The stretch of Memorial Drive where Newton cyclist John H. Corcoran ’84, a former Winthrop House resident, was killed in a crash Monday evening was the subject of years of safety warnings from local politicians and tran
orchestra and its director, the legendary film score composer Hans Zimmer, powerfully strumming his electric guitar.
The Harvard Slavery Remembrance Program has identified more than 300 enslaved individuals who were owned by Harvard affiliates — a significantly higher figure than what the University initially disclosed in its 2022 report, according to three people familiar with the team’s work.
The University’s 2022 Legacy of Slavery report found that Harvard faculty, staff, leadership, and donors enslaved more than 70 individuals, though the report acknowledged at the time that its figure was “almost certainly an undercount.”
Remembrance Program researcher
Raymond L. Wilkes III confirmed to The Crimson that the team had identified several hundred enslaved individuals owned by Harvard affiliates but declined to provide specific numbers, citing a confidentiality agreement.
The Remembrance Program has also
identified more than 100 living descendants of individuals who were enslaved by Harvard affiliates, according to one person familiar with the group’s progress.
A Harvard spokesperson wrote in response to a request for comment that the University cannot confirm the number of enslaved people and descendants identified by the Remembrance Program, but the spokesperson did not refute the numbers either.
This spring, administrators drafted and considered issuing a public update on the Remembrance Program’s progress that reported the number of enslaved people and descendants found by researchers.
But the idea was shot down by Remembrance Program Director Richard J. Cellini, who argued that descendants should be notified before the University published a press release.
Harvard spokesperson Sarah E. Kennedy O’Reilly wrote in a statement that “there has always been an understanding” that the descendants identified by the group would be contacted before “identifiable information” was made public. Cellini did not respond to a request for
comment for this article.
A Crimson investigation published on Friday revealed that several current and former affiliates of the initiative felt that they were rushed by University administrators to release public updates even when they felt the work was not yet ready.
Kennedy O’Reilly declined to comment on those allegations at the time.
To date, the Remembrance Program — a subgroup of the larger Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery initiative — has not made any of its research findings publicly available, and its last official news update was shared in April 2023.
“At the time the University initiated this work, we knew it would be intensive and take time,” Kennedy O’Reilly wrote in her statement.
“This important work must be performed with respect, rigor and integrity, and with the intention to vigorously pursue research avenues to ensure we are doing all we can to identify and help document the family histories and descendants of those who were enslaved by Harvard leaders, faculty and staff,” she added.
Though researchers have identified
living descendants of those enslaved by Harvard affiliates, University officials have yet to formulate a strategy for contacting them or formalize the extent of reparative efforts for descendants beyond existing grant and partnership programs. Kennedy O’Reilly said in a statement that Harvard plans to engage individual living descendants “at the point at which the research has prepared us to do so.”
“When this engagement with living direct descendants begins, we will do it with humility and an understanding that these first conversations are just the beginning of what we hope will become a long-term relationship with Harvard,” she wrote.
Cellini has been in conflict for several months with Vice Provost for Special Projects Sara N. Bleich — who oversees the Legacy of Slavery initiative — over allegations that she instructed him to restrict the Remembrance Program’s scope.
Cellini alleged in a statement to The Crimson that he had been “repeatedly and emphatically told by Dr. Sara Bleich ‘not to find too many descendants’ and that ‘the
The Securities and Exchange Commission alleged former Harvard football player Nicholas A. Palazzo ’03 defrauded investors in his various sports-related companies — including at least two of his former teammates on the Crimson, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court on Friday.
Palazzo allegedly used his connections with former teammates to raise money he spent primarily on paying off his debts and other personal expenses like a trip to Disneyland, private school tuition for his kids, and rent for a multi-million-dollar home.
Another of Palazzo’s alleged victims was an 89-year-old Navy veteran who sent Palazzo at least $500,000 from 2020 to 2023, according to the lawsuit.
Palazzo did not respond to a request for comment on Monday. In the complaint, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the SEC outlined two main securities frauds allegedly perpe -
trated by Palazzo between October 2019 and December 2023.
The first involved a company called STACK — which the SEC described as a “youth sports media company” that was supposed “to produce media and content for young athletes” — that Palazzo founded in 2005. According to the complaint, by 2017 the company had “more than $18.6 million in outstanding liabilities.” Palazzo subsequently STACK assets to software company SPay for $9.5 million. Despite the sale, Palazzo allegedly failed to fully repay STACK’s investors and creditors — a fact he concealed from SPay despite being SPay’s Chief Digital Officer at the time.
STACK’s largest customer — a digital marketing company referred to in the complaint as “Entity A” — went into receivership in 2019 and the receiver began demanding money from STACK — a problem Palazzo admitted to trying to solve by sending $250,000 to the receiver. At the time, SPay still believed that Entity A owed STACK money, according to
Harvard quietly rolled out new guidance on the implementation of its newly-adopted institutional voice report on Tuesday, following uncertainty over how strictly the recommendations would limit statements from University officials, centers, and student employees.
The preliminary guidelines extend the institutional voice principles down Harvard’s administrative ladder to include department chairs, program directors, and House faculty deans.
Though the new guidance carves out some exceptions, allowing advocacy-focused programs to “engage in their ordinary academic work,” it suggests the University is taking a far-reaching approach to its restrictions on public statements.
The guidelines, published as a fivepage compilation of frequently asked questions, were approved by Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’77, Provost John F. Manning ’82, Executive Vice President Meredith L. Weenick ’90, and the
University’s top deans.
But the FAQ did not answer some of the most frequently asked questions, according to several students and faculty members.
The document offered little information on how — or whether — the University intends to enforce its new policies against affiliates who fail to adhere to them.
Archon Fung, the director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at HKS, said he hoped the document’s release would be a starting point for a broader campus discussion on institutional voice. “I think we all want some more clarity, and want to participate in shaping what
the University and its representatives to defend Harvard’s “core function.” The new guidelines categorize most
BY BRIANA HOWARD PAGÁN — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
gates, according to the Columbia Daily Spectator. The event, featuring Barnard alumna Cynthia Nixon, criticized new university guidelines around the use of campus spaces and said they were writtenw tihout community input. The non-binding expectations give examples of permissible and impermissible conduct for Columbia and Barnard affiliates. THE COLUMBIA DAILY SPECTATOR
More than 300 academics and Dartmouth students signed a letter protesting Dartmouth College’s decision not to hire Nicole Nguyen, a law professor at the University of Illinois Chicago. In the letter, according to The Dartmouth, the signatories accused Dartmouth of rejecting Nguyen’s appointment due to the progressive content of her scholarship and demanded a “fair and impartial review” of her case. The controversy has sparked a broader discussion about academic freedom and the role of political ideology in hiring decisions at the college.
DARTMOUTH
In
$350 million in revenue from fossil fuel companies over the past decade, raising concerns about the effectiveness of the divestment. The group is calling for greater transparency regarding the university’s finances, THE YALE DAILY NEWS
U.S. President Joe Biden announced plans to return to the
SEPTEMBER 27, 2024 THE HARVARD CRIMSON
NY MAYOR ERIC ADAMS INDICTED, CHARGES SEALED
The New York Times reported on Wednesday night that Adams was facing federal criminal charges, a culmination of multiple serious investigations plaguing top members of his cabinet. A growing list of politicians were calling for the mayor to resign, including New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He is the first New York mayor ever to be indicted. This unprecedented situation raises questions about the future of his administration and its impact on city governance.
CONGRESS FUNDS GOVERNMENT, AVOIDS SHUTDOWN
Congressional leaders postponed the debate over the next federal budget until after the presidential election with a bill this week that funds the government through December. The legislation allocates several hundred million dollars to support the Secret Service, ensuring it can effectively protect officials during the campaign. This temporary funding measure aims to prevent a federal shutdown while allowing lawmakers more time to negotiate a comprehensive budget.
TRUMP TO RALLY AT ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT SITE
Trump plans to return to Butler, PA, on October 5 to hold a rally at the same site where he survived an assassination attempt on July 13, 2024. He plans to honor Corey Comperatore, a volunteer firefighter killed while shielding his family from the assassin. This attempt, followed by another on September 15 in West Palm Beach, FL, may impact the upcoming election.
US AND ALLIES DEMAND CEASEFIRE IN LEBANON
The United States and its allies called for a 21-day ceasefire in Lebanon at the UN General Assembly this week. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the ceasefire, stating, “we are continuing to strike Hezbollah with full force” and “we will not stop until we reach all our goals.” Israel’s military is also preparing for a potential ground invasion of Lebanon, continuing its conflict with Hezbollah since last October’s war on Hamas.
HURRICANE INTENSIFIES AS IT APPROACHES FLORIDA CAPITAL
Hurricane Helene intensified into a Category 4 storm headed for Florida’s northwest coast, with warnings of a 20-foot storm surge and over 600,000 homes without power. Evacuations were ordered as authorities braced for life-threatening conditions. Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Isaac formed in the Atlantic, and former Hurricane John threatened Mexico’s west coast.
Start every week with a preview of what’s on the agenda around Harvard University
Friday 9/27
FOOD LITERACY PROJECT OUTING: TOUR OF BOSTON PUBLIC MARKET
Boston Public Market, 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Join the Food Literacy Project for a tour of Boston Public Market. Explore the market, learn its history, and sample local foods. Ticket price includes public transportation, and attendees will receive meeting details for a group ride from Harvard Square.
Saturday 9/28
26TH ANNUAL HARVARD POWWOW
McCurdy Track, 1-6 p.m.
The event is free and open to not only the Harvard University community, but to the public at large. It will be a fun-filled occasion with the welcoming of our Native and Indigenous students and community at the start of the academic year.
Sunday 9/29
SPOTLIGHT TOUR: ART AND LAW, WITH HANNAH GADWAY ’25
Harvard Art Museums, 11-11:50 a.m.
Hannah Gadway ’25 will explore the intersection of art and law, particularly how the law has served to protect the interests of artists, art, and collectors.
Touching on subjects from “art as evidence” to Nazi-owned art to the legal process involved in giving art to a museum, Gadway will examine three works.
Monday 9/30
“PIZZA IS MY YOGA” - SCIENCE & COOKING LECTURE SERIES
Science Center Hall C, 7-8:30 p.m.
Giorgia Caporuscio, master pizzaiola has elevated the restaurant’s legacy with her innovative approach to Neapolitan pizza, earning accolades such as the prestigious Caputo Cup and “Pizza Maker of the Year” in 2024.
Tuesday 10/1
2024 HUTCHINS CENTER HONORS
W. E. B. DU BOIS MEDAL CEREMONY
Memorial Hall, 4-5 p.m.
The W.E.B. Du Bois Medal is Harvard’s highest honor in African and African American studies. It is awarded to individuals in the US and across the globe in recognition of their contributions to African and African American culture and the life of the mind.
Wednesday 10/2
CAN AI HELP COURTS BE FAIR AND JUST? UNLOCKING THE POSITIVE EFFECTS OF JUSTICE ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Virtual Event, 12-1
Thursday 10/3
OFA ARTSBITES WITH A.R.T. Office of the Arts Common Room, 12-1 p.m Informal lunch conversation with Diane Paulus ‘88 and Karina Cowperthwaite ‘23. Paulus is the Terrie and Bradley Bloom Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University. This event is capped at 20 students and open to current Harvard undergraduates.
Friday 10/4
SIXIAN YOU: DRIVE BIOMEDICAL DISCOVERY WITH LIVE-TISSUE LABEL-FREE METABOLIC MICROSCOPY Pierce Hall, 11am-12 p.m.
Held by Sixian You, an assistant professor at MIT, this talk will discuss mechanisms to increase the depth, contrast, and throughput of live-tissue pathology for biomedical applications, with a focus on metabolic imaging of living systems.
through a historic overhaul of the Corporation’s governance structure, which saw the body nearly double its size and impose 12year term limits on its members.
Marc L. Goodheart ’81, the longtime secretary to the University’s secretive governing boards, will leave Loeb House after more than 27 years in the role to take a new position as a senior adviser to the president of the University.
Goodheart will depart his role as secretary of the governing boards at the end of the academic year, but he will continue to remain a senior staff member within the University’s administration as an adviser to Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 and other top officials.
Over three decades as an adviser to Harvard’s top leadership, Goodheart served seven University presidents and five senior fellows of the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body. In the role, Goodheart acquired a wealth of institutional knowledge and has become an expert on University policies and procedures.
As secretary of the governing boards, Goodheart had a major role in guiding the University
Goodheart, who was once described by a former Harvard Corporation member as the University’s “keeper of the keys,” also had an influential role in guiding Harvard through the turmoil and uncertainty sparked by former Harvard President Claudine Gay’s resignation on Jan. 2. The announcement of Goodheart’s departure comes less than two months after the permanent appointments of Garber and Harvard Provost John F. Manning ’82 at the helm of the University, effectively ending the leadership crisis.
“Where there have been gaps between where we are and where we want to be, he has endeavored to narrow them in his customarily unassuming fashion, enriching deliberations with his matchless understanding of history and precedent,” Garber wrote.
“Though he would be the last to admit it, he has quietly guided Harvard through change and through storm, seeking neither credit nor praise in the process,” Garber added.
Goodheart’s final act as secretary of the governing boards will likely include a significant role in supporting the Corporation’s efforts to reform its presidential search process — a process announced by Senior Fellow Penny
S. Pritzker ’81 in April.
The University is looking to conclude its reforms some time before the launch of a search for the 31st president of Harvard, which is expected to begin in spring 2026.
Goodheart, who has sought to elude the media spotlight during his tenure in University leadership, said in a rare public statement that he looks forward to continuing to help Harvard “navigate an exceptionally challenging time.”
“What has kept me here longer than I’d ever imagined is not simply the allure of the University’s mission, not simply the devo -
tion and resilience of the people devoted to advancing it, not simply the University’s inexhaustible capacity to serve up novel and intriguing issues, but the recognition that there is always, inevitably, a gap between Harvard’s ambitious ideals and their fulfillment,” Goodheart added.
The Harvard Gazette, a University-run publication, wrote in an article that Goodheart’s new position in Harvard’s top administration will entail “a wide range of duties drawing on his extensive experience in areas relating to institutional policies, presidential
priorities, and planning of major University events.”
But Goodheart is also known among Harvard leadership for his prose and sense of humor — including the elaborate puns that mark the conferral of honorary degrees during Commencement.
“I have reached a time in life when hardly a day goes by when my mail at home doesn’t include at least one advertisement for a Medicare plan,” Goodheart wrote.
BY S. MAC HEALEY AND SAKETH SUNDAR CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
Harvard Law School’s Black Law Students Association endorsed professor David B. Wilkins ’77 and controversial former Winthrop House Faculty Deans Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. and Stephanie R. Robinson in the search for a new dean. If Wilkins, Sullivan, or Robinson are tapped to helm the Law School, they would be the first Black dean in the history of HLS. None responded to requests for comment on the endorsement. A professor at HLS since 1986 and a vice dean since 2009, Wilkins was pointed to as a potential candidate by a number of faculty members who spoke to The Crimson last month. He was previously endorsed by 10 HLS affinity groups, including BLSA, in the 2017 dean search that selected Manning. BLSA’s endorsement cited Wilkins’ clerkship for Thurgood Marshall, tenure as Vice Dean for Global Initiatives on the Legal Profession, and position as a faculty associate at Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics for “his place as a towering figure in legal ethics.” Robinson has been a lecturer at Harvard Law School since 2007. For their endorsement, BLSA cit-
ed her experience in media as well as her service as Chief Counsel for Sen. Ted Kennedy ’56 and as president and CEO of the Jamestown Project think tank.
Sullivan, a professor of criminal law, is the faculty director of the Harvard Trial Advocacy Workshop. He also serves as a faculty advisor to BLSA and was president of the group as a student at the Law School.
Robinson and Sullivan, who are married, served as the faculty deans of Winthrop House from 2009 to 2019. When appointed, they became the first Black faculty deans at the College. However, Sullivan and Robinson’s tenure at Winthrop house was marred by controversy. When Sullivan joined Harvey Weinstein’s legal team, he faced protests for more than three months in 2019, ranging from graffiti and sit-ins to students requesting house transfers.
Towards the end of Sullivan and Robinson’s term, College administrators launched a “climate review” of Winthrop House following concerns from residents about the house’s environment and support for students. Just one day after more than a dozen Winthrop House staff members told The Crimson that Sullivan and Robinson created a hostile work environment for over
a decade, Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana announced that their contract would not be renewed and Winthrop House affiliates said the environment improved after they were dismissed.
At the time, the BLSA criticized College administrators’ investigation of the Winthrop House climate, calling it an “outsized response” with “racist undertones.”
The BLSA did not mention Sullivan and Robinson’s tenure at Winthrop House in their endorsement.
BLSA also outlined criteria they would like the search committee to take into consideration and policy goals they hope the next dean will commit themselves to, including expansions of the Low Income Protection Program, the Summer Public Interest Funding program, and clinical programs focused on racial justice.
BLSA also wrote that they hope the next dean will hire another critical race theory scholar to be a professor at HLS and “codify curricula requirements surrounding the legal history of enslavement and broad disenfranchisement of people of color.”
BLSA did not comment on whether Wilkins, Robinson, or Sullivan agreed with these criteria for the next dean, or goals for HLS.
Harvard may have more freedom to decide how to handle its research misconduct cases under new federal rules designed to make cases easier to bring forward and resolve.
The changes — announced on Sept. 12 by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity — reduce the burden of cases on research integrity offices while making it easier for whistleblowers to come forward. The revisions come after the office received more than 200 comments on the proposed changes last year, which were criticized for being too stringent.
The new guidelines — the first changes to the policy since 2005 — come in the wake of a string of research misconduct allegations against several prominent researchers affiliated with hospitals in the Boston area.
Earlier this year, four executives at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a top neuroscientist at the Brigham and Women’s
Hospital were accused of falsifying data in their papers.
The allegations of research misconduct have also struck Harvard affiliates. In early September, a federal judge dismissed defamation charges filed by Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino against the University, whose tenure was placed under review in July after being accused of data manipulation in 2021.
“We are grateful for this collaborative approach and believe it has resulted in a final rule that will be better for not only administrators, but also for the research and academic mission,” Kristin Bittinger, HMS dean for faculty and research integrity, wrote in an emailed statement to The Crimson.
“The changes include important extensions to previously unrealistic timelines, to the statute of limitations and to the development of an institutional record,” Bittinger wrote.
In addition to relaxing the timelines for cases, the changes also remove a proposed rule to transcribe all interviews during the inquiry and assessment
‘the HSRP shouldn’t do its job too well.’’” Cellini added in his statement that he has “publicly rejected the idea that the HSRP ever could, would, or should limit the number of descendants it finds; fail to do its job to the best of its ability.” Kennedy O’Reilly disputed Cellini’s allegations against Bleich, saying he was never instructed to limit the number of descendants identified.
Despite the internal turmoil, the Remembrance Program’s work remains ongoing. One person familiar with the work said that they expect the final number of living descendants and enslaved individuals identified to be far higher than the number identified so far.
phase and allow for “honest errors” to be found at any stage in a proceeding — allowing officers to finish these cases early on in the inquiry process rather than escalating to an investigation. Though the HMS research integrity policy will be revised in light of the change, “the overall impact will be more administrative than substantive with regard to our oversight of integrity matters,” Bittinger wrote.
“I am not sure if the revised regulations will materially impact the experience of whistleblowers,” she added. In an interview with The Crimson, Holden H. Thorp, the editor-in-chief of Science — a premier journal in which prominent Boston-area researchers have published — pointed to the limitations of the new rules.
“In some cases, they made it possible for institutions to be more transparent about what they’re doing,” Thorp said. Still, he said, “it doesn’t go nearly far enough in terms of stating that the institutions have an obligation to inform the public when they have concerns about the paper.” Thorp pointed to a small change in language: While the original proposed rule stated that research journals “shall” be notified about certain aspects of investigations, the modified rule states that journals “may” be informed.
“I’d be very pleasantly surprised if any institution interpreted the word ‘may’ as meaning that they should be more responsive to us,” Thorp said.
“In my opinion, they have prioritized the fear of bad publicity and litigation that the institutions have over their obligations to be direct with the taxpayers and other scientists,”
PROTESTS PERSIST.
Pro-Palestine protesters returned to Widener Library during a rally on Wednesday, despite disciplinary threats.
BY HIRAL M. CHAVRE AND SAMUEL A. CHURCH, CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
Roughly 60 student protesters gathered outside the Science Center Plaza before walking through Harvard Yard and gathering in front of Widener Library during a rally on Wednesday protesting Israel’s recent attacks in Lebanon.
The rally was aimed at protesting Harvard’s “material and moral complicity” in Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, according to an online flier for the event. It also came just days after University administrators threatened to take disciplinary action against students following a pro-Palestine “study-in” at Widener on Saturday.
The rally was one of many protests organized by Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine, a coalition of unrecognized pro-Palestine student groups. In addition to the student protesters, roughly eight counterprotesters were in attendance, presenting portraits of
Israeli people with the caption, “murdered by Hamas.” They also held up the Israeli flag and chanted “free our hostages” throughout the rally.
The rally featured student speakers and other organizers who led attendees in chants including a call for an “intifada,” “hands off Lebanon,” and a reading of news excerpts regarding the Israeli attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon last week.
Mia Montrose ’26, an organizer with the African and African American Resistance Organization, delivered remarks to the protesters, demanding Harvard “disclose” and “divest” — a reference to the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement aimed at severing Harvard’s ties with Israel.
Speakers then discussed the controversial execution of Marcellus Williams in Missouri on Tuesday, comparing his struggle to that of Palestine.
“We must remember that the same system that lynched Marcellus Williams is committing the genocide of the Palestinian people,” said Prince A. Williams ’25, a speaker at the event and a Crimson Editorial editor.
“It’s settler colonialism. It’s white supremacy,” he added.
Violet T.M. Barron ’26, another speaker at the event and a Crim-
BY HIRAL M. CHAVRE AND SAMUEL A. CHURCH CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
The Harvard Undergraduate Ukraine Solidarity Group, an organization hoping to raise awareness around issues facing Ukrainian people, announced their intention to apply for official recognition from the College on Saturday. The group would become the first undergraduate organization aimed at explicitly promoting Ukrainian cultural identity. The organization’s founding comes amidst Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
Co-presidents Mariia Hnatiuk ’27 and Mariia Solovii ’27 said it is “important” to have a space where Ukrainian students can come together and share experiences.
“There’s countries like Spain, Italy, France that already are really embedded in the culture of Harvard,” she said. “For Ukraine, it’s very different, because we are a country that has only been independent for 30-something years.”
“So in the long term, we just want to make Ukraine a permanent thing at Harvard,” Solovii added. Hnatiuk and Solovii also described their unique experiences as
Ukrainian students coming to Harvard during an ongoing war in their home country.
“I came from a place where my home was destroyed and my family had to internally move within Ukraine,” Hnatiuk said, adding that she had hoped for a “strong Ukrainian presence” at Harvard that would provide her emotional support to deal with the conflict’s fallout.
“I can’t say that I really got that when I came because there were basically only four of us,” Hnatiuk added. Solovii described her trouble finding others who could understand her experiences, as most Harvard students “haven’t themselves gone through the beginning of a war.”
She added that sharing her experiences with peers at Harvard became difficult because of their distressing nature, making her feel “a little bit lonely.” In addition to providing a support network, HUUSG has plans to collaborate with other Harvard organizations — such as the Harvard Undergraduate Romanian Association or the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ukraine Caucus — to plan events that celebrate Eastern European culture.
The co-presidents were also able to connect with Ukrainian leaders when First Lady Olena Zelenska spoke at an IOP event in Loeb House on Tuesday, something Hnatiuk said gave her and Solovii “a lot of inspiration.”
“It was very nice, we got to tell her that we were planning to make a club,” Solovii said. “We are very excited about being in closer cooperation with our government — not being a random club, but actually being supported by our own country.”
While HUUSG plans to provide a space for Ukrainian students, Hnatiuk and Solovii clarified that they wanted the group to be open to everyone.
“This is just really a space for anybody who wants to, first of all, help us further Ukrainian traditions on campus,” Solovii said.
The co-presidents said that even the organization’s name was chosen to be inviting non-Ukrainian students.
“We’re not going to be naming ourselves like a Ukrainian student club,” Solovii said. “We are incredibly open to really anybody who’s interested in whatever we do.”
hiral.chavre@thecrimson.com samuel.church@thecrimson.com
son Editorial editor, dismissed the administration’s threats from the Widener study-in.
“We know the administrative playbook all too well by now,” she said. “Do not let the administration have their way, do not let this suppression have the exact effect that Zionists want it to have.”
“We have already forced their hand this far – now is not
the time to give up,” she added.
“Do not let a year of genocide make you complacent.”
The rally ended with a walk to Widener, where protesters continued to chant and assembled on the library steps.
In addition to protesters, around a dozen personnel from the Harvard University Police Department and Securitas were present as the protesters moved from the Science Center Plaza through the Yard. “We will continue to organize, to fight, because the steadfastness of the Palestinian people, the steadfastness of the Lebanese people, are unlocking the consciousness of the world,” Williams said.
hiral.chavre@thecrimson.com samuel.church@thecrimson.com
of Harvard’s operations as an institution of higher education as part of that “core function” — such as admissions, faculty hiring, curriculum, advocacy for research funding, and academic freedom.
For instance, the guidelines affirm Harvard’s decisions to issue statements in support of affirmative action and against Trumpera restrictions on travel from several Muslim-majority countries. But they exclude the possibility that the Harvard School of Public Health could take a stance on the Affordable Care Act.
The guidelines specifically discourage University leaders from making statements on events that garner public attention, including natural disasters and acts of mass violence.
It also instructs University officials to refrain from saluting, flying flags, or signing petitions. Members of Harvard leadership, however, would be allowed to attend a memorial event that acknowledges a “public tragedy and honors and remembers lives lost.”
The new guidelines urge “particular restraint” from high-level administrators, warning that statements they make could be easily interpreted as official University positions.
However, they also encourage caution from program leaders and department and area chairs, asking them to “indicate that they are not speaking for their institutional unit” when they publish opinions in their capacity as academics.
Messages posted on official social media accounts, websites, and email announcements will be considered official statements, according to the report.
Fung expressed cautious optimism about Harvard’s movement toward institutional neutrality but warned the policies could backfire if Harvard took them too far.
While Fung said he agrees that academic centers should not take official stances on individual policies or political candidates, he argued that some institutions — like the Ash Center — should be transparent about their goals.
“Our pro-democracy bias is not an outcome of a large investigation of many ways to govern human societies,” he said. “It’s a prior normative commitment that informs our work.”
Fung said he was also concerned that an institutional voice
policy that restricts statements by lower-level chairs and directors — not just Harvard’s top brass — could curb free speech instead of protecting it.
“Then I think what you’ve effectively done is chill the speech by extending it all the way down,” he said.
A Harvard spokesperson declined to comment on criticisms of the new guidelines.
Even before Harvard adopted its institutional voice principles in May, the University had already sought to encourage the leaders of academic centers and institutions to distance themselves from Harvard when issuing statements on matters of public interest.
Harvard Kennedy School professor Mathias Risse, who leads the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, wrote in an email that he received pushback from the school’s administration after his center issued a pair of statements in October 2023 that condemned Hamas’ attack on Israel and Israel’s large-scale retaliation in Gaza, while urging steps toward deescalation and long-term peace.
The statements were initially made on behalf of the Carr Center, but then-HKS Dean Douglas W. Elmendorf asked Risse and Carr Center Executive Director Maggie Gates to add notes asserting they represented only the views of the directors.
Risse and Gates complied, but Risse wrote in an email that they did so “reluctantly.”
“A human rights center as such should be permitted to articulate views on the world’s most visible human rights crisis, as long as it does so in moderate and reasonable ways,” Risse wrote.
Risse added that he believes statements like his and Gates’ would be compliant with the institutional voice principles. A Harvard spokesperson declined to comment on whether the institutional voice policy allows similar statements.
After administrators discussed the institutional voice report at a Sept. 13 training for undergraduate student employees at Harvard College’s diversity offices, some students felt they did not receive clear answers on what kind of statements their offices could issue.
Olivia F. Data ’26, who works at the Women’s Center, wrote in an email that she thought the new guidance remained unclear.
“If we constantly have to ask ourselves whether an email or flier or event goes against a bureaucratic policy, then that’s less focus we can devote to our primary goal — advocating for gender equity,” she wrote.
Aaryan K. Rawal ’26, who works at the Office of BGLTQ Student Life, wrote in a statement that they were surprised their statements might be restricted by a policy they thought was intended to govern high-level administrators.
“Are student employees considered ‘university leaders’ suddenly — and if we’re not, why were [equity, diversity, and inclusion] student workers subject to a half-baked training on institutional voice?” Rawal wrote. The new guidance also suggested that the College is trying to assert more control over statements by officially recognized student groups.
“Student organizations are subject to the policies of the Schools at which they are based. Schools will work with student organizations to ensure that any statements by those groups follow School policies and are not framed as representing the positions or views of the University or its constituent parts,” the document reads.
Harvard spokesperson Jason A. Newton declined to specify whether student groups will be required to vet statements with school officials or how the policy would be enforced.
“As always, student organizations are expected to abide by school and university policies, including the university’s long-standing use-of-name policies,” he wrote in a statement. “Student organizations with questions are encouraged to reach out to their local student affairs offices.”
BY AZUSA M. LIPPIT
CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
Adispute over the results of a leadership election in May for a University-wide Mexican affinity group spiraled into a monthslong vicious feud punctuated by allegations of corruption and personal attacks levied through mainstream Mexican news outlets.
But the infighting started weeks before the election of the Harvard University Mexican Association of Students as potential candidates argued over the rules and whether students who did not hold Mexican citizenship could vote in the election.
In an effort to ensure the election was conducted fairly, HUMAS’ outgoing leadership asked Associate Director for Student Engagement Marshall Page, a staff member in the Office of the Provost, to administer the process and count the votes.
A slate of candidates led by Abraham H. Majluf Rizo — a student in the Harvard Graduate School of Design — won the election. The group hoped to move past the turbulent electoral process, which caused a significant rift among Mexican students at Harvard, and begin planning for the next academic year. Then, their names and faces began to appear in the Mexican media.
A small group of students led an effort to feed negative news articles about the winning ticket to a number of American and Mexican media outlets, including The Crimson. The campaign even made its way to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who briefly addressed the electoral dispute in an August press conference.
While no HUMAS members have directly claimed responsibility for communicating with the media, private messages obtained by The Crimson revealed a small group of students affiliated with the losing ticket led the charge against Majluf and the perceived fraud in the election.
The YouTube videos and news articles amplified allegations of fraud in the HUMAS election, citing Majluf’s romantic relationship with Maria Jose Milla — the organization’s outgoing vice president — and a failure to adhere to the HUMAS bylaws.
In interviews with more than 40 current and former members of HUMAS, nearly all the students said the election
bylaws were old and it was hard to follow them exactly,” Mejia said.
Mejia said the reluctance to hold elections also came from a highly contested HUMAS election in 2016, — prompted by a perceived failure to adhere to the group’s bylaws — which was also escalated to University officials.
As some HUMAS alumni expected, history repeated itself.
president of the Harvard Graduate Council, and Page, the associate director for student engagement in the Office of the Provost — to oversee the election.
Having shifted responsibility to Monson and Page, the outgoing board viewed the issue as resolved. Milla said she stepped away from the administration of the election and had Magaña Ocana and Marco A. Noriega, the outgoing treasurer, lead the process to transfer power to the neutral observers.
“At that point, I removed myself from the process entirely,” Milla said.
‘It’s About Process’
Though Monson and Page were brought in to help manage the integrity of the election, the allegations of fraud only grew louder.
Canet said in an interview that the involvement of the neutral administrators in the election was unsatisfactory.
“We demanded someone external to oversee the process, because we did not trust the girlfriend of the candidate to oversee the process,” Canet said. “But Marshall has stated thousands of times that the only thing he did was counting the votes, that the rules of the process were internal.”
Beyond simply counting the number of votes, students on the losing ticket wanted Page to verify that each voter was a Mexican international student.
Canet said the outgoing HUMAS leadership told candidates that “only Mexican votes would count” and that they campaigned under that assumption. She said the lack of electoral observers made it impossible to verify after the election that only Mexican students voted.
terviewed for this article, described the complaint about “non-Mexican” students as invalid and even a violation of the University’s nondiscrimination policies.
Noriega, who is Mexican American, said it would be extremely difficult to verify that only Mexican international students voted in the election as it would be “pure, blatant discrimination” to ask for students’ nationalities.
“With all of the DACA rules and all that, there are many Mexican Americans who are culturally Mexican Americans but not even legally Mexican Americans. They’re Americans 100 percent,” Noriega said. “Mexicans come in all colors and flavors.”
should have been run better, but the process was not corrupt or fraudulent. Many students also said they were disappointed and unsettled that the winning slate was publicly shamed in the media.
Even Fernando Chavarria, a Harvard Medical School student who lost the HUMAS presidential election to Majluf, denounced the media crusade against the winning ticket.
“I was the president of that campaign — I don’t know where the ‘angry people’ is,” he said.
“I’m not angry, I’m not upset,” Chavarria added. “I understand that we lost.”
When the former executive board of HUMAS announced the start of the election process in April, it was the first election the group had held in more than four years.
Isabel Mejia Fontanot, who was president of HUMAS for the 2021-22 academic year, said the group refrained from holding elections because HUMAS’ bylaws were outdated, leaving the organization without a clear process for running leadership elections.
In recent years, the group transferred power by building a united “coalition” of all students interested in leadership.
“We knew that elections would be contested and that there would be controversy in different ways, just because the
In late February, Majluf, the boyfriend of HUMAS’ then-vice president, quietly reached out to some fellow HUMAS members and asked them to join his campaign.
Majluf’s effort incited the haphazard formation of an opposition group, according to Chavarria — the presidential nominee for the opposing slate of candidates.
“People who he didn’t call at the moment got a little bit upset and started creating this narrative of, ‘This is not fair, he is the boyfriend of the vice president, and he’s probably going to be the next president,” he said.
“To be honest, we didn’t let him invite us,” Chavarria added. “The moment we heard the gossip, people who were a little upset were contacting each other and forming another team.”
Though Chavarria was the presidential candidate, he said Harvard Kennedy School student Juan Pablo Pietrini Sanchez was the primary driver in creating the opposing campaign, which was eventually named “Todos Somos HUMAS.” Throughout the electoral process, Pietrini frequently raised concerns in meetings and the official HUMAS WhatsApp group chat about the handling of the election.
Due to the continued complaints about the conflict of interest, outgoing HUMAS president Monserrat Magaña Ocaña brought in two neutral observers — Brett A. Monson, then the
The most vocal members of HUMAS who voiced concerns about the election were Pietrini and Chavarria, as well as the losing slate’s treasurer Mariana J. Canet Atilano and HUMAS alumnus Sergio Herrera Carranza.
The criticisms largely stemmed from a perceived lack of compliance with the HUMAS bylaws which were inconsistent
University spokesperson Jason A. Newton declined to comment on Page’s involvement in the election.
In response to a request for comment, Monson directed The Crimson to a June document sent in the WhatsApp group by the outgoing board. The document states that the elections were “organized, su -
But Herrera said the inconsistent messaging about voter eligibility gave the losing ticket the impression that they were competing for a smaller voting base, saying it “seems like corruption.”
“Once the authority in the organization, which is the president, tells you ‘This is the eligibility,’ you take it for granted,” Herrera said. Canet said she “would accept the results” of the election if a representative of the losing team could verify that the list of voters was only Mexican students.
“If they showed the results and it showed that they had more Mexican votes, I would be fine with that,” Canet said.
“It’s not about winning, it’s about process,” she added.
The ‘Mafia’ and the Media
with Harvard’s student group handbook, the set of policies Monson and Page are instructed by the University to uphold.
Jaime Espinoza, another member of the losing ticket, said the process could have been improved with a longer election period and a preexisting voter registry of HUMAS members.
Two aspects of the electoral process stipulated by HUMAS bylaws — electoral observers and the restriction of voters to Mexican international students — were no longer applied after the transfer of power to Monson and Page.
pervised, executed, and validated by the Provost’s Office in conjunction with the Harvard Graduate Council.”
The central complaint that emerged was that the number of votes exceeded the Office of International Education’s published data on the number of enrolled Mexican international students. Only 104 Mexican international students were enrolled for the 2022-23 academic year, while 144 people voted in HUMAS’ May election.
But almost everyone else, including the winning and outgoing boards, Page, and many rank-and-file members in -
The election ended with the slate of candidates led by Majluf earning the most votes, but the small group of students who had previously voiced concerns about the process did not immediately concede the race. Instead, they got the president of Mexico involved. In late May, reporters for The Crimson began receiving cryptic text messages about “very corrupt acts” that took place during the HUMAS election. Soon after, on June 13, notable Mexican journalist Hernán Gómez posted a nearly nine-minute video to his 144,000 YouTube subscribers about the HUMAS election. The video singled out Majluf and Milla, suggesting that their relationship was evidence of corruption in the
SEPTEMBER 27, 2024
mez also pointed to the friendship between Milla and Magaña — the former HUMAS president — as additional evidence of collusion in the election.
The video marked the beginning of a successful campaign led by Pietrini, Canet, and Chavarria to convince mainstream Mexican media outlets to amplify their criticisms of the HUMAS election. Similar versions of the story reported by Gómez appeared in five other Mexican newspapers, including La Razón de México and El Popular México. Pietrini authored a document titled “Articulo HUMAS,” or “HUMAS article,” that outlined the group’s complaints with the handling of the election and referred to the electoral ticket led by Majluf as “the mafia.”
“In the end the result of the election was 81 votes in favor of the mafia and 63 for the other students. 144 votes in total,” the document stated. “The problem is that according to information from the Harvard International Office itself, there are only 104 Mexican students at Harvard.”
While Canet acknowledged in an interview that she collaborated on the effort to tell Mexican journalists about the turmoil within HUMAS, she later distanced herself from the effort and maintained that she did not personally reach out to any journalists.
“I highly doubt that someone will come forward and say, ‘Hey, I did it,’” Canet said. Pietrini, however, acknowledged his role in a statement on Wednesday.
“I am very proud to have con -
tributed to the investigative and complaint documents that were made, and like other alumni and students, such as Fernando Chavarría at the time, I sought to have them published in the media,” Pietrini wrote.
“I applaud the people who managed to get this published in the media, as it required a lot of courage because there were threats to try to keep the issue hidden, and many who complained have been excluded from the groups managed by the new HUMAS committee,” Pietrini. “They should be very proud of raising their voices.”
According to May text messages obtained by The Crimson, Pietrini’s document was created with the intention of sending it to “pro-4T” media organizations, referring to newspapers that are favorable toward the incumbent president of Mexico. In August, a journalist asked López Obrador, the Mexian president, about HUMAS and the alleged electoral “fraud” during one of his regular press conferences.
Rather than waving the question off, López Obrador addressed the scandal for nearly five minutes, using it as an opportunity to make a convoluted point blasting his political opponents and their former Harvard affiliations.
The media storm in Mexico about the HUMAS elections died down in the weeks after the press conference with López Obrador, but some students have continued to discuss the fallout with Harvard administrators.
In an Aug. 26 email to Canet, Page wrote that he and Associate Provost for Student Affairs Robin Glover “asked the HU -
MAS leadership to undertake an internal review in the early fall to analyze voting processes and procedures of the group.”
Canet also expressed some regret about her approach to the contested HUMAS election.
“I am never going to say that what they did was right, never,” Canet said. “And I’m going to die saying that.”
“But in terms of being a leader and being an asset for the
community, maybe instead of confronting them so much, now that I look back, maybe I could have worked with them to perfect the electoral process for the future generations,” she added.
Majluf said in an interview that as HUMAS president, he intends to embrace a message of unity for the rest of his tenure.
“I don’t think it’s about looking at the past and trying to de -
stroy things,” he said. I think right now, the purpose should be, ‘Hey, how can we rebuild,’”
Majluf said.
“This is a student organization,” he added. “This is not a political party, this is not government — coming to Harvard is a dream come true for everyone here, and everyone has the right to explore that dream.”
Harvard Business School student Regina Gomez Aguirre said that the bickering of the election made her become disillusioned with HUMAS.
“My understanding of the group was that it was just a support group where we would share, like, ‘Where can I find a good salsa or where can I find tacos?’” Gomez said. “And then, suddenly, everything was blown out of proportion.”
azusa.lippit@thecrimson.com
Students may lose the option to count General Education courses toward their graduation requirements if they are taken pass-fail, Harvard College’s Program in General Education confirmed Wednesday.
Currently, students across the College must take General Education courses across four categories. Though three of the four must be taken for a letter grade, students can opt to take one course pass-fail.
Laura E. Hess, the co-director of the program, wrote in a statement Wednesday that the Standing Committee on General Education unanimously decided last spring to eliminate that option.
Still, the proposal will face a series of votes before it becomes official policy: it will be reviewed by the Standing Committee on Undergraduate Educational Policy and the Faculty Council before coming to a final vote of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Because of the procedural hurdles facing the proposal, it is unclear whether it will go into effect before the end of the academic year.
College spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo declined to comment for this article.
The syllabus for Gen Ed 1025: “Happiness,” taught by Philosophy professor Susanna Rinard, initially stated that students would not be able to fulfill the Ethics & Civics General Education requirement by taking the course pass-fail. A teaching fellow for the class sent out an announcement to students correcting the syllabus in late August. “This is incorrect; although there are plans for the near future to prevent students from using courses taken pass/fail to
fullfill Gen Ed requirements, doing so is still allowed by current policies,” the announcement read.
Rinard said that when she created the syllabus for her course, she “had been under the misimpression that a policy change had already taken place” but later discovered that it was not in effect.
The proposed change comes at a time when faculty are in -
creasingly concerned about the College’s curriculum becoming too lax. In recent years, professors have debated tightening undergraduate language requirements and sounded the alarm about grade inflation at Harvard.
Alexa R. Muller ’28 said that the proposed change could affect students taking more difficult classes, “especially with Gen Eds being a lighter load for
on campus in the last month. At a Sunday event hosted by the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance, security measures included dozens of personnel from the Cambridge Police Department, Longwood Campus Security, Securitas, and HUPD. According to an HUPD officer, the Secret Service was also present. A Secret Service officer flew a drone over Annenberg through the duration of the event.
HUPD Spokesperson Steven G. Catalano declined to comment, citing department policy. The Secret Service did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.
A University spokesperson also declined to comment for this arti-
cle. HUPD also stationed a Mobile Command Center behind Annenberg during the HJAA event. More than one week ago, the Command Center was also parked in the Science Center Plaza where over 1,000 affiliates, including Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76, gathered for Shabbat 1000. Harvard Hillel Rabbi Jason B. Rubenstein wrote in a statement that HUPD recently increased the security provided to Hillel in response to a Mezuzah that briefly went missing from a student’s door earlier this month. Rubenstein added that the measures are in response to a nationwide increase in hate crimes against Jewish people during the last year.
“The increased HUPD presence is highly appreciated by our students and community, especially given that over the past weekend several unrecognized Harvard-affiliated groups slandered Harvard Hillel and Chabad as accomplic-
es to genocide and mass murder,” Rubenstein wrote.
HUPD first increased their presence on campus in response to increased threats against students — including doxxing attacks and online threats — following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel last year.
CPD spokesperson Robert Goulston wrote in a statement that CPD has managed protests regularly on Cambridge university campuses since October 2023. He added that CPD relies on a Memorandum of Understanding with HUPD which outlines how CPD will assist if needed on Harvard’s campus.
“Throughout the entire process, we have been actively working with our partners to make sure we have a situational awareness of all the protests in our area,” Goulston said.
Danny O. Denenberg ’26, the Israel Chair of the Hillel Board who spoke at the event Sunday, said that high levels of security are now
“very normal” for Jewish events on campus.
“I think something that’s very Jewish is getting used to seeing security at a lot of events,” Denenberg said. “It’s just a sad part, I think, about when you get a lot of Jewish people together, there’s always going to be tight security.” Rubenstein wrote that while he appreciates Harvard’s “immediate steps” to provide greater security, the lack of day-to-day security places an “unsustainable financial burden” on Hillel, as the center pays for its own building security presence out of pocket.
“We hope that Harvard will build on its provision of police, by providing day-to-day protection for its Jewish students and institutions, and making clear that the safety of Harvard’s Jewish community is a priority for the University,” Rubenstein wrote.
most students.” “I think the more options, the better,” Muller said, adding the pass-fail option is valuable for students who are “engaged in a course and are wanting to take it, but aren’t willing to dedicate the time” to taking it for a letter grade.
Rinard — who, like all tenured professors, will have the chance to vote on the proposal before it is finalized — said she is of a split mind about its utility.
“On the one hand, we don’t want students to be under undue stress and pressure. We want them to be able to enjoy the learning experience,” Rinard said. “On the other hand, we want students to put in the time and effort required.” “So the question is, how best to do that?” she added.
the complaint. In November of 2019, Entity A’s receiver demanded $4 million from SPay. Palazzo was terminated from SPay in April 2020. The lawsuit alleges that in 2019 Palazzo formed 4TA Sports as a company he could use to buy back STACK from SPay.
According to the SEC, Palazzo then targeted two former teammates and convinced them to each invest $250,000. Palazzo allegedly used a funding agreement signed by a codefendant in a separate civil lawsuit to misleadingly convince them that he had raised $5 million for the company.
While Palazzo and his codefendant were raising money to help deal with a civil suit, the SEC’s complaint alleged the sum was closer to $1 million not $5 million and was not intended for repurchasing STACK.
Palazzo also sold both former teammates “secured promissory
was facing, debts, vacations, and private school tuition. This included allegedly sending $250,000 to Entity A’s receiver. In the second scheme, the SEC claims Palazzo fraudulently solicited investor money for the development of Play Caller Sports
IMPORTANT INITIATIVE. It shouldn’t have taken Harvard nearly 400 years to reckon with its ties to slavery. Now that it’s started, the University can’t afford to rush.
It shouldn’t have taken Harvard nearly 400 years to reckon with its ties to slavery. Now that it’s started, the University can’t afford to rush.
Five years, two faculty chairs, and an executive director later, recent reporting suggests that Harvard is doing just that. Affiliates involved with the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative describe internal leadership strife, pressure from the University to prioritize press releases over progress, and instructions to limit or dilute its work.
The University is right to regard this initiative as urgent. Few causes appear to us more important than redressing its abominable history of chattel slavery. But it would be an embarrassment — and a grave disrespect to the victims of that history — to rush through, slapdash, a sloppy product for good PR.
Reparation is valuable for reparation’s sake. Harvard and its affiliates did horrible things to at least 300 enslaved people. The University must atone for those sins, and for the ill-gotten gains it reaped from them. And after this past year, the University owes it to the Harvard community, Black affiliates especially, to show that it cares about racial justice. In January, Harvard’s first Black president resigned after a campaign against her full of racist vitriol. Shortly thereafter, three other Black Harvard academics — including the school’s chief diversity and inclusion officer — faced targeted attacks on their scholarly credentials. And now, after the fall of affirmative action, Black enrollment in the Class of 2028 has dropped four percentage points. Yes, reckoning with Harvard’s legacy of slavery is more urgent than ever. The University can afford
neither to drag its feet nor to carelessly rush the process. But somehow, Harvard seems to be doing both. Waves of resignations and bureaucratic infighting have hamstrung H&LS’ progress. At the same time, initiative staff allege that administrators looking to churn out public-facing updates have pressured them to rush their work, neglecting essential
priorities like community engagement and careful outreach to the descendants of enslaved people Harvard affiliates owned.
We trust that the academics working on this initiative do so with its best interests in mind. While it’s hard to read the tea leaves of office politics, we’re inclined to believe them when they say they’re being
BY VANDER O.B. RITCHIE
In a way I never would have expected, religion has played a deeply important part of my life at Harvard.
My freshman year, I took a remarkable class — GENED 1069: Faith and Authenticity: Religion, Existentialism, and the Human Condition. At the intersection of Judeo-Christian studies and continental philosophy, the class forced me to engage with religion in a serious way, which I hadn’t for many years. Since then, questions of freedom, faith, and purpose have stuck in my brain.
These questions have lingered as I have further explored religious life on campus with my girlfriend Neha. Neha grew up Hindu, occasionally going to one of the numerous, gorgeous temples scattered throughout her home state of New Jersey. At home, temple is a place of comfort, to which she has turned for spiritual and personal advice during difficult times. More importantly, it has served her and her family as a place of community, where they can gather with other South Asian people. At Harvard, though, Neha has often felt disillusioned with, and uncomfortable in, Hindu religious
spaces — specifically Canaday basement, which houses Harvard Hindu students association Dharma. She feels the space is cramped and dilapidated, and that being shoved into the basement of a freshman dorm has suppressed what should otherwise be a thriving religious community.
Religious faith is, of course, personal, but it is also communal. The clear inequity in the resources available to those of minority faiths at Harvard isn’t just unfortunate in that it makes worship uncomfortable — it also stunts the development of meaningful communities.
Conversations with Neha inspired me to join her at a meeting of Dharma for aarti, a Hindu worship ritual. Neha led me by the hand to the basement of Canaday, infamously Harvard’s ugliest freshman dorm, to a room smaller than many classrooms at Harvard. South Asian students — maybe around 50 — crowded in until it was full to bursting.
Despite the temperate weather outside, the room was unbearably hot, and the mass of people made it difficult to move around, to stand, and especially to sit, as everyone does for a minute of meditative reflection during aarti. (Sitting is made even harder by the mice that have been known to scurry around the premises.)
Neha has told me that she often returns from aar-
ti frustrated, and that frustration keeps her from attending as often as she otherwise might. It’s not difficult to see why. Even with the lively group gathered there, standing in the basement, it’s hard not to feel as though Harvard has treated its Hindu students as an afterthought. After attending aarti once, I couldn’t help but think about how much Hindu students, especially those working hard to run Dharma, could benefit from access to a proper prayer space.
On the walk back from Dharma, Neha told me about how she learned “Om Jai Lakshmi Mata” — a Hindi song dedicated to the goddess Lakshmi — from her grandmother, and how she remembers her mom singing it, and what a beautiful voice her mom has. She was, and still is, upset that something so meaningful to her is now so inaccessible.
My experience exploring Catholicism at Harvard has been a totally different story. I’ve had the chance to attend mass at St. Paul’s, the gigantic, beautiful Catholic church on Bow Street. The Harvard Catholic community, though relatively small, is strong.
The Harvard Catholic Center, meanwhile, has guest talks from popular bishops from around the country, weekend retreats for Catholic students, and guest lectures on topics like Philosophy and Theology. That’s not to mention that our services are led by actual, professional clergy.
unduly rushed.
To be clear, the Legacy of Slavery Initiative has made some real progress. We applaud its $6 million effort to digitize and preserve collections of African American history held at historically Black colleges and universities. Ditto for the newly established Du Bois Scholars program, which brings HBCU students to campus for a summer research internship.
If designed with proper input from descendants and stakeholders, the proposed physical memorial could be a striking public reminder of the darkest chapters of Harvard’s history. It’s a shame the University has left the artists who submitted proposals for it in the lurch by requesting plans seemingly before they were ready to evaluate them. Of course, memorializing the past is not enough. Harvard must show the depth of its commitment to racial justice today. That starts with robust outreach to living descendants of those enslaved by campus leaders — all of them. No stone can be left unturned when it comes to grappling with the University’s sordid
–This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.
It is almost comically depressing to compare the worship spaces available to me and other Christians with those afforded to Hindu students, or, for that matter, almost any student who doesn’t take Christ to be their lord and savior. Last Saturday, Harvard saw the first South Asian convocation, at which more than 200 students and faculty members gathered in Epworth Church to celebrate South Asian students. Held by Harvard’s South Asian Student Association, the event was social and community-driven. Students dressed up in kurtas and sarees and lehengas to celebrate each other. Look around. Harvard has a lot of South Asian students. Like everyone else, many of those students value celebrating their culture, whether it be through social events, religious services, or holiday celebrations. A robust foundation for doing so requires improved physical spaces and concrete financial support from the institution. If Harvard really cares about diversity, as it absolutely should, they must take religious life for all students seriously.
BY CHANDEN A. CLIMACO
T he diversity argument used to be my favorite defense of affirmative action.
It’s both simple and easily quantifiable: All the studies, I’d been told, say that using admissions preferences to build a racially diverse class not only helps minority students but also the student body as a whole. It’s appealing and, to my mind, intuitive that a class of students with a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives would perform better and think more creatively than a homogeneous one. The only trouble? If you look into “all the studies,” the evidence just isn’t there. There’s precious little proof that racial diversity improves academic performance, and the durability of that myth masks the real reason we should support affirmative action: that it’s the right thing to do. In a seminal paper published in 2003, three researchers used survey data from over 4,000 students, faculty, and administrators at U.S. universities to demonstrate that higher levels of racial diversity were associated with a decrease in the satisfaction of faculty and administrators with the university’s quality of education and the academic readiness of students at their institutions.
One 2015 study examined group project work in an undergraduate management class to see whether age, gender, and racial diversity affected outcomes. While the gender and age composition of groups did have an impact on performance, racial diversity did not influence either individual or group outcomes.
In addition, in 2020, researchers analyzing
more than 30,000 third-graders in 278 schools found that racial diversity improved grades and standardized test scores for white students, but hurt academic achievement for minority students — even after controlling for socioeconomic factors — and found a negative correlation between racial diversity and overall academic performance.
This same phenomenon has also been observed in the context of higher education.
One of the most famous series of diversity studies — by McKinsey — indicated that racial diversity among company executives could increase corporate profit. With over 1,300 citations, the original paper has become a cornerstone of the diversity argument, fueling the push to increase the number of minorities sitting on corporate boards.
But since the paper was published, multiple studies — the latest from this year — have failed to replicate McKinsey’s findings.
After Students for Fair Admissions first filed its lawsuit against Harvard’s over its affirmative action policies in 2014, the University convened a committee tasked with studying the benefits of student body diversity. But as far as I can tell, it cites only qualitative, anecdotal evidence. The most quantitative it gets are self-reported figures about the value of diversity from Harvard’s own student surveys. Indeed, in all my research — and, trust me, I looked — I couldn’t find a single convincing study indicating that racial diversity has a statistically significant positive effect on educational outcomes.
I’m no expert in educational policy. Maybe
I’m missing something glaringly obvious. But the
more I research, the harder it becomes to argue with the empirics: Diversity alone does not generate educational benefits.
It’s a hard pill to swallow. The diversity argument is appealing because it’s easy. Easy to swallow, easy to argue, easy to see. It turns affirmative action into a game of numbers and checkboxes — just make sure you get a racially proportionate incoming class and you’re good.
Many of us have an intuition that there’s something hollow about that conception. The real value of affirmative action doesn’t lie in the vague promise that sitting next to someone who looks different makes us smarter or more open-minded, and it certainly doesn’t lie in its benefits for Harvard’s marketing.
Affirmative action aims to address society’s deep unfairness, the unfairness that begins with a random lottery at birth, where some face sixfoot hurdles from the start while others face none at all. That’s where we should focus our arguments — not on the flimsy premise that the mere presence of diversity magically makes us all better students.
Harvard recently released some (very, condemnably) murky data indicating a decline in Black enrollment. These numbers — and even more alarming ones from schools like MIT — are an unmistakable sign that, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision outlawing affirmative action, the very real barriers facing some minority populations have only grown taller.
But obsessing over the demographic composition of Harvard’s incoming class misses the forest for the trees. Should our focus be on whether classes are 18 percent Black instead of 14? Two
percent Native American instead of one? Fourtenths of a percent Estonian instead of, say, twotenths?
It’s all a bit shallow. Race can be a decent proxy for disadvantage, but treating it as the endall-be-all oversimplifies inequality. Race alone doesn’t consider geography or disability or access to extracurriculars or secondary school quality or, most critically, wealth. I struggle to believe a percentage-point bump in the Black population meaningfully addresses injustice if those slots are being taken by students from privileged backgrounds, regardless of race.
Racial diversity can and should be a natural outcome of addressing systemic injustices. But when we reverse that order — seeking diversity first and justice second — we only reinforce the very disparities we want to dismantle.
The path to a just society is hard, and I won’t try to parse out the particulars of the changes we should make to admissions policy. Maybe we need (much stronger) class-conscious admissions, or the end of legacy and athlete preferences, or a greater emphasis on recruiting in underrepresented communities. Maybe we need all of them and more. What matters is not the particular mix of preferences but that the telos of any such proposal is justice.
If fairness comes first, diversity will follow. In a Harvard that recognizes that — a Harvard which reflects the society we hope to build — diversity will be the proof, not the purpose, of our commitment to real and lasting justice. – Chanden A. Climaco ’27, a Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Quincy House.
RIDICULOUS RULES. The University’s current policies — and their seemingly subjective enforcement — are a step beyond inane. They are reactionary and targeted.
arvard now polices affiliates for not register-
Hing their protests, using megaphones at rallies, writing messages about puppies in chalk — and now, just when we thought the administration couldn’t stoop lower, they’ve threatened discipline against students for participating in a silent demonstration.
On Saturday afternoon, around 30 pro-Palestine student protesters staged a silent “emergency studyin” at Widener Library in protest of a wave of Israeli attacks against Hezbollah last week.
In response to the protest — which consisted of students clad in keffiyehs silently studying with signs attached to their computers — Harvard administrators misguidedly threatened disciplinary action.
On Friday, Associate Dean for Student Engagement
Jason R. Meier informed the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee that the sit-in was “a violation of Harvard’s policies and participants may be subject to follow-up as appropriate.”
That may be the case — but the policy itself is absurd.
Students with keffiyehs and PSC laptop stickers have become a common sight on campus, making it impossible to tell the difference between a politically active student and a protestor.
We can’t help but wonder: Is every student in a Trump hat or Harris t-shirt protesting? The administration is powerless to tell the difference. Their sweeping policy only invites profiling, and we applaud the protestors for laying bare the University’s hypocrisy.
This recent form of protest is unobjectionable. It conveyed its message with minimal disruption to the function of the University and aligned with the spirit of Harvard’s Statement on Rights and Responsibilities, the University-wide document that regulates student protest.
Furthermore, administrators made far more noise taking students’ ID numbers in the Loker reading
room than the protesters themselves: If the University truly cared about preventing disruptions in Widener Library, they would not have made a ruckus interfering with the demonstration.
Last year’s chaos arose from a patchwork of rules enforced completely ad hoc. We demand more clarity: Why was this study-in considered a protest? Was it because there were signs affixed to laptops? Was it because the PSC and affiliated groups publicized it as such? And why did Harvard suddenly decide to start enforcing these rules?
As every liberal arts student knows, one must follow his or her argument through to its logical conclusion: If a professor posts a sign to their classroom door notifying students that class had been moved, we can’t imagine they would be disciplined. Yet Harvard takes issue with student activists’ “unapproved signage.”
Harvard needs to learn a lesson. Its guidelines were always inane, and now — between the chalking regulations and its response to the study-in — that inanity is on full display.
We’re not saying protest should be unregulat-
BY ALLISON P. FARRELL
Two tenured professors, Edward J. Hall and Kathleen M. Coleman, were recently appointed to the College’s Administrative Board, bringing an end to three years of disciplinary decisions proceeding without tenured faculty input beyond the dean of the College.
(Prior to Hall and Coleman’s appointments, the Ad Board was made up entirely of resident deans, administrators, and non-ladder faculty.)
The news comes following tense relations between the faculty and the Ad Board: Last spring, the Ad Board imposed penalties that prevented 13 seniors from graduating at Commencement due to their participation in the pro-Palestinian encampment in Harvard Yard — though most of the students received their diplomas over the summer following faculty and student outcry.
Hopefully, by placing faculty on the Ad Board, the disciplinary body can better reflect the views and values of the entire Harvard community, of which tenured faculty are a key constituency.
But, while this change is certainly welcome, it’s time to think bigger and push Harvard to make a bolder transformation.
It’s time to give students representation on the Ad Board.
It is time to ask: How can Harvard treat its students facing disciplinary action with fairness, dignity, and respect?
The answer must lie in reimagining Harvard’s disciplinary system to be oriented around the school’s community as a whole.
If Harvard’s rules and regulations are more than punitive measures passed down from above and instead serve as a shared foundation for campus life, then students — key members of that community — must play a role in interpreting and applying them.
While this change may be bold, it is not without precedent. There are already similar structures in place at Harvard and down the road at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At Harvard, we have the Honor Council. This body, whose membership includes not only faculty and administrators, but also students, is responsible for adjudicating cases of alleged academic misconduct. In the 2022–2023 academic year, the Honor Council primarily investigated issues of plagiarism and inappropriate collaboration.
Although these issues are far narrower than those addressed by the AdBoard, the powers associated with the body are not substantially different: The Honor Council can determine that a “change in status” is appropriate for a given student. The outcomes in such cases typically range from being placed on probation to be-
ing required to withdraw for anywhere from two to four terms.
A body even more similar to the Ad Board already operates with guaranteed student representation at MIT.
The Committee on Discipline, which has a mandate similar to the Ad Board, is composed of six faculty, six representatives of the administration, three graduate students, and three undergraduates. In fact, there has been student representation on the COD since at least 2013. If our peers and administrative leaders down Massachusetts Av. can make student representation work, there is no reason we cannot.
Some may worry that student representation on the Ad Board would increase the likelihood of personal biases interfering with (theoretically) impartial judgments.
While students would, of course, be required to recuse themselves in cases concerning friends or other close connections, there is no reason to presuppose that a student is more likely to be unduly swayed by personal opinion than a professor or administrator.
In fact, by including more diverse voices on the committee, the Board’s overall composition becomes less conducive to the individual biases that emerge from each particular role at the University.
When we envision what kind of school we want Harvard to be, it is only natural to desire a stake in the pro-
ed. The sensible response is a set of reasonable rules paired with consistent, even-handed enforcement. That said, it’s worth considering the origins of the fatuous “no demonstration in libraries” policy, which was almost certainly crafted in response to the PSC’s Widener study-in last December.
Harvard’s policies should not be designed to win favor with a hostile Congress. What we need is a sensible set of protest guidelines informed by input from faculty and students — those who learn, live, and teach here. The University’s current policies — and their seemingly subjective enforcement — are a step beyond inane. They are reactionary and targeted. Harvard must do better.
– This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.
cesses that impact our community’s makeup. While Harvard College is far from a large school, it is certainly not small either. To be a student requires some level of interaction not only with our instructors, advisors, and peers, but also with the Harvard bureaucracy. This is, evidently, even more true at our worst moments. No one wants to face disciplinary proceedings with the Ad Board.
But, if we take small steps — including students in these processes and crafting a jury composed partly of our peers — we can ensure that students facing disciplinary proceedings need not defend themselves before a completely opaque bureaucratic machine. To be a student here could mean being part of an interconnected, mutually responsible collective. In our status quo, however, as long as policies perpetuate a hierarchical enforcement of rules and regulations over a system of mutual accountability, respect, and understanding, any “justice” handed out by the Ad Board is merely admonishment from above.
If we want Harvard to serve as a community in the true sense of the word, then we must all play a part, even with the difficult aspects of living together. Harvard students are ready for the challenge: What we need is for the administration to give it to us.
–Allison P. Farrell ’26, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Philosophy concentrator in Leverett House.
BY MATTHEW R. TOBIN
The Harvard College Administrative Board has had a rough few months. After a series of controversial decisions, reversals, and re-reversals concerning student protestors involved in the encampment last spring, it’s clear that Harvard’s disciplinary process is in dire need of reform. The solution? Give students a seat at the table. The saga began back in May, when the Ad Board suspended five student protestors and placed more than 20 others on probation for their participation in the Harvard Yard encampment. The decision, which peremptorily prevented 13 seniors from graduating, immediately drew widespread criticism. What followed was a dizzying display of institutional infighting and whiplash. First, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences officially overruled the Ad Board, voting to confer degrees on the 13 censured seniors and declaring that the FAS “is the ultimate disciplinary body” for the College. Next, the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, stepped in on the side of the Ad Board, undercutting the authority of the FAS and reinstating the decision to prevent the 13 seniors from graduating. Ultimately, though, the Ad Board walked back
its decision anyway, reversing the five suspensions and releasing diplomas to 11 of the 13 seniors.
Whew. Clearly, something in that process went very wrong.
Regardless of where you stand on the encampment itself, or even on the appropriate disciplinary response from the University, one thing is certain: No one benefits from a civil war between the Ad Board and the FAS. Internal conflict at this scale undermines the University’s ability to make sound decisions. More broadly, the purpose of the Ad Board is to fairly enforce the rules in a way that fosters trust and maintains the well-being of the entire community. The fact that the FAS — the largest division at Harvard and the very people responsible for the intellectual development of its undergraduates — overwhelmingly overruled the Ad Board indicates that the Board has failed its mission and does not accurately represent the wishes of the students or faculty at Harvard. The Ad Board has lost touch with the community.
Part of the problem came from the fact that, for three years, only a single tenured faculty member, College Dean Rakesh Khurana, sat on the Ad Board. The rest consisted of resident deans, administrators, and non-ladder faculty. This year, two additional faculty have joined the Ad
Board, reasserting the FAS’s vested interest in disciplinary matters in an effort to restore the body’s legitimacy. But that doesn’t go far enough.
If the Ad Board truly wants to make decisions in the best interest of the Harvard community, it needs to turn to those who understand student affairs the best — namely, students themselves. The principle is simple: those closest to the issues should have a voice in their resolution. We trust juries of our peers in our legal system; why not in university disciplinary proceedings?
It isn’t a new idea to have students serve on governing bodies. Indeed, in July, Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 referred in an announcement to a historical body known as the University Committee on Rights and Responsibilities, which was designed to coordinate fact-finding for disciplinary cases and included “faculty and students designated by each school.”
Although the UCRR only involved students for fact-finding, there’s no reason that students, some of Harvard’s key community stakeholders, should not also be involved in the actual decision making process.
At several other schools, including Colgate University, students serve on their disciplinary boards. Even Harvard’s own Honor Council — which adjudicates academic integrity cases — contains students.
These examples demonstrate that students are trustworthy, capable, and discreet enough to make critical decisions about their peers without leaking classified information. Honor Council decisions are no less consequential than those issued by the Ad Board. So why not let students weigh in on Ad Board proceedings too?
It would be naive to imagine that all of the Ad Board’s problems would be resolved merely by adding students — or anybody else, for that matter. The Ad Board is tasked with deciding some of the most personal and contentious issues on our campus while balancing the interests of different University stakeholders, a responsibility that is undoubtedly challenging.
But at the very least, adding students would give a voice to a group otherwise unheard on the Board. Until that happens, the Ad Board will continue to make decisions that are out of touch with the stakeholders it exists to serve.
By embracing student representation, Harvard can create a more just, equitable, and effective disciplinary system — one that truly reflects the values and interests of its entire community.
–Matthew R. Tobin ’27, a Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Winthrop House.
H. Corcoran ’84, was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
According to the Massachusetts State Police, the crash “remains under investigation,” although no charges have been filed at this time.
ANewton man died after being hit by an SUV while riding his bicycle on Memorial Drive Monday evening, marking the third cyclist to die in a collision in Cambridge since June.
Massachusetts State Police and Cambridge Police responded to the crash in front of Boston University’s DeWolfe Boathouse at 5:45 pm on Monday. The cyclist, identified by police as John
“The preliminary investigation suggests that a man in his 20s lost control of his vehicle and struck a bicyclist,” State Police trooper James D. DeAngelis wrote in an email to The Crimson. “The bicyclist sustained serious injuries and was transported to Massachusetts General Hospital where he was pronounced dead.”
Corcoran, 62, graduated cum laude from Harvard College with a degree in English and American Literature and Language. He lived in Winthrop House.
The collision comes as the latest in a series of fatal crashes. Over the summer, a truck struck and killed a Florida woman riding her bike through Harvard Square. Only two weeks later, a second cyclist was killed by a truck in Kendall Square.
The cyclist deaths have caused many Cambridge resi-
BY AVANI B. RAI AND JACK R. TRAPANICK CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
The stretch of Memorial Drive where Newton cyclist John H. Corcoran ’84 was killed in a crash Monday evening was the subject of years of safety warnings from local politicians and transit activists.
The fatal crash reignited a debate over safety measures on Memorial Drive — which is overseen by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation & Recreation — especially the stretch on either side of the Boston University Bridge intersection.
According to Massachusetts State Police, who are still investigating the incident, a driver swerved onto the sidewalk and struck Corcoran, who was biking west about 500 feet from the intersection. By Wednesday, multiple bouquets of flowers had been hung in front of Boston University’s Dewolfe Boathouse to mark the site of the crash.
In the fallout from the tragedy, local transit activists accused DCR of dragging their heels on safety upgrades to the nearby intersection, which has long been known as dangerous for cyclists.
Bikers traveling west on Memorial Drive are forced to share a narrow, five-foot stretch of sidewalk with pedestrians before entering the busy intersection at the BU Bridge that puts cyclists into tight contact with fast-turning cars. An estimated 2,200 bikers cross the breach each day.
“The safety concerns especially at the BU Bridge intersection/ rotary has been known for years,” City Councilor Patty M. Nolan ’90 wrote in a statement to The Crimson.
Though Corcoran had not yet entered the intersection at the time of the crash, activists and local officials have called on DCR to implement traffic calming measures to encourage drivers to go slower before and after the intersection.
Two years ago, a group of residents formed the BU Bridge Safety Alliance to advocate for protected bike lanes in the bridge, widening the initial, narrow stretch of sidewalk to give pedestrians and cyclists more space, and limiting right turns during red lights.
“We know that configuration of this on-ramp and this sidewalk contributed to the death of the cyclist,” said Kenneth Carson, a co-founder of the alliance group.
“We firmly believe that if the changes that we have been asking for were implemented, the cyclist would not have died,” he added.
Members of the group were set to meet with DCR on Oct. 9 in a closed-door meeting to discuss the DCR’s plans for the area. In the aftermath of the crash, the DCR instead chose to release its planned safety improvements to the public.
According to a DCR spokesperson, those improvements will include building a 12-foot-wide raised path for pedestrians and bikers, improving and reconfiguring wheelchair ramps, replacing fencing, and restriping the crosswalks to include green paint for bike crossings.
Longer term, the spokesperson said the DCR plans to redesign the intersection between Memorial Drive and the BU Bridge in collaboration with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.
The spokesperson did not provide a specific timeline for the im-
provements.
Members of the City Council, who are powerless to implement changes on the throughway, said the state could no longer afford to take their time on adding safety measures.
“We can’t delay safe infrastructure improvements,” Vice Mayor Marc C. McGovern wrote in a statement to The Crimson. “And although the city doesn’t control Memorial Drive, we must work with the state to ensure our state roads are also safe.”
Nolan suggested lowering the speed limit on Memorial Drive and implementing a “road diet” — where a four-lane undivided roadway is converted into a two-lane roadway with a barrier and separated bike lanes — to increase traffic safety.
But a proposal to cut down on lanes is likely to face resistance from some residents. Victoria L. Bestor, the secretary of Cambridge Streets for All — a group which has sued the city to block the expansion of bike lanes — said reducing lanes could exacerbate safety issues, despite empirical evidence that road diets lead to a reduction in crashes.
Clyve Lawrence ’25-’27, a Harvard undergraduate who has lobbied for better bike infrastructure in Cambridge and Boston, said the DCR should consider the fatal crash a wake up call.
“While DCR had said that they had plans to improve this intersection and introduce bike lanes in that drive, we haven’t seen that happen yet,” Lawrence, a Crimson Editorial editor, said. “And unfortunately, this death underscores the urgency of doing so.”
dents and local leaders to call for stronger truck regulations and improved biker and pedestrian safety in the city.
In an email to members, advocacy group Cambridge Bicycle Safety said that local activists have been calling on the Massachusetts Department of Conservation & Recreation to address
safety issues at the intersection where the crash occurred.
“This is the third cyclist killed in Cambridge in the past few months, and highlights how dangerous our streets currently are,” the group wrote.
sally.edwards@thecrimson.com asher.montgomery@thecrimson.co
“Given our billion dollar budget last year, I think there’s so much wealth in this city. Whatever we can do to help the families who need the most should be a priority,” Siddiqui said.
The Cambridge City Council voted unanimously to explore a successor to the city’s guaranteed income program during its Monday meeting, even as Councilors have raised concerns about the city’s growing budget.
If Cambridge moves forward with a successor program, it will remain one of the few cities to provide direct cash payments to its residents. But Vice Mayor Marc C. McGovern stressed that any follow-up will likely have a reduced scope as the city braces for likely budget reductions.
“We’re not going to be able to write a whole bunch of blank checks the way we used to,” McGovern said. “Some things we can do full force, and some things we’ll have to scale back.”
Cambridge originally provided 130 single-caretaker households with monthly $500 payments as part of a pilot program spearheaded by then-Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui during the pandemic, funded by philanthropic efforts led by the Cambridge Community Foundation.
A University of Pennsylvania study found that the initiative increased employment rates, financial health, and educational outcomes for children.
The city then expanded the program — now known as Cambridge Rise Up — in 2023 using nearly $19 million of federal Covid-19 relief funds, making it the third-largest direct income program in the country at the time.
But with funding for the program projected to deplete in February, its supporters are looking for a permanent funding mechanism.
Former Vice Mayor Alanna M. Mallon, who led the initiative alongside McGovern and Siddiqui, said addressing the city’s financial concerns would need “creative” solutions.
“Maybe the universities help fund it, like they did in the pilot,” Mallon said, referring to Harvard and MIT’s six-figure donations to the original program.
“There’s certainly a biotech community here that has a ton of money. I think there’s a way for Cambridge to come together to make sure that this program continues. I’m just not sure that the City of Cambridge could do it on its own,” she added.
But Siddiqui said she was not “too worried” about Cambridge’s ability to finance the program.
Geeta Pradhan, the president of the Cambridge Community Foundation, acknowledged that maintaining Rise Up would require a sizable investment. Still, she said continuing the program would be especially impactful considering Cambridge’s high cost of living.
Chabad
“For a family to live a healthy, stable life in Cambridge, you need to be earning at 500 percent of the federal poverty line,” Pradhan said, “This program actually applied to families that were at 250 percent of the federal poverty line, which means these were families that were already struggling to make ends meet.”
Beneficiaries of the program also spoke passionately about its impact on their lives.
Lita Griffin, who works as a digital navigator for the city, said the program helped her recover after losing two jobs during the pandemic.
“Cambridge Rise Up has helped me to support this and feeling stability,” she said. “I just want to say that it has helped me to even get my job that I have right now.”
Joanna Jimenez, a local mother of eight, said receiving payments through the pilot program helped her finish highschool and start paralegal training.
“Depression could have been my last name until the RISE program came about,” she said.
“I know for a fact that I would have not been able to be where I’m at today if it wasn’t for this program who helped me pay bills and take on that financial hardship,” she added. “I can focus and change the trajectory of my life, my children’s life, and I can now see that I’m going to have a future.”
“Not
on the record reveal their personal discriminatory intent,” the complaint alleges.
Chabad accused the BZA of violating the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act – a federal law that protects religious groups from discriminatory zoning laws. In its complaint, the organization claimed the BZA treated it differently from “both religious and non religious institutions, and effectively excluded Judaism from the neighborhood.”
BZA members declined to comment on the lawsuit through a city spokesperson.
Chabad also alleged that the BZA violated the group’s rights to the free exercise of religion and the equal protection of the law under the Constitution.
The complaint comes after Chabad separately appealed the BZA’s decision to the Middlesex County Superior Court on Monday. The BZA voted down the expansion, which exceeds size and density limits in the zoning code, over concerns that the scale of the project would be incompatible with the surrounding residential neighborhood.
The vote came after the Kerry Corner Neighborhood Association, a group of residents in the neighborhood, organized in opposition to the proposal, which they said would bring additional traffic and noise to the area. In the lawsuit, Chabad said the KCNA “tried to have Chabad removed altogether,” and suggested their opposition was motivated by antisemitism.
“KCNA’s extreme position made its overarching motivation abundantly clear — it wanted to exile Chabad from the neighborhood altogether, not reach some sort of mutually beneficial settlement,” Chabad alleged. “It is not uncommon for antisemitic groups to form and try to impede zoning applications by Jewish groups.” In a statement, the KCNA referred The Crimson to comments from members of the group at the June BZA hearing. At that hearing, KCNA representative Deborah Epstein said the group had been open to negotiating Chabad’s expansion, but said Chabad was “firm” that “there will be no discussion of reducing square footage.”
Epstein also said the neighborhood association was “surprised and saddened” by Chabad’s characterization of the group as antisemitic.
“All of us — many of us are Jewish — although we were told by the Rabbi that we are not — deeply value all of our neighbors,” Epstein said, referring to Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi. Zarchi declined to comment, but updated Chabad affiliates on the lawsuit in a Friday afternoon newsletter. “We wanted our community to know — and we have communicated to the City officials — that we have no desire to engage in protracted litigation,” Zarchi wrote.
LASTING INEQUITIES.
Cambridge’s economic and racial achievement gaps went mostly unchanged in this year’s MCAS results.
BY DARCY G LIN AND EMILY T. SCHWARTZ CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
Cambridge students’ scores on the 2023-24 Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exam were released Tuesday, revealing persistent disparities and widening achievement gaps along racial and socioeconomic lines.
Across grades three through eight, 55 percent of students met or exceeded expectations on the English Language Arts component, a four percentage point decline from last year. On the math component, 54 percent of students in grade three through eight met or exceeded expectations, a one percentage point increase from the previous year.
But in a district that is 37.5 percent white, 22.5 percent Black, 14.4 percent Asian, and 14.3 percent Hispanic, as well as 35.5 percent low-income, disparate achievement gaps have long persisted along both racial and socioeconomic lines.
In grades three through eight, only 27 percent of Black students met or exceeded expectations on the English Language Arts test, compared to 72 percent of white students. Similarly, only 27 percent of Black students met or exceeded expectations on the math test, compared to 70 percent of their white counterparts.
Compared to last year, when MCAS scores returned to pre-pandemic levels, the achievement gap between Black and white students widened by 2 points for ELA, and shrunk by 2 points for math. Cambridge’s test averages exceeded those of the state, but the city’s achievement gap along racial lines was also greater. In grades three through eight, white Cambridge students scored 25 percentage points higher on the ELA assessment than the average white student in Massachusetts, while their Black peers scored just 3 points higher than the average Black Massachusetts student.
Math results painted a similar story: white students in grades three through eight in Cambridge scored 21 points higher than the average white student statewide, while the average Black student in Cambridge scored just 5 points higher than the statewide average for Black students. Some voiced discontent with how close the math and ELA gaps were between Cambridge and the statewide averages.
“Given that we spend twice the state average per student, I would expect that we would be doing a bit better than the state average,” School Committee member Elizabeth C. P. Hudson said. This year’s results also highlighted a stark achievement gap across socioeconomic status.
Only 27 percent of low-income students in grades three through eight met or exceeded expectations on the English Language Arts test, compared to 74 percent of their non-low-income peers. A similarly stark 46-point difference extended to the math test.
Though gaps between low-income and non-low-income students remain steep, the results do not mark a significant change from previous years, shifting only a few percentage points.
“The persistent underachievement of African American/Black, Hispanic/Latino and Students with disabilities in Cambridge and across Massachusetts is real and persistent,” the Cambridge Families of Color Coalition wrote in an emailed statement to The Crimson.
On the 2023-24 MCAS ELA test, Cambridge students with disabilities in grades three through eight scored 35 percentage points lower than the average student.
The coalition cited “the effects of marginalization, low expectations, conscious and unconscious bias, lack of targeted family support and school exclusions,” as well as students of color or with disabilities being suspended “disproportionately” at
some upper schools, as factors contributing to the MCAS performance gap.
“We expect the district to be transparent about these outcomes and reaffirm its dedication with action to closing these gaps and ensuring that every student—regardless of race, ethnic-
ity, learning needs, and/or socio-economic status—has the opportunity to succeed in Cambridge Public Schools,” the coalition wrote.
Hudson called the disparity “horrifying” and called for the district to aggregate the data by the length of students’ careers in
the school systems in order to understand the quality of programming and to understand the specific supports students need.
The dissatisfaction with performance gaps is not new.
In earlier interviews with The Crimson about the 2022-23 school year MCAS results, City
Councilor Ayesha M. Wilson had called last years’ scores “insulting” and School Committee member Richard Harding, Jr. had called them “a failure.”
Interim Superintendent David Murphy wrote in the Tuesday press release that “embracing and being responsive to this data” is important to ensuring “student excellence, particularly amongst our most vulnerable students and those from historically marginalized communities.”
“CPS continues to be acutely aware of the opportunities and areas for growth,” Cambridge Public Schools spokesperson Sujata Wycoff wrote in a press release. “When the data is disaggregated, it is evident that the district continues to experience challenges in achievement among some student demographic groups.”
In the press release, Wycoff listed a slew of ongoing initiatives aimed at ensuring equitable access to education, including the newly-launched universal preschool program, adoption of new standardized curriculum, and “more focused” professional learning.
Last fall, CPS also completed its years-long implementation of Illustrative Math to align math curricula throughout the system, across grades kindergarten through 12. This fall, CPS launched Amplify CKLA, an ELA curriculum, standardizing instruction across grades one through 12.
Though the MCAS data revealed gaps in achievement across racial lines, on Tuesday, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education also identified two Cambridge schools as demonstrating progress towards “accountability targets,” with an emphasis on schools’ “lowest performing students group.”
The Tobin Montessori School was included on the DESE’s Schools of Recognition list, which only featured 57 schools across Massachusetts. The Martin Luther King, Jr. School was also separately featured for its National Blue Ribbon status, a national award system. Though performance gaps along lines of race and socioeconomic status persist, Hudson warned that it may take years to see the impact of curriculum changes.
“There’s a lag,” Hudson said. “There’s the year you implemented, and then there’s the time teachers are totally ready to go.” And with so many curriculum changes in a short period of time, she said, “that lag just gets exag-
darcy.lin@thecrimson.com
emily.schwartz@thecrimson.com
“My
Embarrassed to be late again, Jill S. Linnell’s son rushed into class at Cambridgeport Elementary School 35 minutes after the start of first period on Tuesday. Her son — who has been late to school every day this semester — is one of scores of Cambridge students who have been affected by bus delays this fall. The pattern has frustrated administrators, students, and parents, who reported delays of between five and 35 minutes. On Tuesday, exactly three weeks into the school year, adjustments to certain bus routes finally took effect, alleviating some of the delays. Still, parents were frustrated by weeks of unpredictable and stressful mornings, back-andforths with district officials, and a lack of official communication from the district. The first official district-wide communication about the delays came Sept. 20 — more than two weeks after school started — when Mayor E. Denise Simmons and interim Superintendent David G. Murphy sent parents an email apologizing for the “inconvenience” and announcing that changes to routes
were being made.
In a memo sent to the Cambridge School Committee, Murphy attributed the delays to multiple factors, including an earlier start to the school day and the fact that CPS is also responsible for transporting students to private and charter schools, which operate on a different schedule. He added that the district did not slot pick-up times earlier than 6:55am, in an effort to prevent students waiting in the dark or cold in the winter months.
Boston Public Schools have experienced similar issues, with only one in three school buses arriving on time for Boston’s first day of school.
Murphy said in a Wednesday interview that it took time to understand and implement solutions to the delays. He said district officials have drawn new routes, deployed additional buses, and adjusted which students are on certain bus routes.
“It takes the first three weeks to truly identify what are — not a couple of garbage trucks in the wrong place at the wrong time — and what are truly systemic routes that are not working,” Murphy said. In the memo, Murphy wrote that the district will forgo a policy of matching students to the same morning and afternoon bus route and draw new routes. As a last re-
sort, he added, the district may push pick-up times ten minutes earlier.
Still, families went weeks without official district-wide communication from the district about the delays. Some parents waited at bus stops for 30 minutes, while others hustled their children onto public transit, and still others were late to work in order to drive their kids to school.
Many individual parents communicated, sometimes daily, with Murphy, members of CPS’ transportation office, and even customer representatives from Eastern Bus Company, Cambridge’s bus vendor. Others turned to parent listservs and still others, like Jessica D. Goetz, established group chats.
Amber B. Fisher, whose children attend Rindge Avenue Upper Campus and Graham & Parks Elementary School, said that while she gave the district a twoweek “grace period,” she expected change and communication to have come earlier.
“We didn’t get that message until the very last day of the third week of school, and then changes were implemented today, which is the second day of the fourth week of school,” she said. “I think that’s a long time for people to go without any resolution.”
Both Fisher and Linnell worried that the bussing and commu-
nication delays disproportionately impact families who could not drive their children to school, afford to be late to work, or who don’t use the bus tracking app.
“I can just see how easy it would be for kids to miss a day of school who would otherwise want to be there,” Linnell said. “I’m really just baffled that we have this bussing program in Cambridge to make the schools more equitable, and we’re not making the buses itself equitable.”
Jodi S. Ekelchik, who co-chairs the School Council at Putnam Ave. Upper School, said she is concerned that the bus delays will make it more difficult for students to meet attendance expectations — which the district has indicated they will strictly enforce.
“We got an email about really encouraging kids to get to school on time to start their day, and through no fault of any of the students, the buses have not been meeting that goal or allowing the students to meet that goal,” she said.
In a statement, CPS spokesperson Sujata Wycoff wrote that students will not be penalized for arriving after the start of the school day.
“While the majority of buses are arriving on time, we fully recognize how frustrating and disruptive these delays can be for all of our impacted elementary and upper
families and we are working diligently to resolve the issues,” Wycoff wrote. After school on Tuesday, Linnell was informed the bus schedule would be adjusted, and that her son would need to arrive at the bus stop at 7:03 a.m. — nearly an hour earlier than usual.
BY GILLIAN H. SELIG
Cn Classically trained, Turkish-born, Wharton-educated hyperpop princess INJI, born Inci Gürün, lit up the crowd at Brighton Music Hall on Sept. 21 as part of her “Tour You Can Scream Along To.” From midshow gossip to outfit changes and nonstop dancing, INJI kept the energy up, bouncing from one side of the stage to the other. Accompanied by Joey Hess on drums and Mistine on bass and gui-
tar, INJI opened the show with her song “THE ONE,” running out from the green room and onto the stage surrounded by screaming fans. Her stage presence was immediate and infectious, hyping up the already excited crowd even more. While some artists may act like they are too good to interact with their fans while they are on stage, INJI does the opposite, bringing the crowd in as part of her show by sharing stories about terrible exes and taking shots with concertgoers. INJI feeds off the crowd and the crowd feeds right back off of her. When asked about what she was most excited for this tour, she
replied, “I doubt myself all the time and tour is one of the only things that stops those doubts because I see actual humans excited to be here.”
When she originally blew up on TikTok her senior year of college, she described feeling isolated and not wanting to leave her room. She has since blossomed and become more comfortable in the spotlight, saying, “Tour is everything for me, it’s like why I do this, it’s what keeps me going.”
Throughout the night she mixed her club songs, like “GASLIGHT,” with some songs from her new EP, “WE GOOD,” that have
moment to impress in the spotlight.
more of a jazz tone to them, drawing from her musical origins at the Istanbul University State Conservatory, where she grew up learning music theory.
Commenting on how her classical training impacted her writing process, she said, “I know it sounds very separate, like classical and the type of music I’m doing now, but it’s when you’re studying classical piano at an institution like that they really teach you like how to play music to move people.”
Before singing “HATE YOUR GUTS,” she stopped the show to share a little bit about the man who inspired the lyrics.
INJI recounted, “The worst thing about [him], was that, first of all he went to Harvard, we were in the same fucking friend group, so every time I saw him I had to be like mwah mwah, how you doing?
How’s that new freshman you’ve been fucking? It’s horrible, It’s the worst thing in the world and this is why I wrote this song.”
She also debuted some unreleased songs, including one featuring NOTD. Everything from her outfit choices to the choice of venue felt authentic to who she is as a person and an artist. INJI made it apparent that she was there to have fun, showcasing her genuine
love for performing and putting on a show that can only be described as a combination of FISHER and Tate McRae. To close out the show, she reappeared in a blue hip scarf adorned with gold coins and finished with “BELLYDANCING,” a song that she sings partially in Turkish. INJI makes a concert venue — and her performance — feel like sitting in a living room, gossiping and singing with close friends. “Tour You Can Scream Along To” is definitely one that should not be missed.
gillian.selig@thecrimson.com
Move over brat summer, there’s a new green god on the scene. At Boston’s Emerson Colonial Theatre, “Shrek the Musical” begins with blazing striking green lights to the audience, promising a production that is nothing if not green. What follows is roughly two hours of talented actors performing an earnest rendition of the iconic ogre’s tale that many know and love. Once the green lights fade from the audiences’ eyes, however, the show is more subdued, never reaching that level of pizzazz again.
Unlike many other productions, this show, directed and choreographed by Danny Mefford, opted to represent the young Shrek as a puppet. In fact, many of the characters came with strings attached. The puppets were well made and well-managed, and the voice actors demonstrated their talent without taking center stage. In a memorable moment, puppets of Young Fiona (voiced by Ally Choe) and Teen Fiona (voiced by Katherine Paladichuk) were joined by Kelly Prendergast, who portrayed Fiona. The trio delivered “I Know It’s Today,” a heartfelt harmony about Fiona’s childhood. With strong vocals all around, the song struck a chord with the audience.
With such outstanding puppetry, it came as a surprise that Dragon (Tori Kocher) lacked spectacle, wearing only a shimmery cloak. The puppets were a bold choice that paid off in the long run, providing an opportunity to showcase talented vocalists in multiple roles, but without a towering dragon, which has been a hallmark of many productions of “Shrek the Musical,” the limitations of this rendition, whether monetary or otherwise, were acutely noticeable. The subdued dragon puppetry would have been less noticeable if Mefford and the show had not taken such a trite approach in conveying the musical’s main themes. Shrek is, at its core, an absurdist rendition of a classic fairytale trope. There is a dashing prince (with egomania), a beautiful sequestered princess (who can keep up in a flatulence contest), and an intrepid hero with his gleaming steed (an ogre and his donkey). Though the show lands on the well-worn value of self-acceptance through true love — a worthy albeit saccharine moral — it is the spectacle and humor that make the script shine. The performance on Sept. 15 lacked the bravado and campiness that Shrek fans have come to expect. For instance, during one of the show’s most memorable numbers, “Freak Flag,” the cast belted with their best vibrato, and the one-liners in the show gave each member a
This talent, however, seemed purely dedicated to the overly sincere messaging that teetered on an anti-bullying campaign. Because the moral of the story was so heavy-handed, there was not much to laugh about, despite the inherently goofy song title and comic costuming.
Despite this, Donkey (Naphtali Yaakov Curry) impressed the audience with his falsetto, and many of the actors in this production exhibited stunning vocal abilities. Curry commanded the humor of the show with his physical comedy, saving moments that were almost too serious. When Shrek first sings Donkey’s jingle about friendship on the imaginary bridge over burning lava, the scene almost loses its energy, but Donkey’s skillful miming brought the crowd to laughter.
Overall, the show seemed to lack tonal cohesion, with lighting effects and puppetry that suggested a production that was selfaware of its source material but lacking the bravado and showmanship that would have made the show spectacular. “Shrek the Musical” was still an enjoyable show with some memorable high points, but the audience left wishing they had laughed more.
Shrek ran at the Emerson Colonial Theatre from Sept. 13 to Sept. 15.
ollie.marinaccio@thecrimson.com
note sounded throughout the arena — the singer’s pure, confident tone settling lightly in the air. And then — chaos. Electric guitar rang out, backed by powerful strings and a thundering bass drum as the electric screen “curtain” lifted to reveal a full orchestra and its director, Hans Zimmer, powerfully strumming his electric guitar.
Having finished the first piece of the night, “House Atreides” from “Dune,” Zimmer introduced the opening singer, Loire Cotler, as the voice of ‘Dune.’ Colter, who would go on to provide more incredible performances throughout the night, was the first of many to be introduced in between songs. During the concert, Zimmer made sure to highlight these individuals in the band and orchestra making his mu-
The excitement was palpable at MGM Music Hall on Sept. 13 as a young crowd awaited beabadoobee’s sold-out Boston show. Born Beatrice Kristi Ilejay Laus, Filipina-British singer-songwriter beabadoobee garnered attention this summer after opening for Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour.” On Aug. 9, she released her most recent album, “This Is How Tomorrow Moves,” off of which four singles were released earlier in the year.
Beabadoobee’s fame began in the midst of the pandemic, when 2020’s “death bed (coffee for your head)” went viral on TikTok. Since then, songs like “Glue Song,” and “the perfect pair” have also gone viral, although to a lesser extent. The crowd was clearly made up of loyal fans, as they sang the lyrics to both her viral songs and her lesser-known ones.
After impressive opening performances from American alt-country duo Hovvdy and American indie-pop singer-songwriter Keni Titus, beabadoobee started her show with “California” from her newest album, followed by “Talk” and “10:36” from 2022’s “Beatop-
sic possible. Despite TD Garden’s monstrous size, Zimmer’s tone throughout was conversational. Jokingly making fun of latecomers and apologizing for his recent pneumonia, Zimmer apologized he wouldn’t be performing his “infamous tango steps and gymnastics.” Pneumonia or not, Zimmer certainly gallivanted across his discography with all the confidence of a man with over 40 years of film scoring experience. The night continued with “Mombasa” from “Inception,” followed by a harrowing suite from “Wonder Woman” with frantically dissonant harmonies.
“Wonder Woman” also introduced Tina Guo, Zimmer’s star cellist and a virtuosic Grammy-nominated musician in her own right. Guo played “Wonder Woman” as if she were fighting the cello itself, wringing its neck to produce inhuman sounds. Throughout the concert, Guo cemented herself as perhaps the most impressive of Zimmer’s incredible backing band, “The Disruptive Collective.”
The lead guitarist for the band,
Guthrie Govan, also demonstrated extreme skill during his extended solo on “Man of Steel,” which patently overshadowed all other aspects of the song as notes flowed from the fretboard of Govan’s guitar seemingly of their own accord.
Despite this significant talent display, there were aspects of Act I that fell short. Technically, the mixing sounded a little strange — a muddy high end took some of the sharpness off the performance.
The visuals projected behind the band and orchestra and on the raised screen above the stage were lackluster and provided neither context for the music nor sufficient focus on the performers. Although aspects of the songs were electrifying, overall they stretched a little too long and suffered their fair share of boring sections exacerbated by the subpar lighting choices. Any misgivings, however, were persuasively cast aside by one piece: “Pirates of the Caribbean.” The suite is a masterpiece in tension — the entire arena was waiting for the main theme, teased by musical motifs, but only two minutes from the end
did the classic notes ring out from the orchestra. And ring out they did. The arena erupted in cheers as the music summoned memories of an intrepid Jack Sparrow through a brilliant score. The end of the song closed the first Act, and expectations were high going into Act II.
For any disappointments in Act I, Act II rebounded twice as hard. The latter half of the show was incredible, with “The Last Samurai” and “The Dark Knight” immediately proving to be a step up from most of the first act. The lighting was magnificent, and during “Interstellar” a spotlight aimed at a giant disco ball scattered shards of light throughout the audience.
“Interstellar” also featured a beautiful and terrifying vocal performance by Molly Rogers, who reached inhuman heights with her voice. The performance was accompanied by a nerve-wracking acrobatic demonstration by Nina Treiber, who was spectacularly suspended on aerial silks.
“The Lion King” was the most upbeat part of the show, with the original singer Lebohang “Lebo
M” Morake reprising his role in the Zulu call opening the song. After the jovial, dancey tune that was “The Lion King,” the show closed its regular-time Act II. The encore started strong with “No Time To Die,” a jazzy, fast tune filled with solos from just about everyone in Zimmer’s band. “Time” from “Inception” ended the show, remaining faithful to its studio recorded version as a fittingly epic finale to a truly epic show. The monumental legacy of Zimmer’s scores was clear to see in “Hans Zimmer Live.” The night was packed with blockbuster after blockbuster. But the show offered the viewer a unique glimpse into a rarer side of Zimmer’s magic — his performance. Through enthusiastic audience participation, vivacious arrangements bordering on metal music, and an unstoppable cast of characters supporting him, Zimmer proves that his flair for the dramatic extends beyond just his written music and into the live sphere.
alessandro.drake@thecrimson.com
ia.” She showcased her instrumental talent, often switching between electric and acoustic guitars for different songs. Although beabadoobee’s performance was somewhat relaxed, the lively music and the joy emanating from the crowd kept the energy high.
“This song is very special to me, and I hope it’s special to you too,” she said before playing “Take a Bite,” one of the more popular songs from “This Is How Tomorrow Moves.” The crowd was obviously pleased, with the occasional shout of “I love you, Bea!” coming from the floor.
Beabadoobee dedicated one song to her boyfriend, Jake Erland.
Toward the end of her set, beabadoobee brought the energy up with her 2019 hit “She Plays Bass” from her EP “Space Cadet.”
“I’m gonna count, and everyone’s gonna jump,” she instructed as she began the song. “It’s gonna be really fun.”
“This one goes out to my boyfriend,” she said before playing “Ever Seen,” a love song featuring cute lyrics like, “I can’t lie, he has the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen.”
The entire venue seemed to jump up and down as she repeated the catchy chorus and had fun with her bandmates on stage. The stage design also encouraged the atmosphere and the crowd. For most of the show, a simple white sheet hung from the back of the stage, with lights sometimes revealing the shadows of plants, trees, and other greenery. Then, right before “Beaches,” which bea-
badoobee described as her favorite song, the sheet dropped — revealing the shrubs that were once hidden.
After beabadoobee played her last song, 2021’s “Cologne,” and walked off stage, a cacophony of shouts, whoops, and more screams of “I love you” pulled her back on for an encore.
“You guys are so loud, it’s so much fun. I especially like when you guys sing along,” she said playfully before singing “Coming Home” from her newest album and 2023’s “the way things go.” A bittersweet feeling filled the venue as beabadoobee got ready for her last song of the night.
“You guys make me so happy. Thank you so much for having us. That was so special to me, and I’ll see you soon,” she said as she began the fitting “See you Soon” from “beatopia.”
SEPTEMBER 27, 2024
Herchel Smith Professor in Computer Science Finale Doshi-Velez sat down with Fifteen Minutes to talk about artificial intelligence in healthcare decision making, the dangers of “boring AI,” and writing what may be his first novel.
FM: Your undergrad was in aerospace engineering and physics at MIT. I am curious how you transitioned from that background to AI and decision making?
FDV: I think it’s easy to look back and find a common theme of what excites you. As an un dergrad, the classes that really excited me were about proba bility and machine learning and AI. There were already classes that were related to what I’m doing now; it’s just different sets of applications, whether it was more focused on aerospace or more focused on robotics. At one point, I wanted to work for NASA and do information fusion from satellites. If you think about the math, there’s a lot of similarity between, like, “How do you point satellites and fuse information between them?” and “How do you collect sensory data from patients and fuse those togeth er?” I feel like there’s been a throughline about probabilistic reasoning and probabilistic methods and decision making under uncertainty.
FM: Your niche in AI is its appli cations to health and making it useful for physicians in inter preting different disease symp toms and phenotypes. How’d you carve out that niche?
FDV: My Ph.D. was not applied to any particular problem. I start ed out as a roboticist, and then really shifted into probabilistic methods and reinforcement learning.
And then I reached a point to ward the end of my Ph.D. where I was like, I love what I’m doing. But if I’m retiring at some later point, and I’m looking back on my life, would I be happy if I just did what I am currently doing? I was like, “I need something that touches real life in a more con crete way.” At the time, I talked to 40 different labs across areas that I cared about: health, education, energy and climate, developing world and social good, and these sorts of things. And it just happened to be that a health-related postdoc just fit in terms of methods and stuff. So that’s the area that I’ve been working on for the last decade or so.
FM: The field must have changed so much since you started. Now, AI and large lan guage models are embedded in our lives through ChatGPT and generative AI. Did you expect that sort of change? And how has that shaped your work over time?
FDV: I think it’s important that we pay a lot of close attention to those models, because they have capabilities that are just so close to human life — but not. There’s a lot that can go wrong in that space. I also worry that there’s all these “boring AIs,” like the ones that are making your credit de cisions, and the ones that are de ciding different types of criminal justice decisions,housing bene fits, deciding whether something is fraud or not. They’re spaces that are becoming increasingly automated with these “boring” AI tools. I think there’s such an impact that that can have, for good or worse, on humanity if you don’t do those right. Done right, these things can be really helpful. They can triage easy situations and help get consistency. But done poorly, they can lock out marginalized groups from access.
can make three predictions. It’s all the same math. Then someone can look at that. You’re in a very different brain state when you’re thinking about choosing between options versus “I’m telling you what to do.” Because if you get told what to do, you might just do it because the AI seems very authoritative. You might also just do it because of liability, because if you don’t do it, you’re going to have to explain to your employer if something goes wrong. But if you get a couple of options and some pros and cons, then it invites you to engage with the system.
are pretty good — or sector specific regulations to particular use cases? Because the regulation will still say something like “It has to be fair or unbiased,” or “Data must be representative of the population that is going to be applied on.”
How do you measure that? How do you know that something is “fair” and “unbiased” or that the data are “representative”? I think that’s really the big gap currently.
FM: Moving forward, what sorts of regulations would you want to see to address these limitations in these AI models that might not be perfect, but can be used as the basis for critical decisions, especially for diverse populations?
FDV: A lot of industries already have rules about what’s okay and what’s not okay. The big challenge currently is, how do you link either AI-specific checklists and regulations — which
FM: You direct the Data to Actionable Knowledge group in the Computer Science department, and one of the goals I’ve read is to untangle these complex, heterogeneous datasets using AI models.
Could you give an example of what that looks like in your group?
FDV: I’ll give you one concrete example that I’m really excited about at the moment. When you look at health data, one common way of
analyzing it is that you get a batch of data from a hospital.
We first focused on finding places where doctors disagree. So, try to identify patients who are in very similar conditions that ended up with different treatments. That simplifies two things. First of all, data are super messy, but if you really focus on identifying those areas of disagreement, you end up with relatively few. With the ICU critical care database, once we did this analysis, we found that there were only on the order of 15 types of situations in which there was disagreement. That was great to present to the doctors and be like, “Here are places where you and your colleagues don’t do the same thing.” First, that was very interpretable. It was something that they could engage with. And secondly, now we can do some optimization and say, “What happened to the people who took
branch one versus the people who took branch two?”
FM: A common issue that comes up with AI models is the issue of the “black box” in these models — not knowing necessarily what’s happening inside. I’m curious about your thoughts on how important it is to ensure we know exactly what the model is like doing?
FDV: This raises the question of, “What should the system even be doing?” One thing that I’ve realized over the years is that, when I started, a lot of the effort was around, “Which treatment for which patient?” But as I’ve done more work, I’m realizing there’s other things that AI can do.
Rather than presenting one option, you present the expected pros and the expected cons of three options or five options. With the AI tools, if you can make one prediction, you
Human doctors talk to each other about their decisions and their rationale. If we can figure out what information we need to present such that the other person can feel confident in trusting us or not trusting us, I feel like you could do the same thing with AI.
FM: I’m curious how you communicate that with doctors. How do you communicate these best practices to the people who will be using them, especially since they’re busy? I don’t think you can just tell people to behave. You need to design the system in a way that invites engagement. For example, we built a prototype of a system that allows you to toggle conditions on and off. You start out with, populated from the health record, “Here are the conditions I think you have.” But because it’s toggleable, you can
So let’s suppose you have some sleep drama, but it’s never been diagnosed as insomnia. You can toggle on the insomnia because you don’t want a medication that’s going to mess with your
If you make the system interactive, then people are more likely to engage with it.
FM: You also make music videos of your work on your YouTube channel Bayesonce. And I just noticed you have an overall very fun and very playful approach to science. Why do you feel like these creative forms of expressing science are important? You also make music videos of your work on your YouTube channel Bayesonce. And I just noticed you have an overall very fun and very playful approach to science. Why do you feel like these creative forms of expressing science are important?
FDV: I’ve been a Weird Al fan for forever, and I just like the art of parody. There’s people who like to do their math, and that’s great. But for me, I’m much broader. I like reading literature and talking about it; I enjoy listening to different types of music or going to theater performances. There’s so many aspects of myself, and I feel like it’s fun to be able to bring those together. Our society encourages us to fit into buckets. You’re a STEM person, or you’re a theater kid, or you’re an analyst, right? I think most of us probably don’t fit neatly into just one When it comes to the music videos, I’ve always been a huge fan, and we had a grad student visit day, and the lab actually was like “Why don’t we do a music video?” Someone was like, “Oh, I can do the filming,” and “I can do the dance.” And I will write the lyrics.
Starting at their own seven yard line, four rushes from Mc Laughlin put Craig and the of fense at their own 42 yard line with only 37 seconds left in the half. Two completed passes to junior tight end Ryan Osborne and senior wide receiver Kaedyn Odermann, and an illegal sub stitution penalty from Stetson, placed Harvard at the Hatters’ 24 yard line with only 14 seconds re maining.
The
“I thought both sides of the ball did a really good job of just staying focused out there,” Aurich said. “And ultimately, there’s a lot of stuff we’re gonna have to clean up — but it’s always better to be cleaned up after a win than a loss.” But nature’s elements — and the Stetson defense — couldn’t stop the Crimson’s offensive attack.
With 11:26 left in the first quarter, junior quarterback Jaden Craig delivered a clean strike from the pocket to senior wide receiver Scott Woods II in open space. After juking past one defender and squeezing through two more, Woods streaked into the end zone for the 46-yard touchdown, putting Harvard up 7-0 and officially kicking off the Aurich era.
After forcing Stetson to a quick three-and-out, Woods returned a punt to the Hatters’ 20 yard line. Starting their second drive from the red zone, the Crimson was able to convert yet again - this time on a four-yard rushing touchdown from senior running back and team captain Shane McLaughlin. Following freshman kicker Keiran Corr’s second extra point, Harvard took a 14-0 lead with 8:39 left in the first quarter.
The Crimson’s defense replicated the offense’s success on the next possession. Senior linebacker Mitchell Gonser picked off a pass that deflected off of senior defensive back Miles Wiley’s hands and took it back to the end zone for a 37-yard pick six, giving Harvard its second touchdown in 40 seconds and a commanding 21-0 lead after just seven minutes of play. The play was the first time the Crimson has returned an interception for a touchdown since its game against Holy Cross in late September last year.
The downpour made its mark on the game over the next quarter and a half. With 15 seconds left in the first quarter, Craig, rushing to the right side of the field, coughed up the football at Harvard’s 39 yard line. Both offenses continued to struggle throughout the second quarter, as neither team was able to sustain a possession and move the chains downfield, resulting in five consecutive scoreless drives. The Crimson’s offense faced its first pressure test late in the second quarter as the team tried to get down the field with only 1:48 left in the half.
of pressure from Stetson. But junior wide receiver Cooper Barkate was the real star of the drive, juking Stetson defender Noah Schwartz along the sideline — and sending him to the ground — for a 25-yard gain and catching a pass from Craig for a touchdown
ered. The team ran the ball nearly every play with Deprima at the helm, with Deprima throwing only one incomplete pass. Aurich said that the Crimson “put the ball in the ground way too much,” an issue that he partially attributed to the weather. Still, Aurich’s comments — and Deprima’s lackluster showing — suggest he will be used primarily as a backup or changeof-pace threat in the offense. The Crimson ended strong with an interception from freshman defensive back Xaden Benson with just over 30 seconds on the clock, preserving the shutout. As the players rushed onto the field, they began singing a rendition of Ten Thousand Men of Harvard — a moment of joy after a decisive first win. Meanwhile Aurich took in the victory with his family — posing for pictures with his wife and kids. Woods, who put up 103 all purpose yards, was excited about the win and his strong performance, but was already looking forward to the next challenge.
“It’s hard to win in college football, so 1-0,
Harvard basketball standout Harmoni Turner added another achievement to her growing list of accolades: co-captaining Team USA to an undefeated gold medal run at the 2024 FIBA 3x3 U23 World Cup in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Turner, a senior from Mansfield, Texas, demonstrated her leadership both on and off the court, ending the tournament second in scoring behind compatriot Sania Feagin, totaling
Entering the tournament, Team USA ranked second behind China. This earned the team a spot in Pool B alongside Italy, New Zealand, Japan, and Spain. Team USA started its campaign with a 21-14 victory over Japan, in which Turner contributed six points including the game winning layup off a well-timed spin move. Turner replicated her performance in the next game against Italy, notching six points in another 21-14 victory.
The United States’ clash with Spain proved to be its most challenging of the tournament. Turner opened the scoring with a two pointer, but Spain’s offensive creativity secured an early 9-6 lead. The teams battled, but Spain remained firm, clinging to a 16-14 lead with 20 seconds remaining. As she does for Harvard, Turner put on some late game heroics by nailing a two
me up to get that shot off. I wasn’t feeling any nervousness.”
Team USA wrapped up group play with a 21-13 win over New Zealand, securing the top spot in Pool B. It was Turner’s most subdued performance of the tournament, with the Mansfield native contributing only one point in the contest. Her co-captain Feagin, however, stood out in the contest, dropping 10 points on the Kiwis and preserving the US’ unbeaten record.
The road to gold was anything but easy for Team USA, as all knockout stage games were packed into a single, grueling, day of competition. The day commenced with a quarterfinal matchup against France, headlined by Eve Wembenyama, sister of NBA superstar Victor Wembenyama. Turner rose to the occasion and turned the page on her past performance, delivering 10 points for Team USA including four two pointers. She nearly outscored all of Team France by herself, as the United States cruised to a 21-11 victory.
A mere three hours after its second victory of the day, the Americans took the court once again to face off against the Dutch for a chance at bringing home the gold. A tight contest was fitting for the gold medal match, as the teams exchanged leads throughout the game. Team USA found itself down 10-6 as the Dutch pulled ahead on an early run, but the team’s grit was on full display, reducing the Dutch’s lead to 1211 as the United States proved its worth and clawed its way back to the one point deficit.
Once more, Turner shined in the clutch, knocking down a two pointer to earn Team USA the
lead. Then, she knocked another deep bomb to extend Team USA’s advantage to 16-12. Timely buckets and defense stymied the Dutch advances, as Team USA gutted out an 18-15 victory. Turner scored a joint gamehigh six points, all from behind the arc. In total, Turner knocked down all eight of Team USA’s two pointers in the knockout stage.
“Since we touched down in Mongolia and we had our few practices, it
for the
and I was willing to do whatever
40 points across seven games. Turner’s perimeter shooting proved crucial for Team USA’s gold medal campaign, its first in the event since its inception in 2019.
“I’m super grateful for the opportunity,” Turner said about representing Team USA. “The experience was nothing short of amazing. And for it being my first time making [Team] USA and coming back with a gold medal, that is something no one can take away from me. It’s something I’ve been working towards my whole life.”
pointer to equalize. After committing a foul that gave Spain a one point lead, Turner made up for her mistake by knocking down the game winning twopoint buzzer beater. Turner tallied a game high seven points in the contest, securing an 18-17 USA victory.
“[My] mindset was to do anything to help the team,” said Turner. “I’ve worked on [that shot] a thousand times. It’s nice to see that my work comes to fruition, but at the end of the day it is just another shot. I credit my teammates and team for setting
Not even two hours after the victory, Team USA squared off against top-ranked China in the semifinal clash of the titans. The Americans started hot, quickly jumping to an early 12-4 lead spearheaded by a well-rounded offense. China underwent a 5-1 run to pull within four, but that was the closest that the supposed-powerhouse was able to tighten the lead. Team USA drained the clock to the tune of a 19-10 victory over the top-ranked squad, with Turner contributing four points to the final victory.are sufficient grounds to pursue her original claim that Harvard negligently inflicted emotional distress, as well as the more severe civil charge of “reckless infliction of emotional distress.” The suit Supreme Judicial Court. Allegations are ready. In the decision, the Court ruled that Lanier’s allegations.
The Siebel Scholars program was founded in 2000 to recognize the most talented graduate students in business, computer science, and bioengineering. Each year, over 80 outstanding graduate students are selected as Siebel Scholars based on academic excellence and leadership and join an active, lifelong community among an ever-growing group of leaders. We are pleased to recognize this year’s Siebel Scholars.
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