THE CONTENDERS. HLS faculty members said they want the next dean to come from within their own ranks, with interim Dean John C.P. Goldberg emerging as an early frontrunner.
HUPD Investigates Missing Mezuzah
INVESTIGATION. The Harvard University Police Department is investigating after a mezuzah went missing from a freshman student’s doorway. The mezuzah was recovered a few doors away from its owner.
Harvard College’s Class of 2028 enjoyed a surprisingly smooth Convocation — an event typically marked by protest — despite heightened concerns among University leadership that large-scale campus demonstrations will return in the fall. Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 and Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana addressed 1,650 freshmen in a sundrenched Tercentenary Theatre. In their speeches, administrators repeatedly emphasized the right to protest and dissent and respect for differing viewpoints, hinting at the controversies that plagued Harvard’s campus following Hamas’ Oct.
7 attack on Israel. The absence of disruptive yelling and large banners suggest that the College’s disciplinary action against student protesters in the spring has initially deterred campus activists from staging rowdy protests. Though the fall semester has not yet begun and many students are still moving onto campus, Convocation has historically seen protests staged by pro-Palestine groups on campus. Though organizers did not chant between speakers as in previous years, they distributed pamphlets titled “The Harvard Crimeson” — which was first created by pro-Palestine organizers for Commencement — to freshmen as they filed into the Old Yard. Copies included a history of protests at Harvard and a map of “Harvard’s crimes throughout its history.”
“Welcome to the College. Everything is normal all the political controversy is behind us,” the front page reads. “Harvard backs and bankrolls Palestinian genocide.”
Despite the lack of disruptions during Convocation, there was a noticeable presence of Harvard University Police Department officers throughout the Yard.
As students in the audience flipped through the pamphlets slamming Harvard for being complicit in genocide, administrators on stage shied away from directly addressing the subject, instead leaning on language around “intellectual vitality.”
“Being in this environment, in this community, means having rights and responsibilities,” Garber said at the beginning of his speech. “Those gathered here have the right to express themselves
freely — to dissent and to protest — but they also have the responsibility to act with each of you and the meaning of this occasion in mind. We are convened to welcome you.”
Last week, Garber sent an email to undergraduates ahead of the start of the fall semester informing students to be “prepared to be held accountable” for participating in protests that violate University policies.
Garber’s email signaled the administration is seeking to prevent the recurrence of large-scale demonstrations that occurred last semester, including the 20-day pro-Palestine encampment in Harvard Yard and the large-scale walkout during the University’s Commencement ceremonies in May.
Ricardo Hausmann, a prominent Harvard Kennedy School economist, is facing allegations of plagiarism from his longtime collaborator and former co-author César A. Hidalgo, a professor at the Toulouse School of Economics.
Hidalgo, a former HKS research fellow, publicly levied the plagiarism allegations in a post on X late last month, writing that Hausmann failed to properly acknowledge his work in two working papers published in April 2024.
Hausmann denied the allegations in a statement to The Crimson, calling Hidalgo’s claims “entirely baseless.” Hausmann also said that he requested the University to conduct an investigation into the allegations.
“This independent review will examine the merits of the claim, and I am con-
fident it will affirm our position that the allegation is unfounded,” he wrote.
Hidalgo also formally requested Harvard to investigate the allegations against Hausmann. In an email obtained by The Crimson, Hidalgo asked the University to open an investigation into Hausmann’s attempt to “misappropriate an idea published by a former co-author while knowing of that work.”
A Kennedy School spokesperson declined to comment on specific details of the allegations or whether an investigation had been launched following the requests from Hidalgo and Hausmann.
“Harvard Kennedy School has a robust process for reviewing research integrity concerns,” a spokesperson said. Hausmann, however, wrote that “the review is ongoing” and that he and his team had been instructed by the University to not discuss details publicly until the investigation reached its conclusion.
A small group of Harvard faculty members chalked messages on the sidewalk below the John Harvard statue Tuesday afternoon to protest the University’s new policies restricting campus protests, including bans on chalking and unapproved signage.
The five professors — Steven R. Levitsky, Walter Johnson, Ryan D. Enos, Richard F. Thomas, and Hibah Osman — condemned the prohibitions, rolled out in August as part of a new slate of campus use rules, as a threat to students’ free speech.
Some of the chalked messages were pointed: “Why do preschoolers have more academic freedom than Harvard students?” read one. “Long chalk to freedom,” read another. Nearby, a string of pink letters spelled out a warning: “Caution: Chalk is dangerous.”
Other messages struck a different tone, welcoming students to campus and declaring: “I love puppies!”
The faculty members also propped up a trio of posters criticizing the requirement that signs and displays affixed to Harvard property must first be approved by the University. A Harvard University Police Department officer took photos of the professors and the chalked messages. And the messages were washed away less than an hour after they were written. Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo declined to answer questions on whether administrators had authorized the removal and the HUPD presence. “An issue was reported and addressed in accordance with normal protocols,”
BY J. SELLERS HILL — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER
that the University fully divest from companies with financial and political ties to Israel.
THE COLUMBIA SPECTATOR
The Rhode Island State House is expected to see the re-introduction of a bill that would ban legacy admissions state-wide after a previous version failed in committee during the previous legislative session. The renewed effort is backed by Students for Educational Equity and Brown student activists. The previous version of the bill was introduced by State Representative David Morales (D) during the January to June legislative session.
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD Penn Police Chief Gary Williams unexpectedly departed his role after being appointed on Jan. 17, 2023. Deputy Chief Derrick Wood will step in as interim chief, while Williams will remain with the department as director of community outreach and engagement. Wood, who joined Penn following a 24-year career with the Philadelphia Police Department and a term as Norristown’s Chief of Police, will take over as interim police chief.
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
The Yale Class of 2028, the first group of students admitted since the Supreme Court ended race-conscious college admissions, saw a decline in its share of Asian American and white students compared to
UPHOLDS X BAN SEPTEMBER
BRAZIL’S SUPREME COURT
The Brazilian Supreme Court on Monday upheld Justice Alexandre de Moraes’ order to telecommunications carriers to cease supporting X on devices in Brazil, the BBC reported. X, formerly Twitter, has been suspended in Brazil since Saturday. Judge Moraes ordered Elon Musk to shut down accounts spreading disinformation about Bolsonaro’s 2022 defeat. Musk refused and closed X’s Brazilian offices, leading to the suspension. Musk criticized Moraes as an “evil tyrant” and called the order censorship.
FAR RIGHT WINS STATE ELECTIONS IN EASTERN GERMANY
The far-right AfD party won the largest share of seats in one German state and took a close second in another, DW reported. Sunday’s elections saw the far-right AfD win over 30 percent of votes in each state, the first such win since WWII. However, the AfD may be excluded from governing as other parties refuse to coalition with them. The newly-founded Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, also supporting immigration restrictions and opposing aid for Ukraine, made a strong showing.
FOUR PEOPLE KILLED IN GEORGIA SCHOOL SHOOTING
Two teachers and two students were killed Wednesday in a shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga., the New York Times reported. Authorities identified the 14-year-old gunman as a student at the school. The attack, the deadliest school shooting in Georgia’s history, is among over 380 mass shootings in the U.S. this year. Hundreds gathered for a candlelight vigil to mourn the victims, and President Biden called on congressional Republicans to support gun control legislation.
ISRAELIS PROTEST
NETANYAHU AFTER HOSTAGE DEATHS
Thousands of Israelis joined an anti-government general strike Monday after the bodies of six hostages who were killed in Gaza were recovered, the Washington Post reported. Protesters accused Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu of delaying a deal with Hamas for hostage release and a Gaza ceasefire, citing his insistence on maintaining troops along the Gaza-Egypt border as a major obstacle.
JUDGE HALTS ENFORCEMENT OF OHIO ABORTION RESTRICTIONS
A judge blocked two Ohio laws restricting medication abortions, the Associated Press reported. The judge’sAug. 29 injunction blocks a law banning non-doctors from prescribing mifepristone and halts a telemedicine abortion ban. This follows Ohio’s 2023 amendment protecting abortion access, making it one of four states with such protections since Roe v. Wade.
Start every week with a preview of what’s on the agenda around Harvard University
Friday 9/6
BIG DATA CONFERENCE 2024
Harvard University CMSA, 9:00 a.m.
The Center for Mathematical Sciences and Applications invites you to the tenth annual Conference on Big Data. This two-day event will feature Harvard’s Professor Raj Chetty and global experts in computer science, statistics, math, physics, and economics.
Saturday 9/7
Monday 9/9
CONVERSATION WITH TAIPEI CITY
MAYOR, WAN-AN CHIANG
JFK Jr. Forum, 6:00 p.m.
Taipei City Mayor Wan-an Chiang will open the Harvard Institute of Politics’ inaugural JFK Jr. Forum of 2024-2025. Moderated by professor Anthony Saich, the discussion will explore Taipei’s blend of tradition and innovation.
Tuesday 9/10
Wednesday 9/11
MEET THE IOP FELLOWS
JFK Jr. Forum, 6:00 p.m.
Head on down to the Harvard Kennedy School to meet this semester’s class of Institute of Politics fellows. They include former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Nikki Haley’s former campaign manager Betsy Ankney, and John Anzalone, the chief pollster for Biden’s 2020
Thursday 9/12
Sunday 9/8
FIRST SUNDAY SERVICE OF FALL
Church, 11:00 a.m. Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts invites students, Harvard affiliates, and the public to Memorial Church for the first service of the academic year. The multi-denominational service will be live-streamed on YouTube and broadcast live on WHRB 95.3 FM.
Friday 9/13
A SHAKESPEAREAN SPEED-FRIENDING EVENT
Aeronaut Allston, 5:30 p.m.
The American Repertory Theater and the B-Side at Aeronaut Brewery are hosting a speed-friending event. In each round, participants will be paired with a different person to chat. Attendees can enter to win free tickets to Romeo and Juliet.
use guidelines that explicitly ban chalking on University property.
Several other freshmen pointed to their first college classroom experiences as a highlight of the day. Dillon Dukes ’28 said Michael Sandel’s course titled “Justice: Ethical Reasoning in Polarized Times” was “very different” from his high school coursework.
Harvard undergraduates posed for pictures, reunited with old friends, and enjoyed sunny Cambridge weather as they streamed across campus to attend their first classes of the semester on Tuesday.
“I think everyone just has a bubbly, excited energy to be back at school,” Kyle L. Mandell ’25 said.
For the class of 2028, Tuesday also marked the beginning of their academic college experience. Several freshmen said their first glimpses of college coursework abated their firstday jitters.
After attending the first meeting of “Life Sciences 50: Integrated Science,” an intensive freshman biology course, Bob Guan ’28 said he would describe his first day as “exciting” and “exhilarating, even.”
“I’m feeling that butterflies-in-my-stomach sensation, in a sort of prolonged fight or flight response,” Guan said. “But you can take that in the best way you can.”
Annika N. Krovi ’28 said she was pleasantly surprised at the small size of her Government 20 class, adding that she particularly enjoyed meeting Government professor Steven Levitsky.
“My professor — it’s Levitsky, so he’s obviously awesome, read his book before. It’s crazy to be face-to-face with him,” Krovi said. Just after delivering the 12 p.m. lecture, Levitsky and other Harvard faculty wrote in chalk next to the John Harvard statue in Harvard Yard to protest the University’s updated campus
“I think that’s the most I’ve thought on a moral and ethical sense than I’ve ever even experienced for one second in high school,” Dukes said.
As seniors began their final year at Harvard, many students said they were eager to make the most of their remaining semesters.
Anthony J. Malysz ’25 said he is “excited to see what a new semester holds.”
“Nerves are for previous years,” Malysz said. “Now there’s no nerves.”
Thor N. Reimann ’25 said he did not have any classes on Tuesday, but he still decided to sit in the Yard to “take it in, enjoy it.”
“I’ve seen a lot of people that I haven’t seen in a while, walking through. It’s nice to say hi,” said Reimann, a Crimson magazine editor. “Sometimes in the summer, you can feel so anonymous, because a lot of people are in new places with non-Harvard people.”
For Samantha C. Graisen ’25, this first day of classes was “just another day.”
“This has been a weird year for me, because I used to care so much about my outfit and getting ready,” Graisen said. “Especially freshman year.”
As students lined up to take
photos on the steps of Widen-
er Library with signs that read “First Day of 13th Grade” and “Last First Day,” some said they noticed an unusual amount of formal attire among their peers.
“I’ve seen some people wearing heels, and I know that that’s not going to happen for me,” Samantha A. Jackman ’25 said.
“As you get closer and closer to finals, sweatpants start coming out,” Jackman added. “And that’s how it should be.”
Some undergraduates said the first day sparked an increase in school spirit across the student body.
“I got my ‘H’ on today,” Dukes said, pointing to the Harvard logo on his sweater.
PROTEST FROM PAGE 1
include some common sense provisions, like restrictions on alcohol and open flames. But they also include efforts to tamp down protest tactics — like a camping ban and a requirement that events be sponsored by recognized organizations.
The new rules put Harvard on a long list of schools nationwide — including the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, Florida State University, and Indiana University — that have tightened protest rules in preparation for another semester of demonstrations around the war in Gaza.
University President Alan M. Garber ’76 and Harvard Executive Vice President Meredith L. Weenick ’90 highlighted the rules in emails to Harvard affiliates before the start of the fall semester. Weenick warned that affiliates who violate the policies could face disciplinary action or be stopped by Harvard police.
Levitsky, a Government professor, described the chalking ban — and the threat of punishment — as “completely antithetical to the kind of democratic society that I want to live in.”
Levitsky said he hoped the protest would call students’ attention to the regulations and signal that student protesters have support among the faculty.
“We don’t necessarily or always support their cause, but we staunchly support the right to express themselves, their right to express what might be unpopular views, and their right to protest,” he said.
Johnson, a History and African and African American Studies professor, criticized the restrictions in an emailed statement.
“The number of rules limiting and defining the boundaries of acceptable expression made by the university administration over the summer is dizzying,” he wrote. “Their approach seems to be to assert incredibly broad authority over expression which then allows them a great deal of latitude to selectively enforce regulations.”
As students and tourists strolled through Harvard Yard Tuesday afternoon, most seemed unbothered by the faculty demonstration. Families snapped photos by the statue. Enos, a Government professor, explained the chalked messages to a pair of undergrads who had stopped to watch. “Why are you guys chalking?” a woman asked as she strolled past.
The Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Administrative Board denied reconsideration requests last month from at least eight of 10 students put on probation in June for their involvement in the pro-Palestine protests last semester.
GSAS was the only graduate school to sanction student protesters for their participation in the 20-day pro-Palestine encampment in Harvard Yard last spring.
Though the Harvard College Administrative Board originally suspended five undergraduates and placed more than 20 on probation, the body reversed its decisions over the summer. Following student appeals and criticisms
from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ Faculty Council of how the Ad Board had handled the cases, the board downgraded all five suspensions to probations and reduced the length of some of the 20 probations.
While undergraduates placed on probation by the College’s Ad Board were able to appeal their punishments to the FAS Faculty Council, the website outlining GSAS disciplinary procedure states that “a student who is required to withdraw for more than one term can appeal to the FAS Faculty Council.” An appeal process through the Faculty Council is not listed for probations.
At least eight GSAS students applied to the Ad Board for reconsideration on their probation sentences — which ranged from six months to one full academic year — but due to a lack of new
evidence in the case, all requests were denied.
Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine Coalition, an unrecognized pro-Palestine student group, criticized the decision in a Tuesday evening statement to The Crimson. “The failure of the GSAS Administrative Board to follow the precedent set by every other graduate school and the college is deeply unjust,” wrote a HOOP spokesperson. “This is yet another instance of the clear and rampant repression of pro-Palestine speech on Harvard’s campus.” GSAS spokesperson Bailey Snyder declined to comment for this article, citing a policy of not discussing students’ disciplinary cases.
sent an additional email to Harvard affiliates on Friday stating the University is prepared to use police force to end protests that cause “substantial” disruption. In emails sent to freshmen ahead of Convocation, administrators also warned against bringing signs and flags to the class photo — a line newly added to the pre-ceremony email this year.
“Please note that no signs or flags will be allowed in the photo. Any items brought to the Widener steps will be held until the completion of the photo,” the email stated. Khurana — who announced last week that he will be stepping down from his position at the helm of the College in June 2025
— acknowledged the “divisions on campus, divisions in the country,” and “divisions in the world,” but urged students to nurture a “willingness to connect with others.”
He underscored “responsibility and accountability” as one of the core principles to which students should adhere, noting that while “a university is a place where we will often disagree, often vehemently,” there is still a “responsibility to do so with humility and thoughtfulness and kindness.”
“The challenges of last year showed us that we have more to do to reach globalistic ideals and meet the obligations of our community,” Khurana said. “Our words have enormous power. Think about what power you want to put into the world.” The ceremony also included
remarks from Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh, Dean of Students Thomas Dunne, and Harvard Alumni Association President Moitri Chowdhury Savard ’93. Ashley C. Adirika ’26 and Jonathan Hailselassie ’26, the co-presidents of the Harvard Undergraduate Association, also addressed the class in dual speeches. Harvard choruses and the Kuumba Singers performed during the event, and ceremonial tracks from the Harvard Band reverberated throughout the Old Yard as freshmen lined up to take their class photo on the steps of Widener Library to close out the ceremony.
testers, it would ignite a student and faculty rebellion as had just occurred at Columbia and Dartmouth.
With dozens of tents filling the lawn in front of his office in Massachusetts Hall, Alan M. Garber ’76 huddled with his closest advisers late on May 13 to go over their options if student protesters rejected his offer to end the 20-day pro-Palestine encampment in Harvard Yard.
If they made any further concessions to the demonstrators, it would stir uproar among donors and alumni. If they called in the police to forcibly remove the pro -
Either scenario also would have almost certainly dashed any hopes of Garber elevating to the presidency permanently, according to two people familiar with the deliberations within the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body. So when members of Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine quietly packed up their tents and sleeping bags the next morning, Garber had not only achieved a peaceful end to the occupation of Harvard Yard but effectively secured his grip on the presidency. Not quite two-and-a-half months later, in late July, the Corporation gave Garber everything he had asked for: a full appointment as president of Harvard, a finite tenure, and the ability to serve alongside John F. Manning
’82, his handpicked deputy.
“Sometimes in crises there are people who are right for the moment and people who aren’t right for the moment,” said one longtime Harvard insider. “He just happens to be right for the moment.”
This account of how the Corporation decided to permanently keep Garber at the helm of Harvard — and delay a potentially destabilizing presidential search — is based on interviews with members of the governing boards, faculty members familiar with the decision-making, and prominent donors.
Success in the Interim
On Jan. 2, former Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned, and Garber suddenly found himself as Harvard’s emergency leader — interim in name but without a term limit.
At the time, Garber was eyeing retirement — not a promotion.
But suddenly, the longtime Harvard provost had a second chance to make his own mark at the helm of the country’s oldest institution of higher education after he was passed over for the job in 2017.
Initially, the plan was to conduct a formal search and relieve Garber of his interim duties as soon as a successor was chosen.
sure as federal lawmakers and the editorial board of at least one national newspaper called on Garber to remove Penslar from the task force. Garber, however, resisted the pressure.
Just over one month later, Garber made another controversial decision when he tapped John F. Manning ’82 — the longtime Harvard Law School dean and conservative law profes-
and off campus among alumni — given the knowledge he has of the University and how good he’d be not just at keeping things going, but actually promoting the key objectives for the University — we started to talk about what might make sense,” Martin said.
Sealing the Deal
Those conversations, however, were paused when dozens of pro-Palestine activists flooded the Yard on the last day of classes and began pitching tents in front of the John Harvard Statue. Garber and his advisers were also watching fellow higher education leaders struggle to end the protests without controversy.
But if Garber ever believed that his position at the helm of Harvard was precarious, he never acted like it.
On Jan. 19, Garber announced the formation of twin presidential task forces to combat campus antisemitism and anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias. Later that afternoon, he clarified Harvard’s guidelines surrounding campus protests in an effort to demonstrate to campus activists that he intended to strictly enforce the University’s policies.
The announcements addressed two of Harvard’s most pressing concerns, a resurgence of the fall’s pro-Palestine protests and a feeling shared by Jewish, Muslim, Israeli and Palestinian affiliates that the University had ignored their concerns.
Just days later, Garber faced his first major crisis as some Jewish affiliates at Harvard criticized the decision to appoint History professor Derek J. Penslar as cochair of the antisemitism task force because Penslar had previously suggested that claims of antisemitism at Harvard were exaggerated.
The internal criticism snowballed into intense external pres-
sor — to be his interim provost.
At Harvard, where the faculty is overwhelmingly liberal, some affiliates grumbled at Manning’s appointment.
Though both decisions sparked some backlash, Garber managed to craft an image as a resolute president who was willing to make bold appointments, resist pressure, and do what is in the University’s best interest — even if doing so was unpopular.
“There was a feeling among the fellows that he was really doing a wonderful job,” said Carolyn A. “Biddy” Martin, a former president of Amherst College who has served on the Corporation since 2018.
“I think his temperament, his intelligence, his love of the place, his knowledge of it, all of those things served him well,” she added.
Shortly after Garber returned to campus from a spring break trip that allowed him to meet with donors in London and Miami, the Corporation began to consider whether they should try to keep Garber as president for longer.
“I’d say sometime mid-semester, March-April, given the trust in him that seemed to exist on campus among faculty, students,
The Harvard encampment was one of well over 100 such protests at colleges and universities across the country. While many were short-lived, others had a profound impact on their University administration. Columbia President Nemat T. “Minouche” Shafik asked New York Police Department officers to clear the encampment on her university’s campus, a decision that prompted faculty members to censure her and call a vote of no confidence. She would resign in August, having never regained the trust of her faculty. Meanwhile, university officials at Brown, Rutgers, and Northwestern negotiated with protesters to secure peaceful resolutions to their encampments. But those decisions drew a different form of backlash — this time from major donors and federal lawmakers.
Garber attempted a different strategy: patience. Initially, Harvard’s top administration attempted to ignore the encampment, but the situation became less tenable for Garber as the days went on and Commencement drew closer. The prolonged protest, though largely peaceful, forced the University to shut its gates, relocate several final exams, and maintain a costly round-the-clock security presence. It also prevented maintenance workers from preparing the Yard ahead of the graduation ceremonies later that month.
On May 10, Garber turned up the pressure on protesters as he placed more than 20 participants on involuntary leaves of absence from the University. But they did not leave voluntarily.
In a last ditch effort to secure a peaceful end to the encampment, Garber presented the protesters on May 13 with his final offer: reinstatement from involuntary leaves of absence and a conversation with members of the University’s governing bodies to discuss divestment.
Despite the offer, Garber reiterated that the University would not accede to the protesters’ demands – divestment was off the table. School-level administrative boards had also opened disciplinary proceedings against more than 60 students for their participation in the encampment.
The encampment ended the next day, with protesters saying that “the utility of this tactic has passed.”
As far as the Corporation was concerned, Garber could not have handled the encampment any better.
When members of the governing boards arrived on campus later that month, they had some of their first in-person conversations about removing Garber’s interim tag. To some people involved in the deliberations, the informal talks about keeping Garber indicated that his appointment as the University’s 31st president would only be a matter of time.
“The inevitability became inevitable after Commencement,” one person said.
The Next Search Garber’s success at managing the encampment cleared a path for the Corporation to move forward with removing his interim title, allowing the University to forgo an official search for several years.
In the immediate aftermath of Gay’s resignation, the Corporation’s Senior Fellow Penny S. Pritzker ’81 wrote that the “search for a new president of the university will begin in due course.” But just weeks into the spring semester, she realized that would not be feasible.
Faculty members remained angry that Gay was not better prepared for her congressional testimony, wealthy alumni pledged to withhold donations from the University over concerns of antisemitism, and — even amid deep divisions on campus — almost everybody seemed to blame the Corporation for Harvard’s leadership crisis.
Paul Reville, a professor of education policy and administration at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said the Corporation “was looking at the University in a very turbulent period of time and with a significant probability of times getting even more turbulent in short order, depending on how the election would turn out.”
But perhaps the biggest obstacle to launching a search was just that not too many people were interested in becoming president when the University was still trying to emerge from a period of intense controversy.
“This would not be an ideal time to try and recruit a new president,” former Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow said.
The Corporation also knew that no matter who they selected to serve as the University’s president, their pick would be viewed through the prism of identity politics. Critics would inevitably raise questions about their appointee’s legitimacy.
When Gay resigned, some conservative activists claimed without evidence that the plagiarism allegations against her were evidence that the Corporation had settled on a less qualified candidate in order to appoint the first person of color to serve at the
helm of Harvard.
If the Corporation ultimately decided to select another person of color to succeed Gay, their credibility would have immediately been questioned by these same critics. And if they were to appoint a white man, they faced being portrayed as having caved to right-wing reactionaries.
That consideration was a significant factor that deterred the Corporation from immediately launching another search, according to one person familiar with the decision-making process.
Garber’s early success as interim president presented them with an out. By appointing him, the Corporation could permanently fill the post without the perception that they had selected Garber over other candidates.
Another concern for the Corporation was selecting a candidate whose academic credentials could withstand the scrutiny of external critics. Garber’s academic background, which includes a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard and an M.D. from Stanford University, eased any lingering concerns from Corporation members.
“His academic credibility was never in doubt and that ended up being a tremendous positive for him,” said a person close to the governing boards.
‘On Our Own’
As campus cleared for the summer, there was only one hurdle remaining for the Corporation before it could officially name Garber as president: Pritzker and the other Corporation fellows had to avoid the appearance that they were making a unilateral decision.
Earlier in the spring, Pritzker told faculty members at a town hall in April that the Corporation could not make presidential appointments without consulting a broader group of Harvard affiliates.
“One of the things the Corpora-
tion cannot do is appoint the president of Harvard on our own,” Pritkzer said, according to transcribed meeting notes from an attendee.
“It’s a process.”
To gather input from more faculty members without officially conducting a search, Corporation members began to quietly meet with preexisting groups of affiliates.
The fellows met with a number of University Professors in July as well as the faculty advisory committees that counseled the Corporation during its 2017 and 2022 presidential searches, according to Biddy Martin.
Pritzker also confirmed in a statement that the group also privately consulted alumni, school deans, members of the Board of Overseers, vice presidents, and “other leaders” among faculty and alumni.
“Many of these conversations were one-on-one or in smaller groups with the Fellows,” Pritzker wrote. “These conversations were immensely important to our considerations in reinforcing that what we were observing — a high level of trust and confidence in Alan’s leadership — was in fact felt by others in the community.”
At a meeting with University Professors a week before the decision, the Corporation fellows also solicited opinions about the search process and when it should be conducted. The faculty agreed against conducting a search in the fall and expressed approval of Garber’s performance, a person with knowledge of the meeting said.
When the idea of extending Garber’s tenure was discussed, the faculty attendees also expressed widespread agreement.
Harvard Divinity School professor Catherine A. Brekus ’85, a member of the 2017 search faculty advisory group, wrote in an emailed statement that “the appreciation for Alan Garber’s leadership was unanimous” during the discussion with the Corporation.
“This kind of unanimity is rare at Harvard, but faculty are immensely grateful for President Garber’s wisdom, his fairness, and his ethic of service to the university,” Brekus added. Meanwhile, Pritzker and a small group of other fellows were conferring with a trusted circle of alumni and donors to gauge their thoughts on the appointment.
Peter J. Solomon ’60, a former member of the Board of Overseers, said Pritzker had called him before the decision to ask his opinion. The two also discussed the potential length of Garber’s tenure.
“I thought it was an excellent appointment and it would make no sense for Harvard to have looked elsewhere,” Solomon — a former chair of the Friends of the Center for Jewish Studies — said.
“I said, ‘The sooner the better,’” he added. From there, it all happened rather quickly.
In late July, Pritzker spoke with Garber and told him that the governing boards would meet on Aug. 2 to vote on his appointment as Harvard’s 31st president.
On the morning of Aug. 2, the Corporation convened for an official vote. A few hours later, the Board of Overseers rubber-stamped the decision. And by that afternoon, Pritzker announced the news publicly.
“Alan has done an outstanding job leading Harvard through extraordinary challenges since taking on his interim presidential duties seven months ago,” she wrote in an email to Harvard affiliates on Aug. 2.
“We have asked him to hold the title of president, not just interim president, both to recognize his distinguished service to the University and to underscore our belief that this is a time not merely for steady stewardship but for active, engaged leadership,” Pritzker added.
Similarly to Garber’s own bold appointments as interim
president, the Corporation decision to elevate him without a search caused some faculty and alumni groups to grumble — especially those who were not consulted over the summer.
Several elected directors of the Harvard Alumni Association, which oversees nominations for the Harvard Board of Overseers, also said that they had hoped to see the Corporation commit to a full search process.
And the Coalition for a Diverse Harvard, an influential alumni group with 2,400 members, wrote in a statement that they were “deeply distressed that Alan Garber was installed without any search process whatsoever.”
“We are especially shocked that President Garber was unilaterally installed given that an open search process has long been a pillar of equitable hiring practices, which Harvard professes to be committed to,” the Coalition added.
But for Derek C. Bok, the last person to serve as the University’s interim leader, the decision to keep Garber at the helm permanently was simply the best move for Harvard.
“It’s an unusual procedure because these are unusual times,” Bok said. “And Alan is exactly the right person to appoint.”
BY S. MAC HEALY AND SAKETH SUNDAR CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
n one of his first actions as Harvard’s 31st president, Alan M. Garber ’76 permanently appointed longtime Harvard Law School Dean John F. Manning ’82 to serve as the University’s provost — creating a vacancy at the helm of HLS for the first time in seven years.
Garber and Manning will officially launch the search for the Law School’s 14th dean this month, with Manning expected to be heavily involved in picking his successor at the helm of one of Harvard’s most powerful graduate schools. In interviews with The Crim-
son, HLS affiliates expressed support for a wide range of candidates, including interim Dean John C. P. Goldberg and the school’s deputy deans. But all of the Law School’s faculty members agreed on one thing: the next dean should come from within their own ranks.
If Garber and Manning decide to fill the vacancy with an external hire, it would break with a century of precedent at the Law School. Only one dean at HLS did not have at least a brief stint on the school’s faculty before ascending to the deanship.
“It would be unusual to have an external candidate,” said HLS professor Holger Spamann.
‘A Clear Front Runner’ When Manning informed his faculty in March that he was taking a leave of absence from the Law School to serve as the University’s interim provost, he announced that Goldberg — formerly a deputy dean under Manning — would serve in the role on an interim basis.
Now that Manning will permanently remain in Massachusetts Hall, Goldberg has emerged as a leading contender to become the Law School’s 14th dean, according to several professors.
“The obvious choice is the current interim Dean, John Goldberg,” HLS professor Oren Bar-Gill wrote in a statement to The Crimson.
“I would be surprised and disappointed if he is not appointed Dean,” he added.
HLS spokesperson Jeff Neal declined to comment on whether Goldberg would seek the position.
Goldberg, a professor of tort law and political philosophy, served as Manning’s deputy dean from 2017 to 2022 — a top administrative role at the Law School.
And his appointment as interim dean over the school’s current deputy deans demonstrated that University leadership had a high level of confidence in Goldberg’s ability to lead the school. Spamann described the relationship between Manning and Goldberg as “very close.”
Last spring, HLS faculty widely praised Goldberg’s appointment. And after five months on the job, many faculty members would like to see Goldberg remain in his role.
While HLS professors Howell E. Jackson and Randall L. Kennedy both said that there are a number of faculty members who are strong candidates to serve as dean, they specifically praised Goldberg.
HLS professor Michael J. Klarman called Goldberg “a clear front runner,” saying that he was “universally liked and admired.”
“I have never heard anyone say an unkind word about him
— only expressions of fondness and admiration,” Klarman wrote in an email. “He is warm and generous and easy to talk to; students and alumni will love him.”
‘A Deep and Diverse Bench’
While Goldberg may have an advantage as the school’s interim leader, several HLS professors said that there are a number of current deans and vice deans who may also be top contenders for the role.
The deputy deans and vice deans have historically served as a waiting room for professors vying for the top job at the school. Prior to becoming dean in 2017, Manning served as deputy dean under his predecessor, former HLS Dean Martha L. Minow.
“There are several associate deans now at the Law School who have significant administrative responsibilities,” Klarman said. “And I think some of them might be interested.”
I. Glenn Cohen and Maureen E. “Molly” Brady ’08 both served as deputy deans under Manning. Cohen joined the school’s leadership in 2020 and Brady has served in her role since 2023. Cohen and Brady declined to comment for this article.
Gabriella Blum, Jonathan L. Zittrain, and David B. Wilkins ’77, who currently serve as the Law School’s three vice deans, were also suggested by faculty members as candidates for the top job.
Blum, Zittrain, and Wilkins all declined to comment on whether they were interested in succeeding Manning.
But of those five, Cohen — a leading expert on bioethics and health law — received the most support from faculty members as a potential candidate for the deanship.
When Cohen joined the HLS faculty in 2008, he became the youngest professor at the school. He is also affiliated with the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics.
Klarman described Cohen as a “brilliant guy.”
“He’s a big institutional contributor,” Klarman added. “He would be a plausible candidate.”
Wilkins has emerged as a top contender to serve as dean during past searches at the Law School. He was a finalist in the 2009 search that landed on Minow.
In 2017, during the search that ended with Manning’s appointment, 10 student affinity groups endorsed Wilkins for the deanship. If appointed, Wilkins would become the first Black person to serve as dean of the Law School.
Jackson wrote in a statement that the Law School “has a deep and diverse bench of faculty members who have the right temperaments and skills to serve as the next HLS dean.”
“There are lots of good internal options if Alan Garber chooses to go in that direction,” he added. Kennedy also said that University leadership does not need to look far to find the Law School’s next leader.
“There are an array of members of the HLS faculty who would be excellent candidates,” Kennedy said.
Shaping the Search
As Garber and Manning plan to launch the search, they will likely consider stakeholders beyond just the Law School’s faculty. The next HLS dean will likely be Garber’s third dean appointment. He tapped Stanford political scientist Jeremy M. Weinstein to lead the Harvard Kennedy School in April, and is currently considering candidates to succeed Bridget Terry Long as dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
HLS student leaders have already indicated that they are hoping for a more active role in the dean search.
Felipe Lobo Koerich, co-president of HLS Lambda — the school’s LGBTQ+ student organization, wrote in a statement that the group’s members “urge the administration to meaningfully incorporate students and affinity groups into the process of selecting a new dean.”
Student involvement in administrative appointments has been a longstanding demand at HLS, where students also sought more involvement in the 2017 process. At the time, the Law School’s student government leadership asked the University’s leadership to hold student forums, create a position for a student on the search committee, and allow students to interview candidates. While students were not offered a direct role in the search, former Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust organized a series of panels to hear about what students wanted to see in the next dean. Faust also created an open email account for students to send input on the dean search. There appears to be no widespread endorsement of any particular faculty member yet, but affinity group leaders told The Crimson that they want the administration to seek their input. Laura Kern and Laura Muñoz, co-presidents of HLS’s Women’s Law Association, wrote that they “look forward to working closely with interim Dean Goldberg during the search for our next dean — whom we hope will reflect and represent our members and the wider HLS community.”
INVESTIGATION. Harvard Police is investigating after a mezuzah briefly went missing from a student’s door Tuesday.
BY MICHELLE N. AMPONSAH AND JOYCE E. KIM CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
The Harvard University Police Department is investigating after a mezuzah went missing from the doorway of a Jewish freshman’s dorm in Thayer Hall early Tuesday morning.
The mezuzah, a scroll of parchment containing Torah verses and traditionally placed outside Jewish homes, appeared to be affixed to the doorway with adhesive material. HUPD spokesperson Steven G. Catalano did not indicate whether authorities currently believe the mezuzah was forcibly removed from the doorway or if it became dislodged on its own. Catalano wrote in a statement that the mezuzah was found on the floor in Thayer “approximately three doors down from the student’s room and returned to the owner.”
“This incident is still under investigation,” Catalano wrote.
The mezuzah belonged to Sarah F. Silverman ’28, who claimed it was deliberately removed from her doorway in Thayer. Silverman said that the mezuzah was missing for several hours on Tuesday as it had disappeared from her doorway before 9 a.m. and was only recovered by a HUPD officer several hours later during their investigation.
“My roommate and I firmly believe that it was planted then,” Silverman said.
Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi wrote in a statement to The Crimson that “we must recognize this incident for what it truly is: a hate crime.”
“To tear down a Mezuzah is to send a message of intimidation and erasure,” Zarchi added. “It’s not just a matter of vandalism; it is an attack on the very identity of the Jewish community at Harvard.”
Zarchi, however, did not provide any evidence that the mezuzah was forcibly removed from the student’s doorway. Chabad, one of Harvard’s Jewish
centers, first revealed the incident in a post on X Tuesday morning and demanded a full investigation from HUPD. “In light of the shocking incident
Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 acknowledged that deep divisions remain on campus in an address at Memorial Church Tuesday morning, urging affiliates to “embrace each other” as the University anticipates another tumultuous semester.
“We also know that this fall is not likely to be calm with memories of the spring so fresh,” Garber said in his remarks at Morning Prayers, continuing a tradition of presidential addresses during the sermon on the first day of class.
Echoing his statements to freshmen during Convocation Monday, Garber recognized the likelihood of protests on campus but also cautioned attendees to avoid isolating each other.
“By reserving judgment, we make it possible for others to know that they are part of this community, and that this community cares for them as much as you hope and expect it will,” Garber said. “Disappointment in this regard is a crushing blow, not to the will but to the spirit, with belonging — and the freedom and peace that it brings — out of reach.” Garber and other top University leaders have signaled that they have a lower level of tolerance for disruptive campus protests after the 20-day encampment in Harvard Yard last spring and a walkout featuring more than 1,000 students during Commencement.
“We expect that there will be debate and argument,” Garber said. “There will no doubt be hard feelings and hurt feelings among us.”
Garber has previously told
protesters they would face consequences for rule violations and in an email last week, Harvard Executive Vice President Meredith L. Weenick ’90 told them the University is prepared to call in the police in the event of “substantial disruptions” to campus operations.
One day into the semester, the campus’ pro-Palestine activists have been largely quiet. They were absent from freshman convocation, did not protest Garber’s speech at Morning Prayers, and have not announced any rallies.
And despite the concern from Garber about a resurgence of campus protests, he largely struck an optimistic tone in his remarks at Memorial Church.
“If you believe the headlines — and last month was awash with them — those of us who are fortunate enough to be part of universities have no choice but to brace
ourselves,” Garber said. “What a bleak notion that is at an institution such as this one.”
“This is not a time to brace ourselves,” he added. “This is a time to embrace one another.”
Garber, who is Jewish, also quoted from Pirkei Avot, a Jewish rabbinical text.
“Find yourself a teacher, win yourself a friend, and be one who judges everyone by giving them the benefit of the doubt,” Garber said.
Garber encouraged attendees to find commonalities and be each other’s teachers and friends, even in moments of intense disagreement.
“To do so, we must welcome humility and humanity into interactions with each other more readily than in the sense of righteousness,” he said.
emma.haidar@thecrimson.com cam.kettles@thecrimson.com
that occurred last night in Harvard Yard, where the Mezuzah of a Jewish student was ripped off her dorm room sometime after 2 AM, we call on the university and law enforce-
FROM PAGE 1
Hidalgo alleged that Hausmann had plagiarized a 2023 peer-reviewed paper that Hidalgo had co-written in which his team combined trade, patent, and research publication data to explain a country’s income inequality, emission intensity, and economic growth.
Hidalgo said in an interview that Hausmann’s first working paper, published in April 2024 by the World Intellectual Property Organization, had the same focus on “expanding from trade to other dimensions.” In the paper, Hausmann and his team presented a model that used similar types of data — “scientific publications, patents, and international trade data” — as Hidalgo’s paper to explain countries’ economies.
While Hausmann and his co-authors did cite Hidalgo’s 2023 paper in a footnote, writing that “other studies have developed similar complexity metrics,” Hidalgo still took issue with the paper. Hausmann claimed that past studies have used different names for their indexes, even though the name he and his co-authors use — “Economic Complexity Indexes” — is nearly identical to the “Economic Complexity Index” used in Hidalgo’s 2023 paper.
Hidalgo claimed that the footnote reference was an insufficient citation and constituted a violation of Harvard’s Honor Code, saying in an interview that the citation in Hausmann’s paper did not match with Harvard’s policies on proper attribution.
In a second working paper — also released in April — Hausmann and his co-writers cited other research Hidalgo published in 2007, 2009, 2014, and 2018, but not the 2023 paper. Instead, Hausmann’s second 2024 paper attributes the use of trade and patent data to his first working paper.
Hidalgo said he believes Hausmann consciously failed
ment, to immediately investigate this hate crime,” Chabad wrote on X. “The perpetrator should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.” In response to a request for comment, University spokesperson Jonathan L. Swain said that “every student should feel welcomed in our Harvard community.”
“The University will not tolerate actions that violate this commitment,” he added.
The incident on Tuesday comes after a series of anonymous acts last semester, including the appearance of antisemitic and anti-Palestinian posters around Harvard’s campus and antisemitic posts on Sidechat — a social media app that allows users
he wrote.
michelle.amponsah@thecrimson.com joyce.kim@thecrimson.com
to properly cite his 2023 paper since a third 2024 working paper written by junior contributors on Hausmann’s team — but not Hausmann himself — includes an explicit, in-text reference to Hidalgo’s 2023 research.
The co-authors on Hidalgo’s 2023 paper — Philipp Koch and Viktor Stojkoski, the principal author — said in interviews that they believed the plagiarism allegations levied by Hidalgo were convincing.
Hausmann, however, firmly defended his scholarship and said that Hidalgo’s allegations will disproportionately hurt junior contributors on Hausmann’s team.
“His groundless and utterly false accusation of plagiarism does not aim to resolve any grievance he may have in a constructive fashion and instead risks damaging the reputation of my young and promising co-authors in his attempt to damage my own,” he wrote.
Hidalgo said in a statement that “neither that post nor my formal complaint involves claims against Hausmann’s co-authors.”
“His first attempt to spin my publicizing these facts may be to argue that someone of his caliber does not have the time to look at petty things like footnotes and references (pinning the responsibility on them),” Hidalgo wrote in his email to Harvard requesting the launch of an investigation. “I don’t think that’s fair,” he added.
In the X post, Hidalgo also alleged that Hausmann has had a trend of academic misconduct since 2010, ranging from refusing to credit junior contributors and unilaterally moving a project Hidalgo led at MIT to the Kennedy School. Hausmann denied both allegations, writing that “no such pattern exists.”
BY SARAH F. SILVERMAN
Tuesday was a day of firsts. The first day of college. The first day of new friends. And the first day I had to call the Harvard University Police Department.
That morning, I didn’t mind my blaring alarm, nor the resonating sound of bells coming from Memorial Church, nor the fact that I now had to get used to wearing shower shoes. Classes were about to begin, and I was ready to be immersed in the “transformative experience” that I was promised from the moment I opened my acceptance letter.
Beyond psyched to get ready for my first Life Sciences 50 class of the year, I bounded out of my Thayer dorm, toothbrush and toothpaste in hand, when I noticed something was missing. In the place where my mezuzah — a Jewish ritual object traditionally placed on doorposts — had been so tightly secured, only a bit of sticky adhesive I had used to hang it remained.
My heart sank. After my roommate and I swept through the dorm’s entire floor, the morning’s excitement dimmed into an awful anxiety.
My mezuzah was nowhere to be seen.
Coming from a religious Jewish background, I arrived on campus with optimistic caution. Despite reading the numerous headlines and testimonies characterizing Harvard as a hotbed for antisemitic behavior, I convinced worried friends and family that this year would be different. I told myself that intolerant people would not stop me from attending my dream school.
And when my entryway pledged to create an inclusive community for all, I truly believed it. Having to repeatedly explain my situation in meetings with my resident dean, proctor, upper-level administrators, and the Jewish leadership on campus, I felt the warm carefree glow of freshman year escape me.
Thrown into the cultural crisis of the University, my wishful thinking of feeling that I fully belong is on life support.
The Crimson’s initial coverage regarding my mezuzah’s disappearance was written under a misleading narrative and without my knowledge, omitting the critical almost fivehour timespan from when my roommate and I looked for the mezuzah to when it finally resurfaced. The story focused more on whether or not my mezuzah had fallen off by accident rather than the distressing reality of the potential hate crime. Moreover, The Crimson took over 12 hours to consider my input and update the article. I feel it necessary to use this space to explain what actually happened.
I refuse to believe my mezuzah magically fell off. I don’t see how it could have fallen given that I had seen it firmly attached while walking to the hallway bathroom at 2 a.m. that morning. I know because I kiss it every time I walk through my doorway. That morning, after searching in vain, I went to class.
An investigation was opened, and a detective came to take fingerprints. After searching, the detective found the mezuzah about two doors down from me across the hall, tucked into the wall.
I have no idea how it got there, but it was certainly not sitting there when my roommate and I searched every inch of our entryway for it. Since there were no cameras around to capture the act and no one has stepped forward with any information, the culprit will probably never be found. I live on the top floor of Thayer, and given that there were other mezuzahs on lower floors that were not torn down, I am left to speculate whether this was a targeted act. Worst of all, I’m left wondering whether someone on my floor — or even someone I had just met — hated my identity so much that they felt compelled to frighten me. Today, being Jewish on a college campus requires a certain level of strength — strength to stay steadfast in your beliefs, even while bullies try as hard as they can to tear you down. By no means did I expect to be embroiled in a spotlighted antisemitic incident on my first day of classes. With the support of the Jewish community and my allied friends who have helped me at this uncertain time on campus, I feel confident that I can heal from this and get back to my normal life.
Rubbing the fingerprint ink off the mezuzah Wednesday morning, I placed the mezuzah right back on my doorpost with the help of a rabbi. Because I refuse to be afraid of expressing my religious beliefs. Because I won’t give in to antisemitism on this campus. And because I am proud to be a Modern Orthodox Jew.
BY HARVEY A. SILVERGLATE
It is normal, when a long-serving administrator retires, for mountains of praise to pour forth from those over whom he or she administered. Hence, the coming departure, at the end of this academic year, of Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana has brought forth many encomia. It is the polar opposite of the observation in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar that while the evil that men do lives long after them, the good is oft interred with their bones. But, as legal co-counsel for a group of all-female social organizations in a lawsuit brought against Harvard because of Khurana’s effort to ban single-gender social organizations, I have to admit that I came to see him as overly controlling, especially on the “politically correct” issues of the day. He apparently felt that it was Harvard’s (and his) business to decide how and with whom undergraduates spent their social time. In my view, Khurana is part of Harvard’s old and unwise administrative order, which includes, of course, former President Claudine Gay. I hope — and suspect — that newly-appointed President Alan M. Garber ’76, and newly-appointed Provost John F. Manning ’82, are wiser and more respectful of the autonomy of the human beings over whom they have authority.
Harvey A. Silverglate is a graduate of Harvard Law School and a co-founder of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
BY MATTHEW L. MEYERSON
The Harvard community warmly welcomes students and faculty from all corners of the world, including countries whose governments often draw severe condemnation, like Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan. But there is one country whose nationals do not receive the same favorable reception: Israel. Israeli students and faculty are targets of pervasive anti-Israel hatred. At Harvard, students have disrupted an Israeli professor’s lecture, an undergraduate has reported that a professor forced her to leave a classroom after she said she was Israeli, and an outside law firm engaged by Harvard found that another instructor discriminated against Israeli students on the basis of their national origin and Jewish ethnicity. In conversations, Israeli students have told us that they are routinely excluded from student organizations and social activities, and that some of their peers literally turn their backs on them.
The message is clear: Zionists are not welcome.
The situation was bad even before Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. But it became much worse after. On that terrible day, Israeli students and faculty on campus frantically texted and called their friends and family to find out who had been tortured, raped, killed, or kidnapped. They then looked up from their phones to find a campus that not only lacked empathy, but actually blamed them for their own suffering. The surge in anti-Israel sentiment has been accompanied by a rise in antisemitism. Since Oct. 7, Harvard students have complained on Sidechat, a campus social media platform, that “we got too many damn jews [...] supporting our economy” and decried “how much power the Jewish population has over the media.” Another post mocked an Israeli undergraduate with an antisemitic trope: “She looks just as dumb as her nose is crooked.”
A Title VI complaint filed against Harvard, which recently survived Harvard’s motion to dismiss, alleges in detail how multiple faculty have discriminated against pro-Israel Jews. And Jewish students have said to us that they must renounce Zionism — part of many Jews’ religious identity — if they wish to participate in progressive spaces.
BY PRINCE A. WILLIAMS
Harvard is denying us the racial demographics for the Class of 2028.
Many of us have watched closely this past year to see the impact of the Supreme Court ruling on Affirmative Action after the Court’s decision to eliminate race-conscious admissions threw the future of access to higher education into uncertainty. And thanks to University leadership, we still don’t know the effect of the decision on our campus.
Back in December, in a major break with precedent, Harvard withheld the race and ethnicity statistics of early admits. Hiding behind legal challenges, the University claimed it would still report the data after the deadline to commit to Harvard in May. And yet, four months later, surprise, surprise, Harvard has still not coughed up the numbers.
To mount public pressure, the African and African American Resistance Organization, which I help organize, launched the “Release the Data!” campaign to expose the University’s lack of transparency. Nearly 30 AFRO members and other Harvard affiliates sent emails demanding Dean Rakesh Khurana and President Alan M. Garber ’76 release the data. They contin-
ue to leave us in the dark.
Several other Massachusetts schools’ released demographics only validate and heighten our concerns about Harvard’s potential numbers.
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Black student enrollment dropped by two thirds. The number of Latino students also saw a large, nearly one-third dip. Amherst College and Tufts University have similarly reported significant declines in Black and Brown enrollment. These remarkable drops in admissions represent a reversal of gains won by generations who struggled against oppression and discrimination. If this is the reality of admissions just up the street, what is Harvard hiding?
As we challenge the erasure of Black and Brown students on campus, we need to make clear Harvard is not our friend in this fight.
In many ways, Harvard only values diversity for its financial and political capital. The University plasters our faces all over their media to maintain their own image. They underpay us as workers to maintain their profit margins. And while they claim to tolerate our basic political demands for higher wages or an end to their funding of genocide, they actively crush our right to protest.
Harvard only wants a form of diversity that main-
We are both Jewish and have both spent many years at Harvard, as undergraduates (Class of ’85), graduate students, and then faculty. We cannot remember anti-Israel hatred or antisemitism at Harvard ever being this profound and widespread.
Some say that the current situation harkens back to antisemitic discrimination at Harvard and other American universities 100 years ago, when quotas were implemented to limit the number of Jewish students admitted. But Jews, especially Israeli Jews, may well face a far more hostile campus today than their co-religionists did a century ago.
The situation at Harvard reflects a larger, deeply disturbing trend in academia: the vilification of Israel and its people, with the goal of driving the intellectually and scientifically creative nation of Israel, and by extension the Jewish people, from campus.
To be sure, the situation of Israelis and Jews is even worse at other universities, both in America and around the world. Students have reported hearing chants of “Gas the Jews.” Several European universities have cut ties with Israeli universities.
But Harvard still must do better. Harvard bends over backwards to prevent individuals of any other religion or nationality from being singled out for ha-
rassment, discrimination, and shunning. The University should similarly have zero tolerance when the victims are Israeli or Jewish. Treating every member of the Harvard community as an individual deserving dignity is the right thing to do, because it is kind. But it is also necessary to advance the University’s mission. A world-class university needs to draw the best students and scholars from diverse backgrounds, including Jews and Israelis, to learn and discover together, build intellectual bridges and advance human knowledge. Harvard should also resist calls to boycott or to refrain from expanding ties with Israeli universities. Not only would such steps interfere with academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas; they would also represent a capitulation to bigotry. We fondly remember a Harvard where Jews and Israelis were warmly welcomed, just like everyone else. It can be that way again.
tains the status quo.
It’s also important for us to understand that diversity for diversity’s sake should not be the reason we safeguard affirmative action. The policy’s origin was never a shallow defense of multiculturalism: Affirmative action was an anti-discrimination measure. It was a set of policies designed to reverse hundreds of years of exclusion in education, housing, the job market, and other sectors of society.
Our fight for affirmative action should be reparation for those violently marginalized across U.S history.
Harvard is intimately connected to this country’s legacy of slavery, colonialism, and eugenics, as they detailed in their own report from 2022. The University has failed to take even the most minimal of steps to “reckon” with this history. Already both of the co-chairs of the Legacy of Slavery Memorial Committee and the executive director of the entire Legacy of Slavery Initiative have resigned.
If the University truly wanted to reckon with their legacy of White supremacy, they would end policies that favor generational wealth and legacy status.
If Harvard wanted to actually begin to repair, they would materially support and admit more working-class people, especially Black, Brown, and Indigenous students right down the street.
BY LORENZO Z. RUIZ
There’s no doubting that Harvard’s legacy admissions system is detestable. But since administrators have shown little interest in scrapping it entirely — I say we make legacy bigger. Hear me out: I propose a new criterion for legacy preference to supplement our current hereditary lottery. The University should establish a voluntary network of alumni mentors responsible for engaging promising high schoolers of historically underrepresented backgrounds. At the same time it should encourage mentors to cultivate Harvard’s values in those students. Then give that cohort of applicants a leg up in admissions. Our University’s unwavering preference for children of alumni undermines, in principle, the pursuit of excellence through meritocratic achievement and selectivity. That family association should privilege some applicants over others is, in the eyes of most students today, an affront against the very premise of Harvard — an institution reserved for those willing to earn their place here. But as things stand today, the legacy boost is going nowhere. Proponents of legacy preference have mounted an effective campaign in its defense — effective enough to sustain their model through the dawn of new admissions priorities such as diversity and inclusion.
They desire a durable foundation of shared ideals and traditions for the University and claim that a preference for legacies is the best way to achieve that.
Think Harvard-Yale, Commencement, Housing Day. These are the timeless Harvard experiences that, ideally, complement a set of equally timeless virtues: education, scholarship, excellence.
It’s certainly a rosy picture.
Most charitably, legacy admissions foster cultural continuity across generations — a sturdy bridge with the alumni household as its keystone, where future Harvard students are reared by their parents to reproduce the same customs, value the same virtues, and enjoy the same social-environmental product.
Let’s be clear: Those goals are partially justified. Tradition, institutional character, and intergenerational collaboration all have value. But the bloodline privilege this institution has contrived to reach those ends is outmoded.
Let’s also be realistic: Harvard’s fundraising impulses — indulged in large part by wealthy alumni on the prowl for admissions boosts for their children — make the full demise of legacy preference a remote possibility.
So if legacy admissions are here to stay, why not retool the existing system by adding something meaningful, rational, and modern — a mentorship-based pathway that strengthens our values rather than undermines them?
We can fight — or at least temper — the stubborn, anti-meritocratic mischief of legacy admissions, rein-
venting them as an engine for inclusivity and mobility.
Here’s the model of a legacy-powered Harvard I envision: Carve out an enhanced role for alumni in the social and academic upbringing of our student body. This University should seek a formal process whereby alumni mentorship of bright high school students of underrepresented backgrounds confers unto those students legacy admissions preference.
The College’s Office of Admissions and Financial Aid should establish a program akin to their interviewer network — where a pool of qualified and eager alumni are formally selected to serve as mentors in their communities.
The University should then identify promising students through school administrator nomination and admissions-side evaluation and pair them with a volunteer alum from the same region.
For the duration of the program — spanning two years of a high schooler’s education — the College should enforce clear, effective, and realistic benchmarks for alum and mentee engagement, including a certain number of hours of academic consultation and a specified volume of college admissions advice.
These are the intangible perks afforded the children of alumni during their high school experience — and which Harvard, it seems, deems to be the makings of the ideal legacy candidate. We should apply the very same weight provided to traditional legacy students in the admissions process for those mentored students who engage fully and consistently
We know by the University’s actions and inactions they have no intention to implement policies working towards substantive reparation. However, once they finally release the data, the need for such policies will only become more apparent. In order to fight for that vision of affirmative action, we must unite under a multiethnic, multinational front. In the SFFA v. Harvard Supreme Court case, we saw first hand the model minority myth used to create rifts between Black and Asian American communities. Divide and conquer is one of the oldest tricks in the oppressor’s toolbox. We can overcome these attempts to sow division by uniting against our common enemy. Instead of misdirecting blame on one another, we need to organize against the system that serves the very few at the expense of the many. Whether or not Harvard has the spine to release the numbers, best believe, we will not stop fighting to pry open its gates for those who built it.
and
with a program of this sort. Harvard can and must do better. We should be creating a system that orients alumni-enhanced admissions toward who and what Harvard can be — rather than solely what it was in their time or is today. Expansive, aspirational, mentorship-based legacy preference would enable precisely that. Harvard can model multigenerational collaboration, accountability, and exchange through pathways of support and interaction that extend beyond the family system.
A legacy bump predicated on mentorship underscores and perpetuates our institutional foundation: that we are a university of timeless ideas — and that foremost among those ideas are collaboration, growth, and achievement.
Of course, I want the next generation of this University to appreciate the same indelible features of a Harvard academic and social experience as I have.
But for the sake of a vibrant, living and breathing academy, I’d rather they not bear the same last names as myself and my peers. I’d rather they come from backgrounds far removed and more diverse. This is the reasoning that built a Harvard bigger than the Lowells and the Cabots.
My generation’s successors should share Harvard’s values — yes — but should add their own to them too.
Boston Globe. Though she will remain at her Dana-Farber immunology lab, Glimcher said she will spend more time with family and mentoring younger researchers.
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute President and CEO Laurie H. Glimcher ’72 will step down from her post at the end of September, the institute announced on Tuesday.
Medical Oncology Chair Benjamin L. Ebert — who oversees more than half of Dana-Farber’s faculty — will succeed Glimcher as president and CEO of DFCI beginning October 1. Glimcher — who has led the institute as its first woman CEO since 2016 — approached Dana-Farber board chair Josh Bekenstein in the spring about relinquishing her executive duties, according to The
“Eight years ago, I began this journey with a deep appreciation for the extraordinary research that emanated from Dana-Farber since its earliest days and the clinical excellence that Dana-Farber provides patients and families,” Glimcher said in a press release on Tuesday.
“I am intensely proud of what we have achieved in providing world class care for our patients, leading in innovation, and discovering new treatments and cures,” she added.
The last year of Glimcher’s tenure as CEO has been marked by controversy. Four senior Dana-Farber researchers — including herself — were accused of data manipulation in January, and in April, the journal Science retracted a 2006 paper for which Glimcher was listed as a corresponding
author. At the time, a DFCI spokesperson wrote to The Crimson that journal reviews were “ongoing” and that “we encourage them to do so promptly so that the scientific record is accurate.”
Glimcher also faced criticism over her surprise decision last year to end Dana-Farber’s decades-long relationship with the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, instead build-
ing a new hospiatal dedicated to cancer care with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
Glimcher — who attended Radcliffe College and Harvard Medical School — is a professor of medicine at HMS, and she previously served as a dean and professor of medicine at Weill Cornell.
Ebert graduated from Harvard Medical School and completed his
residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, as well as a fellowship at DFCI. He will now be tasked with steering Dana-Farber through the expensive process of building a new hospital with Beth Israel.
Ebert said in the press release that he was “extraordinarily honored” to be named the next president and CEO of Dana-Farber.
“Dana-Farber is truly a remark-
able organization and a global leader in innovation, and in caring and advocating for cancer patients,” Ebert said. “Together with our executive leadership team, I will continue to advance a patient-first model as we open this new chapter.”
veronica.paulus@thecrimson.com
BOSTON — Harvard graduate students Elom Tettey-Tamaklo and Ibrahim I. Bharmal arrived at Brighton District Court at 9 a.m. on Wednesday prepared to enter pleas to charges of assault and battery over their involvement in an altercation at a pro-Palestine protest last fall. Instead, their arraignment was postponed for the second time, as prosecutors said they were still awaiting more information from the Harvard University Police Department.
The postponement to Oct. 22 further draws out a case that has drawn the attention of national media outlets and federal lawmakers, who have used it as an example of systemic antisemitism at Harvard since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. Last year, Bharmal and Tettey-Tamolko — then a proctor in Thayer Hall, one of Harvard’s freshman dorms — came under fire after they were caught on video approaching an Israeli student who was filming pro-Palestine protesters during an October demonstration at the Harvard Business School.
In the video, which went viral, they can be seen escorting the
student out and blocking his camera with their safety vests and keffiyehs, occasionally coming into physical contact with him. In May, the two graduate students were charged with assault and battery, and are both facing up to 200 days in jail.
The video ignited fierce backlash against Harvard from politicians and alumni, with Rep. Elise M. Stefanik ’06 (R-N.Y.) accusing the University of delaying “justice” for the Israeli student involved in the confrontation.
Amid the backlash, Harvard indefinitely removed Tettey-Tamaklo from his proctor role in November. While the arraignment was
originally scheduled for July, it was pushed back to September before being further postponed on Wednesday. The repeated delays are an unusual deviation to normal court proceedings: in most cases, arraignments take place within 48 hours of charges being filed.
The graduate students arrived with their lawyers on Monday to begin the criminal trial process. However, Urusula Knight – a prosecutor from the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office requested a delay in the arraignment, saying that “there’s still investigation that needs to be done.”
“Although this case went to a Massachusetts court and is an issue against these individuals, there
were additional individuals who were there that day,” Knight said. She added that prosecutors expect HUPD to continue to investigate these additional individuals in order to corroborate the details of the incident.
Judge Margaret F. Albertson granted the state’s request for a delay of arraignment.
HUPD turned over its investigative materials on March 8, and has since provided additional information — including additional video footage of the incident. HUPD spokesperson Steven Catalano declined to comment on Knight’s statement.
Harvard spokesperson Jason A. Newton wrote in an email to The
Crimson that Harvard has “cooperated fully throughout the District Attorney’s office investigation.”
“It remains unclear what further role they are asking HUPD to play,” he added.
A handful of Harvard alumni joined in support of the graduate students at the court on Wednesday morning, including some student organizers affiliated with Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine. Tettey-Tamaklo and Bharmal both declined to comment on their case.
sally.edwards@thecrimson.com asher.montgomery@thecrimson.com
BY AISATU J. NAKOULIMA AND SAKETH SUNDAR CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
Roughly 200 Harvard affiliates attended a vigil on Sunday to mourn the lives of the six hostages whose bodies were recovered from Gaza and to demand the return of all the remaining hostages held captive by Hamas. U.S. President Joe Biden and Israeli authorities said the hostages had been killed by Hamas militants just days before their bodies were recovered. One of the hostages who was found dead in Gaza, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was a dual Israeli American citizen. Harvard Hillel and Harvard Chabad — the University’s two Jewish centers — jointly organized the vigil, which was held at Science Center Plaza. Attendees held candles, posters displaying the names and faces of kidnapped hostages, and Israeli and American flags. The other five hostages whose bodies were recovered by the Israeli military on Saturday were Ori Danino, Carmel Gat, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi, and Eden Yerushalmi. Around 250 people were taken hostage by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Israeli authorities estimate that more than 100 hostages remain in captivity, including more than 30 who are thought to be dead.
“Our hope with this vigil is that we don’t have to feel so alone — the fact that we’re able to stand
together, to lean on each other, to cry on each other’s shoulders,” Hillel Campus Rabbi Getzel Davis said in an interview following the event.
For many Jewish affiliates in attendance, the vigil was their first event at Hillel or Chabad since returning to campus after summer break.
“It’s sad that these are the circumstances that bring us together for the first time as we launch a new academic year,” said Harvard Chabad President Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi. And for some freshmen students, the vigil marked their introduction to Jewish organizations at Harvard.
I wasn’t happy or excited that this was the first event that I was attending,” said Abraham N. Kohl ’28, who said that he was studying abroad in Israel on Oct. 7 last year.
The vigil was attended by a range of Harvard affiliates, including undergraduates, graduate students, and local Cambridge residents. Dean of Students Thomas Dunne also attended the event, but did not deliver any remarks.
Though tens of thousands of Israeli citizens took to the streets on Sunday to demand Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agree to a ceasefire with Hamas and secure the release of the remaining hostages, the speakers at the vigil at Harvard largely veered away from discussions of Netanyahu and the protests. Instead, the sharpest criti-
cisms voiced by attendees at the event were directed toward journalists and other groups at Harvard that did not participate in the vigil.
“Some of you, one day, will go on to be journalists,” Zarchi said.
“Please don’t be like the shameful journalist who reports that six hostages died in captivity.”
“One can think it was from old age or perhaps cancer,” he added.
And Davis pointed out that Jewish groups at Harvard exclusively organized and co-sponsored Sunday’s vigil.
“It’s notable that we don’t have any non-Jewish groups that came out to sponsor this today, even though what we’re really mourning is very simple,” he said.
“It is six innocent civilians who were brutally murdered — murdered by terrorists,” he added.
“This isn’t a political issue.”
At the vigil, which drew a large delegation of Jewish students at MIT as well as Harvard, Davis led attendees in a chant of “Bring Them Home,” which calls for the release of the hostages held by Hamas. A group also performed Leonard Cohen’s song “Hallelujah” and attendees together chanted El Maleh Rahamim, a Jewish prayer for the dead.
Ira E. Stoll ’94 said the number of people in attendance demonstrated that “a lot of people care about those hostages and are praying for them to be released to freedom.”
“For a lot of us, it’s not just the morning after some of the hostages were killed, but we’ve been
praying for these hostages every week in synagogue,” added Stoll, a former Crimson president.
Zev Moore, an MIT student in attendance, said that despite the sadness of the vigil, one “silver lining” was that it brought Jewish students at MIT closer with the Jewish students at Harvard.
“We had a big chunk of people come despite many of our undergrads not being back on campus yet,” Moore added. “So we felt it was necessary to recognize the moment and stand here in unity.”
11TH-HOUR TWIST. State Rep. Marjorie C. Decker
pulled ahead of Evan C. MacKay ’19 in one of the state’s most heated races.
BY MATAN H. JOSEPHY
ncumbent State Represen -
Itative Marjorie C. Decker pulled ahead of progressive challenger Evan C. MacKay ’19 by a razor-thin margin Wednesday afternoon, marking a shocking twist to one of Massachusetts’ most closely watched races.
Decker emerged up 41 votes after the Cambridge Election Commission counted remaining ballots Wednesday afternoon, essentially flipping MacKay’s 40-vote lead as of early Wednesday morning.
The updated tally comes after a whirlwind night for both campaigns. With 99 percent of votes counted, MacKay declared victory in a speech to supporters several hours after polls closed on Tuesday.
Jay Cincotti, a Decker adviser, said in a Wednesday statement on behalf of the campaign that they are “certainly encouraged” by the update but wants “to give the process time to work itself out.”
“We’re not going to declare victory until this entire process is over,” Cincotti added.
Cincotti’s comments appeared to be a not-so-subtle jab at MacKay for prematurely claiming victory at their election night watch party.
“Our movement has won this election,” they said on Tuesday.
The MacKay campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment Wednesday. With only 40 votes separating MacKay and Decker Tuesday night, confusion reigned over the results of the race. The Cambridge Day similarly called the race for MacKay early Wednesday morning. However, numbers revealed by the Cambridge Election Commission on Wednesday af-
ternoon — updated with several hundred new votes — had Decker ahead by 41. The AP has not yet called the outcome of the race. Even if Decker is eventually confirmed as the winner of the election, the razor-thin margin marks the incumbent’s closest campaign since her entry into Cambridge politics 25 years ago. The 41-vote difference falls just outside of the 0.5 percent threshold to allow for either campaign to request a district-wide recount. Still, other options exist to request more specific recounts. Both campaigns have until Friday to submit signatures requesting ward-level recounts within the 25th Middlesex.
BY EUNICE S. CHAE AND MANDY ZHANG CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
Tiger Sugar, a popular Taiwanese boba tea chain, is expected to close its Harvard Square location less than two years after its grand opening. Though Tiger Sugar could not be reached for comment for this article, the Cambridge Board of Zoning Appeals is set to discuss an application to permit smoothie bowl restaurant SoBol to open in Tiger Sugar’s current space in the Abbot Building at 5 JFK St on Thursday.
The Harvard Square Advisory Committee, which reviews development proposals and planning projects in Harvard Square, previously reviewed SoBol’s application during a July hearing. Michael Quinn, SoBol’s Digital Sales Specialist, wrote in an email to The Crimson that SoBol is expected to open in May 2025. SoBol, a chain with more than 60 locations across eight states,
offers a menu featuring smoothies, bowls, and waffles. The Harvard Square branch will be the fourth SoBol location in Massachusetts, joining stores in Beverly, Duxbury, and North Andover. Tiger Sugar’s closing marks another incidence of turnover in Harvard Square’s bubble tea market. Before its closing, Tiger Sugar was one of four boba tea restaurants in Harvard Square alongside Ten One Tea House, Gong Cha, and Kung Fu Tea. Möge Tea, which opened in February 2023, permanently closed its doors less than a year after its grand opening. Katherine M. Esponda ’25 said that Tiger Sugar was one of her “favorite places to get boba,” and that she’ll “miss Tiger Sugar for sure.” When asked whether she would try the new smoothie bowl restaurant, Marissa L. Strong ’27 said “I’m really excited about that.”
eunice.chae@thecrimson.com mandy.zhang@thecrimson.com
Decker has never fallen below 83 percent of the vote in a primary election since assuming state office in 2013. But MacKay’s challenge — driven by an army of volunteer door-knockers and a potent message that slammed Decker as weak on government transparency — proved near-fatal for her career. Before MacKay’s campaign, the closest Decker ever came to wiping out of Cambridge politics was in 2009. In what was attributed to “internal confusion” that year, her campaign failed to file City Council nomination papers on time, forcing Decker to run a hastily-assembled write-in campaign to save her seat.
Decker placed 5th in firstround votes that year — easily securing a spot on the 9-member City Council. It would be her toughest race until MacKay declared their run.
Though Decker may likely keep her office on Beacon Hill, the results are certain to prove as a wake-up call for the career politician who, until this cycle, had never had to worry about reelection.
They similarly indicate the fallibility of the city’s political establishment. Decker was supported by a majority of the Cambridge City Council — including Mayor E. Denise Simmons and Vice Mayor Marc C. McGovern — alongside Gov. Maura T. Healey ’92 and progressive
BY DARCY G LIN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
As middle and high school students descended upon Cambridge for their first day of classes on Tuesday, one thing was missing from their pockets: cell phones.
Beginning this fall, cell phone use during instructional time will not be permitted for all students grades six through twelve, Cambridge interim Superintendent David Murphy said in an interview Tuesday.
“We just want to make sure that our learning environments are as free of distractions as possible so that the focus can be on the teaching and learning,” Murphy said.
According to Cambridge Public Schools spokesperson Sujata Wycoff, though how phones are confiscated may vary across schools, expectations remain the same: cell phones will be collected at the beginning of each period and returned at the end, but students can use their phone during lunch time, in between classes, and before or after school.
Marimay R. Diaz Chan, a sophomore at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, Cambridge’s high school, said that while she finds the policy “reasonable,” she and her peers were frustrated and surprised that phones were also being confiscated during the Advisory Period — a 45-minute block on Thursdays and Fridays for students to unwind, catch-up on homework, and talk to their teachers.
“For the most part there isn’t any academic material being shown to us, and I find it kind of unnecessary to take it away during that time,” Diaz Chan said.
“I think that was a shock for all of us,” she said.
CRLS is “finalizing the purchase of equipment for cell phone
storage in all classrooms,” Wycoff wrote in an email. In the meantime, each classroom has employed different methods: some used cubbies, some used clear pencil cases, and some used cardboard boxes, said Diaz Chan.
Though Sergio A. Diaz, Diaz Chan’s father, appreciated that the policy would help students focus on schoolwork and interact with their peers more, he expressed concern over whether students would be able to access their phones in an emergency.
“There’s a lot of emergency information that could come across through the cell phone, and not everybody has the same phone plan,” Diaz said. “So maybe there’s situations where one phone carrier will be able to deliver an emergency message better than another.”
In April, a member of the Cam-
bridge Police Department accidentally discharged his firearm in a staff bathroom at the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. Though the incident did not result in an evacuation or impact the school day, it was later addressed during a School Committee meeting.
There has also been a nationwide rise in school shootings in recent years. According to The Washington Post, more than 382,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since the shooting at Columbine High School in 1999. Though cell phone storage is designed to be “out of sight and hopefully out of mind,” Murphy asserted that cell phones would be accessible in the case of an emergency. “Each of our schools have a series of emergency preparedness protocols that are in place to keep our students safe, regardless of whether or not any individual student has a cell phone,” Murphy said. The move to confiscate phones aligns with nationwide efforts to minimize usage in classrooms. The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education awarded 77 districts almost $1.3 million in grants to reduce phone use. This
BANKRUPTCY. A judge greenlit the sale of St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center as its owner, Steward Health Care, faces bankruptcy.
Afederal judge in Texas approved the sale of St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton and five other hospitals on Wednesday after the hospital’s owner, Steward Health Care, went bankrupt earlier this year.
The approval of the sale to the nonprofit hospital Boston Medical Center will provide a lifeline to St. Elizabeth’s and end months of uncertainty after Steward, a Texas-based for-profit health care company, spiraled into a financial crisis over unpaid debts and chronic mismanagement.
It also assuages fears from hospital affiliates and local politicians that the hospital might be permanently shuttered. Another Steward-owned hospital in Boston, Carney Hospital, closed its doors last week. According to the terms of the deal, St. Elizabeth’s will sell its operating license to BMC for several million dollars. Massachusetts will then seize the hospital building and the underlying land via eminent domain before transferring it to BMC. Boston City Councilor Elizabeth A. “Liz” Breadon called the judge’s Wednesday approval “the end of a very distressing chapter for the staff, patients and the wider community.”
“The acquisition by BMC is a new beginning,” she said. The state will also provide another round of tens of millions in funding to ensure the hospitals can pay their bills and employees through the rest of the month. The Boston Globe reported last month
that state officials also expect to pay up to $700 million to address staffing and infrastructure issues under Steward’s ownership. Ellen MacInnis, a longtime nurse at St. Elizabeth’s, said that an influx of cash was necessary to improve the hospital’s
condition.
“Things haven’t been upkept, we have broken stretchers and broken beds,” she said. With
Cambridge is no stranger to ambitious housing policies, having set national precedents by abolishing parking requirements and enacting a sweeping plan to spur affordable development.
Now, the City Council is nearing a decision that could once again catapult Cambridge into the national spotlight: eliminating single-family zoning across the entire city.
After years of discussion, the Council has asked city officials to deliver a concrete proposal to allow up to six stories of multifamily housing in all residential districts by the end of this year, marking a dramatic shift from the city’s cur-
rent zoning code. If the proposal is adopted, Cambridge will join a small group of cities — including San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Austin, Texas — to completely abolish single-family zoning. By permitting six-story buildings across the board, the city is likely to establish itself as the most ambitious of the bunch.
“This reform would absolutely make Cambridge a leader nationwide,” said Harvard Economics professor Jason Furman ’92, the former chair of the Council of Economic Advisors under U.S. President Barack Obama.
The proposal comes as advocates of building much more affordable housing — the so-called “Yes In My Back Yard,” or “YIMBY” movement — have experienced a surge of energy across the country. U.S. Vice President and presi-
dential nominee Kamala Harris pledged to “end America’s housing shortage” during her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention last month, while Obama himself took aim at “outdated laws and regulations” preventing housing development.
“You’re seeing more YIMBY enthusiasm from Democrats nationwide and just an increased focus on supply, and you can’t have supply without building, and you can’t have building without zoning reform,” Furman said.
Under the proposal, Cambridge would also be the first city in the Greater Boston area to allow multifamily housing to be developed by right.
“In the 100-percent Affordable Housing Overlay, we led there,” said A Better Cambridge Co-Chair Justin N. Saif ’99, referring to a
policy allowing dense affordable housing across the city. “This is another place where we can lead.”
Though the proposal carries national symbolism, local housing advocates say its real significance comes in addressing the city’s severe affordable housing shortage.
Roughly one-third of residential land in Cambridge is currently zoned for single-family and two-family houses — which advocates and city officials alike point to as a remnant of racist mid-century housing policy.
The city currently has a goal of creating 185,000 affordable housing units by 2030, a number that remains unattainable under the city’s current zoning. By allowing multifamily developments by right, developers can build considerably more units across
the city, not just in already dense neighborhoods.
“It’s enough units to put us near or at meeting our Envision Cambridge goal for affordable housing creation,” Saif said, referring to the city’s 2030 benchmarks. “As things currently stand, we’re not on track to meet that goal.”
But the proposal still has a ways to go before becoming a reality.
Before any specific zoning language reaches the City Council, city officials will hold a series of public meetings where Cambridge residents will be able to give their feedback.
The community engagement period offers skeptics, such as the resident group Cambridge Citizens Coalition, an opportunity to raise concerns about the radical shift. In a May blog post, the group cited environmental and econom-
ic effects as reasons to reevaluate the zoning.
“This will take decades to all play out and by then mistakes that cannot be reversed will have taken place because of decisions made now,” the group wrote. But advocates for loosening zoning restrictions say this concern stems from a misconception that rezoning will spark immediate, irreversible change.
“It doesn’t mean people are going to wake up and discover a ‘manhattanized’ Cambridge,” Magda Maaoui, a professor at the Graduate School of Design, wrote in an email. “Change is slow, and will most likely still happen through isolated, contextual, nondisruptive ways.”
laurel.shugart@thecrimson.com grace.yoon@thecrimson.com
The Cambridge Safety Department’s unarmed response team is now responding to nine different types of non-violent 911 calls — including mental-health related emergencies — in the latest development to the city’s initiative to expand policing alternatives. The team initially gained eligibility in July to respond to a limited number of non-violent 911 calls, in-
cluding notify citizen calls – which involve letting residents know about the death of a loved one — and psychiatric calls. The Community Alternative Response and Engagement team currently operates on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 10am to 5pm.
“We are really so grateful to have the opportunity to be on these calls because we’ve already just seen the impact of having a different response that has a little bit more time, a little bit more capacity, and a little bit more of that expertise around mental health assessment,” CSD director Liz Speakman said in a July interview.
In one of their first calls, Speakman and two other members of the CARE team visited the home of a woman who expressed thoughts of self harm. According to Speakman, the team conducted a psychological assessment, developed a follow-up plan, and checked in on her a week later.
“If they had called another first responder, they definitely would have just brought her to the hospital because they’re not trained like I am to do that full assessment and
be able to make a determination that she was actually okay to stay home,” she said.
Speakman noted that the ability to respond to psychiatric calls in person can make a significant difference in the patient’s emotional state.
“It was really powerful, just being able to — especially when it’s someone in their own home — to be able to say, ‘I see you, and I’m here for you, and I really am actually here for you, and we’ll spend as much time as we need to help you make sure that you have a plan in place,’” she said.
On top of responding to 911 calls, the CARE responders also provide ongoing case management and emotional support for members of Cambridge’s homeless population.
Judith Siemen, co-director of First Parish — a Harvard Square church that provides support for homeless people — said the CARE team has made a significant effort to get to know homeless Cambridge residents and organizations already working with the population.
“They have EMT training, they
have psychotic training, they’re social workers, they’re counselors, et cetera and they’re young, and they’re great, and they come to us most Thursday nights,” Siemen said.
According to Siemen, the team is particularly helpful in dealing with meal attendees with physical and mental health problems. In one instance, the CARE team helped a guest who passed out on his way to the weekly meal after another organization was unavailable.
Siemen said that the CARE team’s volunteer work at the Harvard Square Church’s Meal Program allowed the members to initially get to know the population they will be serving in a non-threatening setting.
“I see them as being supportive of the police in situations where the person or people that they’re asked to deal with are having psychotic episodes or emotional episodes,” Siemen said.
“They are very willing to sit down and just introduce themselves, talk about who they are, listen to people. That’s really critical too because a lot of our guests re-
ally just need to listen to them, and that helps figure out how we can be better helpful to them,” she added.
Despite the existence of the unarmed team, there is no guarantee that if someone calls 911 and requests an unarmed response that CARE will be sent to respond. According to Speakman, the decision to send CARE is under the discretion of a dispatcher who analyzes the situation and determines an appropriate response.
Still, Alexis Grandberg, the director of First Step — which pairs homeless people with shelters in the area – said that because negative relationships often exist between the police and members of the homeless population, having CARE as an alternative in mental health situations will be beneficial to their services.
“Sometimes in my program, calling the police is completely the right thing to do,” Grandberg said.
“But when it comes to a mental health crisis, I don’t think that it’s always the best solution.”
Historian and Ukrainian Re
search
director Serhii Plokhii studies Eastern Europe’s intellectual, cultural, and international history — particularly the early modern period and current-day Ukraine. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
FM: You were born in the Soviet Union and spent your childhood in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. Growing up, how did you conceptualize your
The feeling was that the government was, on the one hand, doing whatever they could under the circumstances. But they were also hiding from us what the reality was. We didn’t know how high the levels of radiation were. Didn’t know how to protect ourselves.
The modern politics of Ukraine started with mobilization around Chernobyl. And the basic slogan was, “Tell us the truth about Chernobyl.” As a historian, I was very much interested in what was hidden from us. Once I started to realize that there were archival
terms of the Ukrainian Cossacks. It was one of the places they first came to in the 15th and 16th centuries. A deep history was around me. So I was very much interested in that.
The third layer was not so much history, but interest in the United States because it was the Cold War. I got interested in American history, but
FM: What about history excites you?
SP: It’s about mystery. The first time I decided it would be
to be a historian was when I was reading about Atlantis. My dream was to find that ancient island. It was about archeology; it was about something that went under the water, and nobody can find it. And I will. I will come, and I will find it.
FM: As a historian, if you could live in any era that wasn’t the present — anytime in the past — where would you choose to live?
SP: I really don’t want to live in any other era. But I would love an opportunity to be a tourist, to visit a place. I started as an early modernist. I would love to go to the 17th century to talk to some of the characters and find out whether I got them right or wrong, and then maybe come and rewrite my books.
FM: How do you feel your Ukrainian identity informs your scholarship?
SP: Through history, I looked at the stories of my family, at the place where I grew up, at the language and linguistic situation that I described before where we really didn’t know what word belonged to what language. So I, to a degree, discovered this identity through history.
I was formed in many ways under the Soviet Union. In the late ’70s, I realized many topics I study were really not welcomed by the establishment. I met with people — mentors — who were fired from their positions. Some of them spent time in the gulag in the 1950s. So in that sense, my Ukrainian identity was mostly confined to my history. I couldn’t publicly declare any manifestation of identity that didn’t fit the Soviet paradigm.
FM: Putin often seeks to justify
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with twisted and incorrect accounts of history. I know you’ve spent time studying, teaching and living in Ukraine, the Soviet Union, the U.S., and Russia. What are the biggest differences between how Ukrainian history is viewed within Russia versus outside of Russia?
SP: There was already Russo-centrism in Soviet history. Not allowing particular manifestations of Ukrainian or Armenian history — to say nothing about Jewish history. What you see with the current Russian approach is that what was, in the Soviet times, just a Russo-centrism became part of the Russian Imperial interpretation of the history of everything.
This war started with Vladimir Putin declaring that Russians and Ukrainians were one and the same. Which really meant Ukrainians don’t exist. That’s quite new in the last 100 years, but it’s not particularly new if you look at the longer perspective. Because this is the vision of history of the 19th-century Russian Empire, and Russian Imperial historians who considered Ukrainians and Belarusians to just be parts of the big Russian nation.
FM: You’ve spoken before about being a Chernobyl survivor, and
you’ve since written a book about the nuclear disaster — and have another forthcoming book on the subject. [Chernobyl Roulette, Plokhii’s most recent book, was published the day after this conversation.] What was it like living in Ukraine during Chernobyl? Did the disaster and the government’s response to it change how you saw the Soviet Union?
SP: I would be a Chernobyl survivor only in the eyes of people who lived in Western Europe or the United States, really far from the reactor. Because when the Chernobyl disaster happened, I lived roughly 300-400 kilometers away from there. So in the eyes of anybody in Ukraine, I’m not a Chernobyl survivor.
But of course, Chernobyl affected me in a very direct way. There was irradiation and pollution around. I had two small children at that time. We kept them indoors the entire summer. My friends and my colleagues were drafted into the army, and my students as well, and sent to Chernobyl to deal with the cleanup work. Some of them became socalled “bio-robots.” I still remember the names and faces of my students being sent to the most dangerous places.
modern history of
is
and
and
That’s one indication of how important the misreading and misrepresentation of history has been for this.
As a historian, I felt that I have not just the possibility, but also the duty to talk about history in a different way.
adelaide.parker@thecrimson.com
BY ANNA MOISEIEVA
As the sun set over Boston’s beloved Fenway Park on July 23, Blink-182 let their signature juvenile humor ring out across the stadium through a selection of their greatest hits and songs off their newest album, “ONE MORE TIME….” With rich instrumentation, youthful banter, and a plethora of fireworks, the band put on a nostalgic performance honoring their past and present.
Blink-182 opened the night with the classic “Feeling This,” a pop-punk song exploring the fiery but short-lived emotions of lust and passion within a relationship. Tom DeLonge, on vocals and guitar, and Mark Hoppus, on vocals and bass, took turns singing the track’s verses and chorus, with fans eventually joining in. “Feeling This” set the energy for the rest of the show, promising a night of boisterous fun and lively music that the rest of the set certainly delivered. Following up with “The Rock Show,” Blink-182 gave their drummer, Travis Barker, time
to shine. Barker gave an exhilarating and skilled performance on the drums, at times overpowering Hoppus and DeLonge but bringing the intensity of a true rock show. The fireworks throughout the song as Hoppus sang the repeating refrain, “I fell in love with the girl at the rock show,” made the show a celebratory event, tying together where the band has been and where they’re going.
Hoppus and DeLonge frequently took breaks for crowd work, ranging from jokes about the Boston cream pie and puns about Dunkin’, to making unserious proclamations that it’s “your fault your parents got divorced” and dedicating songs to the women of Boston “’cause they’re hot.” While their humor was reminiscent of a high school boys’ lunch table, it was classic Blink-182 and embodied the spirit of “What’s My Age Again?,” one of their most popular tracks and an anthem for immaturity.
This exploration of the past continued with “Carousel,” a track from their debut album “Cheshire Cat.” The song is a marker of the band’s origin, which DeLonge made sure to point out after citing criticism he has gotten for getting too
deep with telling stories during the show.
“Instead of doing a story, I’m thinking we should play one of the first songs, if not the first song, we ever wrote as a band,” DeLonge said while introducing “Carousel.”
A track about reflecting back on the ease of school days and the difficult transition of growing up, “Carousel” grapples with the loneliness and loss of community that comes with being a young adult. DeLonge’s powerful vocals alongside Barker’s drumming and Hoppus’s bass brought the angst and frustration that was key to the song.
This meditation on the past was also present in several of the tracks they performed from “ONE MORE TIME…” as the band returned to their poppunk sound with more introspective subject matter. “ANTHEM PART 3” looked back on old mistakes with lyrics, detailing that “this time, I won’t be complacent / the dreams I gave up and wasted.” “MORE THAN YOU KNOW” leaned toward a more metal sound, with DeLonge screaming out the song’s chorus, and explored feelings of pain and numbness.
Barker’s drumming was a literal high point of the show, as
he and his drums were raised in the air during the drum solo of “Not Now” before coming back down three songs later at the end of “Down.” His solo was electric, and his drumming was truly a driving force throughout the set — though Barker shone just as well alongside the melodic vocals and fiery guitar riffs of
lyrics, “Let’s make this last forever / forever and ever,” and the song’s dynamic instrumentals brought a surge of energy as the night ended. Blink-182 makes sure to include an element of surprise at each of their shows. The band has previously used the instrumental bridge of “Dammit” to
With rich instrumentation, youthful banter, and a plethora of fireworks, Blink-182 put on a nostalgic performance honoring their past and present.
Hoppus and DeLonge.
Toward the end of the show, the band returned to some fan favorites from their discography. “First Date,” a track recounting the nerves of going on a first date coupled with the excitement of wanting to stay in that moment, saw the return of another round of fireworks and clips of the audience projected onto the three big screens behind the band. The repeating
cover songs, including Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” in New York and recently Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” at Lollapalooza. In Boston, the band returned to a classic they’ve done during their early years of performing “Dammit” live: “No Scrubs” by TLC. A track about the struggles of growing up, “Dammit” is still beloved by fans today and a fitting inclusion on the setlist for a band that snubs
expectations of maturity in favor of the amusement of youth. The history of Blink-182 is a long and tumultuous one, with several breakups, reunions, and a host of tragedies. Yet, the connection between Hoppus, DeLonge, and Barker has withstood the test of time, and their encore song, “ONE MORE TIME” hammered that message home. The song reflects on Hoppus’s battle with cancer and Barker’s plane crash in 2008, affirming that it shouldn’t take near-death experiences to bring them together. Paying homage to their song “I Miss You” with the lyrics “I miss you, took time, but I admit it / It still hurts even after all these years,” Blink-182 ended the show on a touching note. Though the show was largely a walk down memory lane, Blink-182 celebrated not only where they’ve been, but also where they’re going. Despite an array of childish displays and songs declaring “no one should take themselves so seriously,” the band seems to have grown from their mistakes and refocused on the music, delivering a striking performance for fans new and old.
anna.moiseieva@thecrimson.com
Harvard Interns Take on ‘Romeo and Juliet’
Crimson.
BY ISABELLE A. LU CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
“Romeo and Juliet,” running Aug. 31 to Oct. 6 at the Loeb Drama Center in Cambridge, is a unique production for the American Repertory Theater — it hosts five Harvard College students as summer interns. The students and the play make for an intuitive match as the young and experienced learn from each other, enlivening the classic curriculum text through live performance. William Shakespeare’s 1597 tragedy tells of the doomed romance between two youths from feuding families, Romeo Montague (Rudy Pankow) and Juliet Capulet (Emilia Suaréz). Rife with brawls, stabbings, and poison, “Romeo and Juliet” portrays
a community teeming with hate upended by an extraordinary love.
On any given day, the interns closely assist theater professionals, which includes taking extensive notes to ensure each rehearsal improves upon the last. While stage management intern Elizabeth A. Resner ’25 meticulously ensures that the cast adheres to Shakespeare’s script, sound and stage management intern Teddy E. Tsui-Rosen ’25 keeps track of sound cues, and directorial intern
Dree O. Palimore ’25 records what Tony Award-winning director Diane M. Paulus ’88 wants to work on the next day.
“I’ve never really been able to see [directing] in real life, and what I learned is in order for the ship to sail very smoothly, you have to be extremely patient,” Palimore said in an interview with The Harvard
Several of the interns have worked on student productions or taken theater-related classes. Working with the A.R.T., however, is distinguished by a stricter focus on detail, specific professional skills, and invention or adaptation on the spot.
For example, Bernardo de Moura Sequeira ’26, an acting intern alongside Michael T. Torto ’25, understudies actor Will Savarese — requiring Sequeira to stand ready through early October, even if he has to run from class to perform for an audience of 500. Spontaneity features in his observations of the cast, too.
“There’s very little inhibition. There’s a willingness to play and a willingness to try things, and a willingness to be generous with each other and to go along with some-
body else’s idea,” Sequeira said.
While watching and learning make up much of the interns’ daily lives, they’ve also contributed their own ideas to a creative process that depends on collaboration. Putting on Shakespeare requires studious interpretation, especially in the early days of table work.
“The creative team let us, in turns, be part of that conversation and sit at the table and have our own opinions as well,” Sequeira said. “That informed the work we were doing on the text.”
Although Resner — along with countless American high schoolers — read “Romeo and Juliet” in English class, she finds that the staging process plumbs the difficult text for meaning while making it more enjoyable to consume. Engaging in live performance also
helps underscore the fact that the classic characters and their original audience “were just people,” according to Resner.
“There’s these people in the 1500s who are watching this play that we relate to now, and it relates to them,” Resner said. “So I think there’s multiple layers of universality.”
In bringing Shakespeare’s play to contemporary audiences, the interns reflected on hatred and its consequences today, as well as the insights that theater can evoke in audiences. According to Resner, “Romeo and Juliet” often prompts people to question the feud between two families who have so much in common, which can resemble modern-day conflicts between groups with insubstantial differences.
“There’s a lot happening in the
world. A lot of people are struggling with reconciling with hate, and divisiveness, and polarization, regardless of political beliefs [or] identity,” Palimore said. Yet the A.R.T.’s creative team wants to pivot conversations about the play towards love. Despite the apparent triumph of hate over the play’s titular lovers, the story is, after all, still considered a great romance, and portrays reconciliation and growth in the aftermath of violence.
“New life goes on beyond the tragedy and there can still be hope, as long as you allow yourself to believe that things can still get better,” Tsui-Rosen said.
“Romeo and Juliet” runs at the Loeb Drama Center through Oct. 6.
isabelle.lu@thecrimson.com
BY STELLA A. GILBERT CRIMSON STAFF WRITER Mythical
Mythical Chef Josh Scherer cooks more than just food. When he enters the kitchen, he successfully blends nourishment with entertainment, adding a splash of culture, history, and comedy — along with a generous pinch of existentialism — to create his perfect dishes. The result is a dish greater than the sum of its ingredients.
In an interview with The Harvard Crimson, Scherer had to look down at the plaque on his desk to recall his official job title, executive director of culinary content, because he takes on so many roles at Mythical Entertainment. Mythical is the production company behind Good Mythical Morning, a YouTube show hosted by comedic duo Rhett and Link and the mostwatched daily show on the internet. Beyond cooking unique dishes for GMM, Scherer also develops and hosts his own food shows on the Mythical Kitchen channel, co-hosts a food podcast, and recently wrote “The
Cookbook.” If those accomplishments aren’t remarkable enough, the chef was also honored on the 2022 Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the Food & Drink category.
“The only thing I have ever cared about is food,” Scherer said. “It’s the lens through which I view the world. It is the singular thing that has remained constant in my entire career.”
Food cravings are familiar to most, but for someone with a palate like Scherer’s, cravings are not just about specific foods or even how they taste. Instead, when the chef craves a particular food, he wants the feeling it will give him or the sentiment the food represents. For instance, as a schoolchild on the reduced lunch program, Scherer would often receive standard American institutional food like rubbery chicken nuggets with sickly sweet barbecue sauce. His friend from Lebanon, however, would usually bring in his parents’ homemade Lebanese meals.
“All I wanted was homemade food, and all this kid wanted were the crappy American school lunches. So we would swap,” Scherer said. He reflected on food’s pecu -
liar capability to signify things to the world, satisfying wildly different cravings for different people.
“Why is it that all I crave is the love of a parent and cooking something from scratch, and all this person wants is just this factory-made garbage?” Scherer said. “We’re all trying to meet in the middle and find these similarities, but the things in front of us are dividing us in a weird way.”
From his time as a UCLA track and field athlete, to his early career in print journalism, and now his current role in entertainment, food and the complex tapestry of culture that it represents has remained a commonality. After an hour discussing food with Scherer, it became abundantly clear that his fixation was never about the actual consumption of food.
“The only thing I care about is the process, the philosophy, the culture, and the people behind food,” Scherer said. “I cannot tell you how many times I have finished making a dish and not wanted to take one bite of it. To me, it is not the eating. It is simply the process and learning about the history behind everything.”
To propel his love of food from the school lunch table to a YouTube platform with millions of subscribers, Scherer had to learn how to perform for a camera in order to succeed in the contemporary fame landscape. After a rocky start — “I literally didn’t know what to do with my hands,” he said — the chef harnessed the tenacity he developed as a college athlete to improve his performance.
“I would literally watch TV chefs, and I would sit there with a pen and paper, and I would write down notes as if I were an athlete reviewing game film,” Scherer said. “Everything is a learned skill. And if you want to learn how to do it better, all you have to do is get reps under your belt.”
The result of these reps is a finely tuned, charismatic comedic voice best described by Scherer himself: “It’s me five beers deep at a party, being really excited to explain something to somebody.”
This description is apt. The chef’s persona across all of his projects is characterized by a remarkable intelligence and breadth of knowledge about food, history, and culture. However, Scherer’s media presence
has more nuance than he gives himself credit for. His most standout qualities are his empathy and humanity, which he best embraces in his profound, food-focused interview show, “Last Meals.” In each episode, Scherer cooks celebrities their ideal final meal and interviews them as they eat it together.
“‘Last Meals’ was a bit of a happy accident,” Scherer said.
“I was looking up episode types that would get a lot of views, and people’s death row meals was a very popular YouTube genre — like eating serial killer death row meals in the height of the true crime era a couple years ago. And I thought, ‘What would my own death row meal be?’ And so I cooked it for myself.” As Scherer gifts guests such as Tom Hanks, Emma Chamberlain, and Gordon Ramsay with the meals of their dreams, he expertly guides their conversation toward an authentic discussion of life and death while maintaining an atmosphere of levity. This existential touch, too, was an accident when the show originated.
“I had no intention of talking about death or mortality or existentialism while I was making a carne asada burrito, but it’s
all I could think about,” Scherer said. His lingering mind turned out to be a blessing for the show, which now garners hundreds of thousands of views from fans who appreciate his refreshingly honest approach to celebrity and culinary entertainment.
“All of ‘Last Meals’ specifically is me trying to figure out my own life and my own beliefs and acting as a mirror through other people,” Scherer said. “It’s very cool to be able to pick the brains of all these people that I’ve grown up watching and are heroes to me and genuinely inspire me — and also get paid to do it.” A profoundly deep thinker, Scherer naturally concluded his interview with a piece of parting wisdom directly addressed toward Crimson readers.
“You could’ve existed at any point of the several hundred thousand years of human evolution,” Scherer said. “Only, what, 35 of those years have had Flamin’ Hot Cheetos? And you are there concurrently with them. You are a statistical miracle. And you get to enjoy ’em.” stella.gilbert@thecrimson.com
CONTINUED SUCCESS
For the second year in a row, two rising seniors on Harvard’s baseball team were selected in this summer’s MLB Draft.
For the second consecu-
tive year, two members of Harvard’s baseball team were selected in the MLB Draft. Rising seniors Sean Matson and Tanner Smith were picked up in the ninth round by the Cleveland Guardians and in the 15th round by the San Diego Padres, respectively. With the duo’s selection, the Crimson has 63 MLB draft picks all-time.
Matson, who was chosen with the 265th overall pick, joins 2023 9th round draft pick Jay Driver ’24 in the Guardians’ minor league system. As the ace of the rotation, Matson posted an ERA of 3.25, along with 77 strikeouts and 27 walks across 63.2 innings pitched. His performances earned him Second Team All-Ivy Honors.
“Now, I’m feeling super excited to get the show on the road,” said Matson on getting drafted.
“I’m pumped to get to Arizona real quick. I was kind of not expecting to get the call. My advisor was saying there was a good chance that I’d get the call the next day. He called me out of the blue, didn’t think anything of it, my parents were crying, and it was a really special moment. As soon as it came on the TV, we gave each other hugs and shared that moment together.”
In addition to a stellar regular season, Matson was named the most outstanding relief pitcher at the Cape Cod Baseball League during the 2023 Summer season. Over 16 appearances and 21.2 innings pitched at the Cape, Matson posted an incredible statline with a 6-0 record, 0.00 ERA, and 26 strikeouts to only three walks.
Across his Harvard career, he has amassed 185 strikeouts over 167 innings pitched.
On the importance of playing for Harvard and in the Ivy League, Matson added, “Coach Decker, Stark, Cole, all those guys prepare you for the next level. They prepare you to play for the name on your chest right now, and [it] prepares you for the next level. You’ve seen more and more guys come out [of the Ivy League] because we take baseball seriously. It breeds players who want to take their skills higher and higher, and everyone is working towards the same goal.”
While moving to the professional level is never an easy step, Matson is eager to meet the challenge. He explained, “ I’m really excited for the development and taking my game further and further. I’m really excited for pro baseball, to learn new things day in and day out, and the new relationships. I get to play with 100, 200 more guys by the time I’m done playing ball, and that’s 200 more relationships, not even including the coaches, training, and on top of that developing as a person.”
Smith, the 450th overall pick , recorded an 8.49 ERA across 13 appearances during the 2024 season. Through 23.1 innings of work, the Duxbury, Mass. native posted a 2-2 record along with one save and 29 strikeouts. He missed the 2023 season due to a shoulder injury, but with his promising 6’6”, 240 pound frame, Smith could quickly develop into an important piece for an MLB roster.
“I got my family around and it was an exciting time because it represents an opportunity to do the thing I want to do most: play professional baseball in the big leagues,” Smith explained. “I’m excited now and living it out, but it’s not the end goal. I’m gonna do my best, have some fun, and it’s a blessing to get this opportunity. My emotions spiked that night and the next morning, and now it’s set-
ting in and becoming real.”
Like Matson, Smith believes playing in the Ivy League helped mature him into an elite prospect. “It’s a very strong league. It’s getting better every year, with recruits and draft picks. It’s very strong competition, and not easy at all. It definitely prepared us, and seeing previous Ivy Leaguers get drafted and it’s pretty cool to watch.”
As their collegiate careers come to a close, both Matson and Smith reflected on the unique camaraderie of the Harvard baseball team. Matson explained, “ I’ll miss that team atmosphere where we’re all fighting for that same goal. In my heart, I’ll still be rooting on and fighting for myself. Being in the hotel, locker room, staying up with each other, and hanging out with that team aspect I’ll miss the most.”
Smith added, “Carrying on the tradition of Harvard baseball has been one of my biggest goals. Introducing the underclassmen of Harvard baseball is something I’ll miss greatly. Sean and I talked about that, and that’s something we’re gonna miss doing together.”
Without Matson and Smith, pressure will now shift onto junior Callan Fang’s shoulders. Fang, the second option to Matson last season, recorded an impressive sophomore bout, clinching the prestigious title of the Ivy League Pitcher of the Year. Fang will likely be joined in the starting rotation by sophomores Will Burns and Truman Pauley, who made 14 and 15 appearances, respectively, last season.
Moving forward, Smith maintains that the goal doesn’t change for Harvard baseball. He explained, “[My goal for the team is to] carry on that tradition. Win a championship. But, it starts with the little things that keep the tradition and culture alive and up to the standards that I came into my freshman year.”
praveen.kumar@thecrimson.com
decisive 4-0 victory on Monday. In that game against the Huskies, the team showcased the true depth of its roster, with all four of its goals being netted by different Crimson players.
The Harvard women’s soccer team (2-0-1, 0-0 Ivy) kicked off its season with a hot start this fall, finding its groove in important early matchups against Marshall, UMass Amherst, Northeastern and Boston University.. The latter came in a
Although the Crimson was ranked 18th in Top Drawer Soccer’s Week 1 Power Rankings, due to strict Ivy League regulations the team was prevented from training and competing as early as similarly top-ranked teams. Despite the delayed start, in its home-opening game on Jordan Field, Harvard set the tone for the year with a 1-0 win over the Marshall Thundering Herd. Captain Josephine Hasbo notched the sole goal of the game thanks to a beautiful assist from
freshman Sarah Lloyd.
“Starting later than other D1 programs is difficult because we have less time to focus on details before the first couple of games,” said sophomore midfielder Anya Van Den Einde. “Marshall was a good game to start the season with,” she said. “It definitely was not our best game, but we showed a lot of grit defensively and were able to get the win.”
Harvard looked to continue its success in its next contest, away against UMass Amherst. The Minutewomen posed a challenge for the Crimson, as UMass is a competitive team that also plays on a grass field. Comparatively, Jordan Field, the home to both of Har-
vard’s soccer teams, is a turf field.
For the Crimson, a team that relies on its skill at a fast pace, the change in surfaces forced Chris Hamlin, the Branca Family Head Coach for Harvard Women’s Soccer, to make some mid-game alterations.
“We knew it was going to be difficult because it was on a grass field which slows the game down a lot,” Van Den Einde said. “We had a slow start to the game but really turned it around in the second half when we switched formations. It created more space for midfielders to get on the ball.”
Harvard made a valiant rally in the second half of play, firing 13 shots in the final half in comparison to UMass’s five. Unfortunate-
ly for the Crimson, the team was unable to capitalize on any of its 10 corner kicks in the last 45 minutes of gametime. Harvard’s biggest struggle was ensuring that its shots got on net: out of the 17 total shots made, the Minutewomen goalie, Bella Mendoza, was only forced to save two. The final score of the game was tied at a standstill, 0-0.
After the disappointing contest against UMass, Harvard stormed Northeastern’s Parsons Field in Boston hungry to earn a win on September 2. The Crimson’s appetite for victory was evident in the team’s abundant scoring opportunities, as it totaled a whopping 24 shots — 14 of which were on goal — compared to the Huskies’ seven shots, only four of which made it to the net. Although the Northeastern goaltenders — sophomore Eliza Teplow, and later graduate student Sophia Teresia Augustin — posted an impressive 10 combined saves through both halves of play, their stellar performances were not enough to shut down the offensive onslaught of the Crimson.
Freshman forward Lauren Muniz scored her first collegiate goal and the first goal of the game in the final minute before the halftime break. Sophomores Anna Rayhill, Jasmine Leshnick, and Van Den Einde all then added to the scoreboard, tallying three more goals during the second half, continuing the Crimson’s offensive dominance and sealing the win for Harvard.
“Everything was really starting to click,” Van Den Einde said of the second half. “From the start we were creating dangerous chances and luckily we were able to score some amazing goals.”
While the offensive end of the field was able to drive home the victory at Northeastern, the effective teamwork between the defensive backs has helped keep the Crimson’s opponents scoreless through three contests so far this season. Spurred by senior defender Jade Rose — who most recently showed her skills playing for the Canadian women’s soccer team in
the Paris Olympic Games — the defensive unit has started to find its groove. Entering this season, the Crimson was forced to adjust to a few key losses from the talented 2024 class, including goaltender Anna Karpenko ’24, midfielder Hannah Bebar ’24, and defender Smith Hunter ’24, amongst others. Karpenko and Bebar are both continuing their collegiate soccer careers by pursuing fifth years and currently play for Georgetown and Duke, respectively.
Filling Karpenko’s place is junior netminder Rhiannon Stewart, who started in just one contest and appeared in only two games last season behind the talented Karpenko. The London na-
