?

During her first year at Harvard, Kyra E. Richardson ’28 took Math MA5: “An Indepth Introduction to Functions and Calculus I,” the course McMahon singled out

in her letter.

In Richardson’s rural Alabama hometown, having calculus offered in high school was a “privilege, not a given.” Math MA5 helped her catch up on content she never had the chance to learn.

So when Richardson saw McMahon lambast the rigor of MA5 and the course’s students in the May letter, she was taken aback.

Richardson said the class is “so good for students, not specifically, but especially for students that come from more disenfranchised areas.”

“To sit there and say it’s embarrassing — that students that are in that class don’t deserve to be at Harvard — is incredibly ridiculous,” she added.

McMahon’s criticism of MA5 parroted conservative arguments that the course reflects a worrisome trend at Harvard of lax standards and academically weak students.

But several undergraduates, professors, and administrators said that Harvard’s students are as intellectually talented as in the past, if not more so. Harvard Business School professor William C. Kirby, a former dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, said that “there’s always a temptation to think that there was a golden age of students.”

“But it’s not true,” he added. “I think our students today are the best we’ve ever had.”

Justin Xu ’25 said the establishment of courses like MA5 reflects the fact that Harvard has “a greater spread of people who are interested in different things” today compared to past generations — with more varied areas of expertise necessarily leaving gaps in certain academic subjects.

A student not having learned specific content before college doesn’t undermine their intellectual capabilities, Daniel Lee ’25 said. Lee himself attended an arts-focused high school with a limited math curriculum before arriving at Harvard, where he ultimately concentrated in applied math and took several difficult pure math courses during his time in Cambridge.

“I sympathize with the idea that some students might be less prepared, but I don’t think that means that students won’t ever be able to figure it out,” Lee said.

But even as affiliates defended the intellectual horsepower of Harvard students, they said that over time undergraduates have lost sight of their academic pursuits — drawn away from challenging courses by the allure of an extracurricular landscape that promises pre-professional success.

WHEN CAREERISM REPLACES CURIOSITY

History professor Derek J. Penslar first taught at Harvard in 2006, before leaving the University for several years. When he returned in 2016, Penslar quickly realized that Harvard’s academic standards had shifted: he could only assign about half the amount of reading and writing he did a decade prior.

“I was essentially told by my colleagues that expectations had changed,” Penslar said.

Penslar’s experience is not an anomaly. Several faculty said that in recent years, Harvard students have noticeably moved their focus from academics to pursuits beyond the classroom, forcing professors to adjust their syllabi accordingly.

“I do think that overall, there has been a bit of a decline in the intensity and the sort of academic level of some of the courses,” Organismic and Evolutionary Biology professor Michael M. Desai said.

Academic disengagement has been highlighted in official reports, too. The January faculty report on classroom norms recommended a slew of changes, urging the FAS to mandate attendance and standardize grading across departments, divisions, and schools.

And a 2023 report on grade inflation, which the University termed “grade compression,” found that grades at the College have risen significantly in the past 20 years — with more than 79 percent of grades now falling in the A range.

Faculty and students pointed to a range of potential catalysts for students’ shift away from academics, from achievable A’s to burnout to a competitive careerist culture.

Romance Languages and Literatures professor Francesco Erspamer, who has taught at Harvard for more than 20 years, said that demanding pre-professional extracurriculars compete for students’ attention. He said dedication to these clubs might be “undermining” the academics that should be central to a university.

Social Studies lecturer Bo-Mi Choi, meanwhile, said that grade inflation — which makes earning even a B-plus an “existential crisis” for students — has made undergraduates “really hesitant to take intellectual risk.”

Claybaugh argued that the “grueling gauntlet” of Harvard’s ultra-selective admissions process burns students out and diminishes their academic curiosity, leaving undergraduates to see their college courses “as just another set of hoops to jump through” in pursuit of straight A’s.

“They’ve learned, over the years, to think of the classroom as a place of competition, performance, and stress,” she said. “We want to re-awaken in them other feelings: curiosity, wonder, maybe even joy.”

Some students, however, said they have not sacrificed their intellectual curiosity for an easier courseload that falls second to pre-professional pursuits.

Sylvie S. Wurmser ’27, a Social Studies concentrator, said that “the state of academics is as strong as I could ever hope it to be” in her field of study. For Wurmser, factors like grade inflation have not impacted the “intellectual vigor of conversations we’re having.”

“There’s a really sizable proportion of the College that’s here because they’re really interested in learning, and they’re really interested in digging deep into an academic field with the brightest minds in the world,” she said.

Lee said that rather than being mutually exclusive, academics and extracurriculars can jointly reinforce students’ interests.

“Something like religion oftentimes might be considered extracurricular, but I think for me personally, it’s another manifestation of my interest in philosophy,” Lee said.

Others added that this shift away from school is driven by dynamics in the labor market outside the control of Harvard instructors. Sairam Pantham ’28 said that employers in industries like consulting and finance may value candidates’ pre-professional experiences over their GPAs or course rigor.

“I don’t think you can blame the school,” he said. “I think you more so just have to blame the system and just kind of blame the game.”

But faculty and administrators raised concerns that the exploratory element of a Harvard education is lost when students allocate their time to achieving a hyper-specific goal, such as a job or graduate school.

Outgoing College Dean Rakesh Khurana said in a May 20 interview that such a system undermines the core of a liberal arts education. He said that instead of treating college as a “GPS” with a predetermined destination in mind, students should instead use their time at Harvard to “first decide where it is that you want to go.”

‘A LOFTY GOAL’

The onus to recenter academics at Harvard falls on the faculty, Kirby said.

In his undergraduate courses, Kirby has implemented Harvard Business School’s classroom rules: mandatory attendance,

LAURINNE JAMIE P. EUGENIO — CRIMSON DESIGNER

cold-calling, and a ban on electronics. The shift “actually focuses attention a great deal, because students then pay attention to each other,” he said.

“It’s our job, perhaps, to challenge them more,” Kirby added.

But professors said that they often face pushback in the form of harsh student evaluations if they attempt to make their courses more rigorous. Because student assessments of instructors contribute heavily to promotion and hiring decisions, faculty said they can feel pressured to maintain lower standards to appease students.

“Higher education has become like a client-seller situation,” Choi said.

Desai said that while student assessment platforms like Harvard’s Q Guide provide valuable points of information, the College should embrace a wider range of evaluative methods, proposing a peer review system where faculty can weigh in on their colleagues’ courses.

Penslar — who called Harvard’s grading system “broken because of grade compression” — recommended a more drastic overhaul. He said he would prefer that the College mimic schools like the University of Toronto and Oxford University, where grading is far more harsh.

In recent months, Harvard administrators have announced several sweeping changes to increase undergraduate academic rigor and lessen grade inflation.

The College has begun working to compare and adjust grades across courses, according to Claybaugh. Faculty voted overwhelmingly in March to amend the College student handbook to include language stating that “students are expected to prioritize their coursework” — an amendment proposed by the faculty committee on classroom norms.

And professors greenlit proposals in April that eliminated the pass-fail option for courses fulfilling the Harvard College General Education and Quantitative Reasoning with Data requirements.

Psychology professor Fiery A. Cushman ’03, one of the co-chairs of the Gen Ed program, wrote in a statement that the aim of Gen Eds is to “help our students build the habits of thought that make them informed, thoughtful, and active contributors to society.”

The notion that Gen Eds can stand as a cornerstone of Harvard students’ academic experiences has been criticized as “wishful thinking.” But Cushman said the intent behind the program is precisely what could get Harvard students back in the classroom — and perhaps combat the criticisms of academic rigor raised by conservatives and

faculty alike.

Pantham said the best thing professors can do to encourage academic engagement would be to set concrete guardrails — like limiting phone usage and expecting students to take notes in class. But in some cases, he said, it may not even be possible for professors to change students’ attitude toward their coursework.

“If a student is going into a class thinking, ‘This doesn’t matter for whatever profession I want to go into, whatever industry I want to go into,’ ultimately, the professor of the class can’t do anything to change the student’s mind,” he said.

Choi said it is this mindset — of seeing higher education as a means to achieve professional success — that can prevent students from realizing the true value of their Harvard educations.

“You get this discourse of, ‘My education is an investment,’ which actually just means you paid something and you want a return on it,” she said. “But that’s not actually what college is about.”

“There are certain impacts, there are certain things — when your mind blows open — that cannot be quantified,” Choi added.

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Students walk through Harvard Yard, making their way to their various classes and extracurricular commitments. SAMUEL A. HA — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
Students sit in on an Ec10, an introductory economics class, during shopping week in spring 2018. JACQUELINE S. CHEA — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Will Massachusetts Ban Legacy Admissions?

STATE POLITICS. As states across the country are moving to ban legacy admissions, state legislators in Massachusetts are trying to do the same. After a similar bill died in committee last legislative session, some officials are optimistic their efforts will come to fruition — further changing Harvard’s shifting admissions landscape.

At a routine hearing at the Joint Committee on Higher Education held in early May, a diverse group of five students gathered to urge the Massachusetts Legislature to ban legacy admissions in the state.

They argued the practice advantages wealthier and whiter students in a time when schools should be doing just the opposite. Luke D. M. Albert ’22 - ’23, a recent Harvard graduate and a legacy student himself, spoke against the practice in higher education. Albert said he had sometimes wondered whether he had actually been admitted to Harvard on his own merit because of the College’s consideration of legacy.

“They make legacy students question their place in such competitive environments,” Albert said to legislators.

The students, who were from Amherst College, MIT, Harvard, and Northeastern University, represented colleges both with and without legacy admissions policies. All said that such policies are outdated and without value.

Their testimony at the State House marked the start of a monthslong process that the state legislature now begins to vote, amend, and perhaps finally pass a ban on legacy admissions long sought by affirmative action advocates and their peers, targeting some of the most prestigious schools in the country.

‘FAIR FOR EVERYONE’

Following a surge of admissions-related activism after the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action, taking a similar step to end admissions preferences for the relatives of alumni has grown increasingly popular in liberal legislatures across the country. The Supreme Court ruling “opened the door to a new conversation” in eliminating legacy admissions, said Richard D. Kahlenberg ’85, an expert witness for Students for Fair Admissions who has conducted research into legacy admissions.

“There’s a symbiotic relationship between racial preferences and legacy preferences,” he added.

For many, continuing legacy admissions in a post affirmative action world was a double standard.

“It was right after the fall of race-conscious admissions in Supreme Court and

students were really fed up with the fact that that that their institutions could no longer consider race in admissions in order to redress centuries of systemic discrimination, yet they could continue to preference students solely on the basis of their of their familial bloodline,” Ryan C. Cieslikowski, a lead organizer at the educational equity activist group Class Action.

In 2024 — less than a year after the Supreme Court decision to ban the use of affirmative action — California, Illinois, Maryland, and Virginia all passed state legislation eliminating legacy admissions to varying degrees, though some of them only apply to public universities.

And more broadly over the past 10 years, 452 colleges have independently stopped considering legacy status, including multiple in the Commonwealth.

But Massachusetts, a state with one of the highest numbers of colleges to consider legacy status in admissions, has not budged. Nor has Harvard, one of the most visible elite schools to use legacy admissions in the country.

Advocates are hoping this might be the year that will change. In Massachusetts, a proposal to end the practice that failed a year ago in the state legislature has now been brought back, and this time its sponsors are optimistic.

Currently, New York, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Connecticut have all considered similar legislation over the last year.

“I am confident that we’ll get there,” said State Senator Lydia M. Edwards, a co-sponsor.

“Ending legacy admissions makes sense to me: admission should be based on who the student is not who the student’s parents were,” wrote state Senator William N. Brownsberger ’78, a senior leader in the Senate.

Edwards said reception in the State House has so far been generally favorable, without any organized advocacy against the bill.

Freshman Representative for Lowell, Mass. Tara T. Hong said his colleagues on the Joint Committee on Higher Education seemed interested in the bill, expressing support for it during the May 5 hearing. The previous iteration of the legacy admissions bill passed that committee in 2024, but subsequently died in the Senate Committee on Ways and Means, which acts as the gatekeeper for legislation that will make it to a final vote on the floor.

Hong said the legislation “makes it fair for everyone” to get into college on

their own merits.

Hong said the five students who spoke at the hearing convinced him of the bill’s importance, making him “willing to listen more and learn more about the bill.”

THE ROAD AHEAD

To pass, the new legacy bill must first go through the Joint Committee on Higher Education, again, and then to one of the chambers’ Committees on Ways and Means, where it was abandoned in the Senate last time.

Once the legacy bill can make it through that crucial juncture, it has a much higher chance of passing both full chambers of the State House.

Last time around, the bill languished in the Joint Committee on Higher Education for months before the session ended, never ultimately making it to a vote. Advocates are more optimistic about the timeline this time, after the House’s recent decision to impose a 60-day deadline for committee votes once a bill has had a hearing.

Since the committee held its oral arguments for the bill on May 5, the house at least will likely make a decision by July 6 at the latest.

When Moran and Edwards proposed the first version of the bill back in 2023, legislators and advocates called only one student, a high school student named Abyssinia Haile, to testify.

This time around, a far wider coalition has formed to support the effort.

Last month, the Massachusetts End Legacy Coalition worked with students to write letters signed by more than 20 prominent state and local organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, Harvard Black Students Association, Boston City Council President, and the Harvard-Radcliffe Asian American Association. Senator Edwards participated in a panel sponsored by Harvard’s Intellectual Vitality Initiative and hosted by the Black Student Alliance and the Phillips Brooks House.

In a statement to the Crimson, State Representative Marjorie C. Decker wrote that she “personally opposes” legacy admissions, although she did not take a stance on the bill.

“In light of the courts gutting affirmative action, legacy admissions only serve to further amplify the great inequities and disparities in access to higher education for underserved communities,” she wrote.

Despite the general opposition to leg -

Feb.

16, 2023

Senator Lydia M. Edwards and Representative Michael J. Moran first presented their respective bills in the State House and Senate to ban the practice of legacy admissions at colleges and universities. The two were referred to the Joint Committee on Higher Education in February.

June

27,

2023

The Joint Committee on Higher Education held a hearing for the bill.

June 29, 2023

The Supreme Court bans affirmative action, a decision that resparked national discourse about legacy admissions.

April 1, 2024

The Joint Committee on Higher Education sponsored the bills, moving them forward in the legislature. At the Senate, the two bills were combined — alongside other smaller pieces of legislation — to create a larger bill that would move forward. The bill was then referred to the Senate Ways and Means Committee for further review.

Dec. 31, 2024

The bills’ first iterations died after the Senate Means and Ways committee took no further action by the end of the legislative session.

Feb. 27, 2025

In the new legislative session — which began in January — Edwards and Moran reintroduced their versions of the bill. The two were referred to the Joint Committee on Higher Education.

May 5, 2025

The Joint Committee on Higher Education held a hearing for the two bills, where members listened to student testimonies against the use of legacy status in admissions. Committee members in the house are expected to vote on the bill by July 6, 2025.

The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2025

acy admissions practices, the bill is not guaranteed, and several major obstacles remain.

For one, the Massachusetts legislature is notoriously slow. Last year, the state entered its fiscal year without a budget for the 14th year in a row. Final votes on legislation are also heavily back loaded to the end of the session, with key votes stalled so long that several carefully crafted proposals failed to pass at the end of the last session because leaders ran out of time.

Though the bill may move more quickly through the House this time around, there is no guarantee that the process will make its way through the rest of the legislative body as swiftly.

And while opposition within the government has yet to arise, there remains time for potential lobbying from the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts and other higher education institutions interested in keeping their age-old policies.

Even as the legislation finds general support, Edwards said that some representatives may be tentative to impose legislation upon institutes of higher education such as Harvard while it is being “attacked unjustly” by the Trump Admin -

istration.

In order to pass the bill, Edwards said that she would be willing to compromise by starting with a less aggressive bill that

narrow its impact — UMass Boston and the Maritime Academy already have high acceptance rates — it could help chart the more difficult path of ending the practice

Ending legacy admissions makes sense to me: admission should be based on who the student is not who the student’s parents were.
William N. Brownsberger ‘78
Massachusetts State Senator

only targets legacy admissions at public universities.

“If we can’t get to private this year or first, there is also the option of possibly going to public,” she said.

Currently, the University of Massachusetts Boston and Massachusetts Maritime Academy are the only public universities to use legacy admissions in the state.

Though a compromise limiting the bill to public institutions would vastly

at the state’s wealthier and more selective private universities, which run significant lobbying operations.

The legislature may find a considerable base of support from within such elite colleges themselves if the bill does make it over the finish line.

According to both the Crimson’s Class of 2024 and Class of 2025 senior surveys, 57 percent and 54 percent of students respectively opposed legacy admissions, while just 23 percent were in support of

the practice.

“In this time when DEI is under attack, Harvard must use every tool possible to create equitable educational opportunity and build a diverse campus, and that includes eliminating legacy and donor preferences,” Jeannie Park ’83, the co-founder of Coalition for a Diverse Harvard, a pro-affirmative action organization wrote in a statement to the Crimson.

Though legacy admissions technically serve the interest of Harvard students — whose potential children would one day benefit if they decided to apply themselves — most Harvard students still oppose legacy admissions on egalitarian principles.

Register said that though she understands Harvard alumni desires to see their children at their alma mater, the practice is ultimately unfair.

“I have nothing against your kids coming to your school and that’s a sense of pride,” Register said. “But it’s when you get the unearned tip because of what, where you were born, who you’re born to.”

sunshine.chen@thecrimson.com elyse.goncalves@thecrimson.com graham.lee@thecrimson.com

The Massachusetts State House is located just a few minutes from Harvard’s campus in Beacon Hill. E. MATTEO DIAZ — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
PAGE DESIGN BY XINYI C. ZHANG — CRIMSON DESIGNER

How Harvard’s Wealthiest Alumni Are Reshaping University Giving

STRINGS ATTACHED. Led by Sam W. Lessin ’05 and the 1636 Forum, Harvard donors are ditching unrestricted giving for targeted donations to shape the University’s future.

The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2025

Jason H. P. Kravitt never really opened his checkbook for Harvard.

For the past two years, the class of 1972 Harvard Law School graduate has sent the University a symbolic $1 check — a protest, he said, against how Harvard had “shamelessly” treated its Jewish students and alumni. Each check came with a letter explaining exactly why Harvard would not receive more.

A former co-chair of a major international law firm, Kravitt has funded programs at Johns Hopkins, Cambridge, and the University of Chicago — often in mem-

ory of his late son. Kravitt had long felt uneasy about Harvard’s direction. But it was the University’s muted response to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel that infuriated his hopelessness.

“I told them they were in sixth place on my donation list,” he recalled telling a Harvard gift officer. “They tried twice and then gave up.”

Kravitt’s wallet is still closed for now, but his eyes are not.

Each week, he reads a newsletter published by the 1636 Forum — a group of alumni launched in 2024 to track governance issues, flag campus developments, and help affiliates decide where, or whether, to give.

“I think 1636 is indispensable to anybody who wants to keep up on the details of what’s

going on at Harvard,” he said.

He’s one of many paying closer attention.

“I’ve heard lots of donors say that Harvard is effectively an uninvestable asset at this point,” said 1636 Forum co-founder Samuel W. Lessin ’05, a former Facebook executive. “You don’t know when you give money where it’s going to be used for — whether it’s being used for things you believe in or not.”

Rather than promote unrestricted giving, the 1636 Forum points donors — from major benefactors to everyday alumni — toward specific programs, and initiatives that emphasize academic freedom, governance reform, and institutional accountability.

“We don’t want to not give,” he said. “We want to be supportive. We want to do it in an

aligned way.”

Since its launch, the Forum has helped coordinate more than eight figures in earmarked donations, according to a person familiar with the donations.

Kravitt says he would now consider donating to Harvard — but only if the Forum asked for his support.

“I think the idea they’re trying to do — that by influencing enough people so it makes a difference — I think that’s a great idea,” he said.

‘AN INSIDER-OUTSIDER’

For years, Harvard’s biggest donors gave quietly — out of tradition, gratitude, and institutional pride. But after Oct. 7, that support began to sharpen into scrutiny, and for some, a search for leverage.

Harvard’s initial silence, and its slowwalked response to a widely criticized statement signed by 34 student groups that labeled Israel “entirely responsible” for the violence, jolted a cohort of high-profile alumni into public dissent. For many, giving, once reflexive, now meant asking whether Harvard still deserved their trust.

The first wave was outrage. Just three days after the attack, hedge fund manager Bill A. Ackman ’88 — who has since emerged as one of Havard’s fiercest critics — denounced his alma mater’s handling of the statement and called for then-Harvard President Claudine Gay’s resignation in a series of blistering posts on X.

“One should not be able to hide behind a corporate shield when issuing statements supporting the actions of terrorists,” Ackman wrote in one post.

Soon came exits. Within two weeks of the attack, Leslie H. Wexner — a longtime supporter of the Harvard Kennedy School — severed financial ties with the University. In a letter circulated widely on X, the Wexner Foundation cited Harvard’s “dismal failure” to take a clear and unequivocal stance against Hamas. Billionaire philanthropist Leonard V. Blavatnik soon followed suit, citing concerns over Harvard’s response to campus antisemitism.

Behind the big names, hundreds of people suspended gifts, signed open letters, and demanded accountability from Gay and the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body. But for some alumni, withdrawal was only the beginning — not the end.

Lessin launched a write-in campaign for the Board of Overseers — the University’s second-highest governing body — positioning himself as a reform candidate who could push for change from within. He called for

Psychology professor Steven A. Pinker said the Forum has helped the Council for Academic Freedom raise money. Y. KIT WU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

a renewed focus on academic neutrality, stronger governance, and protections for free inquiry.

“Rather than giving up on Harvard,”

Sam and 1636 gave did give me a few ideas and frameworks that help us think though the gift.

to Harvard’s discretionary fund. Instead, fund specific faculty, departments, student programs, and institutional principles — academic freedom, governance reform, and pluralism — directly.

That includes grants to pluralism-related initiatives and support for the University’s Council on Academic Freedom and Intellectual Vitality initiative.

According to psychology professor Steven A. Pinker — a co-president of CAFH — the 1636 Forum has helped process gifts to fund CAFH’s new executive director position, guest speakers, and the council as whole.

he told his former boss, Facebook founder Mark E. Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan ’07 in a campaign video posted to YouTube. “I do think that this is a great moment to push a little bit, and I’m willing to do the work.”

Even with the endorsement of Zuckerberg, Chan, and a score of big-shot Harvard alumni, all in a carefully orchestrated media blitz, Lessin ended up within 100 votes of the threshold needed to appear on the ballot.

Still, Lessin insisted the campaign was never about a seat.

“There was an opportunity to write in. It was a good way to drive momentum,” he said in a January interview. “But this last year has really shown me the power of being an insider-outsider — the power of an independent organization.”

Instead, he turned his focus elsewhere — to a different kind of influence. Out of the campaign’s momentum came something longer-lasting: the 1636 Forum.

He teamed up with fellow venture capitalist and Harvard Business School graduate Allison Wu to launch what looked, at first, like a niche alumni outlet — a space for disgruntled affiliates to vent, organize, and fund a few causes they believed in.

Lessin’s first moves were modest, a few sit-down interviews with notable affiliates, and scattered donor calls. But behind the scenes, he built something more ambitious: a financial apparatus designed not just to support Harvard, but to steer it.

The 1636 Forum didn’t begin as a campaign for control. It began, in early 2024, as a newsletter.

‘GO-TO SOURCE’

Now, the 1636 Forum is something else entirely: a parallel institution with real leverage, and Harvard knows it.

Their model rejected alumni giving — broad, discretionary, and largely untraceable — in favor of precision. At the heart of the 1636 Forum is a simple ask to donors: don’t send your dollars without restriction

“It isn’t just about building a squash court or a dorm — or even needing a chair,” Pinker said of the Forum. “They’re taking an active interest in the intellectual and academic direction of the University.”

The Forum has also provided input on some of the highest-dollar alumni gifts to Harvard in the last year — including a major donation from Sequoia Capital partner Alfred Lin ’94 to fund two professorships in artificial intelligence and civil discourse.

“Sam and 1636 did give me a few ideas and frameworks that help us think through the gift,” he said.

But Lin, like many donors, saw the Forum’s influence spreading. He said many of his peers, in Silicon Valley and across the country, also read the Forum’s newsletter.

Lori M. Goler — a former Meta official of 16 years — also celebrated Lessin’s focus on “building a community of alums who believe in Harvard.”

“1636 Forum is my go-to source for information on the most important issues facing Harvard,” wrote Goler, a Harvard Kennedy School and HBS graduate.

While several other alumni groups have emerged in recent years — some with newsletters of their own — none appear to match the Forum’s reach or donor influence. Dozens of prominent alumni, including major tech and finance figures, are regular readers of the Forum’s weekly briefings, which now land in more than 20,000 inboxes.

In August 2024, Lessin distributed a 93-slide report diagnosing what he found to be the largest issues at Harvard — politicization of academic curriculum, activist faculty, administrative bloat, and more — and listed, almost point-by-point, how donors could give for “maximal impact.”

Members of Harvard’s top brass also actively read the Forum’s newsletter, according to Lessin.

“In a joking way, a lot of people at a very senior level have made the obvious comment being like we love the newsletter,” Lessin said.

Lessin himself has also been invited to private calls with the top echelon of Harvard donors.

On May 1, he joined a call featuring Harvard Hillel Executive Director Rabbi Jason B. Rubenstein ’04, hedge fund manager Seth A. Klarman, and more than a dozen other top donors, according to another person familiar with the call.

‘JUST CAUTION EVERYBODY’

From the start, Lessin pitched the 1636 Forum as something Harvard doesn’t currently have — a transparent, independent alumni platform focused not on tradition or prestige, but alignment and accountabil-

ity. He’s even gone as far as to call it a kind of parallel to the Harvard Alumni Association, a fresh channel for engagement in an era where many donors no longer write checks out of reflex.

“We’re not super interested in dealing with the HAA bureaucracy and what it’s become,” he said. “We think it’s far more powerful to operate on the outside and build something new.”

A Harvard Alumni Association spokesperson celebrated the “broad support” of alumni donors in a statement.

“We are also grateful for the thousands of donors who provide unrestricted, flexible support, often through the Schools’ annual funds, and who recognize the cumulative

Alfred Lin ’94
Harvard Donor and Sequoia Capital Partner
DESIGN BY CATHERINE H. FENG AND LAURINNE JAMIE P. EUGENIO— CRIMSON DESIGNERS
Sam Lessin founded the 1636 Forum in 2024. COURTESY OF SAM LESSIN

The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2025

impact of their gifts on core priorities such as financial aid, teaching and research,” the spokesperson wrote.

But the future of Lessin’s model is far from settled, especially as some of Harvard’s most established allies push back.

During a pointed exchange in a fireside chat in November, former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers encouraged Lessin to exercise caution with his new model of donating.

“I would just caution everybody,” he said. “The University is an enormously complicated and subtle institution and trying to push it around with threats of not giving money and the like is not likely to be an effective tactic in achieving objectives.”

Months later, Summers has continued to urge restraint, saying that activist donors like Lessin should be more careful of their strategy as a result of the Trump administration’s relentless attack on Harvard’s federal funding.

“I think the 1636 Forum has been very constructive in presenting much needed perspectives to the University,” he said in an interview with The Crimson.

“I would hope that those who care about

Harvard would continue to support Harvard, particularly at a difficult moment like the present, even if they have some concerns about policies being pursued,” Summers added.

Several other longtime contributors to

The University is an enormously complicated and subtle institution and trying to push it around with threats of not giving money and the like is not likely to be an effective tactic in achieving objectives.

Harvard, whose names adorn buildings across campus, echoed that warning — urging Lessin and others not to mistake influence for control.

Paul A. Buttenwieser ’60, the namesake of a University professorship and a former president of the Board of Overseers, said the

model behind 1636 “certainly is a departure from what was standard in my day, which was you look to see what institution wanted and supported it.”

“I think also younger people don’t necessarily want to give a lot of money to support sort of legacy organizations,” he added.

Peter L. Malkin ’55, who funded the Malkin Athletic Center and a longtime Harvard donor, put it more bluntly.

“I have felt that donors have the right to make suggestions and indicate the areas of their interests,” Malkin said. “But I draw the line at specifically saying that I will give this gift only if you do the following.”

In their caution, Buttenwieser and Malkin reflect a more traditional ethos of alumni giving — one grounded in deference to the institution, not demands on it. For decades, their approach helped shape Harvard’s growth.

Still, even skeptics are paying attention to Lessin. Malkin, for one, doesn’t just read the 1636 Forum’s newsletter — he distributes it.

“I do distribute the 1636 to about 50 classmates, class of 1955,” he said. “I think they find it very, very interesting.”

Following Lessin’s lead, other alumni

groups are beginning to adopt similar strategies. The Coalition for a Diverse Harvard is preparing to launch its own giving guide, and a newly formed independent alumni group at Columbia is developing a comparable model.

“We also want to make sure that people with an interest in support of the Coalition’s mission figure out the ways as best they can to get the biggest bang for the buck, even though their bucks may not be as big,” said Coalition board member Michael G. Williams ’81.

The Black Alumni Association has also made targeted giving efforts to initiatives, including the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations, that align with their values.

The trend suggests that Lessin’s vision is no longer outlier — but a template.

“I think we are on our path candidly to having more reach and having more than the HAA,” Lessin said.

“We’re really helping Harvard with the donor story,” he added.

abigail.gerstein@thecrimson.com

dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com

The 1636 Forum hopes to become more influential than the Harvard Alumni Association. TRUONG L. NGUYEN — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

In HSPH’s Year of Crisis,

Baccarelli

Steps Up

A DEAN FOR TOUGH TIMES? In his second year as Harvard School of Public Health dean, Andrea A. Baccarelli is already facing unprecedented funding cuts. Faculty say he’s a good listener and honest about the school’s dire straits — and that might be what HSPH needs.

BRIANA HOWARD PAGÁN— CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Ever since Andrea A. Baccarelli arrived as a visiting scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health 20 years ago, he has viewed the school as a Ferrari.

“Ideas move incredibly quickly here. And they’re beautiful ideas, ideas that can make a difference in the world,” Baccarelli said during a February state of the school address. “It’s like we’re trying to drive the Ferrari on a bumpy country road.”

Like the engine of the high-speed sports car, HSPH’s research engine is strong. Harnessing its power to unleash the full potential of the institution was part of Baccarelli’s vision when he took over as HSPH dean in January 2024.

Baccarelli’s mission was one of strategic change grounded in faculty governance — summarized by what he called “AAA”: agile, accessible, and accountable.

But during his February address, Baccarelli joked that instead of a Ferrari, a more apt vehicle to describe the current state of HSPH is an SUV: less flashy, but far more able to weather harsh terrain.

Just days before, the National Institutes of Health had announced plans to slash federal funding for indirect expenses from $135 million to just $31 million, and the school had begun receiving grant terminations. Since then, the situation has only become more grim as the Trump administration continues to clamp down on universities’ access to federal research funding.

As the Harvard school most dependent on government support, HSPH has the most to lose from Trump’s attacks.

“It’s like somebody dropped a nuclear bomb on the school,” HSPH professor Sarah M. Fortune said.

Baccarelli’s transition from describing the school as a Ferrari to an SUV mirrors the evolution of his vision during the crisis. The federal funding landscape has drastically changed, and the road ahead has become far rougher. And with it, Baccarelli’s mission for HSPH has become more focused on survival.

What he originally set out to do — drive the school forward — is as relevant now as it was before. But Baccarelli’s capacity for compassion and collaboration might ultimately be what allows him to steer the school through the current storm.

‘A COMMITMENT TO CHANGE’

Baccarelli’s deanship began in January 2024 as Harvard faced a University-wide

crisis and unprecedented turnover in Massachusetts Hall. And HSPH was recovering from its own leadership crisis — Baccarelli’s predecessor, Michelle A. Williams, received a vote of no confidence from the faculty during her tenure.

Fortune likened the previous models of the school’s deanship to a “benign dictatorship,” where leaders made decisions in relative isolation and mechanisms for accountability to the faculty were ill-defined.

Rather than immediately launch into reform and strategic plans, Baccarelli began his deanship with a yearlong listening tour to better understand the school’s dynamics and inner workings. HSPH professor Lorelei A. Mucci described his approach as “gaining opinions from everybody before he forms his own.”

Baccarelli’s conversations with HSPH affiliates would eventually inspire his threepart vision — of agility, accessibility, and accountability — first announced in February 2025.

The mission’s focus on agility refers to increasing the school’s entrepreneurial work by forging research and funding collaborations with non-traditional partners for public health, such as engineers and industry CEOs. Emphasis on accessibility has taken

the form of expanding the school’s non-degree programs.

A key mechanism for implementing accountability has been Baccarelli’s three working groups on finance, research, and education. Composed of faculty members, the groups have sought to decentralize decision-making and innovate in the school’s programs.

“He’s trying to create a different governance model than we have traditionally had at the school,” Fortune said.

‘FOUND HIS MOMENT’

Everything changed in February when the Trump administration began slashing Harvard’s federal research funding. Of all of the University’s schools, HSPH is the most vulnerable to the White House’s attacks, given that 59 percent of its operating budget comes from government and private funding.

Last week, the Trump administration froze $60 million in federal grants to Harvard in addition to more than $2.6 billion in cuts in previous weeks. Earlier this month, more than 100 Harvard researchers received termination notices for federally funded research projects. The cuts amount

to a virtually unrecoverable crisis, forcing scientists to halt their often time-sensitive research.

So far, at least 139 scientists at HSPH have had federal grants or contracts terminated, according to a web page maintained by the school. Nearly all direct federal grants to scientists — at least 200 — have been canceled.

To address the funding crisis, Baccarelli has hosted five virtual town hall meetings since March with up to 1,000 attendees each, according to HSPH spokesperson Stephanie Simon. Baccarelli typically gives updates for 20 to 25 minutes — often grim news about recent funding cuts and hiring freezes — before taking questions from attendees for the remainder of the hour.

“In a different time, a listening leader would not have been so perfectly suited,” Fortune said.

“He just found his moment,” she added.

Many have attributed Baccarelli’s success in weathering the current crisis to his initial preparation.

HSPH professor Rifat Atun said that Baccarelli “really tried to understand what the issues were from the perspective of faculty and staff.”

“I think the pieces were in place when the crisis or the tsunami arrived,” he added.

XINYI C. ZHANG — CRIMSON DESIGNER
The Harvard School of Public Health is located on the Longwood medical campus in Boston. BRIANA HOWARD PAGÁN — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

HSPH professor Goodarz Danaei has been struck by how much time Baccarelli carves out for affiliates to share the challenges they are facing and potential opportunities to address them.

According to numerous faculty, Baccarelli responds to his colleagues’ questions and concerns with compassion. Adele B. Houghton, an instructor at HSPH, recalls one town hall when affiliates asked logistical questions about their visas. Baccarelli responded by speaking about his own experience acquiring a visa — something that reflected he was “really personally suffering” in seeing his colleagues and students’ struggles, Houghton said.

HSPH professor Phyllis J. Kanki echoed Houghton’s statement, saying “there’s no arrogance or anything in the way he answers slews of questions that are peppered at him in these town halls.

“I’ve never really seen something like that in a dean,” she added.

To further increase transparency and communication, Baccarelli has sent out several newsletters — titled “Notes from the SUV” — summarizing town halls, informing affiliates on recent school and University updates, and answering questions about funding.

From his letters to the town halls, Baccarelli is willing to admit uncertainty in the face of funding cuts. But faculty have praised the dean’s frank communication.

“I’d rather know the truth about what’s going on than have a false sense of hope, because then you can really plan and take action,” Mucci said.

A FUNDAMENTAL OVERHAUL

At the moment, the school’s current funding model cannot withstand the White House’s attacks. Now, Baccarelli’s task is to fundamentally overhaul HSPH’s streams of revenue.

HSPH professor John Quackenbush said in March that with its significant reliance on government support, the school’s funding setup makes it “nominally a soft money institution.” Costs like research expenses and graduate student salaries are primarily grant-funded.

Consequently, junior faculty are particularly vulnerable. And the funding cuts will impact the trajectory of the scientific ladder as graduate and postdoctoral students face the uncertainty of paused research.

“The people that are going to suffer the most are the very young people, the new investigators, unless we can find a way to support them,” HSPH Professor Frank E. Speizer said. “It might take five to seven years to

get back to where we have been, but during that period, we’ve got to find alternative sources.”

Even before the funding crisis, Baccarelli was reportedly exploring other potential funding avenues. He sought to increase the school’s footprint in its teaching and outreach to students outside of HSPH — something he pursued while a department chair at Columbia University, according to HSPH professor Francine Laden.

At Harvard, Baccarelli worked to increase non-degree programs like executive education and certificates, which are significant sources of income for the school.

Baccarelli has looked towards philanthropy as a potential option as well. The dean has worked to connect individual departments and researchers with private funding sources.

Frank B. Hu, chair of HSPH’s nutrition department, recalled a time when Baccarel-

li facilitated a relationship between him and a Harvard alumna Baccarelli had met at a dean’s gathering in New York City. The alumna went on to make “significant donations” to the department and women’s health research in particular, Hu said.

But the funding from this source is limited. Bacarelli told the Harvard Gazette, a University-run publication, that “it’s unrealistic to imagine it could make up for our long-standing partnership with the federal government.”

And finding donors willing to provide research funding will become increasingly competitive as other large research institutions anticipate similar funding cuts. HSPH professor Christoph Lange said that top biomedical research universities know that what happens to Harvard will “sooner or later happen to them as well, so they are pursuing kind of the same donors.”

Instead, HSPH professor Carmen Mes-

serlian proposed the school pivot to much more expansive collaborations with industry partners — those that would expand upon the “agile” piece of Baccarelli’s vision.

“What I’m doing is what the school needs to figure out — which is how to take science and solve a real problem in the real world,” Messerlian, who founded a fertility care startup, said. “My company is funded by government. It’s funded by private sector. It’s paid for by people.”

“Those are the kinds of strategies moving forward if the school wants to actually survive,” Messerlian added.

Each decision the school makes is marked by uncertainty as news of funding cuts continues to flood in. But for the faculty, Baccarelli’s leadership is suited for the crisis.

“He’s the right dean at the moment for the school,” Lange said.

Andrea Baccarelli moderates a talk with former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer. CLAIRE A. MICHAL — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

The Changing Meaning of the Harvard Name

ENDURING IMAGE. The Crimson spoke with students, alumni, and critics to understand how Harvard’s political battles have changed the meaning of one of the University’s most valuable assets — its name.

It was only after Mary P. Stone ’77 graduated that she understood the power of the Harvard name.

A first-generation college student from Brooklyn, New York, Stone came to Harvard in 1973 to pursue a degree in government. But when she left Harvard’s gates, she realized her diploma symbolized more than just an education — it was a valuable form of social, and professional, currency.

Stone said her Harvard affiliation helped her land a broadcast journalism job in Jacksonville, Florida. There, she said people “were almost taken aback” when she mentioned her alma mater.

“I would never have gotten to where I went in life without that Harvard fire under me,” Stone said.

Many Harvard graduates have a similar story. For generations, the Harvard name has been synonymous with excellence. As the “gold standard for education,” Aaron M. Shirley ’23 said the name turns the heads of strangers and employers alike.

“Harvard is a home name — a name that you would talk about in your living room,” Shirley said. “Most people are like, ‘Wow, I’ve never met someone who went to Harvard.’”

But in recent years, Harvard’s once unshakable reputation — and the inherent value that comes with its name — has been threatened as the University has found itself at the center of contentious political debates. Harvard’s response to pro-Palestine student activism garnered national outrage in 2023, cascading into an all-out public relations crisis.

Now, Harvard’s ongoing legal battles with the Trump administration have once again thrust it into the spotlight — but this time, as the face of higher education’s fight against the White House. As Harvard has taken center-stage in the political controversies of the past two years, The Crimson spoke with graduates, students, and University critics about what the future might hold for one of Harvard’s most valuable assets — its name.

‘CRITICIZED ON THE NATIONAL STAGE’

For many undergraduates, the University’s shifting public image has become a source of concern, confusion, and even disillusionment. What once felt like a powerful credential is now a potential liability in a

politically polarized climate.

“Before coming into Harvard, people were saying, ‘Oh, yeah, Harvard — that can get you anywhere,’” said Mandy Zhang ’27. “During the first year, whenever someone would be like, ‘Oh, where you guys from? What school you guys go to?’ I would shout out ‘Harvard!’”

But Zhang, a former Crimson News ed-

back on her.

Since October 2023, Harvard has faced a complex and rapidly evolving legitimacy crisis. What began as backlash to the University’s response to various elements of student activism in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel quickly snowballed into national outrage.

Within months, Harvard was under

As a student, I want to be part of an institution that is recognized for its role in the public interest, in research, and in being an educational institution with strong with integity and strong values.
Kya I. Brooks ’25
Graduating Harvard Senior

itor and co-president of the Harvard College Democrats, said the past two years have made her less inclined to disclose her alma mater.

The president of the United States called Harvard a “threat to Democracy” in a fiery social media post last month. Trump and his supporters have labeled the University an “Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institution” in their ongoing tirade against higher education.

“The place is a Liberal mess, allowing a certain group of crazed lunatics to enter and exit the classroom and spew fake ANGER AND HATE,” Trump wrote in a social media post.

While Harvard did not respond to Trump’s characterization, the administration has worked against allegations of antisemitism — adopting new regulations and commissioning a task-force to address short-comings in campus bias policy.

It’s not the first time Harvard has been thrust into the political spotlight, nor is it the first time the President has targeted the University by name. But as national figures take aim at Harvard with increasing frequency, Zhang said she believes Harvard’s name has morphed into a potential liability, rather than an asset.

“I feel like everyone just sees Harvard students as really negative now,” she said. “The whole situation just is kind of difficult because we’re just getting criticized on the national stage, and a lot of it doesn’t even have to do with us.”

Zhang is not alone in worrying about how her University’s public image reflects

Congressional investigation. Then-Harvard President Claudine Gay was called before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce in December to defend the University’s handling of antisemitism — particularly as it surfaced in campus protests.

Gay’s disastrous testimony sparked fi-

ery backlash that rippled throughout the nation. In the following weeks, top law firms ended their recruitment programs at Harvard and rescinded job offers to students who signed statements critical of Israel — in some cases, even when the students had distanced themselves from the comments in question.

As public opinion turned against Harvard, students said they were frustrated by outsider’s interpretations of campus dynamics.

For students like Kya I. Brooks ’25, the shift in public attitude toward Harvard has not just been frustrating — it has felt like a fundamental misunderstanding of what the University stands for.

“As a student, I want to be part of an institution that is recognized for its role in the public interest, in research, and in being an educational institution with integrity and strong values,” Brooks said. “I wouldn’t want the mission of Harvard to be misunderstood.”

“I naturally care a lot about my school,” Brooks added. “The future of it, and protecting its mission, and just the history of Harvard since it’s been around almost 400 years.”

‘DO YOU PLAGIARIZE, TOO?’

As national figures take aim at Harvard

An ‘H’ flag flies over the Harvard Square COOP store. E. MATTEO DIAZ — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

with increasing frequency, the weight of the scrutiny is not only borne by administrators in Massachusetts Hall. As the University’s reputation soured, students said the Harvard name carried a new social stigma — despite retaining its previous academic credentials.

Rachel E. Zhou ’24, who works as a psychiatric technician, said the media’s hyperfixation on Harvard has made discussing where they went to college “really awkward.”

“It’s weird that you’re reading things about your alma mater on the front page of The New York Times,” Zhou said. “Their dirty laundry is just being aired out for everybody.”

And it was not just with strangers — Zhou said Harvard’s negative press permeated discussions even within their own family.

“Before my senior year, they had never questioned the name of the University — never questioned its ethos,” they said. But things changed after the outbreak of protests on campus began attracting waves of bad press. Zhou said disagreements between family members about the University’s response prompted infighting that strained their relationships with relatives.

Zhou is not the only one who saw digs at the University’s name follow them home. Emma N. Barnes ’25 said that after Gay’s resignation amid allegations of plagiarism, she got “some weird comments” while in her Virginia hometown.

“There was one time I was home picking up curbside delivery groceries for my parents, and the guy delivering them commented on our Harvard magnet,” Barnes said. “He was like, ‘Oh, do you plagiarize too?’”

Beyond the social stigma newly associated with a Harvard affiliation, the Trump administration has also tried to discredit the University’s academics. In her letter to Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon took aim at the University’s academic requirements, writing that “Harvard has failed” to live up to its reputation of scholarly excellence.

Despite federal attacks, students and alumni report that the academic prestige of a Harvard degree has not waned.

“When I got to the final interview for my job, one of the people who was interviewing me saw that I had Harvard on my resume, and was like, ‘Oh, I think you’d be a great fit. Seems like you went to a good school,’” Zhou said. “And it was no more than a 10 minute final round interview.”

Even in academia, having a Harvard affiliation still speaks for itself.

“I definitely think that the Harvard name makes medical schools more confident in me as a candidate,” Subul Ahmad ’25, an incoming student at the Mayo Clinic School of Medicine, said. “I do get the impression that they think that I can handle the rigor and also bring a diverse, valuable perspective.”

Deborah A. “Deb” Carroll, the executive director of Harvard’s Mignone Center for Career Success confirmed students’ firsthand experiences.

“There was considerable employer activity on campus this past year, including a robust calendar of career fairs spanning many industries and sectors,” Carroll wrote in a statement. “Harvard alumni continue to look to Harvard graduates as strong candidates for their open positions.”

Even as the Trump administration threatens Harvard’s research and scholarship — pulling nearly $3 billion of the University’s funding — affiliates remain cautiously optimistic that Harvard will emerge from the fray unscathed.

“I definitely am sitting in anticipation, like I think most folks are, to see where Harvard stands after the dust settles,” Shirley said.

‘THE LIGHTNING ROD’

As Harvard gears up for a prolonged bat-

tle with the White House, alumni said the University is pushing beyond the criticism it faced over the past two years — and that its name remains strong.

Representative Glenn F. Ivey (D-M.D.), who attended Harvard Law School, said the University’s choice to confront Trump has helped to rehabilitate its public image.

“Harvard’s become the lightning rod that’s drawing the ire of the Trump administration,” Ivey said.

“The rest of these schools need to step up, too,” he added. “The only way to turn it around is to stand together.”

In the hours following Garber’s decision to reject a sweeping list of demands from the Trump administration, donations to the University exceeded $1 million — a sign of swelling public support for Harvard’s defensive position.

Students said they are also noticing the increase in support, and are becoming more eager to tout their alma mater than they have in the past two years.

“I would say that prior to this, it’s been a bit more conservative,” Shirley said of his tendency to mention his Harvard affiliation. “Now, I definitely welcome any chance to discuss what’s going on, because I’m proud of the University and the administration.”

Even conservative critics believe that after the chaos, the Harvard name will remain powerful. Representative Kevin P. Kiley ’07 (R-C.A.) has publicly lambasted

Harvard as being “hypocritical” for expecting federal funding after what he saw as “massive civil rights violations.” But even amid these critiques, Kiley said Harvard’s reputation will weather the storm.

“It’s an image that has been built up for so long, and it’s a brand that’s so strong, it’s a reputation that’s so strong that not all of that will be lost overnight — no matter how just extreme and alarming the problems that we’re seeing right now are,” he said.

Gregory J. “Greg” Stone ’75, a communications consultant, said that while many conservative lawmakers critique the Ivy League, their own affiliation with the elite universities speaks to their lasting institutional power.

“Among the people who hate Harvard for whatever reason, underneath it all, they still respect it,” he said.

As the University tries to move forward into a new moment for its public image — protecting its legacy while embracing its central position in the fight against higher education — students said they feel a commitment to the cause.

“There is a growing awareness that the Harvard name comes with responsibility,” Felipe M. Albors ’25 said. “People are asking themselves the question of, how do I use this platform we’re given to actually contribute something meaningful?”

hugo.chiasson@thecrimson.com samuel.church@thecrimson.com

Tourists enjoy Harvard Yard in late May. HUGO C. CHIASSON — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

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