THE HARVARD CRIMSON THE UNIVERSITY DAILY, EST. 1873
| VOLUME CL, NO. 10 | CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
ED SCHOOL
FAS DEAN SEARCH
OPINION
ARTS
To the T: Tee Up. Boston Residents Deserve Better
Artist Profile: Rapper Mickey Diamond
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FRIDAY, APRIL 7, 2023
Dean Long Raises Diversity Concerns CAMPUS DIVERSITY. Harvard School of Education Dean Bridget Terry Long mantained in a Tuesday interview that economic affirmative action cannot replace racial diversity of students. SEE PAGE 4
COLLEGE
Harvard Affiliates Rally for Gun Control GUN REFORM. On Tuesday evening, more than 100 Harvard affiliates, Boston residents, and gun control activists gathered on the steps of Widener Library, calling for stricter gun regulations. SEE PAGE 8
The Most Powerful Dean FAS DEAN. Now President-elect of Harvard, Claudine Gay is preparing to step out of University Hall and into Massachusetts Hall. One of her most important tasks is to fill her own shoes — dean of Harvard’s largest academic school. Past candidates for the role have typically possessed strong administrative experience and familiarity with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. SEE PAGE 6 SAMI E. TURNER—CRIMSON DESIGNER, MARIA M. ROSS—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
HUPD
Harvard Police Chief Makes First Public Statement on ‘Swatting’ Attack BY RYAN H. DOAN-NGUYEN AND YUSUF S. MIAN
STATE POLITICS
CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
H Proposed Mass. Bill to End Legacy Admissions ADMISSIONS. The Massachusetts House is considering a proposed bill that seeks to end admissions preference for legacies and those related to donors. It also looks to end early decision programs. SEE PAGE 11
arvard University Police Department Chief Victor A. Clay provided new details on the Monday armed raid by HUPD of an undergraduate suite in response to a false 911 call, writing in a Wednesday statement that the caller claimed to be a Harvard student who was “kicked out.” The statement comes more than 48 hours after at least five armed HUPD officers raided the Leverett House suite of Harvard College seniors Jarah K. Cotton ’23, Jazmin N. Dunlap ’23, David G. Madzivanyika ’23, and Alexandra C. René ’23. The students, who are Black, awoke to
COMAROFF LAWSUIT
AND ELIAS J. SCHSIGALL CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
SPORTS
HOCKEY. Several Harvard Men’s Ice Hockey alumni have emerged as powerhouses in the National Hockey League, including Crimson stars Adam Fox, Ryan Donato, Alex Killorn, Jimmy Vesey, and others. SEE PAGE 16
armed” in the third call, Clay wrote in the statement, and first threatened to “shoot law enforcement who entered the room” and then to leave the room and “start shooting as he did so.” These phone calls led HUPD to believe there was an “elevated” threat. HUPD called Cotton and René roughly 30 minutes before the raid, Cotton said in an interview Monday. When officers failed to contact the two students, HUPD “determined that it was necessary to enter the room” to ensure their safety, according to Clay. The officers then searched the Leverett suite with “negative results for an individual with a firearm or any persons acting in a suspicious manner,” according to HUPD spokesperson Steven G. Catalano. After the situation was cleared, officers brought the students to a common room
and briefed them on the reasons for their response, Clay wrote in the statement. At around 4:41 a.m., residential staff “began to engage with the students directly.” The false 911 call was an instance of “swatting,” named for the armed SWAT teams that often respond to them. Swatting attacks have been on the rise, particularly in schools, across the country in recent weeks. NBC10 Boston reported that 28 Massachusetts communities received swatting calls the day following a March 27 school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee. In a Wednesday statement, Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana wrote that other Boston-area universities had been targeted by similar swatting calls in the past week. MIT received a bomb threat
SEE PAGE 8
HARVARD ADMISSIONS
Comaroff Lawsuit Will Class of 2027 Celebrates Proceed to Discovery Acceptances to College BY RAHEM D. HAMID
Former Harvard Stars in NHL
banging on their door and commands to “open up” at approximately 4:15 a.m. Monday. Officers wielding assault rifles and wearing riot gear identified themselves and entered the suite before ordering the students out of their rooms at gunpoint. Clay wrote in the Wednesday statement that HUPD received three calls within an hour from a caller who “identified himself as male” and claimed to be a Harvard student who was “kicked out” this semester. The caller claimed to have taken a woman hostage in the students’ suite and had unsuccessfully attempted to kill her, according to Clay. The caller referenced “a room number that indicated a strong familiarity with Leverett House and how its rooms are commonly referenced by Harvard community members,” Clay wrote. The caller “indicated that he was
A federal judge on Monday allowed a majority of the counts in a lawsuit filed last year against Harvard alleging that the University ignored sexual harassment and retaliation complaints against professor John L. Comaroff to proceed while dismissing one count. In an 81-page ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Judith G. Dein wrote that the May 2020 Crimson investigation into allegations against Comaroff and two other senior Anthropology professors, as well as subsequent reporting by The Chronicle of Higher Education, “support a finding that Harvard engaged in a long-term pattern and practice of indifference to complaints of sexual harassment against professors in that Department.” Dein denied most of Harvard’s motion to dismiss nine of 10 counts of the lawsuit.
She dismissed count three, writing that “plaintiffs have failed to allege plausible claims against Harvard for gender discrimination under Title IX.” Last week, Dein denied Harvard’s motion for summary judgment on the 10th count, which alleges Harvard violated Kilburn’s privacy by obtaining and distributing her private therapy notes as part of an internal investigation. In her ruling, Dein wrote Harvard’s arguments were “unpersuasive” and that the “facts are sufficient” to support Kilburn’s claim that the University illegally breached its fiduciary duty. A total of nine counts of the lawsuit will proceed to discovery. The plaintiffs — Anthropology graduate students Margaret G. Czerwienski, Lilia M. Kilburn, and Amulya Mandava — first sued Harvard in February 2022, claiming that Harvard was aware of complaints about Comaroff’s alleged misconduct as a faculty member at the University
SEE PAGE 4
BY MICHELLE N. AMPONSAH AND EMMA H. HAIDER CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
laire S. Yoo, a senior at Idaho Falls High C School, said she was so nervous waiting for the results of her regular decision application to Harvard College that she took an “hour-long shower.” She was “shaking” as she navigated to the applicant portal. “I clicked it — and the confetti went everywhere,” said Yoo, who started screaming as her mom ran into the room. “We all came downstairs and started jumping around,” Yoo added. “It was the best day of my life. Like, genuinely.” Yoo is one of 1,220 applicants to the College who opened their admissions portals on March 31 to confetti and the word “Congratulations!” — an official welcome to the Class of 2027. Students accepted during regular decision join 722 admits from the early action
cycle, who learned of their acceptances in December. The 1,942 admitted students were selected from a total applicant pool of 56,937. The College admitted 3.41 percent of applicants, marking a slight increase from last year’s 3.19 percent and the second-lowest acceptance rate in the College’s history. Dev S. Ahuja, a member of the incoming class from Cleveland, Ohio, described Harvard as his “dream school” but said he was deferred after applying early action to the College. On Ivy Day — when all eight Ivy League schools release admissions results — he planned to open up decisions in alphabetical order, with his parents and grandmother in the room and sister on FaceTime. Still, he decided to save Harvard for last. “Then I just saw the status update,” Ahuja said. “I took a deep breath. And
SEE PAGE 5
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THE HARVARD CRIMSON
LAST WEEK
APRIL 7, 2023
STUDENT GROUPS
HARVARD LAW SCHOOL
HARVARD KENNEDY SCHOOL
HKS Student Gov Postpones Vote
Robert Bullard Honored by HLS
Rosenbaum Discusses Russia, Ukraine
GOVERNMENT SPARS. Though Tuesday’s Harvard Kennedy School Student Government meeting ran an hour longer than scheduled, the body did not end up conducting the vote it originally set out to hold. During the two-hour meeting, the KSSG originally aimed to discuss and vote on proposed bylaws that would restructure the executive board and move the elections of the president, executive vice president, vice president of finance, and vice president of elections from the fall to the start of the spring semester. Instead, tensions and accusations brewed. BY ASHER J. MONTGOMERY—CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
ENVIRONMENTAL LAW. The Harvard Law School Environmental Law Society presented Robert D. Bullard with the Horizon Award in an award ceremony Tuesday evening. Bullard is a professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University and director of the school’s Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice. An award-winning author of 18 books on issues surrounding environmental justice and a prominent voice against environmental racism, Bullard has been described as the “father of environmental justice.” BY SABRINA R. HU—CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
WAR CRIMES. Eli M. Rosenbaum, the counselor for War Crimes Accountability at the United States Department of Justice, discussed federal efforts to address war crimes in Russia at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at a Monday lecture. Rosenbaum, a 38-year veteran of the Justice Department, currently heads the DOJ’s war crimes accountability efforts. Rosenbaum said Ukranian officials have registered “more than 90,000 atrocity crimes” committed by Russia. BY THOMAS J. METE—CRIMSON STAFF WRITTER
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The Week in Photos
NANCY PELOSI SPEAKS AT SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS WITH HILLARY CLINTON
MARCH FOR OUR LIVES CALLS FOR GUN CONTROL. Following the fatal shooting of six children and adults at a Nashville school last week, more than 100 Harvard affiliates and Boston residents rallied on the steps of Widener Library in favor of stricter gun regulations. JULIAN J. GIORDANO—
Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, former Secretary of State and Speaker emirata, spoke in the School of International and Public Affairs’ first installment of a spotlight interview series. According to the Columbia Spectator, this series plans to host various influential political leaders and experts in the field of government and policy.
CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
THE COLUMBIA SPECTATOR
THC Read more at THECRIMSON.COM
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT GOVERNMENT VOICES CONCERNS OVER SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM Due to a recent policy change, Princeton will enact a new surveillance system: cameras at every external entryway of all dorms and residential college buildings. Students have voiced their opposition to this new policy, claiming it is an overreach of university power and an invasion of student privacy. Administrators said the changes are is not “surveillance” — entailing someone watching the film 24/7 — but rather intended to be used as a “post-incident” tool. THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
NATIVE REMAINS DISCOVERED AT DARTMOUTH PROMPTS COMMUNITY RESPONSE Dartmouth discovered Native remains in their collections, and the subsequent announcement came as a shock to Dartmouth’s Native community. The Dartmouth reported Tuesday that Jami Powell, Hood Museum curator of Indigenous art, said due to inconsistent cataloging in the 1980s, the museum was not aware that the remains were in its collection. In support of Native groups, the remains have been removed from campus.
OUTDOOR DINING. With the arrival of spring, many have taken to the outdoors to enjoy a meal or get some work done. Ben & Jerry’s co-hosted a free cone day event on Monday with the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter, bringing hundreds of people to the Square for free ice cream. BY J. SELLERS HILL—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
PETITION DROPOFF. The Harvard Undergraduate Workers Union delivered a request for voluntary recognition of the union to Harvard’s Office of Labor and Employee Relations on Monday. BY FRANK S. ZHOU—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
THE DARTMOUTH
STUDENT AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS SUPPORT UNIONIZATION EFFORTS IN A DISPLAY ON CAMPUS A group of 70 supporters rallied in favor of the unionization of resident advisers and graduate assistants. The demonstration came in response to the university’s opposition to RAs and GAs unionizing. The Daily Pennsylvanian reported on Monday that the university has said that they are “not employees.” The speakers of the rally said RAs are essential to students navigating personal and academic issues. THE DAILY PENNSYLVANIAN
FLAVOR FLAV. Rapper Flavor Flav spoke at the Phillips Brooks House Association on Wednesday in a conversation about sobriety with Harvard Extension Student Association President Kody Christiansen. During his visit, he also volunteered at the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter. BY FRANK S. ZHOU—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
BRIDGE BANQUET. Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences celebrated Bridge Week.
BASEBALL. Harvard won both games of a Sunday doubleheader against the Princeton Tigers at O’Donnell Field to improve to 4-2 in Ivy League conference play. BY CORY K. GORCZYCKI—CRIMSON
BY MARINA QU—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
PHOTOGRAPHER
NEXT WEEK
THE HARVARD CRIMSON APRIL 7, 2023
What’s Next
IN THE REAL WORLD AMID RISING POLITICAL TENSIONS, MCCARTHY MEETS WITH TAIWAN’S PRESIDENT After the meeting, both sides shared sentiments of fostering a healthy relationship amid rising tensions with China. Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen in California, marking the first time a Taiwanese President has met with a political leader in line of succession since 1979. After the U.S. opened diplomatic relations with China several decades ago, the U.S.-Taiwan relationship has been unofficial but encouraging. Several senators also weighed in, expressing their support for maintaining security and economic interests.
Start every week with a preview of what’s on the agenda around Harvard University
Friday 4/7
Monday 4/10
Wednesday 4/12
THINGS OF THE AIMLESS WANDERER
THE POWER OF PETS: HOW ANIMALS AFFECT HUMAN HEALTH
COUNTERFEIT CAPITALISM WITH MATT STOLLER
Harvard Film Archive, 9 p.m. Watch Kivu Ruhorahoza’s film focusing on the Western gaze upon Africa. The film will center on the relationships between Africa and the West: the past, narratives, trauma, violence, and the history of the continent’s colonial encounter. with explorers. Admission is free for Harvard students.
Following a spell of severe weather, a tornado ravaged southeastern Missouri, destroying homes and killing five people. As the severe storm season continues, experts warn against tornados “spawning” from them. Damage was primarily in the Glen Allen region and surrounding rural areas. This earlier season of storms is a recent change from the later time they would usually occur. This tornado is one of many affecting many midwest states.
Kresge Building, 1 p.m. - 1:50 p.m. Celebrate National Pet Day with Harvard Medical School professor Beth P. Frates ’90 and Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University professor Megan Mueller for a conversation about how pets affect mental and physical well being. Pets will be present at the event.
Saturday 4/8 Remote, 12 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. Join Harvard Extension School alumna Mel R. Wilson to discuss her research on saving nature from climate trauma. Join Wilson for a lecture and film viewing via Zoom.
Hauser Hall, Harvard Kennedy School, 12:15 1:30 p.m. Listen to Matt N. Stoller ‘00, author of Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy, discuss the concept of “Counterfeit Capitalism.”
Thursday 4/13
Tuesday 4/11
WILDER LECTURE SERIES: STAY WILD FIVE KILLED IN MISSOURI DUE TO SEVERE TORNADO
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“WHAT WE MISS WHEN WE LOOK AT EVERYTHING: GLOBAL SHOCKS AND LOCAL IMPACTS”
Grund Hall, 6:30 p.m - 8 p.m. Listen to Graduate School of Design professor Rachel Meltzer speak about how neighborhoods are impacted by broad-scale events in uneven ways. Meltzer will discuss her own research and how poor planning can perpetuate disparities between neighborhoods.
TECHNOLOGY, REPRESSION, AND GEOPOLITICS
Harvard Film Archive, 4 p.m. - 5 p.m. Join Steve Feldstein, Senior Fellow of the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in a discussion as part of a larger series on addressing ethical aspects of the long-term impact of artificial intelligence on society and human life.
Sunday 4/9
Friday 4/14
A MAN, WHEN HE’S A MAN / PLANET OF THE CHILDREN
THE (RE)IMAGINATION OF MATTER
James Room, Swartz Hall, 3 p.m. - 5 p.m. Join a panel of university professors for a symposium discussing Dr. Charles H. Long’s contributions to the fields of religion, history, and culture. The event will feature actor Keith David and Wake Forest University professor Corey D. Walker ’08 will give the opening keynote.
Harvard Film Archive, 7 p.m. - 9 p.m. Watch two short documentaries by director Valeria Sarmiento at the Harvard Film Archive. This event will feature two television documentaries that take place in the Caribbean and explore different aspects of Latin American identity.
ASQA MOSQUE RAIDED BY ISRAELI POLICE Israeli police raided the Asqa Mosque early Wednesday morning. Following the assault, Gaza and Israel traded air strikes. The mosque has been a point of contention in the past due to its status as a holy site in Islam and Judaism, where it is called the Temple Mount. Israeli police also raided the mosque in 2021, leading to an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas. At least 350 Palestinians were arrested and removed from the compound. Israeli police said that Palestinians had locked themselves inside of the mosque hours after their nightly prayers for Ramadan ended. Staying in a mosque overnight is banned by Israel, except on special occasions such as the end of Ramadan.
ELIOT ENVIRONS
STATE REPORT FINDS CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE IN BALTIMORE CATHOLIC CHURCH According to a report released Wednesday, over 600 children were sexually abused by more than 150 Catholic priests and others associated with the Archdiocese of Baltimore. The Maryland Attorney General’s Office has been conducting a year-long investigation into the archdiocese. The office says that the number of victims is likely much greater than is known. The report says that the church was more focused on hiding the abuse than putting a stop to it. Archbishop William Lori apologized in a statement online. Maryland lawmakers passed a bill Wednesday that will remove the statute of limitations on child sex abuse that prevents victims from suing after they turn 38. The Archdiocese of Baltimore has been criticized in the past for its handling of abuse allegations. CLAIRE YUAN—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
THE HARVARD CRIMSON Cara J. Chang ’24 President
STAFF FOR THIS ISSUE Brandon L. Kingdollar ’24
Cynthia V. Lu ’24
Managing Editor
Business Manager
Magazine Chairs Io Y. Gilman ’25 Amber H. Levis ’25
Design Chairs Sophia Salamanca ’25 Sami E. Turner ’25
Eleanor V. Wikstrom ’24 Christina M. Xiao ’24
Blog Chairs Tina Chen ’24 Hana Rehman ’25
Multimedia Chairs Joey Huang ’24 Julian J. Giordano ’25
Arts Chairs Anya L. Henry ’24 Alisa S. Regassa ’24
Sports Chairs Mairead B. Baker ’24 Aaron B. Schuchman ’25
Technology Chairs Kevin Luo ’24 Justin Y. Ye ’24
Associate Managing Editors Leah J. Teichholtz ’24 Meimei Xu ’24 Editorial Chairs
Associate Business Manager Derek S. Chang ’24 Copyright 2023, The Harvard Crimson (USPS 236-560). No articles, editorials, cartoons or any part thereof appearing in The Crimson may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the President. The Associated Press holds the right to reprint any materials published in The Crimson. The Crimson is a non-profit, independent corporation, founded in 1873 and incorporated in 1967. Second-class postage paid in Boston, Massachusetts. Published Monday through Friday except holidays and during vacations, three times weekly during reading and exam periods by The Harvard Crimson Inc., 14 Plympton St., Cambridge, Mass. 02138
Night Editors Sarah Girma ’24 Vivi E. Lu ’24 Assistant Night Editors Claire Yuan ’25 Andrew M. Lu ’25 Jonah C. Karafiol ’26 Jo B. Lemann ’26 Azusa M. Lippit ’26 Leah J. Lourenco ’26 Julia A. Maciejak ’26 Story Editors Isabella B. Cho ’24 Ariel H. Kim ’24
Brandon L. Kingdollar ’24 Vivi E. Lu ’24 Leah J. Teichholtz ’24 Meimei Xu ’24 Eric Yan ’24 Design Editors Toby R. Ma ’24 Sami E. Turner ’25 Nayeli Cardozo ’25 Laurinne P. Eugenio ’26
Christopher L. Li ’25 Addison Y. Liu ’25 Nathanael Tjandra ’26 Editorial Editor
Manuel A. Yepes ’24 Sports Editors
Aaron B. Schuchman ’25 Arts Editors
Zachary J. Lech ’24
Photo Editors Cory K. Gorczycki ’24 Joey Huang ’24 Julian J. Giordano ’25
CORRECTIONS The Harvard Crimson is committed to accuracy in its reporting. Factual errors are corrected promptly on this page. Readers with information about errors are asked to e-mail the managing editor at managingeditor@thecrimson.com.
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THE HARVARD CRIMSON
NEWS
APRIL 7, 2023
HGSU-UAW
HGSU Mixed On New Uni-Wide Policies FALLING SHORT. The first University-wide policies on bullying and discrimination did not reflect some union suggestions. BY JULIA A. MACIEJAK CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
S
ome members of Harvard’s graduate student union said the first University-wide anti-bullying and non-discrimination policies, released last month, did not reflect some of the union’s proposed changes for a broader definition of “bullying” and greater “neutrality” in the University’s resolution process. The policies, which will go into effect Sept. 1, came out of proposals of two working groups established by the first contract between the University and Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Automobile Workers. In April 2022, Harvard released drafts of its proposed policies on anti-bullying, non-discrimination, and sexual harassment, soliciting feedback from affiliates over the course of the summer. The union’s feminist working group submitted proposed changes to the draft policies to Harvard on Sept. 28. Among other recommendations, the group called for specific language changes to broaden the definition of bullying and harassment, as well as anti-bias training for administrators involved with the
complaint process, a clarification about the office or offices charged with handling cases, and a more concrete timeline for cases. HGSU-UAW President Koby D. Ljunggren said they were initially disappointed to see certain recommendations not adopted in the final policies, but they became “a little bit more heartened” at seeing the other policy provisions. “While not everything — and from our perspective, some of the most important things — weren’t adopted, there were some very healthy changes, we think, to some of the definitions. And in the very least, our feedback was heard,” Ljunggren said. With HGSU-UAW on their second contract, these policy changes have been “a long time coming,” according to Marisa J. Borreggine, a member of the feminist working group who participated in drafting the original recommendations to the University. “It took a lot of time and pressure to get meetings with University officials to even hear us out, so I am disappointed that some of our key suggestions have not been incorporated into the new University-wide policies,” Borreggine wrote in an email. For instance, the language regarding “bullying” was not adjusted according to the union’s recommendations. The feminist working group had proposed several adjustments to expand the definition of bullying: that the definition of an act in violation of the anti-bullying policy be changed from “per-
vasive, persistent, and/or severe” to “pervasive, persistent, or severe”; that an example of bullying be changed from “Deliberate and repeated humiliation” to “Deliberate or repeated humiliation”; and that an example of unwanted behavior be changed from a “physical, verbal, and/or written act” to “physical, verbal, or written act.” The University did not adopt the second proposed change, but it did alter language related to the first and third points. The group also recommended that while the University’s policies maintain that critical academic feedback does not constitute bullying, the policies should add a sentence saying, “However, critical feedback is not excluded as evidence in a bullying investigation.” Harvard’s final policy did not adopt this recommendation. “We want to make sure that the definition of bullying adopted is actually going to be applicable to cases of bullying that we see through our union workplace issue forms,” Ljunggren said. “We want to make sure there is some recourse even if it’s moderate bullying. There’s still those instances, and they should still be addressed,” Ljunggren added. Borreggine wrote that certain terms in the policies are “outdated,” such as the University’s definition of discriminatory harassment as “unwelcome and offensive conduct” based on one’s protected status. In their recommendations last year, the femi-
nist working group had criticized the term “unwelcome” conduct, arguing that it “places the burden of proof on the target of harassment or discrimination.” Another main point of concern is the language and policies surrounding the makeup of “Determination Panels,” which review investigative reports and determine policy violations. As of now, the policy describes “at minimum, three neutral members” for these panels, but the union has pushed for majority third-party, non-Harvard appointees to the panel. “From our perspective, we think it’s much stronger and puts a lot more faith and confidence in the process when there is a majority of external decision makers on those panels, and we think that’s an important piece of a truly neutral policy,” Ljunggren said. University spokesperson Jason A. Newton declined to comment. In a March 22 interview with the Harvard Gazette, Sherri A. Charleston, Harvard’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, said after the policies go into effect in September, there will be “a progressive implementation” that will “take a few years of refinement.” “To that end, we want to make sure a constant cycle of quality improvement is embedded into the rollout process, so that as we refine it, we’ll really figure out how to maximize our efficiency and awareness of resources and procedures,” she said. “What we
HGSU-UAW voiced mixed feelings on anti-bullying and non-discrimination policies, released March 22. AIYANA G. WHITE—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
see on Sept. 1 will not be the final product; it will be the beginning of a cycle of continuous improvement.” Bailey A. Plaman, a member of the union’s feminist working group, said the University’s anti-bullying and non-discrimination policies resembled language in its Title IX policies, which the group has been pushing to amend. “We were all really disappointed to see that they were based off of Title IX. A lot of language is very similar, if not the same, and a lot of the policy is very similar,” Plaman said. Borreggine added that there was no “compelling reason” for the University’s anti-bullying and non-discrimination policies to
mirror its Title IX language. “We had a chance here to create policies that were more considerate of the needs of folks who experience harm and how they can be made whole again, and the policies fall short in that regard,” Borreggine wrote. The University plans to release changes to its Title IX and sexual misconduct policies on Sept. 1, after the Department of Education updates federal Title IX rules, according to Newton. As for the anti-bullying and non-discrimination policies, Ljunggren said the union can push for amendments to the language through bargaining for them in its next contract. julia.maciejak@thecrimson.com
COMAROFF LAWSUIT FROM PAGE 1
Comaroff Lawsuit Proceeds on Multiple Counts of Chicago when he was hired in 2012 and mishandled reports of sexual harassment and professional retaliation since then. The suit was amended in June to include additional allegations of sexual harassment from Comaroff’s time as a professor at UChicago. Comaroff and his lawyers have consistently denied all allegations of misconduct made against him. Over the summer, Harvard asked the court to dismiss counts one through nine of the lawsuit, which claim Harvard’s response to complaints against the professor violated federal law. On a count-by-count basis, Dein refuted the University’s arguments, except for count three. On count one — which alleged the University maintained “a policy and practice of deliberate indifference” — Dein wrote that “the issue whether Harvard acted with deliberate indifference must await further development of the record.” Dein rejected Harvard’s argument that the plaintiffs failed to “plausibly” allege Harvard had “a policy and practice of deliberate indifference to sexual misconduct in the Anthropology Department.” Dein wrote that Comaroff’s stature as a leader in his field, as well as the plaintiffs’ allegation that “no one in a position of authority at Harvard” was “willing” to confront him, meant the plaintiff’s allegations were “sufficient to satisfy” a standard of “severe and pervasive” conduct — a legal requirement for claiming a “hostile educational environment” under Title IX regulations. “A factfinder could reasonably conclude that Comaroff’s threats against graduate students in his Department were severe enough, and so pervaded their educational environment, that they undermined the victims’ educational opportunities,” she wrote. Dein similarly rejected Harvard’s arguments of dismissing counts two and four through nine, which included Harvard’s assertion that the statute of limitations on some of the charges had expired. Dein, however, dismissed count three of the lawsuit, in which the plaintiffs alleged that Harvard engaged in gender discrimination and argued that the University’s Title IX policies are structurally biased against wom-
en.
“The problem with the plaintiffs’ theory, however, is that they have failed to allege any facts, as opposed to conclusory allegations, to show that Harvard’s alleged practice of failing to credit complaints of sexual misconduct without independent corroboration applies only to women who file complaints and not to men who file complaints of sexual misconduct,” Dein wrote. Harvard spokesperson Rachael Dane declined to comment. One of Comaroff’s attorneys, Ruth K. O’Meara-Costello ’02, wrote in a statement that discovery will show that “the case against Harvard is built on a house of cards.” “The decision on the motion to dismiss does not reflect factual findings by the court, merely that the court believes the case against Harvard should proceed to discovery,” O’Meara-Costello wrote. “As the case moves forward, we believe the evidence will show that Professor Comaroff did not engage in any of the activities he’s been wrongly accused of.” The attorneys representing the plaintiffs — Russell L. Kornblith, Sean R. Ouellette ’12, and Carolin Guentert — wrote in a statement that “this ruling is an important victory for our clients and other survivors.” Ouellette is a former Crimson Editorial editor. “We are pleased that Judge Dein denied Harvard’s attempt to dismiss this case and avoid responsibility, and we look forward to litigating our clients’ claims for sexual harassment and retaliation under Title IX and violations of Massachusetts civil rights statutes and common law,” they wrote. “Our clients showed great courage in speaking up, and this victory should hearten survivors and their advocates everywhere.” In a statement, Rosalie P. Couture ’26, an organizer with campus advocacy group Our Harvard Can Do Better, wrote that she was “heartened” by the judge’s ruling. “Survivors of Comaroff’s abuse deserve justice, and Harvard must be held accountable for its role in that abuse,” Couture wrote. “We hope this lawsuit, combined with ongoing direct action, will force Harvard’s leadership to take significant and urgent action.” rahem.hamid@thecrimson.com elias.schisgall@thecrimson.com
Harvard Graduate School of Education Dean Bridget Terry Long at a Tuesday interview. FRANK S. ZHOU—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
Ed School Dean Raises Concerns About Campus Diversity Post Affirmative Action BY AZUSA M. LIPPIT CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
head of the Supreme Court’s A decision on race-conscious admissions at Harvard, Graduate School of Education Dean Bridget Terry Long maintained in a Tuesday interview that economic affirmative action cannot replicate the racial diversity of current student populations. Long said the education school’s role is to be a “constant” throughout a changing landscape of education amid controversies over affirmative action, censorship of curricula, and the rise of artificial intelligence. Harvard was sued in 2014 by anti-affirmative action group Students For Fair Admissions, which alleged that the College’s race-conscious admissions practices discriminate against Asian American applicants. After two lower courts ruled in favor of the University, SFFA appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which heard SFFA’s suits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on the same day in October. In 2018, Long testified as an expert at the district court level for the suit brought against UNC. Her role was to determine whether a variable other than race could be used in admissions to create racial and ethnic diversity. Long said her research did not
show such a variable exists. “We’ve also seen that, with a Black middle class, it’s not that income protects you if you’re a person of color,” Long said. “We’ve seen instance after instance, even here in Cambridge, where you can be the most highly educated affluent Black person and still be treated as a suspect,” Long added. Legal scholars expect the Court to rule against Harvard due to its strong conservative majority, with a decision expected by late spring or summer. Should the Supreme Court rule to overturn affirmative action, Long said she is unsure of the impact on Harvard’s admissions practices. “We have large admissions teams, we have holistic review — we can look at so many different dimensions of students,” Long said of Harvard College and HGSE. “But there are two big worries I have.” She raised concerns about a potential “cooling effect” — a decrease in the number of minority students applying due to a perceived barrier to admission — and a loss of racial diversity in bigger schools that lack the resources to practice holistic admissions. Long also discussed the following topics: Artificial Intelligence On the topic of admissions at Harvard, Long said artificial in-
telligence services like ChatGPT will not be a threat to the quality of students admitted to colleges. “The essays that really make a difference are the ones that are distinctive and unique and feel real. So I’m not too worried about that,” Long said. “Though I think in the day-to-day assignments, we’re all going to need a lot of training.” HGSE aims to consider how AI can serve as a tool to promote equity, she said. “We need to think about ways that we can actually use technology, AI, and other tools to help bring up the bottom, to help address the needs of lower income students, so that it doesn’t increase the gaps, and in fact maybe helps us close some of the gaps,” Long said. Curriculum Censorship Long said “incredibly dangerous” campaigns to censor Advanced Placement African American Studies and other school curricula could also perpetuate inequity in the classroom. “If we forget our history, we’re bound to repeat it. There is no question that this is a movement in the wrong direction,” she said. “We need to be educating students about their history, about how the world is working, and also giving them hope about how progress can be made,” Long said. “I’m incredibly dismayed
about the rewriting, sanitizing of history — and it’s not about making people feel bad, but I think we have to be honest with ourselves.” Long said policies censoring classroom content will “ebb and flow,” while HGSE can provide a stable source of research-grounded advice. “When the time comes, when Washington is ready for good ideas, we’ll have the evidence ready,” Long said. Teacher Shortage To cultivate the next generation of educators, Long said the school wants to “foster and support interest” among undergraduates considering a career in education. Long said a key solution to the current shortage of teachers — exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic — is both financial and personal support. “One important part of it is compensation, monetary compensation. But we also have to think a great deal about non-monetary things: working conditions, autonomy and agency, respect,” she said. “It’s hard to put a value on the contributions that you’re making, because every successful person has a story of at least one teacher who made a world of difference in their life,” Long said. azusa.lippit@thecrimson.com
NEWS
THE HARVARD CRIMSON APRIL 7, 2023
5
HARVARD KENNEDY SCHOOL
HKS Student Government Postpones Vote ADJOURNED. HKS Student Goverment failed to vote on executive board and election issues. BY ASHER J. MONTGOMERY CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
T
hough Tuesday’s Harvard Kennedy School Student Government meeting ran an hour longer than scheduled, the body did not end up conducting the vote it originally set out to hold. During the two-hour meeting, the KSSG originally aimed to discuss and vote on proposed bylaws that would restructure the executive board and move the elections of the president, executive vice president, vice president of finance, and vice president of elections from the fall to the start of the spring semester. Instead, it became embroiled in tension, raised voices, accusations, and misunderstandings, ending with a motion to table the vote, an agreement to host more listening sessions, and no clear dates on when the original issues will be resolved. Shared by KSSG President Sam Yoon on March 29, the proposed amendments aimed to avoid another controversial fall election and interim process like the one that took place in September 2022. But opponents of the final pro-
posal — both within KSSG and outside — said the amendments would prevent students pursuing a mid-career master’s in public administration, as well as other single-year students, from being able to vie for these positions. Under the proposed bylaws, single year students — who begin their programs in the fall — would not be able to vote in the previous spring election for the president and vice president who would represent them during their time at the school. Some attendees said it is unfair for single year students to be unable to choose who represents them. “It feels undemocratic and violates every principle of the ideals of democracy that we came here to absorb and learn,” HKS MC/MPA student Laura A. Cahill said. Members of KSSG who volunteered to draft the new bylaws said in Tuesday’s meeting that this potential exclusion was an unintended consequence of an attempt to make KSSG more effective. Lucy C.M. McSweeney, who helped draft the new bylaws, said, “there’s no intent to exclude.” “The intention behind the change temporarily was just wanting to get more continuity and wanting to get more engagement because it’s challenging at the moment,” said McSweeney, the KSSG vice president of internal affairs, in an interview after
the meeting. Another concern raised by KSSG members and attendees was that the bylaw voting process seemed rushed, and students did not have enough time to represent their thoughts. “They put out the recommendation pretty recently, and this is a very major change,” HKS MC/ MPA student Sharon W. Lai said. “Maybe we should slow it back a little bit and involve more voices.” KSSG Vice President of Finance Alexander R. Cooper, who also helped write the proposed bylaws, said the voting process needed to be short because no one ran for interim president or vice president. When current KSSG members’ terms end, there will be no student government if the bylaws do not pass. “Where the urgency comes from is to say, ‘Come May, there will be no KSSG because our terms will end, and we won’t have identified a successor government,’” Cooper said. Cooper also said that during the process of drafting the proposals, there was low engagement from other student representatives, adding his first time hearing most of the critiques was during the Tuesday meeting. Still, he said he appreciated that students were now taking part in the process. “I’m glad that the outcome of this meeting is that there is more engagement,” Cooper said. “The
Representatives from HKS Student Government were unable to pass amendments to the body’s bylaws that would restructure the executive board and push elections JULIAN J. GIORDANO—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
reality was before today, there really hadn’t been that energy.” “And so I’m glad that energy now exists, and I hope that we can take it and use it to deliver some meaningful change,” he added. Vice President of Academic Affairs Enitan Oluwatobi Okediji said she shared her concerns with the authors of the bylaws be-
fore they were released to the student body, adding that she was surprised to see that they hadn’t changed by Tuesday’s meeting. Nevertheless, she said she didn’t consider the disagreements during the meeting as a failure of student government. “What we did today was at the core of what engagement looks
like,” she said. “I think it is on that basis that I would say that this was not necessarily a failure, but progress.” Not everyone in attendance agreed. “I view this meeting as a dumpster fire,” Cahill said. asher.montgomery@thecrimson.com
Harvard Celebrates Trans Day of Michelle Yeoh and Sanjay Gupta Visibility with Events to Headline HLS, HMS Class Days BY HANA ROSTAMI CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
Harvard students celebrated Trans Day of Visibility on March 31, attending a series of events during the week to honor the experiences of transgender people and raise awareness to the challenges they face. The events included a “TransQuinceañera,” information stations at the Office for BGLTQ student life, the opportunity to write letters to trans children, Q&A sessions with individuals to amplify the experiences of those who identify as trans, and documentary screenings. Meagan von Rohr, the assistant director of the College’s Office of BGLTQ Student Life, hosted open hours at the BGLTQ office — also known as the QuOffice — in the days leading up to Trans Day of Visibility. These conversations, open to students across the University, included discussions on advocating for trans rights, allyship, and amplifying the voices of trans students. “We also have stations where people can learn how to contact their elected officials,” von Rohr said in an interview last week. “We encourage folks to do that if they are comfortable with it. It is a little bit of an American focus because that’s where we are right now.” Von Rohr said trans people in the U.S. currently face an array
of difficulties and barriers, referencing more than 300 anti-trans bills across 44 states. “They’re being legislated against and they’re not a huge part of our population nationally,” they added. Amber M. Simons ’26, the co-president of the newly formed Harvard Undergraduate Queer Advocates, said administrators — including Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana — attended events and stations at the QuOffice. Hannah L. Niederriter ’26, the secretary of HUQAD and an organizer of the Trans Day of Visibility programming, said organizers invited administrators to help them connect with trans students on a personal level. “We really wanted to just make them feel like they felt included and that we were listening to their concerns and that we were actively trying to make a difference for the betterment of their communities,” Niederriter said. “We wanted to show that admin was also willing to learn and take steps to improve conditions not only on campus, but just in general for the trans community,” she added. “They get to demonstrate their support and see where they could improve.” Simons said students can become engaged with fighting anti-trans legislation and supporting trans people not only on Trans Day of Visibility, but
“throughout the year.” “It is a really difficult time to be gender non-comforming or trans or gender diverse, and it doesn’t need to be,” von Rohr said. “I just want them to know that we’re here for them at the QuOffice.” Harvard affiliates gathered at Adams House on April 1 for a festive TransQuinceañera, which featured dancing, a documentary screening, and a performance. The event was held in honor of Trans Day of Visibility and Women’s History Month, which is celebrated throughout April. Michael Ángel R. Vázquez, a resident tutor at Adams and a member of the Latinx Student Association and LGBTQ Association at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, said the evening was “an act of gratitude” and an opportunity to support “our trans siblings.” The event featured activist, artist, and educator Lía García, who gave a performance and discussed healing and visibility as a trans woman. According to Vázquez, the event was initially planned for April 2020, but it was postponed for three years due to the Covid-19 pandemic. “We can talk about the difficulties that queer and trans people face, in particular trans people,” Vázquez said. “But we can do it from a point of beauty and goodness.” hana.rostami@thecrimson.com
BY JO B. LEMANN AND NEIL H. SHAH CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
cademy Award-winning actress A Michelle Yeoh will serve as Harvard Law School’s 2023 Class Day speaker, the school announced Wednesday. Harvard Medical School also revealed that its Class Day speaker would be Emmy Award-winning neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta in a March 17 press release. The Medical School’s Class Day events take place on May 25, after Commencement concludes. The Law School’s Class Day festivities, which will take place on May 24 — one day before Commencement — seek to celebrate the graduating class. The day will feature awards and speeches, including Yeoh’s keynote address. Yeoh, originally from Malaysia, began her acting career in Hong Kong, taking roles in a number of action and martial arts films. She later moved to the United States, receiving critical acclaim for her work — which includes lead roles in “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” She garnered an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” marking the first time the honor went to an Asian actress.
Outside of her acting work, Yeoh has served as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations since 2016, advocating for causes including ending poverty and promoting environmental sustainability. Yeoh also serves as the vice president of the board of the Suu Foundation, which works to improve the lives of people in Myanmar.
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We are thrilled to welcome Michelle Yeoh to campus to celebrate our commencement and help us mark this important milestone. HLS Dean of Students, Stephen L. Ball and HLS Class Marshals
Yeoh found the invitation especially “meaningful” because her father was a lawyer, according to a Law School press release. “It is a tremendous honour to speak at Harvard Law School’s 2023 Class Day,” Yeoh said in the statement. Harvard Law School Dean of Students Stephen L. Ball and the Law School’s class marshals announced the news in an email to graduating students. “We are thrilled to welcome Michelle Yeoh to campus to cel-
ebrate our commencement and help us mark this important milestone,” they wrote. “As an acclaimed actress and advocate for so many important causes, she will undoubtedly inspire us, the Class of 2023, as we prepare to make a difference in our world and in peoples’ lives,” they added. Gupta, who will be the Medical School’s Class Day speaker, is CNN’s chief medical correspondent and an associate of neurosurgery in Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital. He has won multiple Emmy Awards for his work hosting “Sanjay Gupta MD” and reporting on Charity Hospital in New Orleans amid Hurricane Katrina. Gupta also reported on the first surgical operation on the battlefield during the 2003 U.S.led invasion of Iraq and also joined the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division in 2009 while it performed rescue missions in Afghanistan. In a Medical School press release, Gupta said he was “thrilled and honored” to give the Class Day address for “future leaders in health care.” “As it has been 30 years since my own medical school graduation, I will humbly offer some of the lessons I have learned over that time,” he said in the press release. jo.lemann@thecrimson.com neil.shah@thecrimson.com
HARVARD ADMISSIONS FROM PAGE 1
Class of 2027 Reacts with Joy and Surprise to Harvard Admission t hen I hit the button. And immediately I saw the confetti and I jumped out of my chair.” Jason Coreas, a senior attending Avalos P-TECH School in Houston, Texas, opened his decision with his mother and brother at his side. “I opened it, and then the three of us were bawling our eyes out,” Coreas said. Coreas said his mother, who immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico at age 18, “dreamed” of him attending Harvard. As a first-generation college student, Coreas said getting accepted to the College meant “making every single person” in his family proud. For Stephanie Yakoff, a senior
from Fort Lee, New Jersey, who committed to playing tennis at Harvard during her junior year, opening the status update wasn’t such a surprise. Still, Yakoff said she is looking forward to meeting other members of the class during Visitas, the College’s admitted students weekend, on April 23 and 24. “Definitely hoping to meet new people and learn more about how Harvard works in general,” Yakoff said. Yakoff said she has already started to connect with other admits through social media. “Through Snapchat and Instagram we have all these group chats, through LinkedIn, Discord. So I’ve met, I would say, a
good 30, 40 percent of the Class of ’27 now,” Yakoff said. For Nana Yaa P. Dwomoh, a high school senior from Brookings, South Dakota, decision day coincided with her mother’s birthday. “The whole day, she was like, ‘All I want for my birthday present is for you to get into Harvard,’” Dwomoh said. Dwomoh opened her Harvard decision alongside her parents and younger siblings, whom she described as her “motivation.” She said she wanted her siblings to know they could “achieve things like this” and not be discouraged by racial barriers or being from “such a small town.” “I feel like this was the best ex-
ample that I could set for them. And so I was crying, seeing their reaction and their happiness,” she said. Dwomoh — who moved from Ghana to the U.S. during elementary school — utilized organizations like First Gen Scholars and the College For All Program to navigate the admissions process. She immediately texted her mentor after her acceptance to share the news. “And he called me immediately, and he was crying,” Dwomoh said. Olivia Pan, a senior from Middleton, Wisconsin, said the night before early decision results were released, she had a dream — that she was rejected.
When Pan opened her decision, however, confetti floated across her computer screen. “I was crying, so I couldn’t speak,” Pan said. Dominic W. Sheeks, an admit from North Baltimore, Ohio, decided to take a gap year after he graduated from high school in 2022. During his time off, Sheeks interned with the Hancock Public Health Department, working on drug addiction policy, before applying to Harvard through the early action cycle. Though some of his teachers were worried that Sheeks wouldn’t attend college if he took the gap year, Sheeks said it was “by far, one of the best decisions
I’ve ever made.” “I’ve had so much personal and professional growth and gained so much insight into the recovery field but also myself,” he said. Sheeks said his acceptance to the College was a “full circle moment.” “I didn’t apply to Harvard for the prestige,” Sheeks said. “But to be able to go to the most competitive university in the nation when years ago, I didn’t even see myself graduating, is very surreal. And I’m definitely very humbled by all of it,” he added. michelle.amponsah@thecrimson.com emma.haidar@thecrimson.com
6
THE HARVARD CRIMSON
COVER STORY
APRIL 7, 2023
Who the Faculty Want to Succeed Gay JULIAN J. GIORDANO—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
1969-1973
John Dunlop
LAST FRIDAY, Jackson was nominated to lead the Supreme Court after many attempts. Thejudgde will complete the Court. BY RAHEM D. HAMID AND ELIAS J. SCHISGALL
member,” Sorensen said. “The two pieces have to come together.” With the search now in motion, several FAS professors spoke with The Crimson about their hopes for the successor to Harvard’s most powerful dean.
CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
1973-1973
Franklin Ford (interim)
1973-1984
Henry Rosovsky
1984-1990
Michael Spence
1990-1991
Henry Rosovsky (interim)
1991-2002
Jeremy Knowles
2002-2006
William Kirby
2006-2007
Jeremy Knowles (interim)
2007-2007
David Pilbeam (interim)
2007-2018 Mike Smith
2018-2023
Claudine Gay
Uniting the Faculty
A
s Claudine Gay prepares to move from her station in University Hall to the president’s office across Harvard Yard, one of her most important tasks will be to select her own successor as the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Encompassing more than 1,000 tenured, tenure-track, and non-tenure-track faculty; more than 7,000 undergraduate students; and thousands of graduate students, the FAS constitutes Harvard’s largest academic school, and according to its own website, the “historic heart of Harvard University.” Gay and University Provost Alan M. Garber ’76 are leading the search for Gay’s successor, which was formally launched in February, alongside an advisory committee of 12 professors from across the FAS, a Harvard Business School professor, and Harvard Law School Dean John F. Manning ’82. In past searches, top contenders have tended to possess substantial administrative experience and a deep familiarity with the structure and governance of FAS. Gay herself was the dean of Social Sciences when University President Lawrence S. Bacow offered her the position. Her predecessor, Michael D. Smith, was the associate dean for computer science and engineering prior to becoming FAS dean, and his predecessor William C. Kirby had served as the director of Harvard’s Asia Center and a former History department chair. The other top candidates for the role of FAS dean shared these characteristics. Before former University President Drew G. Faust tapped Smith for FAS dean, she reportedly offered the role to Geophysics professor Jeremy Bloxham, the divisional dean for Physical Sciences at the time; however, Bloxham rejected the role. In the search that ultimately appointed Kirby in 2002, Faust herself — then the dean of the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study — was a contender, along with Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dean Peter T. Ellison. Of the three current divisional deans — Dean of Science Christopher W. Stubbs, Dean of Arts and Humanities Robin E. Kelsey, and Dean of Social Sciences Lawrence D. Bobo — Stubbs declined to comment on whether he was interested in the position in an interview this week, while Bobo said last week he was uninterested. Bobo also stressed the importance of familiarity with the FAS, saying he hopes “they lean toward an insider” for the position. Diana Sorensen, a former dean of Arts and Humanities who served on the advisory committee during the 2018 dean search that ultimately selected Gay, said the candidate had to have administrative experience. “It has to be somebody who’s been the chair of a department, the director of a center, a divisional dean, you name it, but somebody that has a sense of what it takes to be a strong leader, as an administrator and as a faculty
For years, Harvard’s presidents and FAS deans have been concentrated in the social sciences. Bacow, Harvard’s current president, has a background in economics and public policy, while Gay is a scholar of political science and African American studies. Though Gay’s predecessor, Smith, is a computer scientist, he replaced Kirby, who researches Chinese history. Smith served under Faust, a historian, while Kirby served under Lawrence H. Summers, an economist. But members of the faculty say that the next FAS dean does not necessarily have to come from a particular academic background. “Where someone comes from, I don’t think that that’s always necessarily a good indicator of where they’re going to go, what they’re thinking, and who they are,” Woodward Yang, a professor of Electrical Engineering, said. “I think that that’s kind of a poor metric.”
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need a humanistic perspective to address “increasingly critical issues about human survival, human existence.” “We need scientists who can communicate, we need scientists who are concerned about social issues, about human life on this planet,” Jacobsen said. He said that while “breadth of vision” is more important than a dean’s specific background, Kelsey, the current Arts and Humanities dean, would “make an excellent FAS dean.” Murthy said he would “personally be delighted” if Stubbs, the current Science dean, were selected as Gay’s successor. In emails, chemistry professor emeritus E.J. Corey and astronomy professor emeritus Robert P. Kirshner ’70 also said they felt Stubbs would be a strong candidate for the deanship. Setting a Scientific Agenda Whatever their background, the incoming FAS dean will be tasked with shepherding Harvard’s aggressive shift toward the sciences. In recent years, the University has significantly upped its investments in scientific research and education, including a $200 million donation by Melanie Salata and Jean E. Salata to establish the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability; a $500 million in-
I really can’t overstate the importance of your input in this process.
Claudine Gay Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Maya R. Jasanoff ’96, a History professor, said the next dean’s academic background matters less than their ability to communicate with faculty across a range of disciplines. “In thinking about who would be an effective candidate, one of the most important criteria, in my view, would be that whoever be picked be somebody who is able to understand and work with people across all the divisions in the FAS,” Jasanoff said. Philosophy professor Edward J. “Ned” Hall echoed Jasanoff, saying that the next FAS dean should have “broad understanding of the range of research that Harvard supports and ought to be supporting across different divisions” in addition to a “compelling vision for what a good liberal arts education is going to be.” “It’s not any one academic discipline,” Hall said. Venkatesh N. Murthy, a Molecular and Cellular Biology professor, said he would “love to see” a scientist fill the deanship, although he noted a scientist dean is unlikely to be “science only, science first.” “I would like to see maybe a bit of balance, where let’s say the FAS should perhaps be more in the science-leaning side of things, but of course somebody who’s very, very active and knowledgeable about social studies and policy and things like that,” Murthy said. “Not just like a nerd scientist,” he added. Wesley M. Jacobsen, a professor of the practice of Japanese language, also called for “a balance” between the sciences and humanities, saying that scientists
vestment funding the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence from Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan ’07; and the opening of the $1 billion Science and Engineering Complex, which houses the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, a division of the FAS. Still, some professors said Harvard should further assert itself as a leader among institutions of higher education in science and technology. Murthy, the MCB professor, said he feels the change in leadership is an opportunity for Harvard to stop “playing defense mode” and instead be “proactive” and “set the agenda for the world.” Every faculty member has “their own slightly selfish take on things,” Murthy said; his view is that Harvard ought to “influence policymakers” in fields such as public health, biomedicine, and artificial intelligence, which he said the school has not prioritized in recent years. “Should we just let this go to the School of Public Health?” Murthy said, referencing public health and Covid-19 research. “Or should FAS engage in this?” Compared to other universities, Murthy said Harvard “can’t afford” not to lead in STEM. “Stanford is always in the news, MIT is in the news all the time,” Murthy said. “What are they known for? I would argue they’re known mainly for science and tech.” In order for Harvard to “stay competitive at all in the sciences,” Mansi Srivastava, an associate professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, said the
University needs to address graduate student and postdoctoral researchers’ demands for increased support and compensation. “I think if Harvard is going to be realistic about what’s happening in the sciences, they have to contend with the fact that we cannot take the position that, ‘Oh, we’re Harvard, so the best people will come here regardless of what the salaries are,’” Srivastava said. Matthew D. Shair, a chemistry professor, said an FAS dean from the life sciences would be well-positioned to lead the school’s advancement in scientific research. “One of the jewels of our department are the life sciences,” Shair said. “I’d love to see somebody in the FAS deanship with a deep understanding of what it takes to achieve excellence in the life sciences.” “I think that’s challenging for someone who doesn’t work in that area,” he added. Shair said he hoped the next dean will “foster” opportunities for collaboration across different scientific departments and with the biotechnology private sector in Boston and Cambridge. “That would be very exciting to me personally and, I suspect, to a number of my colleagues,” Shair said. Safeguarding the Humanities While some professors push for a reinvestment in the sciences, other professors raised concerns about Harvard’s priorities shifting away from the humanities, reflecting a growing trend in higher education. The next FAS dean, they said, ought to reaffirm the importance of the liberal arts. Professor Derek J. Penslar, whose research focuses on Jewish history, said he feels Harvard should send a “stronger message coming from the top” about the importance of a humanistic education. “The dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences is responsible for the liberal arts, broadly understood,” Penslar said. “And this is why I think a strong message from the dean of FAS regarding the essentiality of all of the subjects taught in the College would be very important.” Jacobsen, the Japanese language professor of the practice, said he hoped the next FAS dean would combat what he saw as “a trend against the humanities” at Harvard. “There was kind of a concern that humanities concentrators are going down and may not be as serious at Harvard as at other places,” Jacobsen said. “My concern would be that humanities are held up as a centrally important part of the Harvard undergraduate education.” According to Hall, a more robust liberal arts education at Harvard would require the University to take a stronger stance on promoting academic freedom. “I’ve talked to a lot of students who come here thinking like ‘I want the liberal arts experience!’ and they think, ‘Oh, and I don’t really get it because everybody’s cautious about what they talk about,’” he said. Steven A. Pinker, a Psychology professor who has been outspoken in the movement for increased academic freedom, urged Gay and Garber to select an FAS dean “with a steadfast commitment to disinterested inquiry, civility, objectivity, reason, scholarship, and freedom of speech and thought” in a Feb. 17 letter obtained by The Crimson. “The Dean must not only be-
lieve in these values but be willing to use Harvard’s pulpit to speak out for them, and to ensure that they predominate within Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences,” Pinker wrote. In an interview, Pinker also said the next FAS Dean should display “a commitment to academic freedom, and a commitment to securing the credibility of the academy and the professoriate.” Penslar said that rather than trying to compete with other institutions such as MIT in the sciences and applied sciences — a costly endeavor, he added — Harvard should consider pursuing more partnerships between the two schools. “It seems to me that Harvard and MIT together could make up the finest educational consortium in the world,” Penslar added. “But from an outsider’s perspective, from my perspective in history, it does seem odd for Harvard to be apparently duplicating what has done so well at MIT.” FAS spokesperson Rachael Dane declined to comment for this article. Hall, the Philosophy professor, said “the decline of the humanities across colleges and universities in the United States is a pretty serious matter.” “Having a new FAS dean who saw that as a serious problem, and maybe one that didn’t just require throwing resources at the humanities, but demanded of the humanities that we think hard about what our mission is and how to make that mission legible to young people, someone with those sort of priorities would be great,” Hall said. Faculty Voices in the Search At the monthly FAS meeting in February, Gay told faculty attendees that she and Garber would read every email sent to a dedicated dean search email address. “I really can’t overstate the importance of your input in this process,” she told faculty at a subsequent meeting in March. Shair said that faculty “should be very involved” in the search. “I think it would be great if the committee or members of the search committee visited each FAS department for 45 minutes or an hour and heard at a faculty meeting what’s on their minds,” Shair said. Srivastava, the OEB professor, said she felt that the process was open to her feedback, adding it was consistent with her perception of Gay as an “amazing listener.” “I think they’re talking to lots of people,” she said. She added that she attended one of a handful of “small group discussions” for tenure-track faculty to share their perspectives and knew of another discussion for non-tenure-track faculty. The structure of this search mirrors that of 2018, with the incoming president and provost at the helm and a faculty committee in an advisory capacity. Sorensen, who served on the advisory committee in 2018, said that the nomination process was “very open,” and that the committee narrowed down an “expansive” list of nominees to a shortlist. But, she confirmed, the final decision came down to Bacow and Garber. “As we always knew would be the case,” she added. rahem.hamid@thecrimson.com elias.schisgall@thecrimson.com
NEWS
THE HARVARD CRIMSON APRIL 7, 2023
SCIENCE DIVISION
Stubbs Offers No Comment on Interest in FAS Vacancy FAS DEAN. Dean of Science Chris Stubbs did not offer comment on his interest in the position of the next Faculty of Arts and Sciences dean. BY AUSTIN H. WANG CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
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ean of Science Christopher W. Stubbs declined to comment on whether he is interested in succeeding University President-elect Claudine Gay as the next Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean, calling the position a very “demanding” role. “I’m not going to engage in the palace intrigue dialogue,” Stubbs said in a Monday interview. “I look forward to us entering a new era of leadership across the FAS and the University and working in partnership with whoever emerges as dean of FAS,” he added. Harvard launched the search for the next FAS Dean in February after Gay’s appointment to University President was announced in December. Describing the FAS Dean position as a “complicated, multifaceted, demanding role,” Stubbs said he hopes Gay’s successor will “help guide this community through the hard times and help Harvard become its best self.” “There’s a very long list of opportunities, challenges, crises, leadership roles that that individual plays,” he said. “I wouldn’t try to boil it down to a couple of bullet points.” School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Dean Francis J. Doyle III will also be stepping down from his post at the end of this academic year. In anticipation of his departure, Harvard kicked off the search for his successor in February. Referencing a recent visit by the SEAS Dean search committee to the Sciences departmental chairs meeting, Stubbs said that “people like me tend to step away from those meetings so that the
Dean of Science Christopher W. Stubbs did not comment on his interest in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean position. MYEONGSEO KIM—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
faculty can have a full-throated discussion with the search committee.” When asked about foreign interference with research at Harvard, Stubbs said such interference should not be described as “academic espionage.” “Harvard doesn’t do any classified research,” Stubbs said. “The word ‘espionage’ implies spying. The word ‘spying’ implies stealing secrets. We don’t have a lot of secrets to steal,” he added. “So that phraseology has always struck me as inappropriate.” Retired Harvard Chemistry Professor Charles M. Lieber was convicted of lying to federal authorities about his ties to a Chinese talent acquisition program in 2021. His conviction marked a high-profile victory for the Department of Justice’s China Initiative, which sought to combat
academic espionage. The initiative was shut down in 2022 after years of criticism over its disproportionate impact on individuals of Chinese descent. Stubbs said “overly simplistic categorizations” should be avoided in discussing Lieber’s legacy. “Looking back historically, we certainly find countless examples of scientists who made significant intellectual contributions in some subfield of science, but maybe other elements of their either personal life or academic life had aspects that under our current historical lens, we view unfavorably,” he said. Within his division, Stubbs said he is prioritizing building upon climate, quantum science and engineering, and cognition efforts while also continuing to “reinvigorate” the Sciences divi-
District Court Judge Rules in Favor of HLS Animal Law Clinic BY JO B. LEMANN AND NEIL H. SHAH CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
aryland District Court Judge M Julie R. Rubin ruled in favor of the Harvard Law School’s Animal Law and Policy Clinic in a lawsuit against the United States Department of Agriculture in a March 23 decision. The clinic — which filed the suit in November 2019 on behalf of animal rights advocacy groups Rise for Animals and the Animal Legal Defense Fund — challenged the USDA’s denial of a petition submitted by the plaintiffs. The petition called for the USDA to improve the standard for the treatment of primates involved in research, alleging that the agency had violated the Administrative Procedure Act. Rubin sided with the plaintiffs in her opinion, concluding that in its decision to deny the petition, “the Agency did not consider evidence relevant to the subject matter it was tasked with deciding, that it failed to offer a plausible, reasoned explanation of how it considered relevant public comments, and/or that it failed to explain the basis for its conclusion that there were no relevant public comments.” The USDA did not respond to a request for comment. In a brief filed in support of a motion for summary judgment during the lawsuit, the USDA argued that its denial letter for the petition met the required standards because “all that is required by the USDA is to ‘adequately explain[] the facts and policy con-
cerns it relied on and [whether] … those facts have some basis in the record.’” Caitlin Foley, a senior attorney at the Animal Legal Defense Fund, said there are multiple ways the USDA could respond to Rubin’s decision. “They’re going to have to come up with either a way to implement some of the things that we are requesting in the rulemaking or go back to the drawing board and try to figure out another way to achieve the same aims,” she said. Foley added that the decision is unusual and that she sees this case as a “good win.” “These usually aren’t really successful cases when you challenge an agency’s decision-making just because of the deference that’s given to an agency’s determination to deny a petition for rulemaking,” Foley said. Rubin is also presiding over another lawsuit filed last April against the USDA by the Animal Law and Policy Clinic on behalf of the same plaintiffs. In this case, the clinic challenges a policy that it argues was “secretly implemented” by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service — a subdivision of the USDA. According to the complaint, APHIS “relies on third-party accreditation by the Association for the Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care,” which the clinic alleges violates the Animal Welfare Act’s requirement that the agency must “conduct full annual inspections of research facilities.” Katherine A. Meyer, director of the Animal Law and Poli-
cy Clinic, said in an interview that she felt hopeful about the pending case, adding that Rubin’s recent decision was “in very favorable language to our position.” Meyer also said Rubin’s decision provided the clinic’s students with a valuable teaching moment, saying that it is “really great for my students to see that what I’ve been teaching them is correct.” Ashton F. Macfarlane ’17, a third-year Law School student who works at the clinic, said that he could not have “imagined a better conclusion to this particular case.” “It’s just incredibly rewarding to see so much of the language that we worked on and wordsmithed and thought about, hoped that maybe a judge would take seriously and to see not just a handful of our arguments, but almost every argument we made endorsed by the judge in this flamboyantly positive way is phenomenal,” he said. Ed Butler, executive director of Rise for Animals, said he wishes the USDA will take action on the verdict in this case. “We’re hoping that they will do the right thing by the animals and adopt a practice that will help improve the lives of these animals,” Butler said. Butler said Rise for Animals will continue to fight not just for policy change at the USDA but to end all animal lab testing. “Certainly, make no mistake, we would like all the animals out of these labs,” he said. jo.lemann@thecrimson.com neil.shah@thecrimson.com
sion’s core 10 departments. Referring to ongoing residential building renovations at Harvard, Stubbs said he hopes to similarly renovate science buildings “at the building scale, rather than one faculty hiring at a time and renovating laboratories onesie twosie.” “We’re looking hard at how we manage space and infrastructure for the scientific enterprise,” he said. Stubbs added that he plans to configure a more “agile” and inclusive environment within his division. “How can we sustain Harvard’s excellence, increase our level of inclusion and belonging, and be a magnet for the best people in the world to come here and do their best work?” he asked. austin.wang@thecrimson.com
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HLS Elects New Student Government BY JO B. LEMANN AND NEIL H. SHAH CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
Second-year law students Swap Agrawal and Tolu Alegbeleye have been elected co-presidents of the Harvard Law School Student Government for the 202324 academic year, the body announced in a March 30 email to students. The Law School’s Student Government serves as “the student body’s voice to Dean Manning, Administration, and Faculty,” according to its website. The student government’s responsibilities include allocating funds to student organizations, providing academic resources, and hosting events at the Law School. In addition to the co-presidency, students voted on candidates for the director of student organizations, 3L representative, 2L representative, and S.J.D. representative positions. The body had four vacancies for the 3L and 2L positions, and one for the director of student organizations and S.J.D. role. Agrawal and Alegbeleye campaigned on a platform to increase career and financial support for students pursuing public interest careers, provide resources to “make life at HLS easier,” and support student advocacy on campus, according to their campaign website. In an interview, Agrawal and Alegbeleye said they ran for student office due to desire to “create positive change on campus.” Alegbeleye said she believes the HLS Student Government co-presidency puts the pair in a “really unique position” to enact change. “We both acknowledged when we were running that student government doesn’t have a lot of formal power, but it does have the ability to reach literally everybody in the student body, which is something that none of the student orgs can do,” Alegbeleye said. One goal for the pair’s tenure, according to Agrawal, is to address a common concern among law students that public interest careers “are inaccessible or feel inaccessible, at least, to a lot of people.” “There are things that the University can do to correct that,
whether that’s increasing frontend financial aid so that low-income and first-generation students are able to have more freedom with their career choices or improving the Low Income Protection program, which allows graduates who have a lot of debt to pursue lower paying careers by offering them loan assistance,” Agrawal said. “Beyond that, there’s cultural things that the school can do by emphasizing more career advising,” he added. Agrawal and Alegbeleye’s opponents for the co-presidency — M. Saeed Ahmad and Mohini Tangri — campaigned on better representation for the entire student body, including public interest-oriented students and religious groups. Tangri said in an interview following the election results that she hopes to see a “public interest coalition” that would enable student activists to push for progress on multiple issues simultaneously. Ahmad expressed hope about the turnout from the election but said he believes the HLS Student Government could still improve. “One thing I do like was the increased participation we saw,” Ahmad said. “I think there can be more engagement with student government.” First-year Law School student Vinny K. Byju ’20 — who was elected director of student organizations — said in an interview that he ran to improve the process of creating new student groups, following his own negative experience trying to form a new club. According to Byju, his student organization’s application for a birdwatching club was denied this year after three months of no communication from the HLS Student Government. This experience was shared by other applicants, according to Byju, who said he was not satisfied by the HLS Student Government’s response to issues of student organization applications. Byju said he wants to increase transparency within the student organization application process. He added that he does not understand why the process is “behind closed doors.” jo.lemann@thecrimson.com neil.shah@thecrimson.com
College Expands Financial Aid as Cost of Attendance Rises BY MICHELLE N. AMPONSAH AND EMMA H. HAIDAR CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
Harvard College plans to increase tuition and expand financial aid for the 2023-24 academic year, raising the threshold for cost-free attendance to $85,000 a year, according to a press release Thursday. The change in financial aid — a $10,000 increase from last year’s threshold of $75,000 — comes as the College plans to raise the total cost of attendance by 3.5 percent to $79,450. “Building on its long-standing commitment to increasing opportunity for all talented students regardless of their economic resources, the University is announcing another expansion of the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative (HFAI) for low- and middle-income families,” the Admissions and Financial Aid Office wrote in its announcement. The Admissions and Financial Aid Office estimated that roughly 25 percent of families will not have to contribute to tuition, room, or board due to the expansion. Families making under $85,000 annually will also receive a $2,000 stipend for “movein costs and other expenses incurred in the transition to College,” continuing an initiative first launched by the College in 2016. Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 called the changes to the College’s financial aid program “revolutionary,” citing the
Harvard Admissions Office is located at 5 James St., Cambridge, MA. SANTIAGO A. SALDIVAR—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
stipend and the reduced student earnings expectation. “I, as a first-generation, huge financial aid recipient, am thrilled with what the College was able to do,” Fitzsimmons said in an interview Thursday. “And the context of it is a very challenging financial picture in the country and in the world right now.” The College first eliminated the student summer work expectation from financial aid rewards in 2020, replacing it with scholarship funds. Last year, the College increased the threshold to $75,000 from $65,000 and provided a $2,000 grant to students whose family income fell below the threshold. “The further expansion of our financial aid program underscores our continued, unwavering commitment to making Harvard affordable for all deserving students,” said Director of Finan-
cial Aid Jake Kaufmann ’93 in Thursday’s press release. The College’s total cost of attendance — which currently sits at $76,763 for the 2022-23 academic year — has also risen steadily in the past decade. The College typically hikes tuition by around 3 to 4 percent each year. More than $3 billion has been awarded in undergraduate financial aid since the creation of the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative, which was established in 2004 and seeks to “raise awareness of college affordability for students interested in all kinds of colleges and universities.” Prior to expansions of the financial aid program made in 2022 and 2023, the College last increased financial aid during the 2012-13 academic year. michelle.amponsah@thecrimson.com emma.haidar@thecrimson.com
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THE HARVARD CRIMSON
NEWS
APRIL 7, 2023
MARCH FOR OUR LIVES
Harvard Affiliates Rally for Gun Control ON TUESDAY, March for Our Lives organizers urged nationwide gun reform outside Widener Library following a Nashville school shooting last week. BY J. SELLERS HILL AND NIA L. ORAKWUE CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
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ore than 100 Harvard affiliates, Boston-area residents, and gun control advocates gathered at the steps of Widener Library Tuesday evening to rally for stricter gun legislation. The demonstration, which was organized by national gun control advocacy group March for Our Lives, followed the fatal shooting of six children and adults at a Nashville school last week. Speaking through bullhorns, several speakers addressed the crowd to share personal experiences with gun violence, vent frustrations, and issue calls to action. Yael Cushman, a master’s student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and former first-grade teacher, cited the frequent lockdown drills in her school in her call for stricter gun control legislation. “It’s surreal to be sitting through these drills and normalizing something that should never be normalized,” Cushman said. “Schools should be safe spaces where children can learn, play, make mistakes, build friendships — not fear for their
March for Our Lives organizers urged for nationwide gun reform at protest Tuesday evening. JULIAN J. GIORDANO—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
lives.” “I’m angry that teachers have to imagine how they would sacrifice their lives in order to protect their students,” she added. Cornell William Brooks, a Harvard Kennedy School professor and former president and CEO of the NAACP, spoke about the pervasiveness of gun violence in his address. “Gun violence affects us whether you walk on the streets, whether you’re in a school, whether you’re in a college campus,” Brooks said. “We’re all collectively victims, witnesses to gun violence.” March for Our Lives co-founder David M. Hogg ’23 called rally attendees to civic action during his speech. “We’ve gone through a long, hard cold winter here in Boston, but I’m here to tell you today that
spring is here,” Hogg said. “We must demand action from our elected leaders, for we dictate their future because we are their bosses,” he added. In his remarks, Hogg also alluded to a “swatting” attack in Leverett House early Monday morning, during which multiple students were ordered out of their suite at gunpoint by Harvard University Police Department officers responding to a false 911 call. “These halls were all once places where leaders were cultivated — and they still are. But now in these same halls, right down the street at Leverett, they’re being invaded by armed guards, who just yesterday held our classmates at gunpoint,” Hogg said. “That violence has no place here, and we must do more.”
March for Our Lives organizers issued a call to action at the rally, asking students to advocate for stronger gun control measures. FRANK S. ZHOU—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
HUPD spokesperson Steven G. Catalano did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Hogg’s characterization of the department’s response. HKS student Rachel A. Jacoby, who helped to organize the rally, said in an interview that she was inspired to get involved in the gun control movement after a string of mass shootings last year, including a shooting that killed seven people at a Fourth of July parade in her hometown of Highland Park, Illinois. “That really amplified my organizing,” Jacoby said of the shooting. Ivy A.W. Ryan, another rally organizer and HGSE student, said she and Cushman planned Tuesday’s rally due to a desire to take action in the wake of the Nashville shooting. “It initially just started as two
graduate students at Harvard Graduate School of Education wanting to do something and feeling kind of helpless — and then it grew,” Ryan said. Ryan said she was pleased with the rally’s turnout, which drew students from several local schools. “It’s amazing how quickly people can come together when they care about a common cause,” Ryan said. Jacoby said she believes in the power of collective organizing to drive reform. “This movement needs all of us, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve been organizing against gun violence for five years, five months, or five minutes,” Jacoby said. “We need all of us and all of our collective power to come together to organize our friends, our fellow classmates or neighbors, our
families, in the fight against gun violence.” “It’s our responsibility to use our voices to fight for gun safety laws and to fight for a future free from gun violence,” she added. sellers.hill@thecrimson.com nia.orakwue@thecrimson.com
THC View the related video on our website THECRIMSON.COM
Harvard Student Groups, Alumni, Deans Condemn Leverett House ‘Swatting’ Attack HUPD Chief Speaks on ‘Swatting’ Attack HUPD FROM PAGE 1
BY J. SELLERS HILL
AND NIA L . ORAKWUE CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
Harvard students, administrators, and alumni condemned Monday’s early morning “swatting” attack, which saw at least five Harvard University Police Department officers enter a Leverett House suite with riot gear and assault rifles. The officers, who were responding to a false 911 call about an armed individual in the dormitory, ordered the four students in the suite, who are Black, out of their rooms at gunpoint at approximately 4:15 a.m. Monday. HUPD police chief Victor A. Clay wrote an update to undergraduates Wednesday evening, providing a timeline of the department’s response in greater detail. According to Clay, the caller claimed to be a student “kicked out” of Harvard who was armed and holding a woman hostage in the Leverett suite. Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana acknowledged the “deeply troubling” attack in an email to undergraduates Wednesday evening. “Many members of our community are understandably scared, frustrated, angry, and upset that something like this could happen on Harvard’s campus,” Khurana wrote. “We understand that the implications, fears, and trauma of an incident like this land differently for the impacted students and for communities of color more broadly.” The Harvard Black Students Association and Harvard Undergraduate Black Community Leaders wrote that they were “deeply troubled” by the attack in a joint statement Tuesday. “We pledge to offer our unwavering support and do everything in our power to ensure that those affected by this injustice receive the assistance and resources they need,” the statement reads. Kendra Davenport Cotton — the mother of Jarah K. Cotton ’23, one of the students living in the suite — wrote in a statement early Wednesday morning that she was dissatisfied by the University’s response. “While I do not believe race to be a factor in the university’s response, my gut is telling me that the administration would have
Harvard students, alumni, and deans voiced concerns and support for four Leverett House residents who were victims of a “swatting” attack early Monday morning. LEAH J. TEICHHOLTZ—CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
a different posture if these were students of means,” Davenport Cotton wrote. University spokespeople Jonathan L. Swain and Jason A. Newton did not immediately respond to a request for comment. BCL co-chair Brian A. Cromwell Jr. ’23 said he desired more concrete action from Harvard, though he said Khurana’s state-
The Harvard Black Alumni Society also issued a statement Tuesday evening detailing the group’s reaction to the attack. “HBAS is horrified and upset that Black students at Harvard endured such trauma in their own homes, where they should have been assured the utmost safety,” the statement reads. HBAS President Monica M.
Many members of our community are understandably scared, frustrated, angry, and upset that something like this could happen on Harvard’s campus. Rakesh Khurana Dean of Harvard College
ment — which came two days after the police raid occurred — “provided some clarity.” “The delay in their response is worrisome and the solutions provided don’t directly address the safety of Black students on campus,” Cromwell said in an interview Wednesday evening. “We urge the University to take a more rigorous approach to meeting this goal.” College spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Clark ’06 said while she understands the need for a swift police response, she would like to see Harvard more strongly consider student peace of mind. “Some people have said, ‘Obviously, there’s been a lot of school shootings,’ and they understand why there might be a very forceful response given what’s going on,” Clark said. “I appreciate that and get that to a degree, but I still feel like there has to be some sort of balance between managing those kinds of risks and making sure students feel safe and com-
fortable in their home.” “It just amplifies a fear that’s already in most Black people living in America,” she added. The Harvard Undergraduate Association called the swatting attack “horrifying” in a statement on its Instagram page Wednesday evening, urging HUPD to “conduct a thorough investigation to ensure that justice is served.” Prior to Khurana’s and Clay’s statements Wednesday evening, leaders from six undergraduate houses — Adams, Eliot, Kirkland, Leverett, Lowell, and Winthrop houses — acknowledged the swatting attack and offered support in emails to residents. Lowell Faculty Deans David I. Laibson ’88 and Nina Zipser and Resident Dean Annie Park cosigned a statement to residents Wednesday afternoon, where they characterized the attack as “hateful and deeply traumatizing.” Eliot Faculty Deans Stephanie A. Paulsell and Kevin J. Madigan emailed residents Tuesday evening, writing, “It’s awful to think of this happening in the place we call home.” “There are echoes in this incident of some of the most troubling aspects of life in this country — the epidemic of gun violence, the disproportionate weight of policing on communities of color,” Paulsell and Madigan wrote. sellers.hill@thecrimson.com nia.orakwue@thecrimson.com
at around 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, according to Boston 25 News, prompting the evacuation of Simmons Hall, an undergraduate dormitory. Swatting is a crime under Massachusetts state and federal law. Clay confirmed that an investigation into the false report is ongoing and that HUPD is working with the FBI on the matter. In the aftermath of the raid, students and alumni expressed outrage over the raid and concern for the safety and well-being of the students, and six upperclassman houses issued statements to residents as of Wednesday evening. Harvard affiliates and the public criticized the delay of a University-wide response. “We were all extremely scared, particularly because my roommates and I are Black students who have been bombarded our whole lives with stories and images portraying how situations such as this had ended up terribly,” Cotton wrote in a Monday statement to The Crimson. “We felt our lives were in danger. We are traumatized.” Clay’s statement on Wednesday addressed concerns for the students but did not include an apology. “ We acknowledge that the presence of police officers in the early morning hours in one of the College’s residential Houses can, and in this case did, raise fears and anxiety,” Clay wrote. “Entering a residential House is not something that HUPD does without cause or takes lightly.”
Cambridge Police Department spokesperson Jeremy C. Warnick wrote in an email Tuesday that CPD was not informed of the raid when it occurred. “We actually didn’t respond to that reported incident and will support HUPD and/or the FBI if/ as assistance is needed,” Warnick wrote. “To clarify, we didn’t respond as the Cambridge Police were not notified.” Clay’s email did not explain why the department did not send out a public alert to students despite the possibility of an active shooter. “Clearly, they believed there was an active shooter on Harvard’s campus,” Cotton said in an interview Monday. “If there was a shooter in Dunster House, I would like to know in Leverett.” “They clearly, again, thought it was a serious threat because they had assault rifles pointed at our faces,” Cotton added. “I feel like if it warrants that kind of response, it most definitely warrants an email.” Catalano declined to comment Monday on the lack of an alert to campus. “The steps taken by HUPD are aligned with law enforcement protocols, which HUPD officers are trained on,” Clay wrote Wednesday. “The steps we take are based on an assessment of the level of potential threat to members of our community with regards to a potential public safety situation.” ryan.doannguyen@thecrimson.com yusuf.mian@thecrimson.com
At least five armed HUPD officers raided a suite in Leverett House. JULIAN J. GIORDANO—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
EDITORIAL
THE HARVARD CRIMSON APRIL 7, 2023
STAFF EDITORIAL
COLUMN
To the T: Tee Up
BETWEEN THE CRACKS
SORRY STATE OF THE T. Boston residents do not deserve these tragedies; they deserve a robust, accessible, and safe transit system. BY THE CRIMSON EDITORIAL BOARD
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ith such highlights as a ceiling panel falling in the Harvard Square stop, impatient parents in town for junior family weekend, and Harvard employees arriving late for work, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority seems to be the architect of nuisance for many Harvard affiliates. But Harvard is not the biggest casualty. Our predicaments are only shallow reflections of a much deeper — and more literal — trainwreck for Massachusetts residents. Across the state and over the last year, MBTA users have unfortunately become well acquainted with a train on fire, sparks and explosions, line shutdowns, newly imposed slow zones to protect vulnerable tracks, and even a passenger death — with not an end in sight. Boston residents do not deserve these tragedies; they deserve a robust, accessible, and safe transit system. The benefits of such a system are plentiful: community connections for students like us, more movement outside immediate neighborhoods for residents, less congestion on busy roads, reduced air pollution, increased commuter productivity as hands are freed from the wheel — we could go on. The ideal T would embody mobility justice: enabling people of all races, backgrounds, and abilities to feel safe in our streets.
The ideal T would embody mobility justice: enabling people of all races, backgrounds, and abilities to feel safe in our streets.
Instead, transit fares are regressive — meaning fares constitute a larger proportion of income from low-income commuters, who make up 29 percent of T users, in comparison to their wealthier counterparts — and transport can be difficult to access during chilly Massachusetts
winters. To solve these inequities, the T should implement fare-free or reduced fare allowances, as well as bus stops with overhead shelters to protect against harsh weather conditions. The current sorry state of the T points to local and state governments seemingly having put the need for an equitable and secure transit system on the back burner — despite their earlier promises.
The current sorry state of the T points to local and state governments seemingly having put the need for an equitable and secure transit system on the back burner — despite their earlier promises. Last year, Massachusetts voters, in alignment with our own Editorial Board’s stance, passed the “Fair Share Amendment” to invest a projected $2 billion in taxes on the wealthy into transit and education. Governor Maura T. Healey ’92 recognized this majority will of the people in her inaugural address, when she pledged to allocate a portion of her first budget towards hiring 1,000 MBTA workers — but last month, her administration did not provide this funding in the state budget, saying that the T was already allocated the money last year. We ask Governor Healey to recommit to revitalizing public transit in our state. One way to reinvigorate the T is by redesigning its management structure to focus more on the payment of workers and staffers. We support the proposal made by Boston Mayor Michelle Wu ’07 to add a Boston-specific seat to the MBTA’s board; we hope this new board member will be able to successfully change the MBTA’s priorities from the inside. Our recent MBTA woes are not new. But we, as residents, should not accept a dysfunctional system. We need the T to get its trains back on track.
–This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.
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The Silencing of Tamara Lanier IT WOULD TAKE OVER A DECADE for Lanier to find Renty — and longer still for us to tell his story. BY GUILLERMO S. HAVA
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n May 3, 1996, a Connecticut fifth grader named Shonrael Lanier penned her very first book report: An account of her family history, drafted with the help of her maternal grandmother, titled “From These Roots I came.” The report, bound by a tired green spine and geometric covers, reads as follows: “My roots grow deeper than slave times. Yet it is almost impossible to go further than the lonely, tough times of slavery. Regrettably, I can only tell you as far back as my great-grandfather Fred Thompson.” “Fred Thompson was born to the former slave Renty Thompson.” What ten-year-old Shonrael didn’t know, and what her mother, Tamara Lanier, would only discover later, was that the presumed father of Renty Thompson, “Papa” Renty — names travel generationally in her family — was still out there. Not physically, certainly not alive and well, but immortalized, hung, and framed inside the nation’s top academic institution. While his great-great-granddaughter sang his glories from Connecticut, Renty remained far from his own, captive inside the daguerreotype that Harvard scholar and eugenicist Louis Agassiz had taken of him almost a century prior in an attempt to prove his intrinsic inferiority. It would take over a decade for Shonrael’s mother to find Renty, and even longer for her story to make it to the public record. Our own newspaper would — inexplicably and despite an early interview that got squashed before publication — introduce Renty to the Harvard community only in 2019. But by 1996, Shonrael almost knew her link to Renty; he was her blood, kin, and legacy. *** Shonrael’s mother, Tamara Lanier, had grown up under the humbling shadows of revered ancestors. “As far back as I can remember,” she told me in a recent interview, “my mom would talk about Papa Renty.” He was “a community person” who didn’t only teach himself to read — “no easy feat,” as Lanier quips — but also taught others “at his own peril”: Renty was an enslaved Black man who held bible sessions for his peers. Tamara’s mother would speak of him “with such a reverence, with such a love and respect.” A man lost to the yoke of false masters and time, of whom little but oral histories remained. The rest, at this point, is history. By 2010, her health rapidly declining, Lanier’s mother became increasingly fixated on untangling the stories of Renty and others. With her death, genealogical research became Tamara’s uneasy birthright — except she barely knew where to begin. “I have never broken a promise — and my mom, between us there were no broken promises, there were no pledges made that we didn’t follow through with,” she told me. “And so I really felt guilty.” Yet luck was on her side; some vague, fateful sense of historic justice seemed to nudge her home. One day, Lanier said, she stopped at “a small ice cream shop to pick up lunch.” Having built up a rapport with the owner through previous visits, she brought up her mother’s dying wish, and he offered to help. Lanier was skeptical — “I remember thinking, you know, at this time, most seniors did not even know how to find the power button to turn the computer on, let alone get on and get to the internet” — but she agreed. Lanier didn’t visit the shop for a couple of weeks, accidentally slipping out of her role as a regular customer. When she did return, the vendor was ecstatic. “He was standing at the register, and he threw his hands up in the air and he said ‘Where have you been? I found your Papa Renty,’” she recounted. The momentum seemed unstoppable. Lanier was forwarded the image of the man she still claims as her ancestor. She was certain when she saw him — she knew, she told me, “that [he] was the Papa Renty I had heard so many stories about as a child, that my children heard so many stories about during their childhood.” Genealogical studies, name tracing, and even a visit to the Deep South followed, each confirming her certainty. But Harvard wouldn’t budge. According to Lanier, the University and then-President Drew G. Faust repeatedly refused to engage with her requests to get better access to the daguerreotypes or verify her ties to those depicted. Renty’s story would, yet again, have to wait. ***
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9
By 2016, the situation had become almost farcical. Harvard found itself on the verge of grappling with its legacy of slavery: The University had announced plans to unveil a plaque honoring formerly enslaved individuals at Harvard, inviting civil rights icon John Lewis to speak at the ceremony. To mark the occasion, Faust penned an op-ed for The Crimson, describing the need to acknowledge a past that “continues to shape us in ways we should not try to erase or ignore,” all while allegedly declining Lanier’s request to attend the ceremony, according to Lanier. (President Faust declined, after directing my query to a University spokesperson, to comment on this story).
This time around, Lanier contacted The Crimson too — aware, perhaps, of the extent to which public pressure might shape the University’s response. The reporters were “thrilled to have the chance to speak with” her, they emailed Lanier, and followed up on her offer to come to Cambridge for an in-person interview. She obliged, and then waited for the article that might change everything — the article that could, overnight, make her tale one the University wouldn’t be able to ignore any further. Then came the email, subject line “Update on your interview”: “Unfortunately, we have ultimately decided that we won’t be publishing excerpts of your interview because of concerns the Peabody Museum has raised and because recent events on campus have caused our own story to focus more on the Harvard Law School.” It would take years — just enough to fully renew the makeup of our newsroom — for The Crimson to cover Lanier’s tale. Our own coverage, tethered to the launch of Lanier’s still ongoing litigation against the University, trailed everyone from local Connecticut papers to (by a day) The New York Times. A Harvard story that merited a lengthy feature in America’s paper of record would remain out of our own pages for three years after it was initially brought to The Crimson’s attention — three more years out of the minds and hearts of Harvard affiliates, three more years out of the spotlight. *** Lanier never learned what “concerns” the Peabody Museum had expressed to The Crimson in 2016. When I reached out to the museum last month looking for answers, a spokeswoman for the University couldn’t elaborate on them for this article. Still, Lanier seems to hold no ill will towards the student journalists who forsook such an immanently tellable story well after conducting adequate sourcing — “I’m not trying to throw anyone under the bus,” she told me. But it does seem like someone ought to be under the bus. The reference to a change in the piece’s focus strikes me as almost laughable: I have not, in my days at The Crimson, met a single news editor who I’d expect to drop a scoop of Lanier’s proportions and never pick it back up. The concerns the Peabody raised certainly didn’t prevent other outlets from telling the story, nor did they deter well-respected legal professionals from championing her case, nor did they stop the Massachusetts Supreme Court from siding with Lanier’s right to pursue claims of “reckless infliction of emotional distress” against Harvard. We might never find out how or why we missed Lanier’s story: Both the author of the email — now a professional journalist in his own right — and his then-President and Managing Editor declined to comment on the developments on the record. Perhaps the reporters were simply scared — scared at comments like those the University had provided to other outlets. These comments cast doubt on the accuracy of Lanier’s claims, accusing her of providing next to no evidence, all while, in her telling, failing to even attempt to verify the result of her years-long quest. Scared, maybe, of what would follow if they pursued a story they were sternly advised not to pursue. Lanier at times sounded like she thought that was the case: “I get the politics,” she noted. The anecdote is only another minor detail in the textured tapestry of Lanier’s life. But it also holds an unspoken cautionary tale — one meant for all of us who wrestle with spokespeople and PR representatives and cold corporate email accounts you reach out to for any semblance of a comment. The thing about erring on the side of caution when dealing with stories that stain the powerful is that a fair amount of caution can be bought through intimidation alone — and that not every worthwhile story, not even those that go on to become New York Times features, will be free from fauxly rightful pushback. Years later, having produced abundant and proud coverage of the Lanier case, we can only awkwardly stare at that three-year gap when her story went untold — when we let her story go untold — and take limited comfort in knowing that we weren’t the only ones. If The Crimson was late to acknowledge Lanier, the University remains, even later, steadfast in its refusal to do so. The 132-page-long Report on the Legacy of Slavery at Harvard passingly mentions Papa Renty exactly thrice, but makes no reference to his descendant’s struggles with our University; the Peabody’s website, in an uneasy embodiment of our University’s vacuous well-meaning, includes a land acknowledgment to the Massachusett people but no press release related to Lanier or the daguerreotypes’ uneasy origins. Turns out that wrestling with your legacy of slavery is less jarring when you discard any of its breathing embodiments.
–Guillermo S. Hava ’23-’24, a former Crimson Editorial Chair, is a Government and Philosophy concentrator in Winthrop House. His column, “Between the Cracks,” runs tri-weekly on Fridays.
10
THE HARVARD CRIMSON
EDITORIAL
APRIL 7, 2023
OP-ED
COLUMN
Life, Laundry, and the Pursuit of Cleanliness
ARTIFACTUAL
FREE LAUNDRY! As it showed the week after spring break, Harvard has the ability to make our laundry free. So why doesn’t it? BY MAC M. MERTENS
W
hen I returned to Harvard from spring break, laundry was the last thing on my mind. My flights had been delayed by almost eight hours, causing me to arrive in my dorm at 1 a.m. on Monday morning, with class in eight hours. Unsurprisingly, I hadn’t started any of the work that I had promised myself I would do over the break. And I was still covered in sand from playing touch rugby on the beach in Bermuda the day before. Yet as I unpacked, the smell of a week’s worth of dirty clothes soon forced laundry to the front of my priorities. So with my dirties in one hand and Tide pods in the other, off to the machines in the middle of the night I went. Again. But as I rounded the corner into the Weld Hall laundry room, I was greeted by those four letters that put all college students into a state of pure ecstasy: F-R-E-E.
But as I rounded the corner into the Weld Hall laundry room, I was greeted by those four letters that put all college students into a state of pure excstasy: F-R-E-E. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, or maybe I really do hate paying for laundry that much. But those four letters sent me over the moon. Unburdened by cost, I separated my laundry into three loads instead of shoving it all into one machine and pouring a detergent libation to the laundry gods. I even stripped my bed and washed my sheets just because it was free. As far as I was concerned, this was a new era. Harvard had reinvented itself while I was gone. Paying for laundry was a thing of the past.
How disappointed I was when I came back a week later, also past midnight, and found that laundry was once again $3 — $1.50 to wash, $1.50 to dry. There I was, saying another prayer to the Tide pod gods, hoping that one machine could fit all of my dirty clothes. Throughout this veritable roller coaster of emotions, I was left with one burning question: Why does Harvard, one of the richest universities on the planet, charge its students $3 for a load of laundry? Assuming that there are 16 weeks in a full semester, and all 7,103 current Harvard College students do two loads of laundry totalling $6 a week, Harvard is only raking in $681,888 of revenue per semester. And while the word “only” used next to a six-figure number might seem a little absurd, that yearly figure is only about 0.17 percent of the University’s total $406 million budget surplus last fiscal year. It’s not that I expect Harvard to cover every possible expense that it can afford, but the real absurdity to me is Harvard’s hesitancy to offer free laundry when doing so would bring tangible, significant benefits to every single student. With free laundry, students would be less likely to overfill the machines, which is good for both them and Harvard. When students do all of their laundry in one load, clothes are not totally clean, negatively impacting the student and their clothes. And unsurprisingly, overfilling of machines is a leading cause of damage to washing machines. By switching to free laundry, Harvard is actually likely to save money on machine repair. Free laundry would also keep us healthier. Dirty clothes, bedding, and towels are all huge vectors for disease, and removing cost gives students no reason to delay washing their dirty sheets and towels until they can put together one large load. Free laundry would encourage students to wash as frequently as they need, preventing the spread of more germs on campus. Granting students free laundry would also remove a legitimate — and regressive — financial burden. While tuition, housing, and food can all be covered with financial aid, laundry is funded by Crimson Cash — a fully out-of-pocket payment account for students — or quarters. And the larger the financial constraint that laundry has on students, the more likely they are to overfill machines and delay washing al-
AI is no Threat to Art
together, perpetuating the above problems. Harvard is behind the pack when it comes to free laundry. Half of the Ivy League — Princeton, Penn, Columbia, and Brown — currently offer this basic amenity to their students, and students are calling for free or more affordable laundry at Yale and Dartmouth, too. Harvard should lead among its peers — or at least join them.
AI-GENERATED ART. The proliferation of a new technology need not be viewed as an existential threat to the fine arts.
BY ALEXANDER JUNXIANG CHEN
Why does Harvard, one of the richest universities on the planet, charge its students $3 for a load of laundry? Clean clothes are a basic necessity, yet Harvard does not see them as such. When students are discouraged from doing their laundry by unnecessary financial barriers, washing machines wear out faster, students get sicker, and campus becomes less pleasant overall. As it showed the week after spring break, Harvard has the ability to make our laundry free. So why
–Mac M. Mertens ’26, a Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Weld Hall.
doesn’t it?
COURTESY OF SHANIVI SRIKONDA
I
n Jorge Luis Borges’ single-paragraph tale “Del rigor en la ciencia,” the Argentine short-story writer envisions a mythical kingdom where “the art of cartography attained such perfection” that its ruler decided to construct a map identical in both size and shape to the realm itself. In this fictional land, reality and its reconstruction became one and the same. Many have argued, to varying degrees of persuasiveness, that Borges’ fable is not at all as absurd as it might seem, especially with imitating or replicating reality becoming ever easier in today’s increasingly technological society. In the 1980s, French sociologist Jean Baudillard made this very observation in “Simulacres et Simulation,” using the Borges story to introduce a dense critique of the increasing prevalence of imitation and other forms of unoriginality in mass culture. To Baudrillard, it had simply become too easy to replace something original with a copy that was sufficiently verisimilar, thus blurring the distinctions of authenticity enough to render them effectively meaningless. Baudrillard has surely then rolled much in his grave over the past few months, as access to both natural language interfaces, such as ChatGPT, and engines for producing art from generative machine learning algorithms, such as those powering DALL-E and Midjourney, have finally been granted to the public. While computational tools have been in the contemporary creator’s toolbox for decades, the immense amount of apparent originality that these newfangled models seem to be capable of has simply been too much for some artists, as what may be best described as a moral panic has swept through creative communities and stimulated charged debate about the threat of AI to the “essence” of what art is.
AI is no different from any of the other technological innovations that have been introduced to the fine arts.
OP-ED
While I am a generational African American student, I also understand the extra hesitancy of white students who decide to take courses in African and African American studies. Coming into these spaces, it may feel like courses in ethnic studies are geared only toward students of their respective identities. However, white students who decide to pursue non-white language and ethnic studies are not accessing knowledge or occupying territory in which they aren’t welcome. The opposite is the case. I encourage more white students to explore, perhaps for the first time, brand new perspectives that they can learn a thing or two from. If you’re a rising sophomore on the fence about what language to take at Harvard, you should consider joining the ALP. More new students in the department is exciting, and more engagement gives the program the chance to enhance existing events as well as make way for brand new traditions. By choosing to take an African language, you are affirming that this scholarship matters. In the words of the program’s director, John M. Mugane: “A serious understanding of Africa begins with language study.” More students learning indigenous African languages, including those without prior connections to Africa, strengthens the intellectual soul of our University. Learning an African language is deeper than learning some words — it’s about broadening our sense of which cultures can nurture our development as scholars and people.
Permit me to use a historical perspective to assuage these worries. I hold that, at least with respect to the production of art, the emergence of generative computational tools that many have — in my humble opinion, too hurriedly — touted as “artificial intelligence” is no different from any of the other technological innovations that have been introduced to the fine arts in the past. Take, for instance, something that seems as mundane nowadays as photography. When first invented and introduced to the public, the photograph drew scathing criticism from both artists of the time, such as John Ruskin, and art critics, including Baudelaire and Wölfflin. However, over time, photography gradually became an integral part of the visual arts — first as a potent source of inspiration for painters such as Gustave Courbet, who exhibited a deep interest in interpreting photographs through painting. Today, his “Le Puits Noir” hangs prominently in a second-floor gallery of the Harvard Art Museums among the works of Cézanne, Renoir, and other contemporaries who were similarly influenced in their art by the advent of photography. More recently, photography has even gained acceptance as a medium of artistic expression in its own right. As the multitude of photojournalistic works in the Harvard Art Museums collections — from the powerfully titled “Refugee in Hiding, Miami” to Dorothea Lange’s famous images of the Depression — demonstrate, the proliferation of a new technology need not be viewed as an existential threat to the fine arts. Rather, it should be welcomed by artists as a new medium of personal expression that can help their natural ingenuity and originality shine further. Keep in mind that it is us humans who are the ultimate arbitrators of what constitutes “art.” The generative algorithms that have captured the public imagination rely fundamentally on building off of artistic motifs created by human agents. Their products represent the highest form of Baudillard’s simulacra, for even though they seem original, they are far from it. Not only that, consider how important the process of making art is to its designation of originality. A human artist undergoes a process of extensive reflection, whether about their external environment or internal world, that directly affects the outcome of their work. But just like how making a gicleé of an original van Gogh requires no more creativity than it takes to use a printer, the method by which an algorithm produces a piece of art is categorically mechanistic. There is no reflection and no cognition intrinsic to its operation, and at best, it is the human who is providing the text or media input who contributes any semblance of creative vitality to the process. The algorithm couldn’t care less. So, do not fear. As long as humans continue to be creative, the artistic cultures we cherish will continue to flourish. Yes, the economics of supply and demand suggest that the ability of “art AI” to provide vacuous eye candy in seconds will place downwards pressure on the market for simple illustrations, but if the digital camera hasn’t been able to extinguish the market for individual and family portraiture, what’s so different now?
-Prince A. Williams ’25, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a History concentrator in Adams House.
–Alexander Junxiang Chen ’24 is a Neuroscience and Chemistry concentrator in Quincy House. His column “Artifactual” appears on Thursdays.
(Hey), Take An African Language HARVARD UNDERGRADS: Consider taking a course in an African language. BY PRINCE A. WILLIAMS
B
efore my sophomore year, I was terrified of deciding what foreign language to take. The idea of learning a whole new form of human communication seemed daunting. After a lot of stress and searching, I eventually landed on Tigrinya, an East African language spoken by the Tigrayan ethnic group in Ethiopia and Eritrea. But despite the loving faculty and incredible culture that I have come to know during my time taking Tigrinya, I’ve noticed that surprisingly few students enroll in the African Language Program. The ALP deserves more fantastic students in its ranks. To all current Harvard undergraduates: Consider taking a course in an African language. The African Language Program at Harvard University turns 20 years old this year. Throughout its short history, the ALP has provided instruction in more than 40 languages spoken on the African continent, offering more than 10 courses every semester that fulfill the foreign language requirement for Harvard undergraduates. These courses are essential to those specifically concentrating in the African Studies track of the Department of African and African American Studies, but also relate well to a variety of other areas of study and people on campus.
But despite the loving faculty and incredible culture that I have come to know during my time taking Tigrinya, I’ve noticed that surprisingly few students enroll in the African Language Program. There’s only one problem: Students aren’t taking these courses. Last fall, the elementary courses in Igbo and Yoruba, two of the major languages spoken in Nigeria, had less than 10 students enrolled. Introductory Swahili only had seven students, despite being a language
spoken in over more than 14 countries across Africa and the Middle East. And I myself was one of only three students in elementary Tigrinya. These small enrollment numbers obscure the fact that the African Language Program is directly relevant to Harvard’s purpose. One of the missions of a liberal arts education is to familiarize students with other cultures that aren’t their own. At Harvard, it’s easy to center languages that have always been at the forefront of Western higher learning. This historical precedent is apparent in the fact that the only language placement exams Harvard centrally administers are French, German, Italian, and Spanish. But the University has become more and more diverse over the last century, so students should move away from this precedent. Harvard does not have to be a place that only values and encourages learning about Western history — it is just as important to learn about the African diaspora.
Harvard does not have to be a place that only values and encourages learning about Western history — it is just as important to learn about the African diaspora.
One of the most unique learning experiences you will get in the African Language Program is Theater Night. Each semester, students in every ALP course are required to participate in a performance of their choosing. For my first Theater Night, my two wonderful classmates and I did a Tigrinya rendition of “Little Red Riding Hood.” It’s an event unique to the ALP that brings people together through cultural food, arts, and warm welcomes from various people in the department. Beyond Theater Night, I was taken care of in my first introductory course. As a foreigner with no direct attachments to Tigray, my instructor was patient with me. He walked me through the Tigrinya variation of the Ge’ez alphabet, a script which originated as a consonant-only alphabet that is now used for several Afro-Asiatic and Nilo-Saharan languages. Although I was going at a snail’s pace, my instructor consistently checked on my confidence in the material being covered.
Before I knew it, I was able to butcher pronunciations of words, name body parts, and even tell time in Tigrinya. If you are worried about not having a connection to the culture, do not fear. You will be welcomed with care by the African Language Program.
If you are worried about not having a connection to the culture, do not fear. You will be welcomed with care by the African Language Program.
METRO
THE HARVARD CRIMSON APRIL 7, 2023
11
HUPD
No Undergrad on HUPD Advisory Board VACANT ROLE. HUPD’s Advisory Board has lacked undergrad representation since May 2022. BY RYAN H. DOAN-NGUYEN AND YUSUF S. MIAN CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
T
he Harvard University Police Department Advisory Board — tasked with overseeing HUPD’s commitments to transparency and campus engagement — has lacked undergraduate representation since the graduation of its only College student member in May 2022. Noah A. Harris ’22, the former president of the Harvard Undergraduate Council, was the only undergraduate on the board. Harris’ position on the board has been vacant since his graduation in May 2022, leaving the University’s police force without any formal undergraduate oversight. University spokesperson Jason A. Newton confirmed that the board is still without an undergraduate representative and did not respond to a request for an updated list of members. “The committee has been actively reaching out and connecting with several people in attempts to fill the position,” Newton wrote in a Wednesday statement.
In a February 2022 meeting, the HUPD Advisory Board provided feedback on a series of forums proposed by the University’s Reimagining Community Safety working group and offered advice on updates to the HUPD’s crime and workload dashboard. In an interview with The Crimson last week, board chair Tim Bowman — the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences’ dean for administration and finance — said the Advisory Board will continue to seek input from different stakeholders within the University to attempt to increase diversity in membership. “We’ll go to those stakeholder groups who know their community the best and ask them to give us names,” Bowman said. “I believe that we are in the process of transitioning me off of the board and on-boarding new members,” Osiris Rankin, a Psychology student at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, wrote in a Thursday statement. He also confirmed he is still a current member. The Crimson reached out to each of the Advisory Board’s 13 members as of 2022 — representatives from across the University’s schools, including professors, administrators, and students — to inquire about progress made on the board’s initiatives. Eight did not respond to requests for
comment, three declined to comment, and two responded: Bowman and Rankin. “We have met as a board on multiple occasions this year, including recently,” Rankin wrote. “In our meetings, we have discussed department initiatives such as those related to hiring, promotion, training, emergency response, transparency, and communication.” Newton, the University spokesperson, declined to comment on Monday’s “swatting” attack. Four of the board’s members also declined to comment on the matter. The Advisory Board was formed in response to a December 2020 external review that called for significant reforms for greater accountability within the department. The review came in the wake of a January 2020 Crimson investigation surfacing a pattern of racism, sexism, and alleged favoritism within the department. In June 2020, longtime HUPD Chief Francis D. “Bud” Riley announced plans to retire. Bowman said the Advisory Board is looking into whether or not HUPD officers should always respond to mental health calls or if “there are other ways the University can respond” instead. “Some people feel a little overwhelmed when Harvard Univer-
sity police is the one unlocking the building for them,” Bowman said. “And it may not be even the best use of their time.” HUPD has faced heightened scrutiny in the aftermath of a “swatting” attack on Monday, which saw at least five HUPD officers raid a Leverett House suite equipped with riot gear and assault rifles. During the encounter, officers ordered the four College seniors in the suite out of their rooms at gunpoint. HUPD Chief Victor A. Clay wrote in a Wednesday statement that the officers were responding to a caller who claimed to be armed and holding a woman hostage in the suite. Rankin wrote that the HUPD workload and crime dashboard team has met with experts and stakeholders outside the Advisory Board. He added that he discussed a newer version of the dashboard with HUPD within the last month outside of the board’s regularly-scheduled meeting. “The dashboard incorporates community feedback on ways to effectively and transparently share information with all of Harvard and the general public,” Rankin wrote. “This includes information on calls to the HUPD and actions taken.” HUPD’s workload and crime dashboard has not been updated since June 2021.
The Harvard University Police Department’s headquarters. JULIAN J. GIORDANO— CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
After the board’s February 2022 meeting, Bowman told The Crimson that “it’s early for us to try to be issuing recommendations,” and the board members were “bringing ourselves up to speed.” More than a year later, the board has not publicized any formal recommendations it has issued to HUPD. “The reputation of HUPD at Harvard, I think, is starting at a positive place, and I realize
there’s always been some issues and concerns that in many ways is systemic of just policing in the United States in general,” Bowman said in last week’s interview. “But I think it’s been a very effective, very positive organization,” Bowman added. “How can we now even take that further and improve upon that?” ryan.doannguyen@thecrimson.com yusuf.mian@thecrimson.com
Boston’s Rent Control Proposal Remains Up in the Air BY DYLAN H. PHAN AND JACK R. TRAPANICK CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
The Boston City Council last month passed a rent control measure to limit annual rent increases to 10 percent, advancing a proposal drafted by Boston Mayor Michelle Wu ’07 to the State Legislature. The measure’s passage fulfills a key promise of Wu’s campaign platform to bring back rent control in Boston after multiple failed attempts over previous de-
cades. It also comes amid a long-running shortage of sufficient and affordable housing in Massachusetts: Boston currently has one of the highest rates of rent burden — defined as spending 30 percent or more of one’s income on rent — among tenants in the United States. Massachusetts State Rep. Mike L. Connolly, whose district includes parts of East Cambridge and Somerville, said in an interview that there is a need for the policy. “We’ve been in a state of affordable housing emergency really for over two decades now,” he said. “Today,
a more accurate way to describe the housing issues that we face are that this is a disaster.” “We have never seen the level of homelessness that we now see in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” Connolly added. “We’ve never seen the kind of cost burden that faces renters.” Boston saw several periods of rent control in the city throughout the 20th century before a 1994 ballot initiative finally banned the practice across Massachusetts. The statewide ban’s success came despite majority opposition from the three Massachusetts cities — Boston, Cambridge, and Brookline — that had active rent control
Boston City Hall is located in the Boston’s Government Center complex. JULIAN J. GIORDANO— CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
policies in place at the time. As a result of the act, municipalities must now file home rule petitions if they want to regulate rent and evictions. Since then, multiple efforts in both Boston and Cambridge to file such a petition have been defeated either by voters, the mayor, or the city council. Now in the throes of a housing crisis, a majority of Boston residents still appear to support some degree of rent control for their city. Approximately 68 percent of likely voters showed support for this new rent control plan, according to a statewide poll conducted by Northwind Strategies, a public affairs firm. Shelley Hallman, a Cambridge resident who works in Harvard Square, said she believes local governments in the area should be doing more to address the problem. “I hear a lot of kids when I’m walking down the street in Cambridge, talking about they graduated school, they landed a job but they still cannot afford to rent an apartment — that’s just frustrating, to hear kids saying that,” she said. Despite the favorable polls from local residents, uncertainty remains over the bill’s prospects in the State House. Connolly called the bill’s passage an “uphill battle,” pointing out that “legislative leaders have yet to offer support.” Massachusetts State Rep. Robert Consalvo, whose district comprises several southern neighborhoods in Boston, said in
an interview that this was partly because the bill was still in an early stage of the legislative process. “We’re at the literally top of the first inning of a nine-inning game,” Cosalvo said about the bill, which has yet to have a hearing. He added that he had not yet heard much from his constituents. “Our job is to vet — the process is deliberately hard,” he added. “We want to make sure we’re being thorough. We want to make sure we’re being transparent.” Nonetheless, Consalvo noted that rent control, passed or not, would be just one part of a wider approach to the housing crisis, a position similarly taken by Wu. “It’s only one small piece of the pie,” he said, listing separate efforts the legislature was taking to address housing issues in the state, including hundreds of millions in budget appropriations for rental assistance and a proposed tenant protection bill. Chris Herbert, managing director of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies and a member of Wu’s Rent Stabilization Advisory Committee, likened the measure to “anti-gouging legislation,” describing it as mild enough to avoid realizing some of the more common concerns around rent control. “If you limit rents to a 10 percent increase on an annual basis, that leaves tremendous room for landlords to increase rents over time in a way that I think will be minimally, if at all, distorting of the market,” Herbert said. “Rents in Boston have not increased in any given year by nearly that amount.” Hallman, the Cambridge resident, said she believes rent goug-
ing practices are a major contributor to the housing crisis and should not be permitted. “I don’t think corporations should be able to buy up apartment buildings and continue to raise the rent,” she said. “It’s just all for profit.” “They don’t care who can afford it,” Hallman added, describing a significant rent increase she had faced the year before. “As long as they’re making more money: more, more, more, more money.” She added that it was a “huge relief off my shoulders” when she found out her housing voucher was adjusted to help offset the cost of her higher rent. Despite the moderate extent of the measure, the real estate industry has recently begun a campaign — led by the Greater Boston Real Estate Board — in opposition to Wu’s rent control plan. The board planned to spend approximately $400,000 at the beginning of the initiative to publicize their stance, yet the board shared willingness to invest more if the proposal were to advance to the State Legislature. Still, Connolly said he hopes continued outreach to city residents will increase support for the proposal. “It seems the more the public hears accurate information about what we’re talking about, that support only goes up,” Connolly said. “I think we have to just continue doing advocacy — doing that outreach — as we prepare for legislative hearings that will take place this session on these bills,” Connolly added. dylan.phan@thecrimson.com jack.trapanick@thecrimson.com
Bill Proposed to End Legacy and Donor Preferences in Admissions BY JACK R. TRAPANICK AND CLAIRE YUAN CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
The Massachusetts House is considering a bill that would require higher education institutions like Harvard to pay a fee for admissions processes that consider legacy status or relationships to donors or that include an early decision plan. Co-filed by Massachusetts State Rep. Simon Cataldo and State Senator Pavel M. Payano, the bill would require all higher education institutions in the state to disclose information about their
admissions processes and would charge institutions a “public service fee” proportional to the size of their endowment for policies that violate its guidelines. The bill was also co-sponsored by Massachusetts State Reps. Samantha Montaño, Francisco E. Paulino, Carmine Lawrence Gentile, David H.A. LeBoeuf ’13, James K. Hawkins, Sean Garballey, Patrick Joseph Kearney, and Danillo A. Sena. LeBoeuf is a former Crimson News editor. For Payano, the motivation for the proposed bill is “ensuring that the higher ed application process for private schools is done in an equitable manner.”
“These practices are unfair, and they prevent working-class, hardworking students from being able to have access to these types of opportunities that are life-changing not for themselves, but for their entire family,” Payano said. The revenue from the public service fee would fund select Massachusetts community colleges. According to the plan outlined in the bill, Harvard would have to pay 0.2 percent of its endowment to continue considering legacy status in admissions, or about $100 million a year. Harvard spokesperson Rachael Dane declined to comment
on the proposed legislation. “If the bill goes into place, we think it creates about 25,000 slots of free community college,” Cataldo said. “If the schools decide to continue using these pernicious practices, that public service fee that goes into place would create opportunity for the very students that the schools are systematically keeping out of their campuses.” “Community colleges, unlike many elite colleges and universities, put students in the jobs that are needed most in Massachusetts,” he added. The proposed bill comes ahead of a Supreme Court ruling on the anti-affirmative action group Stu-
dents for Fair Admissions’ lawsuit against Harvard, which is expected to overturn race-based affirmative action in universities’ admissions processes nationwide. Massachusetts State Rep. Samantha Montaño, who is co-sponsoring the bill, said it would act as a “counterbalance” for diversity if affirmative action is overturned, describing it as a “valiant effort to address inequities in our private institutions.” Cataldo said the Supreme Court case presents an “opportunity” for Harvard to “think creatively” about equity in their admissions practices. “Legacy preference and do-
nor relations preference have no place in an equitable or fair admission scheme, with or without race-based affirmative action,” Cataldo said. Montaño, whose district comprises several neighborhoods in Boston, said the effort would be “probably a huge battle” given the expected pushback from universities targeted by the legislation. “When we talk about taxing wealthy institutions or people, it’ll be the same issue where they just pour money into stopping it,” she said. jack.trapanick@thecrimson.com claire.yuan@thecrimson.com
THE HARVARD CRIMSON
ARTS
12
APRIL 7, 2023
ARTS BLOG
NCAA
WOMEN’S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT: LESSONS ON AND OFF THE COURT BY MARLEY E. DIAS CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
hat they gonna say now?!” yells LSU forward and “Bayou Barbie” Angel Reese as she points to her newly adorned Final Four hat. Reese and the rest of her Division I Women’s Basketball team have continued to make history, leading LSU to its first championship in history, after defeating Iowa 102-85 on April 2nd. Reese — a former Maryland Terrapin — has led both her team and college basketball to new heights, leading the sport with 17 name, image, and likeness deals. Their regular season win against Mississippi State set an attendance record for Pete Maravich Assembly Center, bringing over 15,700 fans to watch Reese work. She also earned Most Outstanding Player for the tournament. While Reese is a star in statlines and headlines, she nonetheless continued to face backlash and hate. Towering over guards at 6’3”, Reese takes ownership of the paint, averaging 1.6 blocks per game. In basketball, a block is a pure athletic act of domi-
nation that stops an opponent from scoring, making it one of the most exciting moments of a game. When Reese blocks, she often has some trash talk for her opponents, letting them know she’s one step ahead of them. But while blocks in men’s basketball can be praised to the point of being deemed historic — such as Lebron James’s block against Andre Iguadola in game 7 of the 2016 NBA finals — when Reese does it, she often faces floods of hate comments. While faceless commenters might feel safe to bash Reese’s play style, she took to Twitter to let them know she’s unafraid to be herself on and off the court. “‘I’m too hood.’ ‘I’m too ghetto.’ I don’t fit the narrative and I’M OK WITH THAT. I’m from Baltimore where you hoop outside & talk trash. If it was a boy y’all wouldn’t be saying nun at all. Let’s normalize women showing passion for the game instead of it being ‘embarrassing,’” she wrote. Angel Reese is calling out misogynoir, a term that Northeastern University’s Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies professor Moya Bailey coined as “the ways anti-Black and misogynistic representation shape broader ideas about Black women, particularly in visual culture and digital space.” This policing of Reese’s play style is not just sexist, but also wrongly characterizes it as a violent act that intersects with
her Blackness and contributes to the common stereotype that Black women are too aggressive. To think further about how misogynoir functions in sports, let’s look at the criticisms of Reese’s white coach, Kim Mulkey, about her passion on the court. While she’s similarly labeled as overly passionate about her team, a label seldom painted on male coaches, it would be difficult to find comments calling Mulkey “hood” or “ghetto.” Conversations about sexism in women’s sports are continually being brought to the forefront of discourse around athletics, but it is critical to acknowledge the multiple forms of bigotry at play as they go unarticulated in these conversations. In LSU’s win against the University of Miami in the Elite Eight, Reese set the SEC single season record for double-doubles; she later broke the NCAA record for double-doubles in the tournament final. Her pride and confidence is more than earned, and the racist undertones of the comment sections on her past prove that no matter the level of greatness, Black women — especially Black women in sports — must meet impossible expectations in order to gain respectability. Another star who faces sexism in sport is Caitlin Clark, a dy-
namic sharpshooter known for her long range. She led her team, The University of Iowa, to their first championship appearance and was named the Naismith National Player of the Year. Clark is an undeniable gift to basketball, becoming the first player ever to earn a 40 point triple-double in NCAA tournament history, regardless of gender. Her skill has done wonders for women’s basketball viewership — over 2.5 million fans watched Iowa’s win against Louisville in the elite eight, reaching rating highs the NBA hasn’t seen for the entire regular season. Scattered below Caitlin Clark highlight videos are comments misgendering her, calling her “bro,” implying that a female athlete must have male biology to be as gifted as she is. Women’s sports are often mislabeled as unpopular, less athletic, and less competitive — nevertheless, this year’s stars have reminded audiences that they are a force to be reckoned with. Most importantly, they have proven in their play and their presence off the court that sexism in sports can no longer be tolerated. The tournament continues to raise the question of why women’s sports are undervalued culturally despite their evident success, and if the success of this year’s stars has finally begun to turn the tide of misogyny. The NCAA Women’s Tourna-
COURTESY OF ALEXANDER JONESI– WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
ment has seen a 42% increase in viewership from last year’s tournament. This year’s championship game also made history as the most-watched college women’s basketball game ever, with a peak of 12.6 million viewers and an average of 9.9 million viewers. Audiences are making it clear that they want to watch women’s sports, but the dialogues surrounding these athletes reveal the lack of social progress even amongst growth. Sports are meant to bring communities together, teach children important life skills in cooperation and discipline, and entertain. The suggestion that history-making athletes like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese are anything less than extraordinary is more than false. It is a harm to the young girls on the court striving for excellence. It is time to stop forcing female athletes to prove themselves and instead celebrate their greatness rather than simply accepting it. From coaches to trainers to athletes, the women in athletics are due for a resounding round of applause across the nation. marley.dias@thecrimson.com
Mickey Diamond On His Recent Work with Big Ghost LTD BY RYAN S. KIM CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
Detroit rapper Mickey Diamond has been making a name for himself with his signature deep-voiced delivery and gritty lyricism. Last December, he dropped his album, “Gucci Ghost,” in collaboration with producer Big Ghost LTD. In an interview with The Harvard Crimson, Diamond delved into his inspirations, creative process, and connections within the rap community, giving fans a glimpse into the life of a rapper on the verge of greatness. Detroit is Mickey Diamond’s hometown and creative center, but the rapper was born in South Carolina. Moving to Detroit in elementary school led to Diamond’s eventual pursuit of a career in rap, where his Detroit roots play a crucial role in shaping his sound. “I moved to Detroit in ’97. It was a culture shock. I lived in a small town down south. I bounced between South Carolina and Georgia because my dad was in the military. By the time we finally moved up here, I was 11-years-old, an impressionable age where you start learning everything. Detroit is fast, And at least compared to what I was coming from.” Mickey Diamond’s style stands out within the Detroit underground, blending elements of boom-bap and classic New York City hip-hop to create a sound that is more in line with contemporary East Coast artists like those signed under Griselda Records. He cites Outkast and Bone Thugs-n-Harmony among his ear-
ly influences, alongside Detroit legends like J Dilla. Diamond’s father had a prominent influence on the rapper’s taste in hip-hop, introducing him to artists like Ice Cube and DMX. “I remember when [my dad] bought ‘Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood’ by DMX,” the rapper said. “My dad had a paper route and we played those albums back to back to back every night for like six months, while we did the route. Because we ran the route so much, I knew by the time that we made it to a certain song on the album that we were almost done.” Last December, Diamond dropped his latest work, “Gucci Ghost,” and its sequel “Gucci Ghost 2,” both fully produced by renowned producer Big Ghost LTD. The anonymous beatmaker has worked with the likes of Conway the Machine, ANKHLEJOHN, and most recently Griselda rapper Rome Streetz. “Funny story is I had sent him a message in the DM like, ‘I love what you’re doing. I would love to be able to work with you someday,’” the rapper said. “That message literally went unseen for a year.” Diamond shared that his collaboration with Big Ghost came about after the producer saw the Detroit rapper perform online in a December 2021 freestyle showcase at Top Shelf Premium, a clothing store in Hoboken, N.J. Diamond performed at the store alongside his collaborators from the Umbrella Collective, a New York-based hip-hop crew founded by Pro Dillinger and Snotty in 2018. “When we did Top Shelf Premium, I guess [Big Ghost] saw the freestyle, he hit
me and we started talking,” Mickey Diamond said. “What really brought the album about though was a picture he sent to me. It was a picture of every single cassette that I have ever put out. He told me, ‘I’m a fan.’” Inspiration for “Gucci Ghost” came from Canadian snowboarder Trevor Andrew’s fashion alter ego, Guccighost, and the tumultuous history of the Gucci family. “[Trevor Andrew] came out with a brand called Gucci Ghost, where he would spray paint the Gucci logo on refrigerators and all kinds of shit,” the rapper said. “He wasn’t contracted by Gucci, it was all independent. It inspired me because he got Gucci’s attention and they let him design a shoe.” “I tied that in with the story behind Gucci and the Gucci family,” Diamond added. “There was a lot of chaos and turmoil with them running that luxury brand.” “Gucci Ghost” and its sequel touch on themes of family, legacy and fate. The rapper’s attention to detail in his storytelling are evident on standout tracks like “GG Buckets.” Diamond shared that working with Big Ghost is just the beginning of his trajectory. “It’s one of the better deals that I’ve ever done,” Diamond said. “I got a bucket list of milestones for my career. This was a step in the right direction for me to see that I am on the right path, that I’m doing the right thing and that the right eyes are on me. Things can only get better from here.” ryan.kim@thecrimson.com
BY COURTESY OF RAMON ‘1000WORD$’ LAZO
ARTS
THE HARVARD CRIMSON APRIL 7, 2023
13
EDITOR’S PICK: THEATER
FILM
“ATALANTA,” THE NEW NEWSROOM MUSICAL
COURTESY OF STEPHANIE BRECQ
COURTESY OF © 1988 STUDIO GHIBLI
‘My Neighbor Totoro’ After 35 Years is Still Magical THIS YEAR’S GHIBLI FEST CELEBRATED THE 35TH ANNIVERSARY of the release of “My Neighbor Totoro” alongside the other films in the classic Ghibli canon. BY EMMA E. CHAN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
M
y Neighbor Totoro” is filled with light — both metaphorical and literal. This luminosity is especially apparent when watching the film on the big screen. Each year, theaters across North America participate in Ghibli Fest, during which they screen revolutionary Studio Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki’s 10 animated films. This year’s Ghibli Fest celebrated the 35th anniversary of the release of “My Neighbor Totoro” alongside the other films in the classic Ghibli canon. On March 28, the film’s catchy, chipper theme song filled the AMC Boston Common theater as the audience tiptoed to their seats. Even from the opening sequence, viewers are invited into the whimsical, optimistic world of the film; a tiny girl with a widebrimmed hat marches rhythmically across the screen flanked by tiny white Totoros, mouths yawning as they stretch like marshmallows. The stylized simplicity of the opening animation is pleasantly disarming, yet the film’s moving storyline also delves into complex issues of grief and trauma in a cathartic way. “My Neighbor Totoro” remains unparalleled in its immersive storytelling, exquisite visuals, and uplifting message — the film leaves viewers feeling renewed and ready to believe in the world’s potential for joy and light again. “My Neighbor Totoro” maintains this playful tone as viewers meet the main characters. Laughter dominates the soundscape of the film’s first few minutes; two sisters, toddler Mei and older Satsuki, giggle as they crouch at the back of their father’s truck
on the way to their new home. In these moments, Miyazaki’s quiet storytelling shines through. Though viewers are not explicitly told about each character, they watch the smiling, carefree sisters share caramels with their father and greet a passing biker. Their joy is infectious, making tangible the excitement of moving into a new home. Even a rotting porch post becomes a source of delight, as Mei and Satsuki shriek with glee at the idea that this imperfect, beautiful home is theirs. Within the first minute, Miyazaki’s expert characterization makes the viewers invested in these characters, further enhancing the film’s personal touch. Studio Ghibli films are particularly adored for their visual appeal, and “My Neighbor Totoro” is exemplary of the transformative magic of director Hayao Mi-
ki takes a few seconds to dwell on the beauty of a summer evening, humming with cicadas and heat — yet the viewers know that Mei has gone missing and their ailing mother Yasuko may be in mortal danger. In this way, Miyazaki harnesses his visual storytelling power by juxtaposing this static natural beauty with Satsuki’s frenzied movements as she desperately searches for her lost sister. Perhaps most important about Miyazaki’s visual prowess is his character design for the titular character, Totoro. Totoro is technically a monster, a fickle forest spirit living in a camphor tree, but his fuzzy, huggable nature, round body, and endearing button nose make the monstrous adorable. Indeed, this partially explains why Totoro merchandise is so prevalent, amidst a growing, billion-dollar industry for anime ap-
“
The film’s characters choose not to succumb to the bleakness of their situation; they are induced to choose the light.
yazaki’s hand-drawn animation. Light-laden landscape shots are one of Miyazaki’s strengths, and these come to dominate “My Neighbor Totoro.” The patchy, vivid colors that have come to characterize Miyazaki’s style truly come to the foreground. Viewers are treated to still shots and pan outs of glittering rice paddies, emerald forests soft and fuzzy with sun, and a sunset stained orange like a soft-boiled egg yolk. And while the scenes depicted are largely mundane — truly just a rice paddy, a tree-dotted hill, a sunset — it’s Miyazaki’s faithful and intricate ode to the power and beauty of nature that transforms these everyday settings into the calming, peaceful landscapes they have become. At times, Miyazaki skillfully manipulates this visual appeal to contrast with the emotional charge of the moment. For example, later in the film, Miyaza-
parel. Yet Totoro himself is more than just a fuzzy friend to the two young sisters. Though the premise of a massive forest monster coming to humanity’s aid is highly fantastical, this mixing of magic and reality is part of “My Neighbor Totoro”’s appeal. After moving in, the sisters plant seeds in their garden, waiting faithfully for them to grow. One night, Totoro and his two smaller friends creep into the garden to help the plants grow; thanks to their efforts, a copse of trees blossoms into the sky. This is one of the most uplifting sequences of the film; though the towering trees are revealed to be measly shoots in the morning, it is emblematic of the film’s overall message about the power of imagination and childhood and the necessity of hope in difficult times. “My Neighbor Totoro” empowers the audience to heal
their inner child. Just as the sisters turn to Totoro’s mystical aid, viewers are given permission to dream of whimsical solutions to everyday problems. Sustained by the knowledge that all will be well, the film’s characters choose not to succumb to the bleakness of their situation; they are induced to choose the light. The film’s relentless, unfailing optimism may be a response to traumatic events in Miyazaki’s own life. Ostensibly a carefree story of a family moving into a new home, the plot of “My Neighbor Totoro” carries undercurrents of tension that eventually explode in heartbreaking ways. When Yasuko’s condition worsens, the naive Mei desperately attempts to deliver an ear of corn to the hospital in hopes of curing her. Ultimately, it is Totoro and his Catbus friend who help Mei and Satsuki check on their mother, and the film closes with a happy reunion. By contrast, Miyazaki’s mother Yoshiko had spinal tuberculosis and ultimately passed away in 1983, before the release of “My Neighbor Totoro.” In this way, the film’s optimistic tone may be Miyazaki’s way of reaffirming his belief in the necessity of hope: Though not everyone truly has a happy ending, we can all imagine and hope for one. Ultimately, “My Neighbor Totoro” exemplifies the healing realization that despite any doubts, joy can be found anywhere. On their first night in their new home, a thunderstorm batters the house, and the girls huddle with their father in the bathtub, spooked by every sound. Suddenly, their father bursts into boisterous laughter, claiming that laughter “keeps the bogeymen away.” The family laughs their fears away, their lamps glowing into the stormy night. Just as Satsuki and Mei gain the courage to face life’s challenges with optimism, joy, and a bit of supernatural support from Totoro, viewers leave the film with renewed belief in humanity — and a little bit of magic in their hearts.
“Atalanta,” an original musical written by Mira-Rose J. Kingsbury Lee ’24, will run at the Loeb Experimental Theatre from April 6 to April 9. Co-directed by Kingsbury Lee and Ellie M. Powell ’25, the story follows Sarina Lemonde (Grace H. Allen ’24), a young newspaper editor working in a male-dominated newsroom in New York City in 1969. She finds herself in a difficult position when she unexpectedly becomes President of the “Atalanta Post.” “Atalanta” opens with a busy newsroom scene filled with peppy music. Men clad in plaid pants and women in jewel tones fill the scene: “Who’s who in the news?” they ask. Costume designer Stephanie S. Brecq ’24 dove into the Pinterest world of 1960s fashion to outfit the cast. She describes Sarina’s mother Miriam Lamonde’s outfits as “super high fashion, European but she’s like kind of fake so it’s brought to the nth degree.” While this may be the musical’s debut, Kingsbury Lee has been thinking about Sarina Lemonde for a decade. She began developing Sarina’s story in middle school. In this first iteration, though, Sarina wasn’t in a New York newsroom, but a futuristic Greco-Roman world. The title does, after all, pay homage to the Ancient Greek heroine Atalanta. But Kingsbury Lee kept “searching for a place for” Sarina. That’s when she read the autobiography of Katharine Graham, the former publisher of “The “Washington Post” and felt “enchanted” by Graham’s story. “She’s a really peculiar character,” Kingsbury Lee said of Graham. But Graham’s story embodied the growth that occurred in Kingsbury Lee’s own main character, Sarina. Thus, Sarina was born into the newsroom. As a musical, “Atalanta” went through several stages of development — from a workshop at Kingsbury Lee’s high school to an online performance during the Covid-19 quarantine — to reach the state it is in today. The production of the musical at the Loeb Ex aims to present a variety of complex characters and a myriad of relationship dynamics. Viewers will watch as Sarina navigates feelings towards her mother, the bombshell French movie star Miriam Lamonde (Onovughakpor M. Otitigbe-Dangerfield ’25) as well as her husband, Charlie Saltman (Matthew J. Given ’25). Cast member Louis A. Zekowski ’23, who plays the “emotionally volatile” newspaper editor Jack Harding, described “Atalanta” as “something unlike anything I had ever seen before.” Propelled by a lean cast of nine, the music features rhymes and spoken songs reminiscent of Harold Hill in “The Music Man” or rap segments in “Hamilton,” as well as jazzy, upbeat tunes with violin, drums, piano, and saxophone. Vocal music director Henry H. Wu ’25 described the variety of music as including songs that are “lighthearted” and songs that have “more emotional punch.” “So much of the music for this is going to be exhilarating and new and something that audiences aren’t expecting,” said Zekowski. Wu says he hopes viewers will be reminded of “joy” and “the peak of human emotion” when listening to the music in “Atalanta.” The lyrics make biblical, classical, and historical allusions. Despite, or perhaps because of, its ties to history, the musical addresses issues prevalent in today’s world from the vantage point of 1969. Kingsbury Lee said she hopes “Atalanta” will bring audiences to recognize that “you really are what you make of yourself,” and that a person’s background does not have to define their future. sophia.downs@thecrimson.com
emma.chan@thecrimson.com
Best Parks in Cambridge to Visit this Spring BY MARIA F. CIFUENTES CONTRIBUTING WRITER
It’s lighter out longer, the air is warmer, and the flowers are blooming again. Spring has finally arrived! It’s the perfect weather for putting on a light jacket and taking a long walk through the park, so head outdoors with a friend or two to enjoy the wonderful weather and scenery. Here are five parks to visit in Cambridge this spring.
5. Cambridge Commons Just a short walk from the Yard, Cambridge Commons is across the street from the Johnston Gate. The park features paved bike and pedestrian pathways, making it a great spot to go on a run, or simply walk around with headphones on. A podcast, audiobook, or favorite song would complete a walk through the park’s looping pathways, and one’s worries might begin to fade away. A large grassy area in the center of the park practically begs for visitors to throw down a blanket, and take in this little gem of a park.
4. Joan Lorentz Park Located right in front of Cambridge Public Library, Joan Lorentz Park is the perfect place for a morning or afternoon stroll — and maybe even a quick trip to the library. The park features extensive greenery, tall trees, and a vast space to play frisbee with friends! This park is also a hot spot for dogs, so opportunities to watch cute puppies run around abound. Along with puppies, the park even features tennis courts! Whether it’s a study day at the library, relaxing in the sun’s warmth, playing tennis, or hanging with dogs, Joan Lorentz Park has got it all.
3. Riverbend Park For those afternoons when the sky turns pink as the sun sets, grab a blanket, some snacks, a good book, and head down to the Riverbend Park along the Charles River! This is one of the best spots near Harvard Square to watch the sunset and sunrise over the glistening water — the best view is from the bridge that leads directly to the Harvard Business School. The breathtaking view is not to be missed. The park is also ideal for running and biking enthusiasts, since the street is closed off to traffic every Saturday and Sunday.
2. North Point Park Further down the Charles, North Point Park makes the walk to get there totally worth it. The park serves as a haven next to the bustling highway, with its beautiful perennials and meadows. A small bridge over the river provides an ideal view of the vibrant trees and various flowers. This is the perfect place to disconnect from the world for a moment, getting lost in the garden’s calming atmosphere and soothing river sounds.
1. Mount Auburn Cemetery If there’s one thing everyone should do this spring, it’s to plan a day trip to the Mount Auburn Cemetery. The park acts as an urban oasis, featuring the serene Asa Gray Garden. Visitors can walk throughout the many pathways to enjoy the mesmerizing greenery, sit for a couple of hours with a book, paint, or just listen to the birds chirping. Mount Auburn Cemetery is an inspiring place — full of life and surrounded by flowering trees, shrubs, and a calming air that flows throughout the landscape.
14
THE HARVARD CRIMSON
FIFTEEN QUESTIONS
V
aleria Luiselli is a visiting professor of ethnicity, indigeneity, and migration in the English Department. Luiselli is the author of several books including “Lost Children Archive,” which was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Fifteen Minutes: You teach a course called “Plundering the Americas: Histories of Extractive Violence and Creative Resistance in the Americas.” How do you approach creating and discussing work centered around the ideas of empire and U.S. imperialism here in the U.S.? Valeria Luiselli: I think that we look at different instances in which official modes of knowledge — national archives, or final histories of nations — have congealed versions of history. We try to go into the cracks of those archives and extract from those cracks the possibility of understanding what has been left out from them, what has been voluntarily silenced — in an engineered kind of silence, or in some cases just through a kind of inertia.
APRIL 7, 2023
Q&A:
VALERIA LUISELLI ON THE BEST NOVEL EVER WRITTEN, HER FRIEND CRUSH, AND THE PERILS OF AN MFA THE AUTHOR sat down with Fifteen Minutes to discuss writing and teaching. “How do we reshape the view of the migrant as an inherently victimized figure or as an intruder of sorts by thinking, for example, of migration in its kind of heroic arc?” she says. “Of the migration story not as a tragedy, but as a form of epic? BY SAZI T. BONGWE AND YASMEEN A. KHAN CRIMSON MAGAZINE WRITERS
During the time of Obama, there was a document, a kind of “pardon,” or an “ask for an apology” written by the United States government, directed at Native American peoples. The document lists a shopping list of wrongdoing, so to speak, all beginning with the word “whereas.” It’s a very disquieting document because of all the things it does not really say about the horrors of genocidal imperialism and colonization. And we saw one example of a response to that archive, which is this wonderful poem by Layli Long Soldier called “Whereas,” and she responds to this document with her own were “whereases.” FM: Alongside your writing, you have also been involved in political advocacy, notably translating for children in immigration court and teaching creative writing to incarcerated girls in New York City. Is the impulse to do this kind of work different from the impulse to write or make other art?
FM: How do you know which medium or genre feels right for the story you want to tell? VL: Trial and error. For ages. For four years now I’ve been working on a novel that until two weeks ago had no shape. And now I’m only starting to find an architec-
FM: As you were writing your novel “The Story of My Teeth,” you sent chapters to be read to factory workers at the Jumex juice factory weekly in Mexico. The workers would read the chapter out loud, sort of critique them, and send their thoughts back to you and then you’d revise the chapters accordingly with their criticism and then continue that process. My initial question is why did you decide to do this? But I guess a connected question is part of that, for you, figuring out a blurring of the lines between the writing that was produced by you versus writing that’s produced communally?
Don’t fall into the trap of an MFA; rather, do a Ph.D., unless the MFA is tuition free and giving you a stipend. In that case, yes, if you’re being treated like a graduate student and have compensation for your work and research, fantastic.
How is writing a tool for reshaping accepted narrative, a narrative that forms a very congealed part of the collective imagination?
VL: I think the impulse, or the pulse more than the impulse, might be a similar one. But I understand the limitations of one form and the other, and try not to aspire to more than what one form can achieve. So I know, in my case at least, that writing fiction in particular is not the best tool for political denunciation or activism. Some fiction can lead the readers to think as an activist or to act, but it’s not something that I would like to think about when I’m writing fiction. But then, on the other hand, when I’ve written nonfiction in the past, like “Tell Me How It Ends,” I did have a much more political agenda in mind. How is writing a tool for reshaping accepted narrative, a narrative that forms a very congealed part of the collective imagination? And how do you reshape that collective imagination through thinking about narrative differently? How do we reshape the view of the migrant as an inherently victimized figure or as an intruder of sorts by thinking, for example, of migration in its kind of heroic arc? Of the migration story not as a tragedy, but as a form of epic?
the other one. It’s just a mystery that I just have to live with. Some things might be said more humorously in one language than in another, or some things lose that kind of vibrancy. But I don’t think that, inherently, a language produces, in me at least, prose that is more humorous or more melancholic or more anything. It has to do more with the moment and the material itself.
AMANDA Y. SU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
SAFFRON R. AGRAWAL—CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
ture within it; it was just a collection of notes. Four years it’s taken me, and the result is that it’s both fiction and nonfiction. I couldn’t decide which one this time, so both. FM: Was there a moment when you decided to become a writer? VL: I think there were many moments in which I aspired to become a writer. There were certainly many years of writing and realizing that writing was the activity that gave me the most profound forms of intellectual and emotional pleasure, joy, curiosity, satisfaction, also frustration and fear. It was not until when I was an undergraduate student studying philosophy at the UNAM. I met a girl my age, who is to this day like a sister to see me. We were smoking a cigarette outside class — you smoked inside and outside class in those days, but we were respectively smoking right outside class, not inside class — and I asked her her name. I’d been seeing her for weeks and I thought she was very interesting and I wanted her to be my friend, but I didn’t know
how. And I asked her her name and what she did and who she was. And she said she presented herself like a writer. We were 19 years old, and I was like, “What do you mean? A writer?” I know it might sound trite these days, but I really had never read a female writer of fiction. Also, I was studying philosophy, not literature, so I came to literature on my own and later. But in high school, I had read only guys, really. Maybe I had read some Juana, the Mexican poet.
If I do it in one language, I’ll never know what it could have been in the other one. So it was really important for me to hear someone my age who considered herself a writer. And I think after that it became a realistic perspective to me. To this day, every Monday, we check in, and we tell each other what we’re working on that week,
where we’re going, if we did what we said last week, if the chapter is working or not, and we have a very tight discipline that’s now more than two decades long. FM: What books in your life shaped you the most? VL: Brodsky’s essays, that collection “Less Than One.” Anne Carson’s “Plainwater” is one of my favorite books. It’s such a beautiful book. Juane Rulfo, “Pedro Paramo.” I think it’s the best novel that has ever been written. Really plainly so. But there’s so many that it’s a very unfair question, so I’m only going to give you three. I mean, I could say Ovid’s “Metamorphosis,” for example, that I read over and over and over and over again. So maybe that too. FM: You’ve published extensively in both English and Spanish, sometimes assisting in translations of your own work. Does the language of the story change what’s being said? VL: I’ll never know. If I do it in one language, I’ll never know what it could have been in
VL: Thanks to that mode of writing, I have more and more thought of collective experiences of writing or collective modes of documenting. The project that I’m working on is a lot more collective — like, brutally collective. I don’t know if I was too conscious of it while doing it, but I think it taught me how to write in a way and how to listen in a way that has informed my work since. One of the things that I was really interested in trying to understand was just how they understood their own place within this very complicated ecology created by the geographical proximity between the factory and this art gallery in the same plot of land and they belong to the same company. Their tireless work during the day produces the revenue and the surplus of money that eventually goes into buying this expensive contemporary art that exists in this gallery that’s kind of vacuum packed and really well air conditioned, while the factory is super hot. And I really wanted to hear their views on that disconnection and connection. FM: What message would you give to an aspiring writer? VL: Don’t fall into the trap of an MFA; rather, do a Ph.D., unless the MFA is tuition free and giving you a stipend. In that case, yes, if you’re being treated like a graduate student and have compensation for your work and research, fantastic. MFAs are often a bit of a trick for people. So, don’t fall into the trap. Do a Ph.D.; it’s free.
FM Fifteen Minutes is the magazine of The Harvard Crimson. To read the full interview and other longform pieces, visit THECRIMSON.COM/ MAGAZINE
SPORTS
THE HARVARD CRIMSON APRIL 7, 2023
15
WEEKLY SCORES RECAP WOMEN’S
SOFTBALL VS. MERRIMACK
W, 7-01
LACROSSE VS. STONEHILL
W, 13-6
WATER POLO VS. ST. FRANCIS
W, 20-3
TENNIS VS. DARTMOUTH
W, 4-1
GOLF PROSPECT BAY
1ST
WATER POLO VS. MICHIGAN
L, 14-6
MEN’S
BASEBALL AT NORTHEASTERN
W, 4-3
VOLLEYBALL VS. PENN STATE
L, 3-0
TENNIS AT DARTMOUTH
W, 6-1
LACROSSE AT COLGATE
W, 14-10
HEAVYWEIGHT ROWING AT CORNELL BASEBALL VS PRINCETON
Sophomore attacker Sam King tussles with a Boston University player in Harvard’s battle against the Terriers on March 21. DYLAN J. GOODMAN—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
W
L, 18-9
MEN’S LACROSSE
Harvard Gets Back on Track against Colgate A BIG REBOUND after a tough loss last week. The Crimson built a decisive lead through the first three quarters, bouncing back from a two-game losing streak. BY KATHARINE FORST CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
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he Harvard men’s lacrosse team bounced back from a disappointing week of performances with a win against Colgate on Saturday, breaking its two-game losing streak. The team looked much more confident against the Raiders, building a decisive lead through the first three quarters of play. Despite winning the first faceoff, an area the team has been looking to improve throughout the season, the Raiders drew first blood. Overall, the team appeared more cohesive than it did against Dartmouth. Similarly to the game against the Big Green, Harvard was able to stretch an early lead. The Crimson offense was more dominant, moving the ball with pace and precision, and the lines were able to pick apart the Colgate defense. Sophomore middies Miles Botkiss and Joe Dowling stood out as two players who were able to make a dynamic impact during the game. Botkiss tallied four goals and Dowling notched three goals and an assist. The two were particularly crucial in the team’s extra man conversions, each notching a goal alongside senior attackman Hayden Cheek on the man-up. On the defensive end, the team looked solid for the first three
quarters as it was able to hold the Raiders to just four goals for the entire forty-five minutes of play. However, lapses came in the last fifteen minutes of play as Harvard seemed to back off with its lead, getting caught ball-watching and sending the recovery slide a step too late. However, it was one of the tightest performances yet, and pairing its ability to shut down Colgate with the offense’s success in hitting the back of the net, was what pushed the team to victory. “We had a heightened sense of urgency all week in practice which was led by our captain Nick and our seniors, with a focus on consistent play and playing a full game for four quarters,” Dowling commented. “A big emphasis this week will be working towards getting both our offense and defense clicking during the game next Saturday. We haven’t played a full sixty minutes of Harvard lacrosse yet, and that’s the goal.”
ly hard to do, but we showed more glimpses of that against Colgate,” sophomore middie Andrew Perry reflected. He stressed that, “We have struggled at times to put teams away when we have them on the ropes, which has been due to us making plays that allow them to feed off of and go on runs. Towards the end of the game we had to really buckle down as this started to happen, but it was good to put them away, and it’s a good
thing to build off of as we get into a very tough stretch in our schedule.” This critical, Ancient Eight stretch — consisting of Cornell, Penn, Princeton, and Yale — will make for both offensive and defensive challenges for the Crimson. All four of these teams have been dynamic throughout the season and are ranked in the top 20 according to Inside Lacrosse, besides Yale. In order to
win against these higher caliber teams, Harvard must put together fast-paced offensive sets, wins on the faceoff, and lock-down defense in order to have a chance at clinching a slot in the Ivy Tournament. The Harvard men’s lacrosse team will welcome No. 4 Cornell this Saturday, April 8 at 12:00 p.m. to Jordan Field. The game will also be streamed live on ESPN+.
READ IT IN FIVE MINUTES SOFTBALL MAKES IVY LEAGUE PUSH The Harvard softball team had a busy week. A three-game sweep over Brown this past weekend and a doubleheader against Massachusetts neighbor Merrimack have bolstered the Crimson’s confidence as they wade through the depths of midseason play.
katharine.forst@thecrimson.com
TRACK & FIELD BREAKS RECORDS
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Amid one of the program’s most successful seasons in its history, Harvard track and field split between Texas, Florida, and Massachusetts last weekend for the third week of its 2022-23 outdoor season.
We haven’t played a full sixty minutes of Harvard lacrosse yet, and that’s the goal.
Joe Dowling Sophomore Middie
Heading into four games worth of Ivy play, the Crimson is set on the idea of stringing together four quarters of consistency. Despite clinching a victory, the team gave up six goals in the fourth quarter, more than the other three quarters combined. “As a whole team, a big focus for us has been playing a full sixty minutes. Obviously that’s real-
TRIPP TRACY MAKES HIS MARK
The men’s lacrosse squad huddles at a game against Boston University. DYLAN J. GOODMAN—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
GAMES TO WATCH THIS WEEK FRIDAY Women’s Tennis vs. Yale 2:00 pm, Murr Center Men’s Tennis at Yale 3:00 pm
SATURDAY Men’s Volleyball at NJIT 6:00 pm
Men’s Heavyweight Rowing Stein Cup
Men’s Lacrosse vs. Cornell 12:00 pm, Jordan Field
Women’s Heavyweight Rowing Class of 1975 Cup
Women’s Water Polo vs. Princeton 10:00 am, Blodgett
Women’s Golf Harvard Invitational
Goaltender for the Crimson, victor of the Beanpot, and beloved announcer for the Carolina Hurricanes, Tripp Tracy ‘96 has seen it all. Yet before Harvard, and before Harvard hockey, Tracy was just any other high schooler: nervous, young, and trying to impress a date.
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THE HARVARD CRIMSON
SPORTS
APRIL 7, 2023
MEN’S ICE HOCKEY
Sophomore Matthew Coronato celebrates his goal against Boston College in the Beanpot Semifinal on Feb. 6. DYLAN J. GOODMAN—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
Harvard in the NHL
HARVARD STARS This past season, Harvard had 15 players on its roster as draft picks. This marks the most of any team for the 2022-23 season. BY BRIDGET T. SANDS AND AARON B. SHUCHMAN CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
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In the past several seasons, alums of the Harvard men’s ice hockey program have emerged as powerhouses of talent and production in the National Hockey League (NHL), with former Crimson stars Adam Fox, Ryan Donato, Alex Killorn, Jimmy Vesey, and others establishing themselves as key contributors for their respective teams. Now, after Harvard’s 8-1 loss to the Ohio State Buckeyes on March 24th eliminated the Crimson from the 2023 NCAA Tournament, the next wave of Harvard talent is heading to the NHL. Less than 24 hours after the Crimson’s loss, former captain Henry Thrun signed a two-year, entry-level contract with the San Jose Sharks, while former star forwards Sean Farrell and Mat-
thew Coronato inked three-year deals with the Montreal Canadiens and Calgary Flames, respectively. Former goaltender Mitchell Gibson joined the Washington Capitals, while former standout Alex Laferriere is joining the Los Angeles Kings’ minor league team and former captain John Farinacci is considering joining the Arizona Coyotes. Former forwards Baker Shore and Wyllum Deveaux have also signed minor league tryout deals in the ECHL. HENRY THRUN Thrun, a native of Southborough, Mass., co-captained Harvard to a stellar regular season in 2022-2023. After being named a Second Team All-American in 2021-2022, Thrun was recognized this season as the ECAC’s Best Defensive Defenseman, while putting up 31 points on offense (seven goals, 24 assists) to lead Crimson defensemen. A leader on and off the ice, Thrun also led the team in blocked shots with 40, and he was a sta-
Senior forward and captain John Farinacci patrols the blue line against Ohio State in the NCAA Bridgeport Regional Semifinal on March 24. DYLAN J. GOODMAN—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
ple on the left side of Harvard’s top defense pair, alongside fellow senior Ryan Siedem. A fourth-round draft pick of the Anaheim Ducks in 2019, Thrun’s NHL rights were traded to the Sharks on February 28th after he indicated that he intended to test free agency instead of signing with the Ducks. Thrun joins a Sharks squad stuck at the bottom of the NHL standings, but San Jose is 2-0-1 since his debut, and Thrun recorded two assists in his first game, an overtime victory on March 30 against the Vegas Golden Knights. “Obviously, I was a little nervous, a couple [of] butterflies there, but a lot of really welcoming guys in the room,” Thrun told NBC Sports California after his debut.
up was unavailable due to illness. ALEX LAFERRIERE Laferriere led the Crimson in goal scoring in 2022-2023 with 21 as part of a stellar junior season. After earning ECAC Hockey Rookie of the Year Honors last season in his sophomore campaign (his first with Harvard due to Ivy League’s cancellation of the 2020-2021 season), Laferriere emerged as a dynam-
33 assists) in 34 games, and he finished second in the country in points per game (1.56). He was the team’s top left wing, playing alongside Coronato and sophomore Zakary Karpa with the team at full strength. Farrell and Coronato, who previously played together in junior hockey for the USHL’s Chicago Steel, had elite chemistry on the ice. Farrell surpassed the 50-point mark in the ECAC quarterfinals against Princeton on
I think after I got a couple shifts under me, I felt good out there. Definitely a lot more physical, but I felt good” Alex Laferriere
MITCHELL GIBSON Gibson, hailing from Phoenixville, Pa., posted a brilliant season in his final campaign in Cambridge, earning a berth on the AllECAC Second Team with a 2.25 goals-against average and a .919 save percentage. After taking over as the starter last season in his junior campaign, Gibson was a consistent and often dominant presence between the pipes for the Crimson, and he posted some of his best performances in Harvard’s biggest games. This season, he notched 45 saves in the Beanpot semifinal against Boston College, posted a shutout against Cornell in an overtime victory in the ECAC semifinals, and made 35 saves in a heavyweight battle with Michigan in November. Gibson was drafted in the fourth round in 2018 by the Washington Capitals, and he has signed an amateur tryout (ATO) to join the Capitals organization, and he was summoned to the NHL on April 2nd to serve as the Capitals’ backup goalie after Washington’s back-
ic goal-scoring threat and an engine of the Crimson’s second line. A N.J. native and childhood teammate of Farinacci and sophomore forward Alex Gaffney, Laferriere scored five goals across Harvard’s four-game ECAC tournament run, including the overtime winner in the semifinals against Cornell. Drafted in the third round in 2020 by the Los Angeles Kings, Laferriere agreed to an amateur tryout (ATO) with the Ontario Reign, the Kings’ minor league affiliate. “It definitely took a couple [of] shifts to get used to it, my first shift an unlucky bounce off my skate and it’s in the back of our net, so definitely not a good start,” said Laferriere in an interview with the Reign’s official website after his first game. “I think after I got a couple shifts under me, I felt good out there. Definitely a lot more physical, but I felt good.” SEAN FARRELL After an incredible second season in crimson, junior Farrell was named one of the top 10 finalists for the Hobey Baker Award, the most prestigious award in college hockey, which has been awarded to four Harvard alums: Mark Fusco ‘83, Scott Fusco ‘86, Lane MacDonald ‘89, and Jimmy Vesey ‘16. Named the ECAC Hockey and Ivy League Player of the Year, Farrell led the team in scoring, posting 53 points (20 goals,
March 11th, becoming just the third player in Harvard hockey history to reach the mark. Hailing from Hopkinton, Mass., Farrell grew up playing with and against teammate Thrun, and he was drafted in the fourth round of the 2020 NHL Draft, 124th overall, by the Montreal Canadiens — one of the NHL’s Original Six. Farrell officially signed a three-year entry-level contract on Sunday, March 26th, choosing the professional route instead of his senior year at Harvard. Farrell made his NHL debut on Tuesday, March 28th against the Philadelphia Flyers, and he recorded his first goal in his second game, scoring in the first two minutes of the Canadiens’ March 30 game against the Florida Panthers. “Obviously an offensive talent, dynamic player. Not a big guy, but he’s able to attack between checks and stuff,” said Canadiens head coach Martin St. Louis at a press conference before Farrell’s debut. “He’s done it at every level. And this is a level that he’s gonna have to show that he can still do it.” MATTHEW CORONATO Sophomore forward Coronato was perhaps the most clutch player on Harvard’s roster this season, scoring overtime winners against Yale and Colgate, a late game-tying goal against Princeton, as well as four goals during the Beanpot Tournament.
After a stellar freshman year, Coronato matched his point total of 34 (20 goals, 14 assists) while continuing to perform well under the bright lights after he scored the overtime winner in last season’s ECAC title game. Named to this year’s All-Ivy First Team and All-ECAC Second Team, the Greenlawn, N.Y. native signed a three-year entry-level contract with the Calgary Flames on March 26th, foregoing his final two years of college eligibility. Coronato was the Flames’ firstround pick in the 2021 NHL Draft as the 13th overall pick – the highest draft pick in Harvard Hockey history. Coronato is yet to make his debut but will have a chance to do so in some critical games as the Flames battle for a playoff spot. “It’s been a little crazy, it’s been really exciting, just hard to explain the feeling of being here,” said Coronato at a press conference after his first practice. “Really just grateful for the opportunity to come in and be here with these guys and learn.” JOHN FARINACCI In his last year at Harvard, co-captain Farinacci was sidelined due to an upper-body injury for the first half of the season, lacing up for the first time against Clarkson University on January 13th. Upon his return, the Red Bank, N.J. native joined childhood teammate Laferriere on the second line at center and tallied five goals and 15 assists, combining for 20 points in 19 games. Farinacci has been a consistent producer during his time in Cambridge, recording 19 points last year and 20 in his freshman season in 2019-20. Farinacci played for Team USA in the 2021 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships, tallying five goals and two assists in Team USA’s gold medal run. Farinacci was drafted in the third round of the 2019 NHL Draft by the Arizona Coyotes, 76th overall, and the Coyotes will retain Farinacci’s NHL rights until August 15th. If he doesn’t sign before then, Farinacci can become a free agent and would be free to sign with any team in the NHL. bridget.sands@thecrimson.com aaron.shuchman@thecrimson.com
SPORTS
THE HARVARD CRIMSON APRIL 7, 2023
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MEN’S TENNIS
James Blake ’01 in the Pros GOING PRO Former men’s tennis star James Blake has completed amazing acomplishments in his professional career despite numerous setbacks . BY CAROLINE G. GAGE CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
ames Blake ‘01, the former Harvard tennis star who reached a career-high ranking of No. 6 in the world in 2006, wears many hats today: tennis player, commentator, tournament director, charity director, author, public speaker, and many more. Ten years after retirement, Blake continues to break barriers as he brings his life and tennis experience to the sport. “I just knew I wanted to still be back in tennis, and I still had that desire, I still enjoyed the sport,” Blake shared with The Crimson. The Miami Open, one of the nine coveted ATP Masters 1000 and WTA 1000 tournaments on the nearly year-round professional tour, wrapped up last week at Hard Rock Stadium. The coveted singles trophies were taken home by Daniil Medvedev and Petra Kvitova, culminating an exciting 12 days of play at the highest level of the sport. Blake became director of the Miami Open in 2018, making him the first Black tournament director on the ATP Tour. Under Blake’s leadership, the tournament relocated to Hard Rock Stadium — home of the Miami Dolphins — and saw the construction of a state-of-theart tennis facility. The move skyrocketed the event’s fan attendance, with a stunning 390,000 visitors in the first year at Hard Rock. “The tournament director role has also been a wonderful fit, because I feel like I can help the players,” Blake shared. “I come from, obviously, the playing background, so they know that they have a voice in the room, and it’s the voice of a former player that knows what they’re feeling, what they’re sensing, and what makes the tournament good for them.” At the same time, Blake has continued his work with charity and activism. In 2008, he founded the James Blake Foundation, which raises money for the Thomas Blake, Sr. Fund at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The foundation began as a one-time memorial to
James Blake in action at the 2008 Miami Masters. COURTESY OF CÁSSIA AFINI VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Blake’s father, combining music — Blake’s childhood friend John Mayer performed — and
tennis. The events continued annually, and the foundation continues to raise money for cancer research. In the same year, Blake was awarded the Arthur Ashe Humanitarian of the Year Award. In 2015, Blake became an “accidental activist,” after he was attacked by a New York City police officer while waiting outside his hotel in Manhattan. Blake wrote a book, Ways of Grace: Stories of Activism, Adversity, and How Sports Can Bring Us Together, in the aftermath of the attack which delves into his decision to use his platform to speak out on police brutality. The book dives into the lives and work of athletes throughout history who used their positions to speak out and create change. “[The book] talks about being an accidental activist, because I didn’t necessarily have a plan to be [an activist] until that happened, when I realized I could have gone away and not done anything about it,” Blake said. “And as I thought about it, and reflected on it, instead of making a rash decision, I thought, well, you know, what if I had been James Blake the accountant, and that had happened to me? I wouldn’t have had a voice, I wouldn’t have been able to make any difference. But I actually have the ability to speak to some people and to have this voice. And so I felt that that’s my responsibility.” Blake’s transition from athlete to philanthropist, activist, and tournament director was certainly a major change, but he has been a trailblazer throughout his entire career. Before his selection as a wildcard for the 1999 US Open, the Harlem, N.Y., native was a standout player for the Crimson, placing him in the small subset of
professionals who came from the college arena. “College tennis was an unbelievable transition for me,” Blake shared with The Crimson. “It was really perfect because
let the team down.” Blake won ten singles titles during his prolific career on the professional circuit before his retirement in 2013. His first title came in 2002 at the Citi Open in Washington, D.C, where
I just knew I wanted to still be back in tennis, and I still had that desire, I still enjoyed the sport” James Blake ’01
when I got to school, I was still 17 years old, about 150, 155 pounds, so I definitely needed to develop both physically and mentally to be at the level of the pros.” In his two years at Harvard before committing to tennis full-time, Blake was a two-time All-American, playing alongside his older brother, Thomas. He was named the ITA National Player of the Year and won the ITA Rolex National Indoor Championship in 1999 to finish his college career. Blake credits his time at Harvard as critical for his development as a player. “I really do remember so many of the matches I played [at Harvard]. I think it’s partly because it inspires a feeling. The matches you play on tour are exciting and thrilling because of the fans, but there’s so much more when there is that emotion attached to it,” Blake said. “That’s where your memories I think are triggered. For me, so many matches in college tennis really sparked an emotion for me, whether it be so positive for winning a clinching match, or so negative when you feel like you
he defeated the legendary Andre Agassi in the semifinals. He would go on to collect nine more singles titles, as well as a Davis Cup team championship. Yet Blake faced a number of challenges along the way — in 2004, he broke his neck while practicing, and later lost his father to cancer. Despite that, he returned for his best season yet in 2006, and continued playing until 2013. He played his last professional singles match at the US Open, where he was a wildcard qualifier 14 years earlier. “It was a pretty natural decision, my body was starting to fail, really. And also, I had one daughter already and another was on the way,” Blake said. “So it actually felt like a really perfect time to step away where I could be much more involved and help my wife and be a part of the family dynamic a lot more than I had been as a full active tour player.” The realm of tennis has developed a lot in the ten years since, and Blake has had a front row seat. “It’s been great to see that the tournament, the tour, the level
just keeps getting better and better,” he shared. What’s to thank for the continually improving quality of tennis, and making it possible for players to compete into their late 30s? Better training, more money, and technology. “Everything they’re doing for recovery is really, really extending careers, and making for better players,” said Blake, referencing the influx of technologies like hyperbaric oxygen therapy, Normatec boots, and intense physical therapy. “Late in tournaments, when you might see some players faltering a generation ago, where they played too many matches in a row, a player is able to recover so much better now.” Blake’s unique experiences have given him the tools to expand his impact far beyond tennis and into activism and philanthropy. With his intimate knowledge of the sport and its business, his involvement in charitable causes and activist missions, and his new administrative role at one of pro tennis’ most important tournaments, he is well positioned to play a major role in the sport’s future. caroline.gage@thecrimson.com
THC Read more at THECRIMSON.COM
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THE HARVARD CRIMSON
IN PHOTOS
APRIL 7, 2023
China Trade Gate is a paifang archway at the Beach Street entrance to Boston’s Chinatown. It was donated to the city by the government of Taiwan in 1982. TRUONG L. NGUYEN—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
A worker at Bánh Mì Huong Quê prepares bánh mì while chatting with customers in Cantonese. TRUONG L. NGUYEN—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
In Photos: A Trip to Boston’s Chinatown ORDER UP. Boston’s Chinatown, located in downtown Boston, is just five train stops away from the Harvard campus along the Red Line. Crimson Multimedia staff photographer Truong L. Nguyen ’23 embarks on a trip to Boston’s Chinatown to meet the historic neighborhood’s residents and explore their stories.
Boston’s Chinatown dates to the first wave of Chinese immigration in the 1890s. TRUONG L. NGUYEN—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
Bánh Mì Huong Quê is a Vietnamese sandwich shop on Washington St. TRUONG L. NGUYEN—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
A worker prepares the store’s specialty sandwhich: bánh mì thit nuong — a grilled beef Vietnamese sandwich on a crunchy baguette. TRUONG L. NGUYEN—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
The store workers shared in Mandarin that they are immigrants from Guangdong and have worked at Ding Ho for one to two decades. TRUONG L. NGUYEN—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
Ding Ho Fast Food is a Chinese food restaurant joint that has been around since 1980. The store mainly serves lo mein, mei fun, and fried rice with curry or soy sauce chicken. TRUONG L. NGUYEN—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
Inside Great Taste Bakery & Restaurant, customers order baked goods. TRUONG L. NGUYEN—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
Street vendors sell mangos, bananas, and dried foods on Beach Street. TRUONG L. NGUYEN—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER