The Harvard Crimson

Turner Powers the Crimson to Hot Start

IN HARMONY. Harvard’s women’s basketball team has jumped to its best start in years as the team has won five of its six first games. Senior guard Harmoni Turner has played a major role with multiple high-scoring performances. SEE PAGE 16

OPINION

Harvard’s Feeder School Addiction

ADMISSIONS PIPELINES. Until Harvard puts in more effort to find diamonds in the rough, legions of feeder school students — who have their resumes handedited by highly-paid admissions counselors — will continue to fill our classes.

SHarvard Students Try to Get School Spirit Off the Bench

situation.

aul Noam Zaritt, the University’s sole tenure-track Yiddish instructor,

filed a grievance with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences alleging procedural irregularities in his tenure review process after Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 blocked his bid for tenure in June.

Zaritt’s tenure review committee and several of his department leaders in Comparative Literature and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations levied similar allegations in early July, urging Garber and University Provost John F. Manning ’82 to reconsider the decision.

In an appeal letter obtained by The Crimson, they alleged that Harvard let a “field-defining” scholar go after a process riddled with deviations from usual procedures.

When Zaritt was notified of the decision, many of his colleagues were stunned. Some felt that they had never before seen a tenure candidate with so many positive peer assessments be denied tenure, according to three people familiar with the

Though Zaritt wasn’t a unanimous pick — at least one professor in the Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations department opposed giving him tenure — the outcry from his colleagues could reignite controversy over Harvard’s tenure review procedures.

The people who spoke for this article about Zaritt’s tenure process were granted anonymity to discuss the confidential proceedings. University spokesperson Jason A. Newton declined to comment on the specifics of Zaritt’s case. Zaritt also declined to comment for this article.

The denial leaves Harvard’s Yiddish studies program in a precarious place.

At Harvard, professors who are denied tenure must leave at the end of the academic year. Currently, two faculty members — Zaritt and preceptor Sara M. Feldman — teach all of Harvard’s Yiddish classes. But between Zaritt’s tenure denial and a timecap that will prevent Feldman from renewing her contract, both will be gone by the end of spring 2026.

Concerns over Zaritt and Feldman’s looming departures prompted a group of students to meet twice with Derek J. Penslar, who leads the Center for Jewish Studies, to discuss the state of Jewish

studies at Harvard. Penslar wrote in a statement that his “powers are largely limited to lobbying department chairs and FAS.”

“I have made clear that the need for a robust center for Jewish Studies is greater than ever given the turmoil this campus has experienced over the past year,” he added.

In response to a request for comment, FAS spokesperson James M. Chisholm wrote the school intends to recruit new faculty members who can teach Yiddish studies.

“We are committed to maintaining Yiddish studies, language, and literature, which are essential aspects of the study of world history and culture,” Chisholm wrote.

A Last-Minute Rejection

It’s not unusual for Harvard professors to be denied tenure.

The FAS’ job description for “Tenured Professor” states that “appointments are reserved for scholars of the first order of eminence,” emphasizing they should “have the capacity to make significant and lasting contributions to the department(s) proposing the appointment.”

Among the 200 FAS faculty who stood for tenure between the 2009-10 and 201920 academic years, 30 percent did not receive a promotion, according to an October 2021 report.

After an appointment passes the FAS’ internal review — as Zaritt’s did — the president decides whether to convene an ad hoc committee to gather more information on a candidate’s qualifications before issuing a final decision.

In Zaritt’s case, Garber chose to do so. And after the ad hoc committee met, Garber ultimately rejected Zaritt’s bid. It is unclear if Garber did so at the committee’s recommendation. It is less common, though not unheard of, for faculty to see their candidacy shot down at the ad hoc stage. During the same 10-year period from 2009-10 to 2019-20, of the 163 tenure cases that were successful at both the department and FAS level, only 23 failed following an ad hoc review. At least one infamous tenure controversy — Harvard’s 2019 decision not to grant tenure to Romance Languages and Literatures scholar Lorgia García Peña — resulted from a denial at the ad hoc stage. Over the years, faculty critics have blasted

More than 40 pro-Palestine student protesters marched through Harvard Yard to demand the University divest from human rights abuses as part of a walkout staged by Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine on Thursday.

The protest began with a rally in front of the John Harvard Statue, with students braving cold temperatures and downpours. The students then circled University Hall, the main administrative building of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

“You hear that? That rhythm of the rain, that pitter-patter — it’s the same rhythm that’s gonna guide the Palestinians to liberation,” said Kojo Acheampong ’26, a pro-Palestine organizer.

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 told HOOP earlier this year that he would not consider a proposal that called on the University to divest from companies that “directly facilitate or enable severe violations of human rights,” but protesters said

they were committed to continuing their advocacy for Palestine.

Prince A. Williams ’25, a prominent pro-Palestine student activist, told the crowd that “we have to work for the Palestinian people.”

“We look to them in the heart of the moment. When we feel like there is no movement, when we feel like things are slowing down, we have to remind ourselves of that political commitment,” Williams said.

The protest comes amid controversy regarding the University’s decision to sanction students who participated in library “study-ins,” silent library demonstrations supporting Palestine.

Pro-Palestine advocacy groups like HOOP, which organized the 20-day encampment earlier this year, have staged protests on campus since Garber dismissed their divestment proposal. In an Oct. 3 email to HOOP representatives, Garber wrote that “Harvard will not use its endowment funds to endorse a contested view on a complex issue that deeply divides our community.” The walkout also follows the decision of University President Alan M. Garber

Five minutes after Dunster House resident Ada D. Vazzana ’26 sent an email over the House listserv offering to sell her Harvard-Yale football ticket for $55, she found her phone would not stop buzzing.

“I wasn’t expecting to get so many texts immediately, but I guess they really are that popular,” Vazzana said. “There was one person who — I said I had already sold it — and this person said, ‘I’ll offer you more to buy it.’” Vazzana and other undergraduates are participating in what has become a biannual Harvard tradition: selling their Harvard-Yale tickets on the black market and ignoring administrators’ threats that doing so could result in disciplinary action. Each undergraduate student is allotted one free ticket to The Game. House resident deans and academic coordinators have circulated messages to students that tickets are non-transferable and that students who buy or sell tickets will be

referred to the Administrative Board, per policies outlined in the Harvard College student handbook. But the warnings have not stopped students from flooding House listservs, GroupMe chats, and Sidechat with requests to buy or sell tickets.

Taruna Singh ’24-’25,

YALE STUDENT GOVERNMENT ORGANIZES REFERENDUM ON DIVESTMENT

In Photos: Protesters Clash at Boston Men’s March

BY KAYLA H. LE, A. SKYE SCHMIEGELOW, AND GRACE E. YOON — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHERS

presidential election cycles, according to a Columbia Daily Spectator analysis of campaign finance filings. Nearly 90 percent of donations went to Democratic candidates and political action committees. Members of Columbia’s 20-person board of trustees donated around $1.2 million to Vice President Kamala Harris, over $740,000 more than the board donated to President Joe Biden during his 2020 presidential bid. Trustee Adam Pritzker, a relative of Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Penny S. Pritzker ’81, donated the most money to political causes of the board during the 2024 presidential election – contributing $970,000 dollars to Harris.

THE COLUMBIA DAILY SPECTATOR

Dartmouth Provost David Kotz announced that an administrative committee will release recommendations with “concrete guidance” regarding institutional statements written on behalf of departments and centers at the college.The recommendations come as many universities across the country — including Harvard, Yale, and Columbia — have decided to limit institutional statements or adopt institutional neutrality policies. Dartmouth administrators have had “concerns” that some past departmental statements have been published without soliciting consent from the entire department, History Department Chair Darron McMahon told The Dartmouth.

THE DARTMOUTH

Students questioned Cornell University Interim President Michael Kotlikoff about whether Cornell’s policy banning any “explicit call for genocide” violates the university’s commitment to free speech at a student assembly meeting Thursdaym according to the Cornell Daily Sun. Kotlikoff said that “when we get to direct calls for violence, that gets into a careful area” due to the university’s obligation to follow Title VI requirements. Students noted that the university’s policy came under criticism in the spring from a former American Civil Liberties Union president, who pushed back against the policy, stating that calls for genocide are considered protected speech. THE CORNELL

RAINBOW SUITS AND RIOT GEAR

More than 100 anti-abortion marchers clashed with counter-protesters in a Saturday rally that started at Allston’s Planned Parenthood and culminated at Boston Common. Crimson photographers documented the confrontations between the Men’s March demonstrators and counterprotestors, many of whom dressed as clowns.

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants on Thursday for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Netanyahu and Gallant are unlikely to be prosecuted, given that the ICC lacks a police force and Israel isn’t among its member nations. Still, the ruling deals a significant blow to Israel’s global standing as it fights wars on multiple fronts.

Ukraine fired British Storm Shadow cruise missiles into Russia’s Kursk region on Wednesday, just one day after it launched American-made missiles into the country for the first time. The move came just days after the White House authorized the use of long-range U.S. missiles for strikes within Russian territory and marks a major change to the U.S. and Britain’s longstanding policy against allowing missile launches aimed to hit inside Russia. Moscow declared the strikes a major escalation in the war, and President Vladimir V. Putin launched new intermediate-range missiles at Uraine and lowered Russia’s threshold for using its nuclear weapons on Tuesday in response to Ukraine’s attacks.

HOUSE REPUBLICANS TARGET REP. MCBRIDE WITH BATHROOM BILL

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) introduced legislation on Tuesday that would ban transgender women from using bathrooms and changing rooms on federal grounds in a direct attempt to Repelect Sarah McBride (D-Del.), the first transgender member of Congress, from using facilities in the Capitol complex. House Speaker Mike Johnson backed Mace and other far right members of his party on Wednesday, saying that single-sex facilities at the Capitol and the House would be exclusively available to those of that biological sex. “Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say,” Mace said on Monday night, according to the New York Times.

PETE HEGSETH, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE NOMINEE, FACES ALLEGATIONS

Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, paid a woman to prevent her from filing a sexual assault lawsuit, according to NPR, who confirmed the payment with Hegseth’s attorney. His attorney wrote in a statement that Hegseth reached an arrangement with the accuser in which he paid her an unknown amount of money to prevent her from filing a lawsuit. Hegseth denies the allegations and no charges were filed. This comes to light amidst concerns over Hegseth’s lack of qualifications to run the Defense Department. Only a week after his announcment, the Trump transition team is quietly considering other candidates for not disclosing the sexual assault allegation, according to Vanity Fair.

What’s Next

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

Friday 11/22

HYSTERIA

Student Organization Center at Hilles, 8-11 p.m.

From a plushie-making stand to a special photo booth, this event at the SOCH is the perfect opportunity to celebrate with your friends on the night of the big game. Let loose on the dance floor, take Insta-worth pictures, or indulge in the free food and drinks all night.

Saturday 11/23

THE GAME

Harvard Stadium, 12-3 p.m.

Join Harvard and Yale in one of collegiate football’s most anticipated matches and most storied rivalries for the 140th Playing of The Game. From the iconic tailgates and gameday outfits, to the universities’ live bands and cheerleading squads, it’s sure to be a day filled with excitement and unforgettable memories.

Sunday 11/24

SPRING 2025 HOUSING CANCELLATION DEADLINE

This Sunday is the last chance for students to cancel their Spring Housing deadline with a $200 fee. Students who intend to live off-campus or take a leave should cancel their housing as soon as possible.

Monday 11/25

CONVERSATION WITH ASLI Ü. BÂLI Virtual, 4-5 p.m.

Yale Law School professor and president of the Middle East Studies Association Aslı Ü. Bâli will be in conversation with director of the Center for International Development Asim Ijaz Khwaja in this event hosted by the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute on Monday.

Tuesday 11/26

BORDERS IN REVOLUTION: THE 1917 STRUGGLE OVER THE RUSSIANUKRAINIAN DIVIDE

Pritsak Memorial Library, 12-1:30 p.m. Ukrainian historian Hanna Perekhoda will be shedding light on the history of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in her lecture at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute on Tuesday.

Wednesday 11/27

THANKSGIVING RECESS

All day

Courses will continue on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday marks the first day of Thanksgiving Recess for Harvard College students. Students will return from break on Sunday, December 1.

Thursday 11/28

THANKSGIVING MEAL

Annenberg Hall The Harvard University Dining Services team will be serving a delicious Thanksgiving meal for dinner. Keep an eye on your inbox for specific times!

Friday 11/29

ART EXHIBITION: THE PLACE WHERE THE CREEK GOES UNDERGROUND

Byerly Hall, 12-4:30 p.m.

Anthony Romero will lead a series of conversations with brown and Indigenous activists, artists, and theorists on various subjects such as gentrification, displacement, decolonial methodologies, and food sovereignty. The exhibition spotlights life writing and multimedia installation and invites audiences to contemplate family histories within specific sociopolitical contexts.

A FURRY FRIEND

Khurana Tells Resellers to Do ‘Right Thing’

Khurana reminded students that “nobody will ever know whether we did the right thing or not,” but that ultimately, “one has to decide for oneself what that is and live with that.”

Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana declined to directly comment on whether students who sell their Harvard-Yale tickets will be referred for disciplinary action but urged students to “do the right thing” in a Thursday interview with The Crimson.

In what has become a biannual black market, some Harvard students — who each receive one ticket to The Game for free — sell them for up to $150 despite the College’s insistence that doing so could result in disciplinary consequences.

“I believe in the honor of our students,” Khurana said during the interview. “I believe they are incredibly good people, and I would ask — that just like there’s so many things that we have to do in society based on the honor system — that we honor the expectations of each other.”

According to the Student Handbook, selling non-transferable tickets is “strictly prohibited” and can result in referrals to the Office of Academic Integrity and Student Conduct. These include tickets for events such as Commencement, athletic events like the Harvard-Yale football game, and other Harvard-sponsored programs. While House deans and aca-

demic coordinators have circulated frequent warnings to undergraduates, many students have continued to openly advertise and solicit ticket sales over House email lists, in GroupMe chats, and the anonymous messaging platform Sidechat. Some students have even made light of the warnings by sending satirical emails, and described the policy as “non-enforceable.” While Khurana declined to comment on “prospective” disciplinary action, he said that the College, including the Administrative Board is “built around an educational philosophy” and the belief

michelle.amponsah@thecrimson.com joyce.kim@thecrimson.com

Pro-Palestine Activists Rally in Harvard Yard to Demand Divestment

’76 to reject a HOOP proposal that would direct the Harvard Corporation to review its investments for ties to human rights violations.

Alexandra D. Potter, a pro-Palestine organizer and Harvard Divinity School student, compared Garber’s decision to Harvard’s stance regarding conflicts in the past.

“It is crucial that we use our voices and our actions to show this university that we will not remain complicit,” Potter said.

During the rally, protesters repeatedly chanted, “Harvard University, we know what side you’re on. Remember South Africa, remember Vietnam.”

Williams, the first speaker at the walkout, said the election of Donald Trump as president and his cabinet appointees signal “that again, imperialism is taking its mask off.”

“Trump’s appointment for Secretary of Defense, his appointment for ambassador to

the UN, the ambassador to Israel — they’re not sugar coating what they’re trying to do,” Williams said. “To the ambassador of Israel, there’s no such thing as a Palestinian.”

Potter criticized Garber and the University for not taking a strong stance against the war in Gaza.

“They label genocide as a contested issue on this campus,” Potter said. “Standing against genocide should not be labeled as controversial.”

Harvard spokesperson Jason A. Newton wrote in an emailed statement on Thursday that Garber’s stance on divestment remains the same.

“The University has made its position on divestment clear,” Newton wrote.

After the speeches, the protesters marched around University Hall, chanting, “Hey, Harvard, what do you say? How many kids did you kill today?”

Gidon Ben Rivka — who is Jewish and frequently attends pro-Palestine protests — stood steps away from the crowd, recording the rally with his phone and a GoPro body camera.

Ben Rivka said he wanted to attend the rally to document the chants and speeches of the protesters.

“It’s important that this stuff is documented, so that people who couldn’t be here today — people who are working, people in class — can understand exactly how antisemitic and anti-Israel these organizations are,” Ben Rivka said.

HOOP wrote in a statement that they “call for the full liberation of Palestine — from the Jor-

dan River to the Mediterranean Sea — because, for decades, Israel has stolen Palestinian land, life, and livelihood through occupation, apartheid, and genocide.”

“We are astounded by those who continue to claim antisemitism in response to our calls for Palestinian liberation,” HOOP added.

After the protest ended, the activists gathered in the Adams House dining hall for hot tea.

Protesters said they would discuss activism at Harvard, divestment, and the implications of

Trump’s presidency on the Israel-Hamas war. Potter, the Divinity School student, said students at the University had a particular responsibility to advocate on behalf of Palestine.

“We must eat, sleep, and breathe divestment because of institutions like Harvard and the U.S. who eat, sleep, and breathe genocide,” Potter said.

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

David Laibson Drops Out of Harvard College Dean Search

FAS and College spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

lege deans have been picked from among the more undergraduate-facing professors. Khurana was previously the faculty dean of Cabot House, while Harry R. Lewis ’68, dean from 1995 to 2003, was the longtime professor of Harvard’s intro to theoretical computer science class.

Economics professor David I. Laibson ’88, who many expected to be a leading candidate to become the next dean of Harvard College, has informed Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra that he does not want the job.

While Laibson was named to the faculty advisory committee for the dean search last month, it is not unusual for Harvard’s search committees to consider their own members. However, Laibson confirmed to The Crimson on Sunday that he had taken his name out of consideration.

“I think there are lots of people who would be terrific college deans! I am a member of the advisory committee to Dean Hoekstra, so I can’t comment about possible candidates,” Laibson wrote in a text message. “You are correct that I have asked not to be considered.”

Laibson currently co-teaches Economics 10, Harvard’s intro economics course, and is a faculty dean of Lowell House. He cited his teaching responsibilities and commitment to Lowell House as reasons for why decided he did not want to be dean.

“I love my current roles!” Laibson wrote. “Teaching, mentorship, research, and Lowell House are all profoundly meaningful for me.” Before Laibson decided he wasn’t interested in the job, he and Amanda Claybaugh, the dean of undergraduate education, were rumored among the faculty as two top candidates to succeed Dean Rakesh Khurana.

Claybaugh declined to comment on whether she was interested in the College dean position, referring The Crimson to Hoekstra for questions on the dean search. Several recent Harvard Col-

Beyond Claybaugh, other faculty members thought to be possible candidates by their colleagues include Eric Beerbohm, the faculty dean of Quincy House; Anne Harrington ’82, the former faculty dean of Pforzheimer House; and History 10 professor Maya R. Jasanoff ’96. Jasanoff, however, told The Crimson that she was also not interested in the position. Khurana announced in late August that he would step down as dean after the 2024-2025 academic year, concluding a 10-year tenure in University Hall. So far, the search to find Harvard College’s next dean is in its nascent stages. Hoekstra and the faculty advisory committee have held two town halls to date — one last week and the second on Monday in Lowell House. The advisory committee will hold one more town hall with students on Tuesday in Cabot House. The FAS is aiming to select the next dean of the College early in

neil.shah@thecrimson.com

BY NEIL H. SHAH CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana speaks at Harvard’s 2024 Commencement ceremony. JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Undergraduate student Kojo Acheampong ‘26 is surrounded by fellow protestors during a walkout held by HOOP. CAM E. KETTLES — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Economics professor David I. Laibson ‘88 heads into University Hall for a faculty meeting in 2016. KATHERINE L BORRAZZO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

NOVEMBER 22, 2024

Inside Saul Zaritt’s Contested Tenure Denial

the confidential ad hoc process as a “black box” and a “star chamber.” Facing backlash over García Peña’s tenure denial, then-University President Lawrence S. Bacow told The Crimson he never reversed a decision to deny tenure during his presidency.

Comparative Literature professor David Damrosch, who served on Zaritt’s tenure review committee, confirmed in an interview that Zaritt had filed a grievance with the University. Unlike the faculty letter, Zaritt’s appeal could lead to a formal investigation if the FAS Faculty Council’s docket committee chooses to take it up. In response to the letter from Zaritt’s colleagues, Garber declined to comment on the confidential proceedings of the ad hoc committee, but didn’t indicate that he saw a need to revisit Zaritt’s candidacy.

“He asserted that they had reviewed the case with great care and felt that the procedures were appropriately followed,” Damrosch said.

Newton, the University spokesperson, wrote in his statement that though Harvard does not comment on specific tenure cases, the school handles every tenure case diligently.

“These decisions are complex and multidimensional, and at Harvard every tenure case is reviewed with great care by multiple bodies within the University,” Newton wrote.

Procedural Puzzles

Like all junior faculty positions, Zaritt’s appointment came with a ticking clock: At the end of seven years, he would go up for tenure review, a highly selective process through which Harvard decides who to grant a lifetime appointment — and who to dismiss by end of year. So, at the conclusion of his seven years, Zaritt was nominated by both of his departments, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and Comparative Literature, for tenure.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ tenure process begins at the department level. The department chairs first nominate a committee composed of tenured faculty members, at least one of whom must be from outside the department. Once the committee is approved by the divisional dean, it solicits materials from the candidates, gathers evaluations from their peers, and drafts a case statement. After reading the statement, all tenured faculty in the candidate’s department cast a vote. Zaritt passed his Comp Lit vote with unanimous support, but the count was closer in NELC. In a secret ballot vote, five professors

voted in favor, one voted against, and two abstained.

Then, each tenured faculty member in the two departments submitted a confidential letter on Zaritt’s case to FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra, who chairs the FAS’ Committee on Appointments and Promotions.

CAP, as the committee is commonly known, had access to the full vote results, but the NELC department did not share its results with the tenure review committee. So, when members of the review committee spoke before CAP, they were surprised to hear that there was any opposition to the promotion at all.

The Crimson was given an account of CAP’s discussion of Zarit’s case by two people with knowledge of the proceedings. The meeting was also described in the faculty letter to Garber and Manning that asked them to reconsider the decision after the full process had concluded.

That letter was signed by all four members of Zaritt’s review committee — Damrosch, Germanic Languages and Literature professor Alison Frank Johnson, Comparative Literature professor Martin Puchner, and Hebrew professor David M. Stern — as well as Jay M. Harris, then-interim chair of NELC; Jeffrey T. Schnapp, chair of Comp Lit; and Mariano Siskind, who is serving as interim chair of Comp Lit while Schnapp is on leave.

Of Zaritt’s department leadership, only NELC department chair Khaled El-Rouayheb, who is currently on leave, did not sign the letter.

In the appeal letter, the faculty wrote that Damrosch and Schnapp were “blindsided” during the CAP meeting and unable to effectively address concerns they had only just learned about.

“It is no wonder that a puzzled Hopi Hoekstra began the meeting by asking how the review process had been conducted,” they wrote in the letter.

However, CAP still voted to approve Zaritt’s case and send it to Garber’s desk.

Zaritt’s ad hoc meeting was run by Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity Judith D. Singer, according to one person familiar with the matter. While the meetings are typically attended by at least one of the president and provost, two people familiar with the meeting said that neither Garber nor Manning were present. Singer declined to comment on the meeting through a University spokesperson.

The signatories of the appeal letter called Garber and Manning’s absence one of several points of irregularity in the process.

“We have no way to know how

the results of the Ad Hoc discussions were conveyed to you, but we are concerned that — uniquely in our experience at Harvard — the meeting was chaired neither by the Provost or the President,” they wrote.

In addition, the signatories alleged that the ad hoc committee failed to bring in NELC witnesses who were experts in Jewish studies. Instead, the committee chose to bring in “a Middle Eastern specialist who has no connection to Saul’s work or discipline,” according to the letter.

An Empty Seat

Zaritt’s departure will leave Harvard with no other tenure-track faculty members who specialize in Yiddish studies. Feldman, who teaches Yiddish language courses, will reach the end of her contract at the end of spring 2026.

Harvard could go more than a year before it finds a replacement for Zaritt. Had he been granted tenure, Zaritt likely would have received an endowed title as the Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature — a position that spans the NELC and Comp Lit departments.

The existence of the endowed professorship, established in 1993, indicates that Harvard has the necessary funding to appoint another Yiddish literature specialist — but there’s no guarantee that will happen in the near future. Following the retirement of Yiddish Literature professor Ruth

Wisse in 2014, two years passed until Zaritt began teaching at Harvard.

Zaritt, whose scholarship focuses on 20th-century Yiddish literature, is also one of a small group of faculty who teach in modern Jewish studies. His second book — A Taytsh Manifesto — examines how Yiddish (or “taytsh”) texts engaged with and were translated into surrounding cultural contexts.

Zaritt’s departure will thin the already-shrinking ranks of Jewish Studies at Harvard. Hebrew Literature and Philosophy professor Shaye J.D. Cohen will retire by the end of the spring 2025 semester and Stern will retire from teaching the year after.

Penslar wrote in his statement to The Crimson that he was “concerned” about the impending departures of Zaritt and Feldman.

“Losing both of them in such short order is yet another blow to CJS, which is losing many of its senior faculty to retirements,” he added.

Because Yiddish is a Germanic language, and because Zaritt’s work focuses on modern literature instead of NELC’s philological methods, some Jewish studies faculty have questioned whether NELC is the appropriate home for Harvard’s Yiddish program.

When it became clear that Zaritt’s tenure case might face headwinds, his review committee instead proposed appointing him entirely within Comparative Literature, without a joint position in NELC.

“There was a structural strangeness for Yiddish studies to be located at all in NELC, Yiddish not being a Near Eastern language — and particularly so in Yiddish literature, NELC not being primarily a literature department either,” Damrosch said.

Johnson, the Germanic Languages and Literature department chair who served on Zaritt’s tenure review committee, offered high praises for his work: “Speaking as myself and as the chair of the German department, I would love to have Saul Zaritt as a colleague in my department.”

Harvard Divinity School professor Annette Yoshiko Reed also said she was disappointed to see Zaritt leave — particularly because his departure means losing a scholar of Jewish culture at a moment when many of the conversations around Judaism at Harvard are political debates over Israel.

“It’s highly unfortunate that both a very popular and effective scholar teaching Yiddish literature will no longer be at Harvard,” Reed said. “Especially since we have such a rich tradition of studying Yiddish language and literature.”

“It seems at this moment it’s very important for the University to put more resources into Jewish studies in general,” she added.

‘A Gargantuan Loss’

In July, 22 of Zaritt’s students sent a letter to Hoekstra, the FAS dean, and Arts and Humanities Dean Sean D. Kelly lamenting the decision to deny him tenure.

“Losing Professor Zaritt is a gargantuan loss of educational opportunities for students who are interested in studying Yiddish culture, Yiddish art, and the history of Yiddish,” said Lauren A. Perl ’25, who took Zaritt’s seminar — Comparative Literature 166: “Jews, Humor, and the Politics of Laughter” — last spring.

“His presence was a big draw for our program. We were encouraged to work with him, and I don’t think anyone imagined he wouldn’t get tenure,” said Jess J. Mitchell, a Ph.D. candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures.

“There are a lot of people who might have chosen Harvard because they knew Saul was here and they wanted to work with him, and now they can’t,” Mitchell added.

Zaritt’s departure creates an uncertain future for his advisees, who must now find a new faculty member to oversee their work, and for students focused on Yiddish and Jewish studies.

“This year alone, we’ve had Yiddish-focused admits, which is very bizarre, because it means they were admitted to a school that no longer has Yiddish faculty,” said Raphael A. Halff, a Ph.D. student in Comp Lit.

Uri S. Schreter, a Ph.D. student of Zaritt’s who is expected to graduate this year, said the decision to let Zaritt go would make it harder for Schreter to draw on his Harvard network after graduation.

“He’s going to be there with me until I graduate. What I’m going to do going forward? I don’t really know,” Schreter said. “It’s more difficult for me to mobilize my Harvard connections moving forward when you know one of my advisers, or one of my committee members, is no longer at Harvard.”

Garry J. Nitz ’26, who took two of Zaritt’s classes, asked Zaritt to serve as his adviser for the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, a research program designed to help students from underrepresented backgrounds build their profile in humanities fields. Nitz, who plans to write a senior thesis in Comp Lit, had hoped to ask Zaritt — one of the few Harvard scholars in the discipline who studies humor — to serve as his adviser. Zaritt’s departure left him searching for a new mentor.

“Within this generation of scholars he was one of a few people who were making the particular intervention that he was making — about humor, about who contemporary and 20th-century Jewish writers are writing to,” Nitz said. When students met with Penslar, the Center for Jewish Studies director, to express worries about the program’s future, they felt it was difficult to get clear answers.

“Derek himself says his power is limited to his powers of annoyance,” Halff said. “He can himself annoy other people, but no one can do anything.”

“No one we’ve spoken to can actually do anything,” he added.

The Near Eastern Languages and Civlizations Deparment is housed in Harvard’s Semitic Museum. LOTEM L. LOEB — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Yiddish professor Saul Noam Zaritt was denied tenure by University President Alan M. Garber ‘76. COURTESY OF SAUL ZARITT

Reviving the State of Harvard’s School Spirit

urday morning, some students worry that they might not be able to return the favor.

“When Harvard-Yale is at Yale, I would argue it’s so much more fun,” Folukemi O. Olufidipe ’25 said. “I feel like if Harvard wanted to, they could.”

When Harvard stu -

dents arrived in New Haven last year for the annual Harvard-Yale game, they encountered a host of parties thrown by campus fraternities and a raucous tailgate in the Yale Bowl parking lot.

This year, with Harvard playing host on a drizzly Sat-

It’s not just the weather, and it’s not for lack of trying. The Harvard Dean of Students Office, which coordinates College-sponsored social events, has spent months engaging students to host Spirit Week events and a sanctioned student tailgate that meets dual goals of fun and safety. But some students, dissatisfied with the College’s school-sanctioned parties, are taking matters into their own hands.

For the second home game in a row, members of Harvard’s final clubs are coordinating an underground effort to throw an unofficial tailgate free of the College’s supervision, though the exact time and location is unclear.

More broadly, students are doing their best to emulate the rowdy spirit of a state school — taking their cues from @harvardstate1636, a student-led Instagram account promoting Harvard pride and advertising themed tailgates for sports games.

“I’ve been to one or two tailgates as a result,” said Olufidipe, who hails from Florida. “Coming from a state where there’s a big state school culture, it’s nice to bring that here

and feel some semblance of school spirit.”

Many students say this patchwork school spirit results from an administration that fails to understand what students want out of their social life. But they also questioned whether the student body itself is capable of matching the state school energy.

“I don’t think Harvard will ever have the energy of any state school, ever,” Sophia A. Roach ’27 said. “It’s kind of antithetical to what Harvard is.”

The Crimson interviewed more than 70 students, athletes, and administrators about the do-it-yourself methods students use to bolster school spirit — and whether Harvard students have what it takes to

truly let loose, even if just for one weekend.

The Harvard State of Fun

Sitting in the Eliot House dining hall his sophomore year, defensive lineman Kwaku O. Adubofour ’24-’25 thought about the “Barstool Sports” Instagram accounts that promote school spirit at other universities.

He decided to try to rescue Harvard’s school spirit with an account of his own, creating @ harvardstate1636.

Adubofour’s effort has been at the forefront of a widespread student push to revitalize a culture of fun around Harvard’s sports teams. In starting the account, Adubofour said he hoped to recreate the energy at the first post-pandemic football games in 2021.

“Kids came out in numbers,” Adubofour said. “So I was like, ‘This should be how it always is.’” In interviews, students said the account — which promotes

‘Oh there’s gonna be people coming, people are supporting us.’”

“It’s cool to know that you guys notice,” he added.

Another group has emerged as an unlikely champion of a widely-accessible Harvard-Yale weekend: Harvard’s notoriously exclusive final clubs.

Though some students criticized the clubs for the high prices of Friday night pregame parties — tickets to a final club-hosted party at Royale in Boston are currently listed for more than $100 — nearly every student interviewed for this article said they were thankful for the clubs’ tailgate in 2022, and hoped to see it revived this year.

“I think there will be an unofficial one,” Cody Chou ’25 said. “Realistically, I’ll be going to that one.”

Andrew J. Shaw ’24, the former president of the A.D. Club, pointed to the 2023 Harvard-Brown tailgate — organized by several final clubs,

The undergrad tailgate will have live

and all of the

tailgates, shares ticketing information, and spreads memes mocking Harvard’s opponents — was a welcome addition to Harvard’s sometimes-lacking social life.

“It is one of the leading online presences that influences school spirit,” Kai H. Reed ’25 said. “It makes me want to go to football games more. I’m just more excited about the school.”

Kyle A. Aucoin ’25, who plays on the men’s hockey team, said the @harvardstate1636 posts advertising themed attire — which in the past have included “tropical,” “blackout,” and “’merica” — are particularly exciting for athletes.

“Guys will talk about it in the locker room, and guys are happy,” Aucoin said. “If there’s a theme for the game, we’re like,

you could ask for.

Abudofour, and Harvard Athletics — as an example of a successful, student-led pregame.

“By the time we got to 60 to 90 minutes prior to kickoff, it was just a sea of people dancing to music,” Shaw said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Harvard student body that hyped and in one place having fun — being a college student, ever.”

“We can look at Brown at Harvard from last year,” Shaw added. “If we can’t repeat that, what happened from the administration’s point of view that makes that situation not palatable to them to replicate for Harvard-Yale for this year?”

Tailgate Troubles As far as the College is concerned, there is only one under -

graduate tailgate. According to a DSO email last week announcing the event, it’s going to be “the biggest pre-game of the year!”

“The undergrad tailgate will have live music, inflatables, face painting, custom merch, giveaways, food trucks and all of the lunch you could ask for,” the email reads. “Grab some exclusive swag, hit the 21+ bar and bring the energy before kickoff!”

But if the promotion was intended to assuage students’ concerns about the tailgate, it had the opposite effect.

“They were like, ‘You have three drink tickets.’ It was the most stupid thing I’ve heard,”

A. Shahid Sial ’27 said, adding that he does not drink. “Even I know that’s nothing.”

“It almost turns people off,”

Olufidipe said. “‘Face painting, bounce house sounds like a five-year-old’s birthday party.”

“They’ve made it so that students have to figure out their own,” she added.

As students increasingly take Harvard-Yale preparations into their own hands, DSO administrators say they cannot grant students’ wishes for a totally hands-off approach to the tailgate — which, they say, is tantamount to facilitating un -

derage drinking. “We will follow federal law,”

Associate Dean for Student Engagement Jason R. Meier said in an interview with The Crimson last month.

So instead, administrators are working to generate hype their own programming, while discouraging unsanctioned — and illegal — behavior.

Dean of Students Thomas Dunne said in an October interview that he wants to avoid unsanctioned tailgates “popping up,” like they did in 2022.

“We need to be as clear and transparent as we can be with students, so that everyone’s making informed decisions and they’re not surprised when they all of a sudden start having an unexpected conversation with a state trooper,” he said.

Administrators, while planning these events, have tried to bring students into the fold. Dunne said earlier this month that he met with a final club representative, who wanted to discuss “how final clubs think about tailgate stuff.”

A College spokesperson wrote in a Thursday email that the DSO is “not aware of any conversation with a member of their department speaking with final clubs” regarding an agreement about space for

an unofficial tailgate near Harvard stadium.

At the end of the day, according to students who have worked with the DSO, it’s the administrators running the show.

Thor N. Reimann ’25, Mather House Committee cochair, said HoCos had limited input in this year’s tailgate.

“We gave them food recommendations, things like that,” he said. “They obviously were not giving us high-level decision making ability.”

As a result, students said, the office and its programming have become disconnected from students’ actual desires.

“Administration treats Harvard so much more like a boarding school when it comes to fun things,” Celia T. Rees ’26 said.“I feel like I’m 17, and my parents are watching.”

“The perfect undergraduate tailgate would be just a space where they say, ‘Okay, all of you undergrads just go over here and have fun,’” Hakeem “Tami” Kabiawu ’25 said. “EMTs around just for safety, but other than that they just let us be.”

Meier, in the October interview, said the DSO was doing its best within the constraints of the law.

“If people wanted a DJ and a

band, we had that,” Meier said.

“If people wanted food, we had that. If people wanted alcohol, we had that.”

“I understand wanting a really fun social situation, but there were guidelines that we were required to follow,” Meier added. “And so we’re here to find that balance.”

College spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo wrote in a Thursday email that “we are looking forward to an entertaining and competitive game on Saturday,” adding that the DSO welcomes feedback and input from students.

But even Senior Associate Director of Athletics Nicholas Majocha said successful social events need to be spearheaded by the students themselves.

“We know that if Harvard Athletics or Harvard College throws a party or a tailgate, no one’s going to come,” Majocha said. “It has to be promoted and organized by the students, so we’re trying to support those efforts with space and some resources, and then we’re trying to let the students really run the events.”

‘Put the Books Down’

Many students said that Harvard-Yale is the one day a year

when undergraduates unite for a sporting event. Otherwise, school spirit falls by the wayside.

“You can definitely feel more excitement around campus during Harvard-Yale,” Brianna Chan ’26 said. “For the other games, you don’t really know that it’s going on until you see people going.”

“I was doing an Expos essay,” she said. “I hadn’t started it, and I remembered that I had it due, and I just brought out my laptop mid-game.”

Students and administrators said that students’ many commitments can make it difficult for them to invest in athletics. Reimann said he doubts the

Nicholas

Despite Adubofour and other students’ efforts to build excitement, some questioned whether it is realistic for Harvard to match the school spirit and energy of institutions like the University of Michigan.

“Even at Harvard Yale the stadium will be full, and the energy there is very different than if you watch SEC or Big 10 football games,” track athlete Marianne E. Mihas ’25 said.

At The Game in 2016, administrators complained about students’ reluctance to leave their tailgates and watch football.

Meier said the low number of students who even make it into the stadium is “absolutely unacceptable.”

“You are there to support the Crimson, so go to The Game,” Meier said.

On the field, football player Oreck N. Frazier ’25 found the lack of enthusiasm noticeable.

“Two years ago at Harvard-Yale, I was a sophomore, Harvard-Yale here, our whole side was sitting down, it was like just a bunch of old people sitting down,” Frazier said. “It wasn’t hype.” Frazier said he hopes to see more excitement in the stadium.

“This is just my personal experience having gone to 40 football games in my career — or 39, one more left — we need a louder stereo system,” Frazier said. We need the entire stadium to be booming. We need Mo Bamba blasting, third down.”

We know that if Harvard Athletics or Harvard College throws a party or a tailgate, no one’s going to come. It has to be promoted and organized by the students, so we’re trying to support those efforts. THC

attendance at Harvard-Yale can be replicated other weekends.

“I think it’s possible, but I think it would take more buyin from people in a way that it’s just hard to do, because everyone’s pulled in so many different directions,” Reimann said. But those in Harvard’s athletics scene said they feel school spirit is on the rise.

“Each year has gotten better with not just the outcome crowd-wise at Yale game, but throughout the other games as well,” football team captain Shane M. McLaughlin ’25 said. “It’s been amazing to be home and look up at the stands and say, like, ‘Damn, we got a good crowd today.’”

“It helps us out a lot,” he added. “We’re hoping that that state school energy does show.” Frazier encouraged students to ditch the library and head for the stands.

“Yeah, you might be high-achieving, whatever,” Frazier said. “Put the books down for five minutes and have a good time.”

madeleine.hung@thecrimson.com jo.lemann@thecrimson.com azusa.lippit@thecrimson.com

A Push to Formalize Medical Humanities

people at Harvard probing the medical humanities.

BY VERONICA H. PAULUS AND AKSHAYA RAVI CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

In July, Sorcha R. Ashe ’22 began her M.D.-Ph.D. at Harvard. While typical Harvard Medical School M.D.-PhD. candidates pursue doctorates in neuroscience, microbiology, or genetics, Ashe is taking a different route: a graduate degree in English literature.

“There is a big tendency for institutions to separate the science and the humanities into two separate disciplines,” Ashe said.

“They like to draw a sharp line.”

“I think the world would be much richer and much more vivid if the two sides of that line, or that gradient, talk to one another a little more,” she added. Ashe, who is considering exploring mental health literature in her Ph.D., is just one of many

But according to several Harvard professors and administrators, the University has seen a lack of concerted effort toward expanding and sustaining the medical humanities.

‘Understand the Human Condition’

In the last decade, universities across the country have rapidly expanded their medical humanities programs.

Sari Altschuler, the founding director of the Health, Humanities, and Society Program at Northeastern, estimates that the number of schools with health humanities programs is now about 130 — significantly more than existed 10 to 15 years ago.

According to those who study it, the field — which is interdisciplinary by nature — is designed to encourage physicians to think beyond the confines of the bedside.

“At its most basic level, medical humanities places the physical aspects of medicine back within the social, cultural, and

environmental contexts which help to define and shape an individual’s experience of illness or wellness,” Ashe said.

History of Science professor David S. Jones ’97 said the medical humanities are also instrumental, training future physicians in core skills and modes of thinking.

Physicians and patients inhabit a world of narratives, Jones said, so teaching students about medical narratives can improve their patient communication skills. Viewing works of art can also help future doctors better interpret images of medicine, such as X-rays or patches of skin, he said.

Medical students can also use literature to imagine what they might do when they encounter ethical dilemmas, Jones added.

“What the humanities do is help people understand the human condition,” he said. “The better trained you are in the medical humanities, more or less, the better human you can be.”

For Altschuler, the medical humanities also takes on a pressing practical value in the modern

world with new advances in artificial intelligence and technology that rapidly change the health care landscape.

“The more tools you have at your fingertips to be able to think about things and to think about them from a variety of angles, the better you’re going to be at being able to solve problems that come up,” Altschuler said.

‘Not the Owner of the Truth’

In August 2018 Harvard Medical School associate professor Joel T. Katz and colleagues surveyed HMS faculty, residents, fellows, and students about whether the integration of the arts could improve medical education and patient care.

Published in the “Journal of Medical Humanities,” the study found that, respectively, 67 and 74 percent agreed or strongly agreed.

But according to some professors, HMS faces a dichotomy of limited medical humanities programming despite strong student and faculty interest.

The school currently boasts

an Arts and Humanities Initiative led by Jones that, he said, “tries to create a community amongst the students and faculty who are interested in the arts and humanities.” The group funds activities like writing retreats and student groups such as the Longwood chorus.

Despite the Initiative’s ability to support extracurricular activities, “the arts and humanities themselves don’t have a position in the formal, required curriculum of the medical school beyond ethics,” Jones said.

Since 2003, Katz has taught a humanities-based elective for HMS first-years. The course — “Training the Eyes: Improving the Art of Physical Diagnosis” — teaches first-year students how to examine patients by matching artistic concepts to physical exam concepts.

For example, In one session — out of 10 total — Katz connects form to respiratory physiology. During this, students view a limestone bodhisattva sculpture, which goes from a two-dimensional, flat relief to a full figure as one walks around it.

Then, students apply their observations about form to diagnosing patients with different breathing abnormalities.

“It’s a question of deep looking — looking really carefully — and linking the observations they see to the physiology,” Katz said. “Is the stomach rising or falling with inhalation? Is the person using their accessory muscles to get air in?”

Dominique Harz — an orthodontist who took the course and is now a teaching fellow — recalls a session during which she and her peers viewed “El Jaleo” by John Singer Sargent. Because the painting was “so ambiguous,” all of Harz’s peers had very different interpretations. The experience taught students that “you’re not the owner of the truth,” she said. Other sessions in the course include linking analyses of texture and pattern to dermatologic diagnoses and symmetry to cranial nerve abnormalities.

“We’re not teaching students how to be artists or writers,” Katz said.

“We’re teaching them about core physician competencies that just happened to be best taught through the arts.”

Though Katz’s class is offered to all first-years, it is not a required part of the HMS curriculum. The only course all students must take is PWY120: “Essentials of the Profession: Evidence, Ethics, Policy and Social Medicine,” which covers bioethics — a field that some scholars have distanced from the medical humanities.

“Medical humanities and bioethics both emerged in parallel in the 1960s,” Jones said. “Bioethics has been much more successful as a field, at least in the U.S.” Medical humanities, on the other hand, has struggled to gain significant traction.

‘The Label On The Can’ Across Harvard College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, “most of the work on the medical humanities in the FAS here at Harvard is done by faculty in the History of Science Department,” Arts and Humanities Dean Sean D. Kelly wrote in an email.

and East Asian Languages and Civilizations — also pointed to the scattered nature of medical humanities courses.

“One thing for Harvard to consider seriously for the future is some version of a more formalized medical humanities or health humanities program,” Thornber said.

Though a formal academic department has yet to be established, some professors still believe the College offers adequate opportunities for undergraduates to explore the medical humanities.

According to History of Science professor Anne Harrington ’82, medical humanities at the undergraduate level should incorporate interdisciplinary perspectives towards “making sense of health and illness and healthcare and medical science in its broadest human context.”

“Even though we train our students in historical methods, we also are deeply interdisciplinary in the kind of broad training that we invite our students to pursue,” Harrington added.

The History and Science concentration offers two tracks: History of Science and Science and Society. Within the latter track, the Medicine and Society focus field allows students to study auxiliary disciplines like literature in medicine, take cours-

“We didn’t use it much in the United States before that time — the term really came from the UK,” he said. “Today, I think it is a broadly encompassing term.”

For Kleinman, training future physicians in the medical humanities could help remedy many of the problems with the current medical system — serving to “emphasize the human aspects of care and improve things like communication, emotional and moral dimensions of care.”

Kleinman’s last course at Harvard — Anthropology 1826: “Medical Anthropology: Advanced Topics” — will bring 14 of his former students, most of whom have written books in the field, as guest lecturers to explore the future of medical anthropology.

Aside from established departments, a smattering of medical humanities-oriented courses also exist in the College’s General Education program.

Thornber has taught two: Gen Ed 1078: “Disease, Illness, and Health through Literature” and Gen Ed 1144: “Mental Health and Mental Illness through Literature and the Arts.”

“For many of the students, they said it made them feel less lonely,” Thornber said, and “made them feel better connected to their friends, their family members, particularly family members who they’ve watched

es on illness narratives, and even cross-register at the Harvard Divinity School.

In the spring, Harrington will teach History of Science 1770: “Broken Brains: A Patient-Centered History,” where students will read memoirs and consider ethical dilemmas.

“I would consider that to fall squarely into any reasonable definition of a medical humanities course,” Harrington said.

“I think it’s kind of a suggestion to not get too distracted by the label on the can, but look at what’s inside,” she added.

Beyond the History of Science department, the FAS also hosts a lively Anthropology faculty — some of whom also engage with medical anthropology and the medical humanities.

Harvard Anthropology professor Arthur M. Kleinman has long been a leader of medical humanities. In 1988, he published “The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition,” a book that probes the art of diagnosing illness and physician-patient relationships, focusing particularly on the autobiographical and biographical accounts that describe illness and the patient experience.

At the time, Kleinman wasn’t familiar with the concept of medical humanities.

“The way I learned about it, frankly, was that I received a bunch of awards” in the 1990s, Kleinman said. “People told me, ‘Well, the kind of work you do is the medical humanities.’”

suffer from serious illness.”

A Lack of ‘Faculty Strength’

The state of medical humanities at HMS stands in stark comparison to other science and medicine departments at the school.

HMS is the only school in North America to have created a substantial medical social science requirement with PWY120: “Essentials of the Profession: Evidence, Ethics, Policy and Social Medicine.”

“HMS did that because we have this very large social science faculty that was able to make the case that these are things that all medical students must learn, even if it’s not required by the national accrediting agencies,” Jones said.

While he hopes for greater medical humanities programming at Harvard, Jones acknowledges that there hasn’t always been significant demand among students.

“Have I met an undergraduate who came to me and complained vociferously that what Harvard really lacks is a medical humanities program or medicine and society program?” Jones said. “I don’t think so.”

Though some members of Harvard’s faculty are eager to see the medical humanities gain a more formalized space within the University’s curriculum, the field has seen a number of roadblocks in expansion.

Last year, a draft report from the Faculty of Arts and Scienc-

es’ strategic planning committee proposed the creation of a new secondary field in “Integrated Humanities,” which would include a track in the medical humanities.

But the recommendation was ultimately omitted from the committee’s final report.

Still, in Kelly’s discussions with faculty since, “several mentioned the medical humanities as an area in which they would like to see growth for our division,” he wrote.

The medical humanities have not “moved forward” because the school lacks the core faculty — and the funding — to do so, according to Jones.

“A new hire at the Medical School more or less requires a $6 million gift,” Jones said. “So until someone gives $6 million to endow a professor of literature and medicine, we’re not going to have a professor of literature and medicine.”

Like HMS, a lack of faculty has made attempts to formalize a medical humanities program unsuccessful at the undergraduate level.

“There’s really no one in philosophy who works on medical ethics or bioethics,” Jones said.

“There’s no one in English literature who self-identifies as doing medical humanities.”

The expansion of the program would be propelled by sustained interest by deans across departments — a movement that has not yet arrived at the FAS, he said.

Former Arts and Humanities

Dean Robin E. Kelsey cited the interdisciplinary nature of the field

as a complicating factor in faculty searches.

“Because hiring is ordinarily done department by department, it can be difficult for the FAS to develop faculty strength in interdisciplinary areas, such as the medical humanities,” Kelsey wrote.

“Personally, I think we need better mechanisms for doing that,” he added.

‘Softer Aspects of Human Experience’

Despite a potential lack of formalized curricula, academics are not the only way for interested students to pursue the medical humanities.

While an undergraduate, Ashe found that the best resources to explore the intersection between the sciences and the humanities were “the Stacks and my peers.”

At the College, the Harvard Undergraduate Premedical Society also runs a literary magazine, “Prescriptions,” that “aims to create a space at the intersection of medicine and the humanities,” according to an email promoting the magazine.

Mira H. Jiang ’26, the Editor-in-Chief of Prescriptions, said she joined the magazine during her freshman year to combine her passions in medicine and creative writing.

Jiang said though Harvard lacks formal structures for studying the medical humanities, there is certainly interest from students.

“There’s a lot of interest in this field, but it’s not very immediately accessible, I feel like, on an under-

graduate level,” Jiang said. Some students have assembled their own makeshift medical humanities curricula through a combination of various fields.

Zhixiao Yip ’27, who double concentrates in Comparative Literature and Molecular and Cellular Biology, said Harvard provides students with plenty of resources to adapt their academics around the medical humanities.

Still, students may be hesitant to embrace such resources due to stereotypes surrounding either the humanities or sciences, she said.

“I wish sometimes we could better improve on the connotations that, for example, studying the humanities connotes or studying the sciences connote,” Yip said.

“These are both scholarly paths that people work very, very hard to pursue, and I think standing at the intersection makes you realize just how much work people are doing on either side of these fields,” Yip added. Though some may see medicine and humanities as being on opposite sides of the spectrum, Ashe said she hopes the humanities can bring “the softer aspects of human experience” to medicine.

“The science and the humanities can balance one another out — as long as the humanities are, in some level, emphasized a bit more than they are currently,” she said.

HARVARD CRIMSON

The History of Science Department aims to study science, technology, and medicine in their historical and social contexts. CLAIRE YUAN — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Professor Anne Harrington ’82 poses for a portrait. IO Y. GILMAN— CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

University Hall is home to many administrators in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Jews for Palestine Protest Hillel Speaker

SMALL RALLY. About a dozen students staged a rally to protest former IDF spokesperson Ronen Manelis’ appearance at Hillel.

WRITERS

About a dozen students rallied outside Harvard Hillel to protest an event with former Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Ronen Manelis on Monday, the first demonstration outside Harvard’s main Jewish center in several years.

The protest was organized by Harvard Jews for Palestine in response to Hillel’s decision to invite Manelis, who served as IDF spokesperson from 2017 to 2019 and chief intelligence officer of the IDF Gaza Division from 2012 to 2014.

Protesters held two banners that read “Hillel Hosts War Criminals” and “IOF Out of Campus Out of Gaza” — referring to the IDF as the “Israeli Occupation Forces.” They briefly chanted “Shame on Hillel,” “From the River to the Sea,” “Israel is a terrorist state,” and “Zionists not welcome here.”

Executive Director of Harvard Hillel Jason B. Rubenstein ’04 wrote in an emailed statement that “Harvard Hillel is and will always be the home of Zionism, and every form of Jewish life, at Harvard.”

“Moreover, we are unyieldingly committed to ensuring that all Jews, including Zionists and Israelis, are welcome in every corner of this university, and enjoy the fullness of a Harvard education undiminished by prejudice,” he

In a follow up interview, Harvard J4P organizer Violet T.M. Barron ’26 said she saw the “Zionists not welcome here” chant as “kind of equivalent with ‘Racists are not welcome here.’”

“Zionism is, first and foremost, a political ideology, and a genocidal one at that,” Barron, a Crimson Editorial editor, added.

But Rubenstein denounced the protesters’ chants, saying that they amounted to bigotry.

“Zionism, the pursuit of Jewish self-determination in the land of Israel, is a central element of the religious identity of thousands of Jewish Harvard affiliates. ‘Zionists not welcome here,’ a call for discrimination against much of our community due to our sincerely held beliefs, is bigotry,” Rubenstein wrote. “I hope that everyone here, no matter your positions on Israel or the current war, will recognize it as such.”

While the organizers did not give lengthy speeches, Barron said at the protest that the event with Manelis did not represent the range of beliefs among Jewish students.

“We’re all Jewish and we say, ‘Not in our name,’” Barron said. “Shame on Hillel.”

In response to the protest, a group of Hillel members taped an Israeli flag to the building’s front window.

Hillel has previously refrained from displaying an Israeli flag at the front of its building, despite some students’ request.

In an article published in May in Israel Hayom, an Israeli newspaper, Isaac R. Ohrenstein ’26 said Israeli flags were removed from a Hillel barbecue event last spring because “it wasn’t advertised as ‘pro-Israel.”

In a follow-up statement Tuesday morning after this article’s publication, Rubenstein wrote that “Hillel was aware of, and approved students displaying the Israeli flag in the front of the building.”

After the event, Barron said the

‘All Bark, No Bite’: Admin Threats Fail to Deter Black Market

Lockwood wrote in his second email. The warnings have not dissuaded many students from continuing to sell their Harvard-Yale tickets, often for steep prices.

Taj S. Gulati ’25, who circulated a widely-used public Google document to Eliot House students so they could list themselves as buyers or sellers of tickets, said the administration is “all bark, no bite” with its threats.

“If the administration went so far as to actually punish students for doing that, I think it would be extremely ridiculous,” Gulati said.

Harry R. Warfel ’26, a student in Quincy House, said that “the most I’ve heard anyone selling a ticket for was $125.” Tickets to The Game are currently retailing on ticketing platforms such as Ticketmaster and Vivid Seats starting for $130. Over Quincy’s “Qlubpenguin” mailing list, Warfel humorously responded to a warning email

sent by Quincy Academic Coordinator James Simmons, writing that Quincy students were discussing tickets listed on Ticketmaster, rather than their official tickets given by the College.

“It appears that all tickets being discussed were actually tickets being resold through Ticketmaster — tickets that do not fall under the non-transferable athletic stipulation,” Warfel wrote. In an interview with The Crimson, Warfel later said that he didn’t understand the strict response from House administrators.

“I just don’t get why they’re being so serious on something that is almost entirely non-enforceable,” Warfel said.

Winthrop House students have illustrated a similar level of humor in trying to get around the College’s policy.

After Winthrop Resident Dean Sarah Caughey wrote in a House-wide GroupMe chat that reselling tickets is prohibited, a student asked if they could “‘donate’ tickets and then have mon -

ey ‘donated’ to you?”

Caughey did not reply to the student’s message.

Similar warning emails have been sent out by the Mather House Resident Dean and the Kirkland House Resident Dean to their House’s respective students.

A College spokesperson did not answer a question about whether students would be referred to the Ad Board for reselling tickets, instead referring a reporter to Harvard Athletics website’s ticket policy.

While Warfel said he is not worried about students getting punished for reselling their tickets, he expressed more concern about some of the exorbitant prices students were willing to pay for a Harvard-Yale ticket.

“If someone is purchasing a ticket for more than $160, I think they should have their admissions to the school revoked,” he said.

group was protesting what she called Manelis’ “very bloody track record” and Hillel’s decision to extend an invitation to speak.

“The fact that Hillel has invited a war criminal in is deeply offensive to us,” Barron said.

During his time as a spokesperson, Manelis issued a controversial response to the largely peaceful Gaza border protests held in 2018 to 2019, also known as the Great March of Return, arguing the protests should be considered terrorism.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal the same year, he wrote that “there can be no such thing as a peaceful protest in Gaza, only gatherings organized, sanctioned and funded by Hamas.”

Monday’s event itself was billed as a discussion about Iran and the “multi-front challenges Israel faces in this evolving conflict,” according

to Hillel’s Instagram. Since Manelis left the IDF in 2019, he has been critical of both the IDF and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Harvard Hillel representatives denied a request from The Crimson to cover the event, saying that the talk with Manelis was off the record. Barron said the event sent a “prowar” message and that Hillel had been resistant to inviting non-Zionist leaders to speak. She pointed to Hillel International’s speaker policies, which state the organization will not partner with or host speakers that “delegitimize, demonize, or apply a double standard to Israel.”

Manelis wrote in a statement that “it’s surprising that at a place like Harvard, known for free speech and open debate, there’s such ignorance and unwillingness to engage in real conversation.”

“I will continue to share Israel’s voice around the world,” he added. Three counterprotesters stayed outside the building for the duration of the protest, holding Israeli flags and a sign that read, “Get them out of hell” along with pictures of the hostages.

Rotem R. Spiegler, who graduated from Harvard Law School in 2019 and regularly visited the spring encampment with an Israeli flag, said she thought the protest might “scare people off” from the event.

“We wanted people to not be afraid to walk in once they see this,” Spiegler added. Barron wrote in a statement that “People should be deterred from attending an event featuring the former chief spokesperson of the Israeli Occupation Forces, a man who has promulgated violent, false rhetoric at the direct expense of Palestinian

“The

versity.

Former Harvard women’s ice hockey coach Katey Stone asked a federal judge not to grant Harvard’s motion to dismiss her gender discrimination lawsuit in a Tuesday filing.

Harvard’s October filing argued that the claims in Stone’s lawsuit were unfounded, largely past the statute of limitations, and that they should not be considered in federal court. But in her response, Stone’s attorneys wrote that Harvard, in its response, “misses the mark.”

“Through its motion, Harvard attempts to skirt liability by misconstruing Plaintiff’s allegations and artfully ignoring the well-pleaded facts in Plaintiff’s Complaint, to argue that this matter should be dismissed,” the motion read.

The lawyers added that her claims were valid even despite statutes of limitations, arguing that she had plausibly alleged gender discrimination and retaliation claims against the Uni -

“Plaintiff has pled that even in the face of false allegations against her, Harvard treated her less favorably than male coaches in similar circumstances,” the motion read. Stone left her role as head

coach in June after Harvard opened an investigation into her coaching practices. The investigation came after multiple of Stone’s former players alleged she created a toxic environment and downplayed injuries and mental health issues on the team, in allegations first reported by the Boston Globe. In July, Stone filed a lawsuit against the University in July on the basis of gender discrimination, claiming Harvard treated her unfairly throughout the investigation and later forced her to resign over false allegations of misconduct. The former head coach also claimed that the incidents leading up to her forced retirement in 2023 are part of a series of discriminatory violations that would not have occurred if she were a male coach. Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesperson James Chisholm declined to comment, citing University policy not to comment on active litigation. Andrew T. Miltenberg, an attorney for Stone, did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. In addition to her suit against Harvard for an unspecified amount of monetary damages, Stone is suing 50 anonymous individual defendents for defamation, including Harvard employees and former players.

Harvard attempts to skirt liability by misconstruing Plaintiff’s allegations and artfully ignoring the well-pleaded facts in Plaintiff’s Complaint.

Attorneys for Katey Stone Tuesday court filing

Former Harvard women’s ice hockey coach Katey Stone speaks at a July press conference after filing a gender discrimination lawsuit against the University. ELYSE C. GONCALVES — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

UNIVERSITY

4 HGSE Students Suspended for Study-In

LIBRARY BAN. Four Graduate School of Education students were suspended for staging a “study-in” in the HGSE library.

BY KELLY A. OLMOS AND KENITH W. TAUKOLO CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Four Harvard Graduate School of Education students were suspended for two weeks from the school’s library after they helped stage a pro-Palestine “study-in” on Nov. 12. The two-hour study-in — and the Gutman Library’s response — mirror a wave of similar demonstrations that have taken place across Harvard libraries this semester. Students and faculty who have engaged in the actions have typically received two-week bans from the libraries.

During the Nov. 12 demonstration, which began at 12 p.m., around eight students attempted to enter the second floor of Gutman, according to three students who attended. There, they were met by HGSE Executive Dean of Administration Jack Jennings, who informed the group that administrators would check IDs, prompting the protesters to move to the library’s first floor. When the group settled on the first floor, the students said, Jennings immediately began checking their IDs before leaving after roughly 15 minutes. Because many HGSE classes end at 1 p.m., the demonstration had grown to around 30 people by the time it ended at 2 p.m. — though latecomers were not subject to ID checks.

During the study-in, as with previous study-ins, participants read or did work with pro-Palestine signs taped to their laptops, including “Palestine Will Be Free” and “Every University in Gaza Has Been Destroyed.” In a Friday email to suspended students obtained by The Crimson, Gutman Library Director Alex R. Hodge said the suspensions were issued in response to “organized group activity that explicitly used our reading and common areas to make a point.”

“Given your violation of these rules, and consistent with the University’s response in prior situations, your physical access to all Gutman Library reading areas — including but not limited to the reading area in which the organized activity took place — will be suspended from today until November 29,” Hodge wrote. In an emailed statement, University spokesperson Jason A. Newton did not directly confirm that HGSE students had been suspended.

“Participants in protests that occurred inside libraries this semester have lost, for two weeks, access to the particular library building in which they demonstrated,” he wrote.

Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine — an unrecognized coalition of pro-Palestine groups which posted a video of Jennings checking students IDs to Instagram following the demonstration — did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Avery D. Thrush, one of the suspended students, said she was trying to “raise awareness around education in Palestine.”

“It is just the fundamental belief that all children have the right to their childhood,” she said.

Despite the consequences of participating in the study-in, Thrush said it was “worth it” in

her mind.

“I think that the motto of the Ed school is ‘Learn to Change the World’, and what that means

for us is ensuring that every single student everywhere — every child everywhere — has an opportunity to advance their lives through education,” she added.

kelly.olmos@thecrimson.com

kenith.taukolo@thecrimson.com

Gund-Morrow Elected Next Harvard Institute of Politics President

BY WILLIAM C. MAO AND DHRUV T. PATEL CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Tenzin R. Gund-Morrow ’26 and Summer A. L. Tan ’26 were elected as the next president and vice president of Harvard’s Institute of Politics, the organization announced early Monday morning.

Gund-Morrow and Tan will helm the IOP alongside newly elected treasurer Kevin Bokoum ’26 and communications director Lorenzo Z. Ruiz ’27, a Crimson Editorial editor.

Gund-Morrow — who will begin his tenure at the IOP on Jan. 1 — said he was “just so grateful and proud to be here with this wonderful, wonderful woman,” referring to Tan, his running mate.

“I fell on my entire back, spread out, and was thinking about the fact that three years ago, if high school me had seen this, I would have felt every single anxiety I had for the last three years was not consequential at all,” he said.

Gund-Morrow and Tan won with nearly 60 percent of the vote, defeating Thomas A. Tait ’26 and Morgan Byers ’26. Gund-Morrow and Tan will succeed Pratyush Mallick ’25 and Ethan C. Kelly ’25, whose last weeks in office were

marked by controversy after Mallick penned an op-ed calling for the IOP to drop its commitment to nonpartisanship following Donald Trump’s reelection.

Tan said she felt absolutely “ecstatic” and “honored” to have the opportunity to lead the IOP.

“We both joined this organization our first semester freshman year and it’s really become a home to us,” she said. “I have really been able to find a community here.”

Gund-Morrow — who previously rebuked Mallick’s op-ed in a statement to The Crimson — said he and Tan could not “be more emphatic when we say that it is of utmost importance that the IOP remains nonpartisan.”

“We think that the IOP is unique at Harvard, not because of the partisan activities it has, where it brings together like-minded people to come up with great ideas, but most of all, for the times it brings together people that have completely divergent political ideologies,” he said.

Tan said that she hopes to focus the next year on building a “full global affairs program” that will host programming on international issues.

“One thing that I’ve always really wanted to get into is politics abroad, because I think at the IOP, at Harvard, and just in the Unit-

ed States in general, we’re very America-centric,” she said.

Gund-Morrow added that the newly-elected student executive team plans to partner with universities and non-profits abroad to offer more international internship opportunities for IOP members.

Bokoum — who won with just 52 percent of the vote to become the IOP’s next treasurer — said that even in his current role as director of internal affairs, he “got to be a part of negotiating for student scholarships.”

“I met with every single program chair, every single coalition chair in that role too,” he said. “I think it made me really well-prepared for the role.”

Ruiz, who received nearly 65 percent of the vote, said he plans to bolster the IOP’s social media presence and launch a merch store to “get people juiced.”

“We’re going to be focusing on doing reels and post promotional content so that students’ eyeballs are catching what we need them to catch,” he said.

“The IOP in me has a creative and happy mailman, but it also has a very practical and seasoned bulldog,” Ruiz added.

Nearly 950 students were eligible to vote for the election under the terms set by the IOP Election

Commision, a body of four IOP affiliates. While the specific number of voters was undisclosed, the organization announced that the election had “the highest turnout of any IOP election.”

This week, the IOP will elect leaders for six of its 16 student programs, including its flagship JFK Jr. Forum Committee, which Gund-Morrow currently leads. Leaders for the remaining eight programs will be selected through an application-based process.

william.mao@thecrimson.com dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com

Harvard Hires 8 New Climate Faculty Across FAS, Graduate Schools

BY CHRISTIE E. BECKLEY AND XINNI (SUNSHINE) CHEN CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Harvard hired eight new climate faculty members in 2024 as the Salata Institute continues to expand climate research and hiring, the University announced earlier this month. The new faculty span disciplines and schools: Aliya Korganbekova and John Mulliken at Harvard Business School, Jeannine Cavender-Bares and Fiamma Straneo in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Zachary Schiffer and Le Xie at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Wolfram Schlenker at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Elisa Iturbe at the Harvard Graduate

School of Design. James H. Stock, Director of the Salata Institute and the Vice Provost for Climate and Sustainability, wrote in a statement to The Crimson that hiring climate-related faculty members is central to Harvard’s role as an educational institution.

“Education is at the core of what we do, and having faculty whose teaching and research is in climate fields is critical to fulfilling our educational responsibility,” he wrote. Schlenker, newly a Global Food System professor, the decentralized nature of Harvard’s sustainability network — compared to dedicated sustainability schools at other universities — creates a more collaborative environment.

“One thing I like about Harvard’s set up is that Salata is not within one school, but it’s a provostial initiative, and it’s basically aimed at bringing people across campus together,” he said. “Since climate change and sustainability is such an interdisciplinary problem, I personally think this is the right way to go.”

At the Kennedy School, Schlenker studies how changing weather conditions will affect agricultural yield and food prices. He currently teaches a course entitled “Environmental and Climate Economics” with Stock and will head a food policy course in the spring.

At SEAS, Schiffer, an assistant professor of Applied Physics, works at the intersection of

electrochemistry and products like steel, aluminum, cement, and fertilizer.

“The question is: How do we take advantage of this distributed green electricity to start efficiently and sustainably doing chemical synthesis?” he said.

Schiffer, who teaches an undergraduate fluid mechanics course, will shift in the spring to offering an upper-level elective course focused on electrochemistry and sustainable chemical manufacturing.

Mulliken, a senior lecturer at HBS and senior climate adviser for Boston Consulting Group, currently teaches the first-year MBA course on strategy, which features climate-related case studies involving the sustainability goals of a Norwegian fer-

ry company and IKEA. Next year, he plans to lecture on climate and competitive advantage.

Though Mulliken said he has always had an interest in climate, “I really had to find my way back” after serving as the Chief Technology Officer at e-commerce company WayFair and dipping his toes into other business ventures.

“I wanted to work on an even higher level than just building a single solution,” he said. “So I have found my way here to teach strategy and, really, strategies as it relates to climate.”

Joining Mulliken in the wave of climate faculty hires is Cavender-Bares, a professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology whose work focuses on studying the biodiversity of plants through

spectral biology, the interaction of light with biological surfaces.

“We’re just going to see a lot of environmental change in the coming decades, and our ecosystems have to be healthy,” she said.

Cavender emphasized Harvard’s responsibility to commit to sustainable practices.

“Humans have the ingenuity and the capacity to give back to our planet and create resilient ecosystems that can withstand environmental change and to maintain a habitable planet for humanity,” Cavender said.

“That’s why I think it’s so important for Harvard to have hired people that are focused on how to do that,” she added.

christie.beckley@thecrimson.com sunshine.chen@thecrimson.com

Four students were suspended for staging a pro-Palestine “study-in” at the HGSE Library earlier this month. wRYAN N. GAJARAWALA — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Federal Transit Grants at Risk Under Trump

LOCAL PROJECTS. Biden promised Massachusetts hundreds of millions for transit. Experts say Turmp may not follow through.

BY AVANI B. RAI AND JACK R. TRAPANICK CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Hundreds of millions of dollars in federal transportation grants for Massachusetts could be axed under President-elect Donald Trump’s second administration, according to former Mass. Secretary of Transportation Jim Aloisi.

“We should be concerned, but not panicked,” Aloisi said in a Tuesday interview with The Crimson. Massachusetts has won several federal grants through the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure law signed by President Joe Biden. Aloisi pointed out that due to measures like the infrastructure bill, Trump’s second administration will be overseeing far larger discretionary one-time grants going to states than his pre-

vious administration did.

Just between Cambridge and Boston, the Biden administration has allocated $335 million to support the Allston I-90 Multimodal Project and $472 million to the North Station Drawbridge.

Thomas P. Glynn, who has led both the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and the Massachusetts Port Authority, expressed the same concerns. In an interview, Glenn said the cuts are “likely” — especially given the projects whose funding is in question have yet to begin construction. These grants work by reimbursement, meaning Massachussetts won’t actually receive money from the federal government until after funds are spent out of the state’s pocket to complete the work funded by the grant. That gives the Trump administration, which has repeatedly emphasized its intention to slash the federal budget, the opportunity to revoke the funds.

The $1.2 billion North Station Drawbridge, which the T is hoping to replace, connects commuter rail lines over the Charles River be-

tween Boston and Cambridge.

The $1.9 billion multimodal project will realign the Massachusetts Turnpike to reconnect the neighborhood, while improving bus, bike, and pedestrian transit and opening up dozens of acres of Harvard-owned land for development. The $335 million in federal funding comes from the Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods program intending to mitigate highways running through neighborhoods.

Aloisi said the project’s more progressive goals do not align with the priorities of the Trump administration. “Anything that has anything to do with transportation justice, with transit and rail as opposed to highways and bridges, that’s the stuff I worry about,” Aloisi said.

“That’s just not what their priorities are.”

A spokesperson for the Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg ’04 also alluded to concerns around funding for the I-90 project at a Harvard Institute of Politics forum Nov. 13, stressing the need to take immediate action.

“Right across the river, I’m really excited — we have the funding now,” he said. “We have parts of that grant agreement already done, but if we could work at warp speed — at warp speed — then that will happen in a few years, right?”

The Department of Transportation also did not respond to a request for comment.

According to the state’s Direc-

tor of Federal Funds and Infrastructure, Quentin A. Palfrey ’96, the loss of federal funds is not a fight Massachusetts will take laying down.

“Since the beginning of the Healey-Driscoll administration, Massachusetts has brought in nearly $9 billion in federal funding for critical transportation, climate, and economic development projects from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Inflation Reduction Act, and CHIPS and Science Act,” Palfrey wrote in a statement.

“We are working hard to ensure we receive every dollar and will continue to pull out all stops to bring home more federal funding to the state,” he added.

Aloisi cautioned that there is still not “legitimate cause for panic.”

It’s unclear how serious Trump

Nearly 300 Mass General Brigham Physicians File

least 30 percent of eligible workers in a prospective bargaining unit must sign union cards.

ones that have to answer to patients in our visits,” Malm added. “We’re the ones that have to, again, bear that moral injury.”

ing unprecedented volume and stress as a result of a confluence of factors that are not unique to our organization.”

Nearly 300 primary care physicians at Mass General Brigham filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board indicating their intent to unionize. According to the representation petition, the group would include “all full-time, part-time, and per diem academic physicians practicing primary care” at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

If the representation petition is approved or workers and the employer reach an agreement, an election will be held, with a simple majority required for unionization.

The union would join the Doctors’ Council, a national affiliate of Services Employees International Union that represents over 2 million healthcare workers. In order to file a representation petition, at

“We have two options as primary care doctors, as physicians here at Mass General,” Carl P. Malm ’12 — primary care physician at Mass General — said. “Have a seat at the table via a union, or not have a seat at the table where decisions are made about our conditions of work, about our conditions of practice.”

In March, MGB announced the integration of the clinical and academic teams at Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Malm said this change has led to a bulky bureaucracy and high staff turnover, which hinder doctors’ ability to provide patient care.

“The moral injury associated with it becomes too much, and that’s why we see so many of our colleagues either leaving Mass General, academic medicine, or medicine altogether,” he said.

“When things change, we’re the

In an emailed statement to The Crimson, a spokesperson for MGB wrote that “we know that PCPs across the Commonwealth are fac-

“We are committed to continuing our dialogue with our PCPs, supporting them and their practices through this challenging time

is about making substantial cuts to the federal budget, and if he would end target transportation grants to do so. Potential cuts to transportation grants would also likely require approval from Trump’s newly nominee for transportation secretary — former Rep Sean Duffy — who has not taken a public stance on the Massachusetts projects. In a statement, city spokesperson Jeremy C. Warnick said that the city “is prepared to navigate any shifts in policies that may come with the new administration.”

“We are working hard to ensure that existing grant applications are fully contracted as soon as possible,” Warnick added.

avani.rai@thecrimson.com

jack.trapanick@thecrimson.com

for Unionization

and investing in ways to reduce burden,” the spokesperson added.

If successful, the primary care physicians would join residents and fellows at Mass General Brigham who voted to unionize as MGB Housestaff United in June 2023.

The union is currently bargaining for its first contract.

BWH Pathology resident Lee P. Richman, a bargaining committee member for MGB Housestaff United, said he expects the primary care physicians to encounter anti-union messaging from employers.

“There’ll be a lot of fearmongering, because this is going to cost them maybe a lot of money, and so they want to try to avoid this election,” Richman said.

Richman said if primary care physicians unionize, they may face difficulty bargaining for a contract.

“The way MGB has been negotiating with us, they play hardball,” Richman said. “I think MGB is scared of unions and wants to kind of try to demonstrate that they don’t

accomplish much.”

Per Malm, though MGB doctors have the option of leaving the hospital system, they have “strong attachments” to their institutions.

“This is not the path of easiest resistance,” Malm said. “But we love the work we do.”

“We want to be closer to the people that our patients think we are,” he said. According to Richman, the new primary care physician unionization effort will also help MGB Housestaff United in its contract negotiations.

“We are rallying our members,” Richman said. “We’re getting people excited about what we can accomplish and this is just further evidence that workers can make a difference.”

“This is our way of doctors taking back corporate medicine,” he added.

veronica.paulus@thecrimson.com aran.sonnad-joshi@thecrimson.com

Cambridge to Face Tough Choices to Close School Achievement Gaps

ter several delays, parents and educators will likely be looking to interim superintendent David G. Murphy to address longstanding disparities in the test scores.

sistent achievement gaps revealed in this year’s Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System scores.

The Cambridge School Committee raised the possibility of school and resource reorganization to close persistent achievement gaps in the district’s standardized test scores at a four-hour meeting on Tuesday night. The discussion came as the district goes through its sixth month without a permanent superintendent. Though the district officially launched its search on Tuesday, af-

Since taking office in July, Murphy has reshuffled his executive team, managed lengthy bussing delays, and rolled out a no-phone policy at Cambridge’s high school. In an interview with The Crimson in September, he did not rule out considering the permanent role. Even as Murphy’s future in the district remains uncertain, he braced the School Committee for “difficult” decisions to tackle per-

“I can’t stress enough that I believe there is an urgency to this,” he said. “And so it may be the case that difficult recommendations will come in the short-term.”

Murphy also said he did not expect “any final decisions” coming within the next 24 hours, but maintained that “we are on the precipice of important decisions that have to be made.”

Tuesday’s meeting featured the final component of a three-part

MCAS disaggregation presentation saga where district officials presented achievement “challenges” — especially “inconsistent outcomes” across schools and student demographic groups.

In the presentation, district officials named Kennedy-Longfellow School and Fletcher Maynard Academy as two “outliers” in CPS’ performance. According to the presentation, KLO and FMA’s English Language Arts MCAS scores reached five-year lows in 2024, and on the math test, only 29 and 34 percent of students met or exceeded expectations, respectively. These scores are more than 50 percentage points lower than Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School, which was awarded the National Blue Ribbon School distinction the same academic year.

Committee member Richard Harding, Jr. stressed the need for an honest talk on how to rectify persistent underachievement.

“I don’t think tomorrow we’re closing the KLO,” Harding said. “So we’re going to have to have a real serious conversation — a courageous conversation — about what exactly are we going to do now.” At the meeting, members also

contemplated KLO and FMA’s large proportion of high needs enrollment — referring to students who are low-income, English learners or former English learners, or who have disabilities.

While MLK’s ratio of high needs enrollment sits at 40 percent, KLO and FMA high needs enrollment is 86 and 83 percent, respectively, according to the presentation.

Murphy said specialized programming at schools — such as FMA’s extended day and specialized classroom program or KLO’s sheltered English immersion program — might concentrate high needs populations in certain schools. He added, however, that he did not “have an explanation” for why FMA and KLO’s high needs population distributions were fifteen percentage points higher than any other CPS school.

School Committee Vice Chair

Caroline Hunter said she was “prepared” to make some tough calls, including restructuring schools and their programming.

“I’m prepared to make the tough decision if we have to reorganize a school, if we have to redistribute or repurpose a program,” she said, adding that she wanted to be “a part

of the conversation” with parents and caregivers at both schools. The committee pledged to schedule a roundtable meeting where they will continue the conversation, with member Elizabeth C.P. Hudson asking for the meeting to come in “the short-term.”

“I think it’s important that we have this discussion,” Simmons said of the roundtable. “We’re talking about a precious asset, which is our children and we do have to make those hard decisions.”

Leading up to the roundtable, which has not been scheduled, Murphy was tasked with gathering relevant data on specialized programs and developing recommendations — recommendations which may be tough pills to swallow.

“What I’m not willing to do is be disingenuous and tell you that our structure as it currently exists can continue to exist if we want to change the outcomes,” he said. “So if something becomes the only option to serve students, that is the option that we will recommend.”

A $335 million grant from the Biden administration is intended to fund the reoconstruction of the I-90 turnpike. JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

A Push to Keep Harriet Jacobs’ Legacy Alive

tee members, the house in its ideal form would commemorate Jacobs’ home “the way that she lived her own life” — keeping it open to the public as a space for education and cultural programming.

When History professor

Tiya A. Miles ’92 first read “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” as an undergraduate at Harvard, she found herself awed by Harriet A. Jacobs’ description of her experiences of surviving slavery and sexual assault before escaping to freedom.

“It was the foundation of my career,” said Miles, whose research focuses on the experiences of Black women in slavery.

Jacobs was born into slavery in Edenton, N.C. in 1813. She escaped with her children in 1842 and began working for the abolitionist movement, during which time she published her autobiography under the pen name Linda Brent.

After the publication of her book, Jacobs settled in Cambridge for five years. There, she opened two boarding houses for Harvard faculty, including Christopher C. Langdell, the first dean of Harvard Law School.

Now, more than 150 years later, a committee of activists, historians, and residents — including Miles and University Professor Danielle S. Allen — are working to preserve one of the houses, at 17 Story St., as a memorial and museum about Jacobs’ life and impact.

It has not been an easy battle. Most other historical landmarks in the area, such as the Longfellow House in Cambridge or the Ralph Waldo Emerson House in Concord, are owned by either the original families who inhabited them or trusts or foundations specifically designed to preserve them.

But Jacobs never owned the 17 Story St. property outright, only renting it. Now, the dilapidated building is in private hands, with the owner — Janet Jang — planning to transform it into a highend hotel.

Though Jang maintains that she wants to honor Jacobs in some form, she said she needs to balance it against the financial pressures of Cambridge’s expensive real estate market. Members of the committee are stuck in a precarious position, with few resources, competing incentives, and little real power to achieve their goals. To Miles and other commit-

“That did not happen because the resources were not available to those various groups to make it happen,” Miles said. “The resources were actually in private hands, and that’s who’s got the house, and we will just have to do the best we can.”

‘Precious Gems’

Before it was slated to become a boutique hotel, the Jacobs house was nearly Harvard’s property.

The house had been on the market for years, and in 2020 — the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery initiative started in 2019 — University officials began to conduct “preliminary due diligence” on the feasibility of purchasing the property, according to Harvard spokesperson Jason A. Newton.

That initial research “resulted in a need for further and more detailed research related to the history of the property, including its title, the date of its construction, and any affiliated historic significance,” Newton wrote.

Jang, who ended up buying the property in February 2020, briefly listed it for auction in 2022 — but for Harvard, Newton wrote, “the resolution of these questions and a plan for longterm use had not been sufficiently developed in time to support a decision to acquire.” If Harvard had been able to complete a purchase, the efforts to memorialize the house would have been backed with the University’s institutional resources — not to mention, a possible slice of the $100 million Harvard committed to redressing its ties to slavery in 2022.

But the house has remained in Jang’s ownership, and she continued with her plan to turn the property into a boutique hotel — a transformation that would involve moving the house forward on the property and constructing an addition behind it totalling tens of thousands of square feet.

Nicola A. Williams and Christopher Mackin, both of whom rent office space in the boarding house and soon learned of its historical connection to Jacobs, began talking in the spring of 2022 about remaking the space in Jacobs’ memory.

“By this time, Nicola and I were fully engaged,” Mackin

said. “Let’s see what we can do to try to make this building something special, you know? Not just a picture of Harriet Jacobs in the lobby or something, but a place where people can learn about the abolitionist history.”

Williams and Mackin formed the Harriet Jacobs Legacy Committee, and, over the past two years, have recruited a group of other advocates and academics — including Miles and Allen — to help raise money and awareness for the building’s restoration.

Their power is limited. Though the house is marked as a historic landmark, the Cambridge Historical Commission only has oversight over its exterior, not its interior or usage. And the committee — which was denied funding from the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery initiative — lacks the financial resources to buy and repair the run-down building.

Miles said it is disappointing that Cambridge and Harvard have not prioritized maintaining the house and its story.

“Cambridge has these precious gems, and yet we haven’t really taken notice,” Miles said.

“We haven’t lavished this building with care. We haven’t used it to amplify Harriet Jacobs’ history and her story. We’ve hardly ever even noticed it.”

Instead, the committee is relying on Jang’s good-will and collaboration to help memorialize the house as the property undergoes a broader transformation. It is, Miles noted, a tenuous marriage.

“Right now, the person who is in the position to rescue this house is the same person who wants to move it and build a boutique hotel,” Miles said.

Preservation and Profit

According to Jang, the commit-

tee’s goals of historical preservation align with her own.

“Even before the committee was formed, my original — without their influence — my original goal is to also honor Harriet Jacobs,” Jang said.

Jang said she even declined the opportunity to sell the property to a condo developer, despite the opportunity to make a handsome profit.

The developer “will just take it all out, make it a very nice condo, and the people will love it here — but then it definitely will not preserve the Harriet Jacobs legacy,” Jang said.

But she acknowledged that it is “challenging” to balance the historical goals with her obligation to pay back her investors,

who have put millions of dollars into the hotel.

“For me to try to do this, but at the same time also make it profitable,” Jang said, “my investors spend lots of money on this, and I really have to make it work for them, for both ways.”

Mackin acknowledged that Jang’s commitment to the historical project will only go as far as is financially viable. He added that the committee has to reckon with its lack of any real power over the future of the house.

“What if Janet dies? What if Janet, you know, decides she sells to somebody else?” Mackin said. “We have no rights to enforce what we’re trying to do with the next owner.”

“Since we’re not at the table by right, we’re just there with moral persuasion, which doesn’t get you much at the end of the day,” Mackin added.

Jang said she understands the arguments based in history, but said she needs the committee to help fundraise for the project. She said she wants to raise money to establish a museum in the hotel’s lobby and community spaces on the ground floor, along with other memorials to Jacobs memory.

“If they can get some fundraising done, then we can make a Harriet Jacobs facility nice and beautiful,” Jang said. “I definitely want to work with them to make that happen.”

For his part, Mackin said the investment in honoring Jacobs’ legacy would add to the hotel’s profitability.

“Janet understands this at some level, but she needs to be reassured,” Mackin said. “This, if this is done right and tastefully and stuff, it’s going to make the hotel a commercial winner.”

“People are gonna want to stay here because it’s interesting,” he added. “It’s not a Holiday Inn.”

She ‘Changed the Conversation’

No matter how it takes shape, members of the committee say the project is an important opportunity to highlight the underappreciated story of Jacobs and her life in Cambridge.

“Her book, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, was part of what changed the conversation about slavery in this country, and so she’s one of the most important figures for understanding the legacy of slavery,” Allen said. “And her home and the business that she ran as a free woman having escaped from slavery is right smack dab in the heart of Harvard Square.”

Allen’s connection to the house is also personal — her office sits directly across from it.

“I’ve been sitting across the street for 10 years now looking at that building and feeling the pain of it not being appropriately cared for,” Allen said. “It’s been on my mind for a decade.”

Miles added that preserving the Cambridge house was one of the only ways to mount an effective physical memorial to Jacobs.

“It’s precious because it’s a place where this phenomenal woman who left her mark on history and so many people’s lives,” Miles said. “There’s not another building that we know of besides the two in Cambridge where Harriet Jacobs lived.” While Miles — and the committee at large — remain uncertain about the future of the house, their efforts to raise greater awareness of Jacobs’ story have been successful. Kyra I. March ’22, who took Miles’ class on Jacobs as an undergrad, was inspired to join the committee by developing an understanding of Jacobs’ life and the role 17 Story St. played in it.

“I just remember standing in front of the house and just being really emotional because Jacobs the story is just so powerful,” March said. “It’s powerful and it’s heartbreaking, it’s moving — and it’s like she triumphed.

Harriet A. Jacobs, who escaped slavery and wrote an account of her experience, operated a boarding house at 17 Story St. in Cambridge. BRIANA HOWARD PAGÁN — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

STAFF EDITORIAL

Harvard’s Feeder School Addiction

BY THE CRIMSON EDITORIAL BOARD

The next time you go to section, look around — at least one of your classmates is likely sporting an Andover sweater.

Surprising? Maybe not: A recent Crimson investigation revealed the gargantuan role a select number of high schools play in Harvard’s admissions processes — one in 11 undergraduates come from just 21 high schools. Most of these schools are overwhelmingly wealthy, helping America’s upper crust conjure a perfect, Harvard-worthy resume.

While these students are certainly qualified, they aren’t always more deserving than their less privileged peers — they were simply better prepared to craft a dazzling application. It’s time Harvard take off its rose-colored glasses, contend with the failure of its alphabet soup of programs aimed at recruiting from underrepresented backgrounds, and bust the prep school-to-Harvard pipeline.

Out of the 21 most represented schools, 12 are private, with yearly tuitions averaging $64,000. While many offer financial aid, on average, only about a third of their student bodies are eligible for it, making it hard to imagine the demographics of those who matriculate to Harvard are meaningfully different.

Four of these nine public schools are situated in some of their cities’ most affluent neighborhoods. Together, these four neighborhoods boast a median household income of almost $190,000 — over double the national figure.

Another four of the nine are competitive magnet schools with selective admissions processes, susceptible to gamification by expensive tutoring. Moreover, seven of these public schools spend more money per student than the national K-12 average, and four spend 1.5 to twice that figure.

With all this money in the picture, it’s no wonder so many students from top institutions are admitted to Harvard. Feeder school students inevitably

have access to personalized college counseling, resume help, and crucial admissions advice. In many cases, smart students from underrepresented backgrounds aren’t less qualified than their peers at Andover — their applications may simply lack the same gloss. The preponderance of wealthy students streaming from feeder schools only further impugns Harvard’s socioeconomic diversity efforts. To the University’s credit, it does seem like it’s trying. Their two flagship programs — the Undergraduate Minority Recruitment Program and Small Town Outreach Recruitment and Yield — both demonstrate Harvard’s ostensible commitment to recruit

underrepresented applicants.

But with almost a tenth of Harvard undergraduates still hailing from .078 percent of the country’s high schools, it’s laughable to think Harvard’s work is over.

There are a few things Harvard can do.

First, instead of sending interviewers to Andover and Exeter, Harvard should send them to low-income schools, and focus on cultivating new relationships with different high schools to find hidden potential.

Once it finds these students, Harvard should invest in them, through the expansion of initiatives like the Rising Scholars Program and Expository

ings. In

Harvard’s Science and Engineering Complex Needs a Dining Hall

BY MUKTA R. DHARMAPURIKAR

Picture this: It’s a frigid January morning, and you’re trudging through snow and ice, crossing the Charles River, and navigating Harvard Business School’s labyrinthine campus. Your destination? The Science and Engineering Complex, where you’ll attend class for which you just stayed up

until 3 a.m. completing a problem set.

After this arduous journey, you’re probably starving. But sadly, you’re left without options.

Despite the fact that it hosts a large and increasing share of engineering and computer science courses, the SEC does not have a dining hall. In 2022, more than 1,300 students declared a primary or joint concentration in engineering, computer science, or applied mathematics. That means as many as a fifth of

Why I Protest Hillel

BY VIOLET T.M. BARRON

On Monday, Harvard Hillel saw its first protest in years, organized by the very Jewish students it claims to represent.

We protested Hillel for its decision to host Ronen Manelis, a former chief spokesperson of the Israeli military. Manelis oversaw intelligence operations in Gaza during “Operation Protective Edge,” when Israel martyred over 2,000 Palestinians. During the Great March of Return, a largely nonviolent protest in Gaza, Manelis wrote that “there can be no such thing as a peaceful protest in Gaza, only gatherings organized, sanctioned and funded by Hamas.”

This week’s protest was not an anomaly but another chapter in a much longer tale of Jewish discontent with Hillel. In the past year alone, Hillel has faced criticism from students, faculty members, and even one of its former Executive Directors. It has criticized other Jewish organizations, suspending its own chapter of J Street and campaigning against Jews for Palestine on the ironic claim that we Jews are “endangering Jews.” By platforming Manelis and his violent rhetoric, Hillel has made abundantly clear what many of us al-

ready knew to be true: Hillel is an arm for Zionism — a political ideology — before it is a home for all Jews at Harvard.

The organization’s unwavering commitment to Zionism is apparent everywhere one looks, from the Israeli flag which hangs in its dining hall to the annual trip it subsidizes and sends to Israel. Hillel is, in its Executive Director’s own words, the “home of Zionism” at Harvard.

But Zionism is not Judaism, and Hillel’s supreme embrace of Zionism comes at a price. With its insistence upon peddling a politics above representing a people, Hillel has undermined its self-proclaimed title — and arguably only essential role — as the “hub for Jewish life” at Harvard.

While, on paper, Zionism is the (since-realized) nationalist movement for a Jewish state in the land of Palestine, in reality, it is inextricable from the displacement of Palestinian people, destruction of Palestinian homes, and denial of Palestinian history. It is predicated on a myth of permanent victimhood, and it uses this specter of indelible Jewish oppression to justify Jews’ ongoing oppression of Palestinians.

On Monday, we chanted “Zionists not welcome here” because we understand Zionism to be — like rac-

the students at Harvard visit the SEC regularly, often during lunch — and that number doesn’t even include freshmen and non-concentrators.

During mealtimes, all of these students must rely on two inadequate alternatives: the SEC Cafe and Flyby, Harvard’s grab-and-go meal service. These options fall short in several ways.

Flyby provides only pre-packaged sandwiches, salads, soups, and snacks, which usually means only one or two choices for students who have dietary restrictions. These items are less fresh and create significantly more plastic waste than the hot food in dining halls, which is served with reusable dishware and cutlery. And the SEC Cafe isn’t a costless option — students only have $65 per semester of BoardPlus, the equivalent of about five or six meals.

The alternative — returning to the river for lunch — is also impractical. It could take 30 minutes or more round trip each day. Students at the SEC need more robust meal options.

Harvard should open a fully-fledged dining hall in the SEC. Though it would be a significant undertaking, it seems feasible. Harvard was able to integrate a dining hall into The Inn, which has served as overflow housing for those displaced by renovations to Adams and Dunster House. Because many graduate students also eat at the SEC, the new dining hall could include meal purchase options or a section of “upgraded” meals that would resemble those currently in the SEC Cafe in order to ensure adequate demand.

A dining hall would not only feed the hundreds

of students who use the SEC around lunch every day, but it would also create a sense of community and camaraderie around a building that’s often seen as an outcast of the Harvard campus, located over a mile away from Harvard Yard. Short of a full-service dining hall, Harvard can still do more to improve the SEC’s food options. Part of the SEC Cafe could be sectioned off for undergraduate dining, providing a smaller version of the menu that is in Annenberg and the Houses. Harvard could also increase the amount of BoardPlus for students taking SEC classes around lunchtime or provide meal swipes into the SEC Cafe at certain times. More broadly, expanded access to Harvard’s cafes could encourage students to take classes that they may not otherwise, without concern about where they will eat. Considering that most students pay for a full meal plan, and that proper nutrition is essential to students’ health, Harvard should regard a fresh meal as a basic necessity for students. Hundreds of students should not regularly be forced to scarf down a cold sandwich between classes. Until then, good luck to all of the students making that frigid trek this winter — or taking their chances on the SEC Express shuttle. Hopefully they had time to grab a meal beforehand.

ism and white supremacy — a framework that assumes the superiority of one people over another. Its logic is hierarchical, placing Jewish self-determination — in the form of an ethnostate — above Palestinian life.

We must understand Zionism from the standpoint of those most impacted by it — Palestinians. They experience Zionism as we all should: not as a dream ideology but a nightmare reality. In 1948, Zionism was the mass dispossession of 750,000 Palestinians to make room for a Jewish state; today, Zionism is the mass slaughter of 44,000 Palestinians to defend this state.

An ethnostate necessitates exclusion. Judaism — and Jewish presence between the Jordan and the Mediterranean — need not. It must not.

On Monday, Hillel had the chance to change course. Instead it doubled down, flew an Israeli flag, and continued to walk its doomed, divisive path. Indeed, Hillel has effectively positioned itself against Palestinian liberation, right to resist occupation, and right of return home. Its positioning forces Jewish students to take a position of our own: accept Hillel or protest the Palestinian dehumanization inherent within Zionist logic and all Zionist institutions. The decision is obvious. For the sake of Jews at Harvard and beyond and,

effort to

diamonds in the rough, legions of feeder school resumes — hand-edited by admissions counselors — will continue to fill our classes.

Theda R. Skocpol is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology and a former dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

FM: I watched a lecture that you gave earlier this year on the transformation of the Republican Party in recent decades and how this has fed into increasing the partisan divide. And I wanted to ask, do you see this being something that can be reversed?

TRS: It has to be survived at this point, because the party and the chief practitioner of democracy-challenging, socially divisive politics has just come to the presidency for four years. That’s a profound threat in the U.S. system, because a lot of damage can be done in that period of time.

FM: What would you anticipate some of those changes that democracy will have to survive would be?

Q&A:

THEDA SKOCPOL ON THE ELECTION, THE IVORY TOWER, AND THE NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS FIFTEEN

THE GOVERNMENT PROFESSOR sat down with Fifteen Minutes to discuss the aftermath of Donald Trump’s reelection to the White House, the transformation of the Republican Party, and how academics should think about understanding the voter base. “It’s better to hear what people have to say,” she told Fifteen Minutes.

BY JEM K. WILLIAMS CRIMSON MAGAZINE ASSOCIATE EDITOR

tents and gone into the libraries and demanded that the universities divest from the South? How much change would that have produced for the country or for African Americans in the South?

They’re targeting the University when the University doesn’t control what’s going on in the Middle East, instead of targeting those who actually are responsible.

Tactical choices and the choices of protest targets make a huge difference in whether you actually change anything.

FM: How should we navigate platforming various ideas and perspectives while trying not to platform something that might be hateful?

TRS: Well, there certainly are hateful people. But I think one of the things I try

the very wealthy. They want racially charged immigration exclusions. They want more Republican judges, and they don’t all want the same thing. So I’m not saying that Trump doesn’t matter. He matters quite a bit. But he wouldn’t matter individually if it weren’t for all of these other groups that have gotten on the bandwagon.

FM: How did political affiliations come to be regarded as something that is inseparable from a person’s identity?

TRS: Here’s how to look at polarization in the United States. If you look at the middle of the 20th century, what you’re going to see is liberals and conservatives in both political parties. So the Democrat-Republican label didn’t line up — when I was a young student protestor, there were liberal Republicans.

It began to change with the triumph of the Civil Rights Movement and the reorientation of the Democratic Party to be more of a northern-centered party and to be more committed to civil rights and full voting rights for African Americans. Then the next wave of change is polarization of the parties over abortion and women’s roles in society.

Abortion is really a question of women’s roles in society, and that unfolds in the late 1970s, 1980s,

1990s — with Ronald Reagan becoming the one who moves the Republican Party in the direction of being against abortion rights, anti-feminist in many ways, and also foot-dragging, if not reversing, equal civil rights for African Americans. So you’ve got one division piled on top of another there.

And then you get to the current period and differences of opinion across the parties over immigration are piled on top of all of it.

We’re now at the point where people literally line up all of their opinions.

FM: On this topic of the growing partisan divide, you mentioned before that you wanted to talk a bit about the implications of this on campus culture. So what are some of those implications — will it be necessarily harder to engage in bipartisan conversations on campus, or are there other potential consequences as well?

TRS: I hope it won’t be harder, because it’s been pretty hard already. Although I have to say, I think the things that we sometimes hear in the national media — that Harvard is a hotbed of antisemitism and Islamophobia, there are no conservatives here — that’s all balderdash.

I teach classes on topics that are highly charged. I’ve had students who approach these things from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives, and haven’t had any trouble at all main-

taining an atmosphere for rigorously factual and respectful discussions.

That said, I’m hoping that people will stop arguing about the details of student sanctions for library protests, and take a look at what’s coming, because after Jan. 20, the stakes are going to be a lot more than whether you have to check things out but not walk into Widener for two weeks.

It’s irrelevant once we face the actual threats to the University’s autonomy, to its endowment, and to people here who are vulnerable.

FM: I came across a quote you said before about not wanting to be too drawn into the “elitist propaganda of a place like Harvard.” What does avoiding that mean to you?

TRS: My husband and I go to breakfast to the diner every morning, where we meet people from all walks of life and many different backgrounds.

And we hear a little bit about their political perspectives, and believe me, the full range of perspectives is out there, and it’s better to hear what people have to say.

In my research, I’ve just made a point of actually going out and seeing face to face what’s happening in different parts of the country. And so I haven’t been totally shocked at the rise of Trumpism. I understand some of the

popular roots of it.

I don’t have to agree with those at all in my citizen capacity, but as a scholar, I need to understand, and I try to do that in part by getting out from behind the computer and actually talking and listening and observing what’s going on in the Midwest and the Upper South and in all kinds of places. So that’s part of it, but I think the other part of it is just all of us have to realize that we have a lot to offer, but that we have to do it in a non arrogant way.

The universities and colleges, and particularly state universities like Michigan State, where I got my BA, are in great danger, but Harvard is also potentially in danger, and has to avoid making things worse for everybody by being symbolically foolish. And I’m going to say something that some people won’t like at all. I know that there have been a lot of analogies drawn between the pro-Palestinian protests now and the 1960s.

I was once part of that generation that engaged in the anti-war protests against the Vietnam War, and above all, in the protests against racial segregation and in favor of civil rights and voting rights for African Americans.

So I have some perspective on it, and I don’t see the analogy. I am thinking, what if the civil rights protesters on the campuses had pitched a bunch of

Turner Shines on the Court

WOMEN’S

surges as Harmoni Turner’s record-breaking performances and a threegame win streak spark early-season momentum.

BY OSCAR E. MERCADO CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

n a dazzling display, se -

Inior guard Harmoni Turner etched her name into the Harvard record books, delivering a historic performance in Harvard’s 78-70 bounce back victory over Boston College. Turner’s finest Crimson performance saw her record a double-double,

the wall after Sunday. Harmoni played an incredible game and we needed every bucket she scored. Outside of her, we really struggled. They went player to player and we didn’t look as good. She really stepped up during those times.” Turner joined the Crimson as a heralded five-star prospect out of Mansfield, Texas in 2021. She quickly made her presence known, leading the team in scoring with 15.9 points per game. Her efforts earned her Ivy League Rookie of the Year. Turner improved on her rookie season, averaging 16-65 (points-rebounds-assists) en route to a first team All-Ivy selection in 2022. The team im -

statline, earning her first-team All-Ivy honors for the second straight season. Her basketball talent transcended even Harvard basketball: earlier this year, she co-captained Team USA to an undefeated gold medal at the FIBA 3x3 U23 World Cup. She currently ranks top-10 in both career points and assists at Harvard, while achieving the fourth highest scoring average (17.0) in program history. She was poised for a dominant season coming into this year, and thus far she’s delivered a top-25 win over Indiana, the first in the program since the 2018-19 season, and the record breaking performance

player,” Moore said. “When she’s hitting threes, it’s like how are you going to guard her?”

“I allowed the game to come to me,” Turner said about her strong performance.

“My teammates did a great job of finding me and my coaches did a great job of believing in me and never losing that belief especially since I haven’t been having a good shooting year. I really love my team and coaches,” she added.

Turner scored an astounding 15 points in the first quarter against BC, before her offensive output slowed in the second quarter, finishing the half with 20 points. She quickly picked up where she left off

“I already know where she’s going to be,” Turner said, on her assists to Rocco. “I trust that she’s going to make the shot. It’s all about allowing the game to come to me and if I don’t have a shot, then I have a kick.”

In the final seconds of the contest, Turner converted a layup to eclipse the 40-point mark and secure the 78-70 victory for Harvard. Turner’s role in two historic Harvard achievements through four games is helping her build a strong case for the Becky Hammon Mid-Major Player of the Year award. Her incredible season will continue on the road this Sunday, Nov. 17 at noon against the Uni -

Then-junior Harmoni Turner skies for

Then-sophomore guard Harmoni Turner dribbles the

Sarma Review: An Experimental Dream

BY ALESSANDRO M.M. DRAKE

Ahop, skip, jump, T-ride, and narrowly missed bus away from Harvard Square sits Sarma. It’s a charming little place tucked between a cute residential neighborhood and the imposing Somerville High School. The fare, however, goes well past charming and into the risk-prone, adventurous sphere of experimentalism.

The restaurant is frankly beautiful. Its cozy bricks are complemented by gorgeous painted plates mounted on the walls, keeping with its blue color scheme. Water arrives immediately and the servers are top-notch.

The menu lays out an array of options from their familystyle, primarily Mediterranean

cuisine, accompanied with a helpful glossary of terms so that culturally ignorant diners — see also: me — can enjoy a muhammara or a panzanella without undergoing the strenuously self-conscious task of Googling the name of a dish.

The avocado muhammara — an avocado- and burrata-based twist on the classic spicy red dip — unfortunately does not come with bread included, which feels a little counterintuitive — although there is a five-dollar bread side available. Breadless or not, the Muhammara simply stuns. One bite is all it takes to imagine the full Sarma dining experience — one soaked in never-ending flavor and delightful combinations of tastes. The spice level is dialed to perfection, and the avocado combined with the pepper and pistachio creates a sensation of warm goodness in the mouth, which the burrata

cuts through perfectly with its cool, fresh flavor.

Staying on the vegetarian side of things, the preserved lemon Caesar salad — a clever little dish topped with gloriously crunchy sweet potato shoestring fries — is not very Caesar-eque, but still very salad. It earns its $15 price point both for its texture and for its brilliantly simple balance of flavors injected with a zesty lemon overtone.

Throughout dinner service, aesthetically plated specials are flaunted by servers milling around in a tantalizing invite to diners. It’s almost as if the whole experience is crafted to make one forget their sense of time and space and simply give in to the myriad of snack-sized — but full-priced — options.

One of those options, the haloumi baklava, is fairly representative of the Sarma dining experience as a whole. While

an expertly crafted experimental dish that clearly has a lot of effort put into it, it does suffer from a combination of flavor profiles that may just be too different. The pairing with warm pineapple isn’t necessarily distasteful, but it uniquely weighs personal preference into the enjoyment of the dish.

The fregola carbonara is an enigma — especially given that it’s not a carbonara. There isn’t any egg nor guanciale — the only real connection to the classic pasta is the Pecorino cheese that tops it. Either way, the ill-fitting name only mildly brings down the dish, with the fregola-based and squashtopped bowl staying squarely middle-of-the-road in terms of Sarma quality. Sarma’s lamb köfte sliders are simply strange and certainly a low point of the menu. They feel like the pick for diners that aren’t keen on subjecting

themselves to the risks of experimenting, with the dish amounting to something that is ultimately a hamburger. The meat has no signature lamb flavors, and the seasoning is minimal, leading to a just plain boring dish — a transgression that Sarma thankfully doesn’t repeat.

The swordfish, one of the focal points of the menu both by price point and server recommendation, is a meltingly tender slab of fish topped with — you guessed it — wasabi yogurt, served on a bed of vegetables and dolmades — grape leaves stuffed with rice. The eggplant-based concoction of vegetables meld into a comforting sweetness in the mouth, which is only amplified when combined with the swordfish. The odd man out is, of course, the wasabi. It’s just a tiny bit too much. Even if upon first impression a bite is wonderful, there inevitably comes a wasabi aftertaste that overstays its welcome. Either way, it’s a small gripe in a sea of perfectly cooked swordfish. Sarma is certainly tasty — there’s no doubt about it. The experimentation is bold and deserves recognition, and Chef Piuma finds uniqueness in a city with a long list of repetitive restaurants for each type of cuisine. The biggest problem, though, is that a dinner for two with some mild overordering can come out to around $175. Is that price worth it? Probably. Is there hesitation in that answer? Certainly. It’s experimentation at a premium — a palate at a price. But a hop, skip, jump, and — hopefully not — missed bus ride to Sarma at least once should certainly be something on every Cantabrigian’s list, wasabi yogurt or not.

Bleachers’s newest single, “Merry Christmas, Please Don’t Call,” is a sorrowful ballad centered around the pain of past relationships that the holiday season brings up. The song was released on Nov. 13 after years of writing and teasing at live shows.

“This for anyone who has come to realize someone’s been chipping away at the them and does not intend to stop,” Jack Antonoff, the frontman of Bleachers, wrote about the track’s development in an Instagram post.

The track’s lyrics are an intimate exploration of the agony of revisiting old connections. Antonoff addresses the subject directly, singing, “Don’t act like you were kind / You were mine but you were awful every time.” The outside world is kept separate as Antonoff’s bitter lyrics recall past torments.

The chorus is especially biting as Antonoff asserts, “We both know / What happened to you / Why you’re out on your own,” alluding to the heartache and its lasting im-

pact. While the lyrical content subverts expectations of a cheery holiday song, the booming delivery of these angsty rebukes fits within the genre of holiday music. Antonoff’s vocals are echoey, often overshadowed by the track’s instrumentals. In the first verse up until the chorus, the vocals are at the forefront as the synths gradually build to the titular line, “Merry Christmas, please don’t call.” The drum beat from the chorus picks up in the following verse and pre-chorus as Antonoff sings, “You really left me on the line kid / Holding all your baggage,” his words almost indiscernible. Yet, this asymmetry in sound works in the song’s favor, with the instrumentals highlighting the tension and depth behind

Antonoff’s melancholy lyrics.

The bridge puts the most distance sonically between Antonoff and the instrumentals as he faintly calls out, “One ticket out of your heavy gaze / I want one ticket off of your carousel.” The separation Antonoff desires manifests in this moment before the final chorus comes in, and his vocals return to the foreground. These production choices make for an engaging listen as the sound mirrors the track’s narrative.

Though it departs from the majority of popular holiday music, this somber yet sharp, synthladen track is classic Bleachers. It’s difficult to imagine the band releasing any other kind of holiday song. Laced with the heartache of confronting betrayal, “Merry Christmas, Please Don’t Call” emphatically sets firm boundaries for this holiday season.

Few films manage to make the personal political as effectively as “Red, White and Blue.” The Academy Award-nominated short film originally premiered at a film festival in 2023. It tackles increasingly prevalent themes such as abortion and women’s healthcare. This film doesn’t simply ask its audience to listen — it demands they feel the weight of its story.

Written and directed by Nazrin Choudhury, the film takes an intimate look at a mother-daughter duo navigating a world shaped by restrictive abortion laws. Rachel (Brittany Snow) is a single mother living in Arkansas. Due to Arkansas’s strict abortion laws, Rachel and her young daughter Maddy (Juliet Donenfield) have to cross state lines to Illinois when Maddy, age 10, needs an abortion after an assault. Choudhury crafts a film that is as visually subtle as it is emotionally powerful. Adam Suschitzky’s cinematography employs natural lighting, which mirrors the stark realism of the characters’ journey.

Each shot feels deliberate, pulling the viewer into Rachel and Maddy’s world.

The pacing occasionally lingers, with these slower moments adding depth to the story. Road trip segments emphasize Maddy’s fleeting innocence — a heartbreaking contrast to the decision she must face. These scenes aren’t just filler — they deepen the narrative’s emotional resonance and drive home the film’s message.

The acting performances are some of the strongest points of “Red, White and Blue.” Brittany Snow, known for her comedic roles like Chloe in “Pitch Perfect,” delivers an emotionally moving performance as Rachel. Her portrayal of quiet resilience and unwavering love is both raw and authentic.

Juliet Donenfeld’s performance as Maddy is equally compelling, capturing the complexity of a child forced to grapple with unimaginable trauma. Together, their chemistry anchors the film, making its most devastating moments feel heartbreakingly real.

Choudhury’s script also stands out. The dialogue feels painfully authentic, and the narrative’s emo-

tional beats land with precision. By focusing on the personal rather than the overt political messages, the film avoids preaching and instead invites empathy. It is a story that lingers long after viewers have finished the film.

“Red, White and Blue” is a rare blend of artistry and advocacy, delivering a captivating exploration of one of the most pressing issues of our time. Through its compelling performances, thoughtful direction, and emotionally resonant story, it succeeds in humanizing a polarizing issue. Nazrin Choudhury has created a short film that doesn’t just tell a story — it demands attention, empathy, and action. With its visual subtlety and emotional depth, it stands as a necessary and unforgettable piece of work, more than worthy of an Academy Award nomination.

COURTESY OF JOSHUA HANSEN

BEN VAN LEEUWEN

ON THE GOOD ICE CREAM

BY LESHUI (JADE) XIAO CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

In the summer of his senior year in high school in 2002, Ben Van Leeuwen, while perusing through a magazine, noticed an advertisement seeking an ice cream truck driver for $500 per week. Intrigued, Van Leeuwen applied for the position and spent the next two summers driving through the city in a Good Humor Ice Cream truck. Years later, in 2008, Van Leeuwen, along with his brother Pete Van Leeuwen and close friend Laura O’Neill, started selling ice cream out of a 1988 Chevrolet. It was in that retrofitted yellow truck that Van Leeuwen Ice Cream was born. Van Leeuwen’s passion for food and hospitality culminated in his second summer of driving the ice cream truck. With the $40,000 he accumulated from the gig, Van Leeuwen spent a year traveling around the world through Europe and Southeast Asia and was amazed by the accessibility of delectable foods. After returning to college and, by chance, seeing a Mr. Softy truck in his senior year, everything clicked in the moment: He would go into the ice cream business. From the very origins of the brand, Van Leeuwen’s most pertinent focus has been on the product. Raised in a family who

valued homemade cooking from scratch, Van Leeuwen has always been interested in quality ingredients. As the trio set off into the ice cream business, without much funding, they developed a formula with only the simplest of ingredients.

“Nothing complicated, nothing fancy, no secrets, and no brilliance,” Van Leeuwen said in an interview with The Crimson. “Just use the ingredients.”

Starting in 2007 with only $60,000, Van Leeuwen knew that the product was the principal factor for the brand’s survival and success, and everything else came after. With two Chevy trucks, a 1972 paint book, and freelance designers, Van Leeuwen and his partners scrutinized every minute detail. When the business opened its first physical store, it cost only $30,000, and even though the location and designs were still not ideal, “the product was always world class.”

For Van Leeuwen’s ice cream, the base starts with the best vanilla ice cream — in the early days of the business, they spent the most time on this simple flavor. With 18 percent butterfat, six percent egg yolks, and some sea salt, Van Leeuwen emphasizes the natural, simple ingredients of every flavor. The wide variety of flavors is crafted with exquisite add-ins,

such as pistachios from Sicily, sun-ripened strawberries from Oregon, and Tahitian vanilla beans. Van Leeuwen develops every unique flavor in his Research & Development kitchen, and their focus on the product never wavers.

“That’s the only reason we’re here, because of that focus on product,” Van Leeuwen said.

In 2024, the prices of cream and eggs skyrocketed in the United States, raising production costs by up to nine percent. While many people proposed alternatives, such as reducing the amount of cream and eggs in the product, Van Leeuwen refused to touch the formula and continued delivering the same products, remaining true to the brand’s principle of focusing on the product.

To him, staying true to the formula, despite the financial costs, was the best decision for the business.

“The end of the story is: We didn’t touch the formula. We ate the cost, and we had a really tough financial year, but we continued to deliver this same product,” said Van Leeuwen. “But we actually did the best thing for the business.”

For the company, their target audience is simply everyone who enjoys ice cream, and the brand often renovates their products to fit the palate of the guests. They pay close attention to the customers’ feedback, pondering over questions such as the ideal sugar

levels or flavor profiles, and adjusting the products accordingly.

For example, the current formula has two percent more sugar than the original after receiving complaints from customers, reflecting the audience’s tastes. As the brand seeks to expand internationally, the team is analyzing the preferences of various nations and cultures to create formulations that will suit customers’ varying tastes.

Van Leeuwen’s emphasis on quality products extends to vegan options too, with a uniquely high percentage of vegan options on the menu. One of the co-founders, O’Neill, grew up in a half-vegan household, and the brand truly attends to the broad range of customers, offering a variety of options of the same quality. Replacing dairy products with cacao butter, the brand adheres to the same principle of simple ingredients for all of its clients.

“We want anyone who wants to eat vegan ice cream to feel really looked after and considered,” said Van Leeuwen. “To us, that is hospitality.”

Van Leeuwen cites much of his inspiration for the products and business from his experiences inside the scoop shops them-

selves. As the business expands and opens new locations, Van Leeuwen seeks to learn from every experience, and he learns the most from spending time in the physical locations with the team members and guests. While reviewing data may provide critical information on sales, being in the stores offers invaluable insight into the “core of the business.”

Even for the development of new flavors, Van Leeuwen attributes the innovations’ success to being at the store and observing the guests’ responses.

Only a few days ago, Van Leeuwen spent his whole day on a bike, visiting 18 of the stores in New York City from noon to 1 a.m. He emphasized how much he was able to learn from being in the stores that he could not from his office.

“I can’t successfully be the CEO of Van Leeuwen Ice Cream from an office,” Van Leeuwen said. “It has to be from a store.”

From the secondhand yellow Chevrolet truck in 2008 to the more than 50 stunning pastel parlors today, Van Leeuwen remains steadfast in his sincere dedication to quality products. As the newest Van Leeuwen Ice Cream opens its doors in Harvard Square in the upcoming weeks, it brings not only the sweet, delectable cold treats but also a genuine love of ice cream — and “a lot of the good stuff.”

jade.xiao@thecrimson.com

Tokyo Police Club Concert Review: A Final Victory Lap

BY ASHA M. KHURANA CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

The garage rock revival took its time arriving to the Toronto suburbs, but once it did, Tokyo Police Club was born. Between performing songs at Boston’s iconic Paradise Rock Club on Nov. 16, frontman Dave Monks reminisced about their fourth-grade class, late night rehearsals on high school weeknights, and their first shows in Boston.

The band has never been shy to honor their influences — some of their early cuts endearingly emulate The Strokes or LCD Soundsystem. The opening to their show, for instance, was the distorted synth intro of “Favorite Food” from their 2010 album “Champ” — a Broken Social

Scene-esque sonic blanket over the crowd.

Minutes later, though, when Josh Hook sent a sparkly guitar line soaring over the track, Tokyo Police Club was entirely their own. The band kept the energy up through three more tracks from “Champ” — ahead of “Breakneck Speed,” Monks asked the crowd if the “Champ” CD resided for the last decade in their cars. When the crowd echoed the chorus lyric “it’s good to be back,” it was clear that the answer was a resounding yes.

Catching their breath and soaking in the crowd’s joy, the band prepared for a handful of songs from their yearning 2008 album, “Elephant Shell.” The setlist was crafted for the band to play cuts from one album at a time, allowing the band to im-

merse in that album for a handful of songs. For a farewell tour, this was a clever approach — each uninterrupted stint gained momentum as they became their old selves, limbs languid and smiles beaming like the pack of high schoolers they once were.

Monks, with glitter under his eyes, spoke to the crowd candidly about the adolescent energy that was palpable in the set. The cuts from “Elephant Shell” held that very energy, which defined the momentum of the remainder of the show. The driving drum lines and recession-era angsty lyrics spoke to the room more than ever — the global scape of uncertainty that shrouded the band in their inception happens to be back in full swing on their farewell tour.

Moving into their 2018 selftitled album, “New Blues,” the group leaned further into the angst. Pleading and heavy, the track ended with the first true guitar solo of the set. Hook’s moment was spine-chilling — the guitar seemed to convey words that lyrics couldn’t capture. “New Blues” was the only standout of their newer cuts, the rest of the act missing the nostalgic luster of the rest of their set.

Revisiting “Champ,” “Hands Reversed,” and “End of a Spark” was heartfelt and achingly honest. Throughout the set, each song’s outro was deliberate — “End of a Spark” being put to rest with grace. Whether it was a swelling synth, an over-thetop drum fill, or a squealing distortion, every song was tucked into bed fittingly. It was an act of

sympathy to the Boston fans that were hearing each Tokyo Police Club song live for the very last time. The set’s unexpected highlight was “Argentina (Parts I, II, and III)”, a meandering tenminute song with instrumentals that stretched wide and filled the room, countered by vocals from Monks that spoke gently to the audience. The kick drum offered a communal heartbeat to the space. It was triumphant for all ten minutes, with a polished, laid-back excellence — digging his heels in until the last beat, Monks couldn’t hide the pride on his face. It was the kind of musical opus that high schoolers in a garage band would only dream of. They kept the energy as they finally arrived at their first al-

bum, “A Lesson in Crime”, driving through “Nature of the Experiment,” “Citizens of Tomorrow,” and “Shoulders & Arms” while beaming the whole way through. As if they’d been working towards the moment for the whole set, they became fully-fledged kids on stage, emotions raw like the teenagers that wrote the album. The encore featured “Cheer It On,” an early cut that cheekily indulges the band in namedropping themselves. Somehow, though, this was not an act of ego. Instead, it was as though the band was paying homage to their past selves, putting their teen angst into the world in a room full of people who heard them loud and clear.

COURTESY OF VINA SANANIKONE

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