The Harvard Crimson - Volume CXLIX, No. 77

HARVARD CRIMSON

Dunster Resident Dean Bikes Cross Country to Harvard

Men’s Soccer Loses Ivy League Opener to Cornell, Beats

Bertozzi

Becomes

Female College Alum to Win Nobel

Zuckerberg

Buys Harvard and Destroys Humanity

DISSENT.

We have reason to be skeptical of Zuckerberg as a good steward of ethical AI research, and of the funding system that empowers him to pose as one under the legitimizing Harvard brand.

Adichie, Abdul-Jabbar Receive Du Bois Medal

STAR STUDDED.

In front of a sold-out Sanders Theater, Harvard awarded seven individuals the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal, the University’s highest honor in African American Studies on Thursday.

How Racial Justice Joined the HKS Curriculum

REQUIRED READING

Following years of student advo cacy and the murder of George Floyd, the Harvard Kennedy School crafted a model mandatory course on race and racism in public policy.

BY MILES J. HERSZENHORN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Diego A. Garcia Blum was only weeks into his first semester as a master’s of public policy student at the Harvard Kennedy School when he found himself un expectedly taking on the role of a teacher.

One of Garcia Blum’s classes, a course re quired for all first-year MPP students in fall 2019, launched a debate on the relationship between public officials and law enforce ment. The discussion focused on a 2018 decision by a California mayor to warn her city about an upcoming raid by U.S. Immi gration and Customs Enforcement.

But many students were unfamiliar with United States immigration policy and made insensitive remarks on the topic, said Gar cia Blum, who immigrated to the United States from Colombia at a young age.

But HKS classes should not count on stu dents with lived experience to educate their peers in order to “have a good policy conver sation,” Garcia Blum argued.

Garcia Blum said his first semester expe rience convinced him the Kennedy School needed to create a course to provide stu dents a shared understanding of how race and racism impact public policy.

Following the police murder of George Floyd in May, the Kennedy School intro duced such a course in fall 2020 in the form of a required two-week intensive “Race and Racism” class for first-year MPP students. It was then expanded into a semester-long course for the fall 2021 semester.

“In order for us to have real conversa tions about the policy, everyone needed to be up to date with this,” Garcia Blum said. “That was why the class was so important.”

Larry Hogan Talks 2024 Presidential Race At IOP

PRESIDENTIAL PLANS?

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan outlined a potential path to the White House for a moderate Republican candidate in 2024 at a Harvard Institute of Poli tics forum on Wednesday.

“A lot of things were said that were very triggering to students of those back grounds,” he said. “The students of color had to become the teachers in the class to ground the arguments in the history of public policy being used against our communities.”

‘The Spark That Set Everything Off’ All first-year MPP students were required to take “The Responsibilities of Public Action” during their first semester — the class where Garcia Blum and his classmates were asked to debate immigration policy. And Garcia Blum was not the only student who noticed the course’s shortcomings.

Later in the semester, the course held an activity called the “Bell Harbor” simulation, which was “the spark that set everything off,” Garcia Blum said.

Nneka O. Onwuzurike, who was as

signed to participate in the simulation, said the exercise asked students to role-play a discussion of a fictitious police murder of a Black 17-year-old boy. Some students were tasked with playing characters who would make racist and homophobic comments.

“They were asking Black and brown stu dents, immigrants and children of immi grants, to take on a character that is in many ways anti their humanity,” Onwuzurike said.

Members of the HKS Equity Coalition, a student group advocating for justice and equitable change at the school, met in the aftermath of the Bell Harbor simulation to discuss what improvements were needed to prevent a similar situation from occurring.

During the meeting, students agreed that creating a better classroom environ ment would require all HKS students to re ceive a “grounding of knowledge in race and racism,” according to Garcia Blum, who served as the Kennedy School’s vice presi dent of diversity at the time.

Students in the equity coalition believed that an elective class taught by HKS pro fes’Hsor Khalil G. Muhammad, could serve as a model for a mandatory, school-wide course on the effects of race and racism on public policy.

“If we are having conversations on Black Lives Matter that see almost Fox News talking points thrown back, then we are not

Undergrads Petition to Remove Sackler Name From Campus

BY LEAH J. TEICHHOLTZ AND VIVI E. LU CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Members of the Harvard College Overdose Prevention and Education Students, a cam pus group dedicated to overdose aware ness, urged the University to remove Arthur M. Sackler’s name from campus buildings in a proposal submitted Monday.

created fueled sales of the drug.

The proposal was submitted through the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Process for Denaming Spaces, Programs, or other Entities, which had a Monday deadline for requests for the 2022-2023 academic year.

Last week, more than 300 Harvard affil iates signed a petition included in the pro posal to express their support for removing the Sackler name from Harvard. Organizers promised to enter any person who signed the petition into a lottery for $100.

ucational institution that at one point dis played the Sackler name, has decided to keep the name, despite the message of dis respect that it sends to our community and to the world.”

A Harvard spokesperson confirmed FAS had received the proposal and said it would move forward in the review process.

BY RAHEM D. HAMID CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Carolyn R. Bertozzi ’88 was one of three scientists awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry “for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry,” the Nobel Committee announced Wednesday morning.

Bertozzi is the first alum of Harvard College to win the chem istry prize since Martin Karplus ’51 won the prize in 2013. She is also the first alumna of the Col lege to win a Nobel Prize and the eighth woman to win the prize in chemistry.

Click chemistry allows scien tists to snap together molecular building blocks into complex molecules. Chemists K. Barry Sharpless and Morten P. Meldal concurrently developed click chemistry and share the prize with Bertozzi. Sharpless, who completed his postdoctoral work at Harvard, previously won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2001.

Bertozzi, now a professor at Stanford University, “took click chemistry to a new dimension and began using it to map cells,” according to the Nobel Commit tee.

“Her bioorthogonal reactions are now contributing to more tar geted cancer treatments, among many other applications,” the committee wrote in a press re lease announcing the prize recip ients.

Steven G. Boxer, the chair of Stanford’s chemistry depart ment, lauded Bertozzi’s accom plishments in a statement to The Crimson.

“She represents all the best at the interface of Chemistry and Bi ology,” Boxer wrote.

“Harvard can be proud, Berke ley too (where she was a grad stu dent and for a time on the faculty),

A group of about 20 Harvard Extension School students rallied in Harvard Yard on Sunday morning to call on the school to change the names of the degrees it offers.

The 23-page proposal calls on Harvard to dename the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, part of the Harvard Art Museums, and the Arthur M. Sackler Building, a Faculty of Arts and Sciences building. The Sackler family’s company, Purdue Pharma, pled guilty in 2020 to charges around their mar keting of the addictive painkiller OxyCon tin. Members of the family reached a $6 billion settlement agreement in March that would resolve thousands of civil lawsuits over their role in the opioid epidemic.

In the proposal, the authors acknowl edge Arthur Sackler passed away almost a decade before OxyContin hit the market, but they argue the marketing practices he

If the proposal is approved, Harvard would follow in the footsteps of other prom inent organizations, including the Metro politan Museum of Art and the British Mu seum, which removed the Sackler family name from their buildings.

The denaming proposal contends the Sackler name is “deeply tied to the opioid epidemic.”

“To many of us—students, staff, and fac ulty—it is unacceptable and deeply offen sive that we are represented by the Sackler name,” the proposal reads. “It is embarrass ing and unsettling to know that our school, unlike almost every other cultural and ed

A Har vard Art Museums spokesperson wrote that the request to dename the Harvard Art Museum building would move through a similar review process under the Universi ty, as the museum is not part of FAS.

The museum spokesperson added that Harvard currently does not have plans to remove Arthur Sackler’s name from the building, noting he died prior to the devel opment of OxyContin and that his founda tion does not fund the museum.

Still, the proposal authors alleged Ar thur Sackler was “far from blameless” in the opioid epidemic due to his role in develop ing medical marketing techniques they de scribed as “deeply unethical.”

“Put simply, the ethos of the Sackler

Crime Rate on Campus Reaches 10Year Low

HUPD BY SARAH GIRMA AND BRANDON L. KINGDOLLAR CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Crime on Harvard’s campus dropped to its lowest level in over a decade last year, with 37 fewer crimes reported than in 2020, according to a report released by the University on Friday.

The number of crimes report ed on campus fell to 142 in 2021, according to data disclosed by the University under the Clery Act — down from 179 in 2020. The drop marks the fourth straight year crime has fallen at Harvard.

The crime data was released Friday in the Harvard Universi ty Police Department’s annual security report, which included 2021 campus crime statistics and other general safety information. Colleges and universities that re ceive federal funding are mandat ed by the Clery Act to distribute an annual security report to af filiates by October each year. The figures in the report only cover crimes the University is required to disclose by the Clery Act, which was signed into law in 1990.

Harvard saw a sharp decrease in reported burglaries, according to the report. The school’s

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Khalil G. Muhammad teaches Race and Racism, a required course for all first-year master’s of public policy students.

Dean Affirms Financial Stability

How Fossil Fuel Firms Use Social Media

Harvard Student Group Hosts ‘Teach-In’

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AROUND THE IVIES

In fiscal year 2022, Yale’s endowment grew by 0.8 percent, which was the lowest growth since 2009. Yale’s chief investment officer said he ex pects “challenging times ahead as rising interest rates, inflation and the geopolitical environ ment provide stiff headwinds.” This was a very different result compared to the return in fiscal year 2021 of 40.2 percent return, which helped to solidify Yale’s endowment as one of the large university endowments in the world.

The Week in Pictures

BY CORY K. GORCZYCKI — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

A group of students unveiled a five-point propos al to expand upperclassmen dining. In the spring semester, Princeton plans to launch a new dining program that would expand dining options but also increase tuition. Some of the major points in the five-point proposal include an expansion of the existing “Two Extra Meals” program, an expansion of the dining points program for up perclassmen, and programming to open up the eating clubs to all upperclassman students.

THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

The Asian American Studies program at the Uni versity of Pennsylvania gain three new faculty members next year: Hardeep Dhillon, Bakirathi Mani, and Tahseen Shams. Hardeep Dhillon received her Ph.D. in history from Harvard and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the American Bar Foundation researching law and inequality. Bakirathi Mani currently teaches at Swarthmore College and founded the Tri-College Asian Amer ican Studies Program, an initiative to create Asian American Studies curricula at Swarth more, Bryn Mawr, and Haverford.

THE DAILY PENNSYLVANIAN

Brown’s Office of Residential Life will change the timeline and communication of the housing selection process. Rising seniors will have an earlier housing lottery, and the timeline will be different for Student Accessibility Services and religious housing accommodations. The chang es were primarily driven by feedback from stu dents in an effort to reduce stress. New dorms on Brook Street will also be adding 353 beds.

TEACHABLE MOMENT. Lawyers from the Legal Defense Fund spoke to Harvard affiliates at a pro-affirmative action “teach-in” hosted by a student group on Tuesday. The event comes four weeks before the Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in an affirmative action lawsuit against Har vard. The suit, brought by the anti-affirmative action group Students for Fair Admissions, alleges that Harvard College dis criminates against Asian American applicants by considering race in its admissions process.

BY RAHEM D. HAMID AND NIA L. ORAKWUE

— CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

‘TALKING GREEN BUT ACTING DIRTY’ Harvard researchers published a report last week analyzing how European fossil fuel, car, and airline companies use social media to market their work as environmentally friendly. Geoffrey J.S. Supran, a research fellow in the Department of History of Science, led the project in collaboration with the Algorithmic Transparency Institute. The research was commissioned by the Netherlands branch of Greenpeace, a global environmental advocacy group. BY CHRISTIE K. CHOI AND CARRIE HSU — CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

OUT OF THE RED. Harvard Medical School Dean George Q. Daley ’82 said Wednesday that HMS is “more financially stable than at any time in recent history” after recovering from pandemic-era financial stress. Speaking at his first in-person State of the School address since Covid-19, Daley said HMS balanced its books in fiscal year 2022 “despite all the pandem ic challenges, and more than a decade of recurring budget deficits. Daley said HMS broke even on cash flows in 2022 for the first time since 2009. BY DORCAS Y. GADRI AND KRISHI KISHORE — CRIM

STAFF WRITERS

GOVERNOR LARRY HOGAN. Maryland Governor Larry Hogan spoke at a moderated panel at the Institute of Politics on Wednesday that addressed collaborating with people of differing perspectives.

DU BOIS MEDAL. Former Massachusetts Governor Deval L. Patrick ’78 was one of seven honorees to receive the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal in a sold-out ceremony on Thursday. BY JOSIE W. CHEN — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

TEACH-IN. Lawyers from the Legal Defense Fund spoke to Harvard affiliates at a pro-af firmative action “teach-in” hosted by a student group on Tuesday. BY NATHANAEL TJANDRA — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

HOLY LOSS. Harvard suffered

season

Cross.

FARMERS MARKET IN SCIENCE CENTER. Harvard affiliates browse booths set up near the Science Center Plaza for produce, food, and other goods.

TRUONG L. NGUYEN — CRIM SON PHOTOGRAPHER

MARYLAND GOVERNOR SPEAKS AT IOP PANEL EVENT

What’s Next

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

Sunday 10/09

Saudi Arabia and Russia agreed on Wednesday to cut their production of oil in the first large production cut in more than 2 years. President Joe Biden and other European leaders have want ed more oil production in order to ease the price of gasoline. The average gas oline price has been rising in the United States in recent months. The European Union executed a plan promoted by Biden to attempt to cap the price of Russian oil.

ELON MUSK TWITTER BATTLE RETURNS TO FOREFRONT

Elon Musk, who has remained in a protracted battle with Twitter over potentially buying the company, has rekindled speculation that he will as sume control of the company as soon as next week. Musk recently reversed an earlier decision, offering to move for ward with his $44 billion purchase of the social media company. Insiders say he initially offered to buy the company at a lower price in talks that did not advance.

DAUGHTER OF PROMINENT RUSSIAN NATIONALIST KILLED

Daria Dugina, the daughter of a high-profile Russian nationalist, was killed in a car bombing near Moscow in August. United States intelligence said they believe individuals from the Ukrainian government authorized the attack. The agencies condemned the attack, and expressed concern that the incident may escalate the Ukraine-Rus sia conflict.

INTERNATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES

FAIR Science Center, 1 p.m. - 4 p.m.

Attend the annual International Opportunities Fair hosted by the Office of International Education and connect with various international centers and academic departments to learn about different op portunities to study, research, intern, or volunteer abroad.

WILL-O’-THE-WISP

Harvard Film Archive, 7 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.

Go watch a “wonderfully offbeat and comic musical” that follows the love between a nerdy prince who wants to be a fireman and a deter mined veteran. The musical is directed by João Pedro Rodrigues, who also directed O Fantasma in 2022.

NATIONAL FOSSIL DAY

Harvard Museum of Natural History, 1 p.m. - 4 p.m.

Visit the Harvard Museum of Natural History to meet members of the Stephanie E. Pierce Lab and the Ortega-Hernández Lab to see fossils, learn about the research, and ask questions. There will be short talks and table-top presenta tions for all.

SCREENS FOR TEENS: SUBLIME AND THE ONE YOU NEVER FORGET

Monday 10/10

RICE: A STORY OF AFRICA AND THE AMERICAS

Peabody Museum, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Go visit this mini-exhibition that analyzes the legacy of rice cultivation in the Americas. Learn about the knowledge systems from Africa that were essential to establish rice as a thriving in dustry.

Tuesday 10/11

AMERICAN DRAG

Houghton Library, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.

This exhibit tracks how American drag has evolved over time, drawing on themes like fem ininity, masculinity, and sexuality. Learn about the styles and talents that helped to develop modern drag.

HARVARD TRANS+ COMMUNITY CELEBRATION

Cabot House, 5:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.

Join the Harvard Athlete Ally & Harvard BGLTQ Office for a Trans+ community celebration. The workshop to learn about allyship to the trans, nonbinary, and gender non-confirming commu nity requires reservation while the open resource fair is open to all.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. COM MEMORATIVE LECTURE

Sanders Theater, 6 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.

Attend this inaugural lecture to recognize Free man A. Hrabowski III, who has made a significant contribution to advance justice and equality. He is known as one of the most transformative lead ers in higher education.

INTERNATIONAL COMEDY NIGHT WITH ZARNA GARG AND HCSUCS

Smith Campus Center, 7 p.m. - 9 p.m.

Enjoy some comedy by Zarna Garg, an award-winning screenwrite and stand-up come dian. Get a sense of what comedy is like with a dose of international perspective.

Hurricane Ian has decimated several

Students Rally For Iranian Women’s Rights

for the rights of Iranian women on Widener steps Friday afternoon.

BY ELLA L. JONES CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Around 50 Harvard affiliates gathered on the steps of Widen er Library on Friday to stand in solidarity with women in Iran, where protests have erupted in recent weeks after Zhina Mah sa Amini died in police custody.

Amini, 22, died on Sept. 16 at a hospital in Tehran after she was arrested by Iran’s “morality po lice” for allegedly breaking the country’s hijab rules. Her fami ly says she was beaten in police custody and died after suffering blows to the head.

Iranian authorities deny wrongdoing, but the country

has erupted in unrest in recent weeks, with many women burn ing their hijabs in protest of the Iranian government.

“Iranians are asking us, the international community, to be their voice, to amplify them, and to stand with them,” Saba Mehr zad ’25, an organizer of the rally, said during a speech at the event.

The protest was organized by Mehrzad, Tarina K. Ahuja ’24, Alaha A. Nasari ’24, and Dina M. Kobeissi ’24, who all spoke at the rally, alongside other faculty and students.

The crowd on the Widener steps chanted “women, life, free dom” in both English and Per sian.

Ahuja said the goal of the ral ly was “to be in solidarity” with women in Iran and provide them a platform on Harvard’s cam pus.

“The women in Iran, they are leading a revolution. They don’t

need the U.S. or us to save them, they need a platform,” Ahuja said. “They need to be amplified because they’re the ones that are just truly putting their actual lives on the line, so the least that we can do is be there with them and for them.”

Attendees of Friday’s rally held posters calling for justice for Zhina Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian woman who died in po lice custody last month.

The protests in Iran are some of the largest in years.

“I think the power of so cial media allowed us to really spread [the rally] and to get dif ferent people and communities involved in the organizing and in coming today,” Kobeissi said.

In interviews after the event, Nasari and Kobeissa said they organized the rally to protest government restrictions on women, emphasizing the differ ence between state policies and

HUA Receives Budget with 10% Increase from Previous Year

BY J. SELLERS HILL CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

The Dean of Students Office al located $550,000 to the Harvard Undergraduate Association Monday — a 10 percent increase from the usual yearly budget of its predecessor, the Harvard Un dergraduate Council.

The HUA had request ed $682,000 from the DSO last week, citing inflation and an in creased volume of club funding requests.

In a letter obtained by The Crimson, Associate Dean of Stu dents Engagement and HUA ad viser Jason R. Meier applaud ed the group’s presentation and proposal, which advocated for a 14 percent increase in club fund ing and allocations for big-ticket

items, including a $4,000 “Quad Fest” and $10,000 for HUA re treats.

“Your thoughtfulness and connection to the mission and vision of the organization were evident,” he wrote. “While it’s not possible to give full funding based on the current resourc es we have, we are happy to al lot a budget increase from pre vious years and hope that this increase will allow you to move forward on the HUA’s goals and priorities.”

Though they had proposed a much larger sum, the HUA was still able to receive more than its predecessor, which had not been a guarantee.

Meier previously cautioned that the HUA could face a budget reduction com pared to the UC, citing shrinking participation in the student ac

tivities fee, in an interview with The Crimson Thursday.

Four bodies — the HUA, the College Events Board, the Har vard Foundation Student Advi sory Committee, and housing committees — are funded by the Student Activities Fee, a $200 charge automatically applied to the tuition bill of each College student.

According to Meier, an in creasing number of College stu dents have opted out of the fee in recent years, rendering budget expansions difficult.

In a statement to The Crim son Monday, HUA Co-President Travis Allen Johnson ’24 indicat ed that an adjusted budget will be presented at the Association’s general meeting on Saturday.

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the religion of Islam.

“I really want people to see that this is not an issue of Islam — this is not the religion that they portray it to be — and I think that is such a common miscon ception that people in the West are still battling today,” Nasari said.

Rallygoers held photos of Zhina Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody after she was ar rested by the country’s ‘morali ty Police.’

“A veil does not have any sym bolic meaning on its own — it’s when you put it on willingly that it becomes your hijab,” Kobeis si said.

Ahuja said “solidarity is the most important part of” Friday’s demonstration.

“When we show up for each other, we’re unstoppable,” she said.

Harvard UHS Launches New Mental Health Care Program

BY LUCAS J. WALSH CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

After reaching appointment wait times of up to six weeks in the spring, the Harvard Coun seling and Mental Health Ser vices announced it will provide new and faster telehealth ser vices to students Wednesday af ternoon.

The new telehealth services — called TimelyCare — are made in partnership with TimelyMD, a Texas firm that aids universi ties in providing students with virtual care for mental health.

“There has been a growing need for student mental health support and resources and this partnership is an important part of meeting that need,” Chief of CAMHS Barbara Lewis wrote in an email announcement sent to University affiliates.

The TimelyCare platform, which is a regular offering from TimelyMD, will come at no ex tra cost to students. Any student currently enrolled in a degree program at the University and

covered by the student health fee can use it, per the email from Lewis.

“Harvard University Health Services (HUHS) is committed to supporting the mental health and wellbeing of the Universi ty’s students by providing ac cessible, high-quality, and cul turally sensitive mental health services,” Lewis wrote.

Lewis added that the mental wellbeing platform will not re place any existing CAMHS ser vices, such as CAMHS Cares, the 24/7 support line, or group sup port and education sessions.

Students can access up to twelve scheduled counseling sessions per academic year for free through TimelyCare. They can also use the platform’s selfcare content, which includes meditation sessions and group conversations with providers on various health-related top ics.

This partnership with Time lyMD comes as Harvard is ex panding its mental health and wellbeing resources in response to recommendations outlined

in the 2020 final report by the task force on managing student mental health.

“The high utilization of CAMHS Cares reinforced to us the need to expand the deliv ery model for student mental health,” HUHS Director Giang T. Nguyen said in an interview with the Harvard Gazette. “This expansion of offerings, in add ing telehealth supports, allows for flexibility in how a student responds to their mental health needs.”

In the same interview, Lew is said TimelyCare will provide “short-term, solution-focused therapy,” whereas the CAMHS Cares 24/7 line is for more rapid, “in-the-moment” care.

“In our experience, most moderate student mental health concerns can be addressed suc cessfully in about six to eight sessions,” Nguyen said.

“The fact that TimelyCare al lows as many as 12 per year for each student is fantastic,” he said.

Rallygoers held photos of Zhina Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody after she was arrested by the country’s ‘morality police.’ NATHANAEL TJANDRA — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Around 50 affiliates gathered on the steps of Widener Library to stand in solidarity with women in Iran. DYLAN J. GOODMAN — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

How Racial Justice Joined the HKS Curriculum

courses.”

having real conversations,” Gar cia Blum said.

The coalition subsequently staged a full-day protest outside the Kennedy School’s cafeteria — the first of many actions by the group to push HKS to “adopt an anti-racist, anti-colonial culture and curriculum” after the Bell Harbor simulation.

“We kept organizing, disrupt ing various town halls that the University would try to have, emailing everyone and their mother — from the dean to all of the different professors,” said Onwuzurike, a member of the coalition.

In February 2020, the coali tion sent an open letter signed by 375 Kennedy School affiliates to HKS Dean Douglas W. Elmen dorf. The letter included a de mand for a mandatory course on “global racism, colonialism, and public policy.”

Elmendorf responded that though the Kennedy School was “committed” to adding materi al on race and inequality, he was “not convinced (at least yet) that a required, standalone course is the best approach to doing so.”

Equity coalition members were left unsatisfied by Elmen dorf’s response to the open letter, but shortly afterward, they were driven off campus by the out break of the Covid-19 pandemic.

‘The First Win’

If there was any chance of the pandemic overshadowing the equity coalition’s calls for a man datory course on race and rac ism, the police murder of George Floyd in May 2020 brought the conversation back to the center of attention.

Mike Yepes, an HKS alum and member of the equity coa lition, said Floyd’s murder was the tipping point for the Kenne dy School, resulting in a renewed focus on diversity, equity, and in clusion.

“The sad reality is that while we did play a big role, once the conversation got focused on DEI, it took a series of external tragedies to make HKS reactive enough to be willing to listen to our perspectives,” Yepes said.

On June 8, 2020, two weeks after the murder of George Floyd, Elmendorf announced in a school-wide communica tion that faculty were working on a “new, required, immersive course on race and public policy for all incoming MPP1 students for the fall.”

“That was the first win we had,” Garcia Blum said.

HKS professor Cornell Wil liam Brooks emphasized the “es sential, foundational role” that student activism played in pres suring the Kennedy School ad ministration to form the course.

“Our students have done what we admitted them to do,” Brooks said. “We admit them to lead, they insist upon leading — that’s not always easy, but they’ve done it.”

Muhammad, the HKS pro fessor, said he received an email from then-academic dean Iris Bohnet on June 3, 2020, request ing a meeting to discuss “vari ous events and resources on ra cial justice at HKS, including fall

Muhammad said the vision for the course “expanded in the wake of George Floyd.”

Muhammad said that during the first three to four years he taught at HKS, he felt that El mendorf “was not an advocate of making the issue of race and rac ism as important to the Kennedy School experience for students” as today.

“Unpacking how he got to where he is now is hard for me to do,” Muhammad said. “But from my perspective, the kill ing of George Floyd and the mes sages coming from Larry Ba cow and senior administrators about Harvard’s commitment to acknowledging systemic rac ism and white supremacy fun damentally reflected a change of tone that was mirrored in Doug’s own communications to the school community.”

In an interview Thursday, El mendorf said two things have changed during the nearly seven years he has served as dean of the Kennedy School.

“One is the attention in this country — and some others, but especially in this country — to issues of race,” Elmendorf said. “That has increased, or broad ened, the interest among our stu dents in understanding the role of race in public policy.”

Elmendorf said the Kenne dy School has also “deliberate ly strengthened” its faculty with expertise in racial justice.

“We don’t teach courses that we don’t have faculty strength to teach,” Elmendorf said. “To do what we are doing now required the last five years of focused re cruiting effort and was not some thing that could just have been turned on with a switch.”

Muhammad and fellow HKS professor Sandra S. Smith spent the summer of 2020 putting to gether a syllabus for the first it eration of the mandatory “Race and Racism” course, which launched that fall.

‘People Are Paying Attention’

After “Race and Racism” ap peared on the MPP core curric ulum as a required two-week intensive in the fall of 2021, stu dents continued lobbying the ad ministration to turn the course into a semester-long offering.

Garcia Blum, who was elect ed Kennedy School student body president that fall, promised he would work to expand the course during his campaign.

According to Muhammad, school administrators were al ready discussing how the course would be offered the next fall and whether it would remain as a two-week intensive or take on a longer form.

“The initial conversation af ter the fall of 2020 when the course finished with myself, Pro fessor Smith and the administra tion was, ‘What was our sense of what makes the most sense go ing forward. Do the two-week again, do a module version of it, or do a full semester course?’ Muhammad said.

He and Smith ultimately set tled on a module format for the course, he said, which would split the content taught by each professor into two half-semester classes. First-year MPP students

are now required to complete both sessions.

Brooks emphasized the im portance of offering the Race and Racism course, saying the Kennedy School cannot “ignore race and do the job it aspires to do.”

“To not teach race or address racism and colonialism is a form of professional malpractice,” he said. “We simply have to do it.”

In the years since the class was added to the MPP core cur riculum, other schools of public policy have seemed to agree.

Muhammad said he has spo ken about the course with peo ple at public policy schools at the University of California Berke ley, Columbia University, and Princeton University. The fall 2022 course catalog of Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy includes for the first time a class on race and public policy for its MPP students.

“People are paying attention,” Muhammad said.

HKS students attend “Race and Racism in the Making of the United States as a Global Power.” NICHOLAS T. JACOBSSON — CONTRIBUTING

Professor Khalil G. Muhammad lectures Harvard Kennedy School students in the school’s Starr Auditorium on

PHOTOGRAPHER

Seven Honorees Accept W. E. B. Du Bois Medal

BY ALEXANDER I. FUNG CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

At a sold-out Sanders The ater, Harvard award ed seven individuals — including actress Laverne Cox and basketball star Kareem Ab dul-Jabbar — the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal, the University’s highest honor in African American Stud ies on Thursday.

The five other honorees in cluded author Chimamanda Ngo zi Adichie, philanthropist Agnes Gund, Citigroup executive Ray mond J. McGuire ’79, former Mas sachusetts Governor Deval L. Pat rick ’78, and artist Betye Saar. The Hutchins Center for African and African American Research hosted the ceremony, which took place for the first time since 2019.

The Du Bois Medal honors its namesake, the African American scholar and civil rights activist, who graduated from Harvard Col lege in 1890. The ceremony was open and free to the public. More than 300 seats were reserved for local high school students to at tend. Professor of American His tory Robin Bernstein introduced Cox, describing her achievement of “so many firsts,” including her receipt of the medal.

“She is the first openly trans gender actress to be nominated for a primetime acting Emmy, the first trans woman of color to have a leading role on a mainstream, scripted television series,” Bern stein said. “She is the first open ly trans person to appear on the covers of TIME Magazine, British Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Essence Magazine.”

“When we stand for justice, sometimes we have to let go of people, places, things in our lives that do not serve us standing in solidarity with each other,” Cox said in her acceptance speech.

Professor Suzanne P. Blier, a historian of African art and archi tecture, introduced Saar, describ ing her art as “championing the

sculptural idiom of assemblage to address core issues of racial prej udice, caricature, and injustice.”

Harvard Kennedy School Dean Douglas W. Elmendorf in troduced Patrick, detailing his distinguished career, which has included positions in the U.S. Jus tice Department, NAACP, and now HKS. In his acceptance ad dress, Patrick described Du Bois as “a towering, prophetic leader who had the bravery and integri ty to see things as they are and still imagine what America could be, and to reach for it.”

“That, to me, is both the genius and the frustration of America — that we can reinvent, refound our selves from time to time,” Patrick

said. “That we have to may be the frustration, but we can do it, and we must.”

Gund was introduced by Afri can and African American Stud ies and History of Art and Archi tecture associate professor Sarah E.Lewis ’01, who lauded Gund’s decision to allocate $165 million toward criminal justice reform from the sale of a Roy F. Lichten stein painting in her collection.

Hutchins Center Chair Glenn H.Hutchins ’77 introduced Mc Guire as a “titan of Wall Street” and lauded his support of De La Salle Academy, “the only private school in New York City for aca demically talented, less advan taged children.”

English professor Tracy K. Smith ’94 introduced Adichie as someone “consecrated to the work of the word.”

“I’m so grateful for this award because, again, it just makes me think that what I’m doing mat ters,” Adichie said in her speech.

University President Law rence S. Bacow introduced Ab dul-Jabbar, who used his address to draw attention to inequality in the United States.

“It’s important that we keep alive the spirit of Dr. Du Bois, not just by honoring his name, but by continuing his fight for equality for all people,” Abdul-Jabbar said.

Harvard Grad Council Elects Nine New Exec. Board Members

BY PATON D. ROBERTS AND SRIJA VEM CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

The Harvard Graduate Coun cil elected nine students from across the University’s 12 grad uate schools to fill executive board positions this week.

Some of the positions were left open from the Council’s spring elections, in which sev eral roles were left unfilled de spite multiple candidates run ning. Five board members were elected on Monday night and the remaining four positions were filled during a subsequent meeting on Thursday.

At Monday’s meeting, Har vard Graduate School of Edu cation student Ulziijargal Sukh baatar was elected chair of operations, a role responsible for an array of administrative and logistical tasks. Sukhbaatar said in her candidate speech she is eager to learn “other lead ership skills and become a suc cessful chair of operation.”

Sukhbaatar will be the first HGSE student to serve as oper ations chair in at least a decade, she said. Azwa Nayeem, anoth er HGSE student, was elected chair of governance, which in terprets the provisions of the GSE constitution and bylaws.

The body’s current president, Carlos A. Gonzalez Sierra, pre viously held the role.

Gabriel O. Pagan, a student at Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Medical School, was elected chair of information. Pagan will be responsible for overseeing the design and maintenance of the HGC’s website and archives.

Shreya Verma, an HGSE stu dent, was elected co-chair of programming. She will work alongside Prabhroop K. Chaw la, a Harvard Divinity School student who was elected in the spring. Seven students ran for the programming co-chair po sition, but only three were pres ent to deliver candidate speech es on Monday.

“I just love organizing events because the energy and the vibe around that is very exciting,” Verma said Monday.

In the final round of Monday

night elections, Harvard Grad uate School of Design student Cayden Z. A. Arja was elected chair of marketing, a role re sponsible for bolstering the council’s visibility across the University. On Thursday, the Council elected its chairs of ac ademic affairs, student well-be ing, diversity and inclusion, and student advocacy and engage ment.

Medical School student Arya S. Rao ran uncontested for aca demic affairs chair, a new role.

Annie E. Kim, a dual-degree stu dent at the Harvard Extension School and HGSE, was elected co-chair of student well-being. She will work alongside Exten sion School student Ambria K. Jones, who was elected in the spring.

HGSE student Shabeha Haque was elected as the chair of diversity and inclusion after a seven-way race. Haque said in her candidate speech that she hopes to increase transparen cy and support for internation al students, who she said are sometimes disconnected from campus happenings.

“During my term, I hope to solve these problems by creat ing more transparency about events happening on campus, also creating D&I office hours to invite students of the gener al grad school body to discuss ideas and programming, and also create educational events regarding international school students,” she said.

In the final election on Thursday, GSAS student Janan Iranbomy was elected chair of student advocacy and engage ment after a runoff. Sierra, the council’s president, wrote in an emailed statement that he, alongside other graduate stu dents, is “eager to reignite the campus.”

“Now with a complete board, HGC can be a stronger vehicle to improve graduate student life at Harvard,” he wrote.

The board members will serve in their respective posi tions into the spring semester, when another round of elec tions will be held.

paton.roberts@thecrimson.com srija.vem@thecrimson.com

Announces New $5 Million Gift for Endowment

BY ROHAN RAJEEV CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Marking 25 years since its found ing, Harvard Chabad announced last month the establishment of a $5 million dollar gift toward the Harvard Chabad Endow ment for Jewish Leadership.

Jackie and Omri Dahan do nated the $5 million gift, which endows Harvard Chabad found er and president Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi’s position and establishes the Dahan Fellowship for Jewish Leadership. Harvard Chabad is a center for Jewish life located on Banks St., which hosts program ming tied to Jewish tradition and regularly provides Shabbat and other holiday meals to students.

Zarchi described the gift as an “extraordinary act of generosity and investment really in the fu ture of the Jewish community at Harvard and beyond.”

“One piece of the gift is to en dow the position to ensure that

tained for generations to come, that’s one component,” Zarchi said.

“The other is the launching of a fellowship and fellowship pro gram that will shape an educat ed generation of leaders who will lead, anchored from Jewish wis dom and Jewish texts and Jewish models of leadership through out history,” Zarchi added.

Zarchi added that many stu dents who engage in Chabad pro gramming do not come from tra ditional Jewish backgrounds.

“For many, Harvard Chabad is their first independent oppor tunity to engage Jewishly and of ten their first compelling Jewish experience,” he said.

Zarchi said his role, follow ing the endowment, will not in herently change, nor will the or ganization’s identity. Rather, the endowment will allow students to “connect, to be educated and to be exposed and enriched by the great ideas of Judaism and its texts.”

The endowment will ad ditionally help fund a fellow

ship program for students, who Zarchi said will be a “future gen eration of leaders.”

“This gift concretizes in a very substantial way a focus that manifests in a very defined and organized, structured pro gram to specifically identify stu dents who are talented but also driven and focused and dedicat ed to making a difference in the world,” Zarchi said.

“And to see to it that their form of leadership will be very much anchored in and influ enced by the values and models of leadership as articulated in the Torah.”

Zarchi said the program will have implications beyond Har vard.

“Harvard, as you know, is a community that sees itself as ed ucating future leaders,” he said.

“For us, the question is, ‘Will they be Jewish leaders at a time where leadership is so lacking broad ly, including within the Jewish community?’”

BASKETBALL

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was among the seven recipients of the medal on Thurday night.

Former Massachusetts Govenor Deval L. Patrick ’78 speaks after receiving a W.E.B. Du Bois Medal on Thursday.

JOSIE W. CHEN — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

A Prodigal Son Returns

IT CAN BE EASY TO LOSE THE RIGHETEOUS IMPERATIVE TO DO — to strive, to seek, to find. A.I. re searchers stand on one of the great frontiers of human knowledge.

BY THE CRIMSON EDITORIAL BOARD1

Almost two decades after dropping out of Harvard to found Facebook, Meta CEO Mark E. Zuckerberg returned with Pris cilla Chan ’07, bearing half-a-billion dollars and a new Harvard institute to match. The Kempner Institute will study natural and artificial intelli gence, operating at the confluence of two fields that have often been studied in isolation.

This institute is an extraordinary develop ment for Harvard and the world. For Harvard, which has sometimes lagged behind more tradi tional leaders in AI, this is an opportunity to leap forward in an important area of research. Har vard is uniquely well-suited to study the intersec tion of natural and artificial intelligence, and this work has the potential to significantly improve the cutting edge of AI.

The world, meanwhile, will benefit from the institute’s fundamental research. Insights into the brain could one day be leveraged for clinical application. Insights into machine learning the ory — the type that is often too abstract to inspire enough attention in industry — will one day im prove the interpretability and performance of one of the most powerful tools we have for shap ing the world around us.

Finally, giving Harvard’s talented technical students more opportunities to develop exper tise in machine learning has the potential to re dound huge social benefits.

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We acknowledge concerns that the institute seems broadly unconcerned with exploring pressing and complex issues in the field of AI ethics.

We acknowledge concerns that the institute seems broadly unconcerned with exploring pressing and complex issues in the field of AI eth ics.

Machine learning techniques, for example, have at times exhibited racist and sexist tenden cies. More generally, the prospect of Artificial General Intelligence whose values do not align with that of humans may represent an existen tial risk.

While the Kempner Institute’s work of broad ly increasing understanding may obliquely im prove our ability to regulate AI, it’s true that these ethical issues deserve to be tackled directly. Har vard should fund an AI ethics institute that can centralize and add to existing efforts across the University ranging from Professor Cynthia Dwork’s research on information privacy to the Safra Center for Ethics (funded by another bil

lionaire!) and our Embedded EthiCS program.

But these concerns don’t warrant icing the Kempner Institute. In no other field would we wish to require that every new initiative include space for researching ethics. Instead, we tend to require them to adhere to ethical principles pro mulgated elsewhere. This is the approach we should take in AI as well.

In fact, there may be a silver lining in Zuck erberg and Chan’s neglect of AI ethics research. These donors have demonstrated great expertise in and passion for the task of advancing technical understanding — which is, appropriately, a focus of this institute.

Are they as adept at using this technological progress ethically? Perhaps not. Are they real ly the donors we want funding Harvard’s explo ration of fundamental questions of right and wrong in the use of AI?

We acknowledge, too, the obvious objections to a broader University funding model that im plicitly gives billionaire donors influence over which questions get resources and, to some de gree, how they are studied.

We wish the University could do just as much good without taking Zuckerberg’s money and the risk of undue influence it entails — without let ting the fox into the henhouse.

But if Zuckerberg wants to devote resources to the study of these questions, he will. We are concerned about the potential for unethical ap proaches to this research.

Would we rather it take place in the confines of private industry or in the relative (if still often limited) transparency of academia? Conducted by direct reports to a donor we may distrust or by professors at Harvard, accustomed as they are to decentralized autonomy and academic free dom?

This logic is not absolute. The mantra of harm-mitigation would not justify an institute committed to research we find unethical on its face. But the Kempner institute will do necessary research with extraordinary potential for good. If it has potential for abuse, that is an argument for Harvard to step up to the task.

We don’t require absolute faith in Har vard’s upstanding character (far from it): only a hard-headed examination of the available alter natives.

Of course, this puts a great burden on our re searchers to hold themselves to the highest ethi cal standards in an area where doing so requires particularly critical thinking and unusual re straint.

It can be easy to lose, amid the righteous im perative to do things correctly, the righteous im perative to do — to strive, to seek, to find.

These researchers stand on one of the great frontiers of human knowledge in the 21st centu ry. We can’t wait to see what they learn.

This staff editorial solely represents the major ity view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impar tiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on sim ilar topics.

Dissent: At Kempner, Zuckerberg Buys Harvard and Destroys Humanity

TO PUT IT SIMPLY: We have reason to be skeptical of Zuckerberg as a good steward of ethical AI research, and of the funding system that empowers him to pose as one under the legitimizing Harvard brand

BY GUILLERMO S. HAVA AND ELEANOR V. WIKSTROM

Meet the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence: Harvard’s newest, flashiest academic initiative, the brainchild of a $500 million dona tion by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan ’07, any AI researcher’s wildest dream — and, in our view, a damning misstep by our institution.

Given our Board’s broad support for both the Kempner Institute and the donation that created it, we, the Editorial Chairs, find ourselves in the unusual position of having to dissent.

Let us preface this dissent by acknowledging the immense potential social benefits of artifi cial intelligence technology, lest our position be reduced to that of Luddites or fearmongers. We are not blind to the writing on the wall. Few oth er fields are likely to have as substantial an im pact on our lives or to shape our realities quite as much as AI in the coming years. There’s plenty of reason to believe its role will frequently be pos itive in character, facilitating improved cancer screening techniques, helping us better predict and prepare for natural disasters, and massive ly boosting productivity. Our robotic overlords — autonomous driving algorithms? weird art cre ators? — might just prove helpful.

Why, then, oppose an institute that is likely to help spur research into a field we recognize as pressingly important? Why taunt Roko’s Basilisk in such a foolishly public way?

Our opposition to the Kempner Institute isn’t exclusively, or even primarily, concerned with its subject of study. In fact, our first objection to Har vard’s new AI lab is much more mundane and boring than the ultra-futuristic worlds of fan cy conjured up by AI enthusiasts. It’s the econo my, stupid — the economics of University fund ing, that is.

Why, then, oppose an institute that is likely to help spur research into a field we recognize as pressingly important?

Our institution — our entire elite higher ed ucation system, arguably — has a penchant for auctioning off academic priorities to the highest bidder. We detest that a single individual, if suffi ciently endowed with capital, can hold such sway on our University’s research path. Zuckerberg and Chan are hardly alone. Penny S. Pritzker ’81 wakes up feeling particularly generous and the Economics department gets a $100 million boom and a new departmental facility; a private equity couple is seemingly so bummed by rising sea lev els that the $200 million Salata Institute for Cli mate and Sustainability materializes out of thin air. The philanthropist’s whim is the academic’s mandate.

The problematic dynamic threading through these donations isn’t that research is getting funded (we genuinely appreciate that) or even that we have to put up with the wealthy’s pseu do-modest naming tendencies (Zuckerberg chose the parental route, following the path of the Chan brothers). Rather, it’s the fact that a vari ety of colossally influential funding decisions are almost entirely contingent on the whims of the few, regardless of the needs of the many.

Other academic departments — or “clusters”, if you wish — could use Pritzker’s donation much more than Harvard’s most popular, prominent field. Some research areas, like climate change resiliency, have been underfunded for decades, and remain underfunded if they fail to pique do nors’ interest. If our academic loyalties lie with Veritas, our allocation of resources — the sort of decisions that shape whether students get a new facility or faculty members in less glamorous de partments have a path to tenure — is frequently more tethered to our funders’ pet projects.

The University, we are sure, would loud ly protest. Administrators since President Der ek C. Bok have argued that we must accommo date donors’ desires so as to entice donations and increase inherently valuable research. “Social good” stemming from academia has been the University’s favorite apology for the blatant link between donor preferences and crimson-tint ed capital flows. Yet we struggle to believe that any attempt to maximize educational utility at the broad social level would start by funneling an extra hundred million to the world’s wealth iest University. If anything, the system broad ens the gap between our institution and those — community colleges, public universities, HBCUs — less likely to attract as many charitable wealth hoarders. While we understand the reticence to

turn down any multi-million dollar contribu tions, we find other funding systems — including ones with stricter no-earmarking policies for co lossal gifts, as well as those that extract and re distribute involuntary donations from ten-figure figures — infinitely more palatable.

This donor-centric model of financing, fos tered by Bok and his successors, will almost cer tainly come with consequences in the case of Zuckerberg’s AI endeavor.

The development of technology based on re search conducted at Kempner is likely to bene fit Zuckerberg, who has described AI as the “key to unlocking the Metaverse” and invested contin uously in AI systems over the past 10 years, tre mendously. And given Harvard’s history of allo cating a great deal of pedagogical influence to its donors — take, for example, the Visiting Fellow title, private campus office, and direct connec tion to faculty in the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics that were provided to the billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — it seems probable that research conducted at Kempner will align with, if not directly contribute to, Meta’s corpo rate goals.

This donor-centric model of financing, fostered by Bok and his successors, will almost certainly come with consequences in the case of Zuckerberg’s AI endeavor.

One doesn’t need a PhD in tech ethics (luckily, given the low odds that some millionaire would help fund it) to understand why this latter reali zation should be a cause for concern; one needs just to have been alive and awake for the past de cade. Despite Meta’s stated mission of “Giv[ing] people the power to build community and bring the world closer together,” the lasting legacy of Zuckerberg’s brainchild on the 21st century will at least partly be the destruction of American de mocracy — a near-literal transcription of a com ment made by the former chief technology offi cer of the U.S. — through rampant, unchecked, and algorithmically-promoted misinformation which inflamed partisan divides in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election and fostered an in surrection at the U.S. Capitol in January 2021, all while lining Zuckerberg’s pockets.

Beyond landing potentially fatal blows to a centuries-old institution, the profit model and corporate callousness embedded within the tech giant’s operations — captured in Zuckerberg’s now-infamous motto of “move fast and break things” — have also proven the potential to be lit erally deadly.

Perhaps the most salient example of this is the platform’s well-documented role in the 20162017 genocide of the Rohingya ethnic minority in Myanmar, for which Meta (which, convenient ly enough, changed its name from Facebook in 2021 as it faced renewed backlash for spreading misinformation and hate speech during the cri sis) was subpoenaed in the ongoing genocide case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice, in addition to finding itself the sub ject of a class-action lawsuit brought forth by a group of Rohingya refugees. Worse still, a cache of internal documents revealed last year by Face book whistleblower Frances Haugen suggests that Facebook leaders knew of the disastrous ef fects of their creation all along — and did basical ly nothing.

To put it simply: We have reason to be skep tical of Zuckerberg as a good steward of ethical AI research, and of the funding system that em powers him to pose as one under the legitimizing Harvard brand.

It’s further concerning that out of the $500 million donated to launch Kempner, not a single penny seems to have been donated to AI ethics research, a field that is both heavily underfund ed and unlikely to find champions in the non-ac ademic realm of profit-maximizing tech corpo rations.

The overall outcome — million-dollar fund ing that mirrors the donor’s interests, little eth ical scrutiny on a hotspot of research for a field infamously ridden by ethical dilemmas, and an enthusiastic response from a student communi ty that really should know the pertinent players better by now — is hardly something to celebrate. A fulfillment of a dystopic “Zuckerbergitas,” maybe, at the expense of Harvard’s loftiest ideals.

Guillermo S. Hava ’23-’24, a Crimson Edito rial Chair, is a joint Government and Philoso phy concentrator in Winthrop House. Eleanor V. Wikstrom ’24, a Crimson Editorial Chair, is a Social Studies concentrator in Adams House.

Dissenting Opinions: Occasionally, The Crim son Editorial Board is divided about the opinion we express in a staff editorial. In these cases, dis senting board members have the opportunity to express their opposition to staff opinion.

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What Goes Up Must Come Down

than in the 2000s or 2010s?It is probable that Harvard’s grade inflation will soon peak and lev el out in the next decade or two. Unlike the price of a Jefe’s burrito, which has no theoretical lim it, GPAs can only go so high: 4.0. If grade inflation continues at its 2021-2022 pace, for example, the average GPA of the Class of 2028 would be over 4.0. I don’t think Harvard would let this happen, so I predict we’ll see grade growth rates slow.

Because grades are being pushed against the 4.0 ceiling, the grades of the student body will converge more and more, a phenomenon called “grade compression.”

BY ADEN BARTON

Here’s a quotation from one of Harvard’s many committees. Try to guess the year it was written.

“Grades A and B are sometimes given too read ily — Grade A for work of no very high merit, and Grade B for work not far above mediocrity … One of the chief obstacles to raising the standards of the degree is the readiness with which insincere students gain passable grades by sham work.”

This is from the “Committee on Raising the Standard” in 1894. Ever since letter grades at Har vard were established, perhaps as early as 1883 according to school archives, there’s been con cern around the way they’re distributed.

There’s still a lot of talk around Harvard’s grade inflation problem today. It’s hardly a sur prise to anyone who studies or teaches here that grades have risen over time. But grade inflation is inextricably linked to a worse problem, one that is seldom discussed: grade compression, where GPAs stop increasing and instead stabilize in the 3.8 to 4.0 range.

To understand grade compression, we first need to understand grade inflation. Looking at a graph of student GPAs since 1889 is sort of like looking at a graph of Harvard’s endowment: It only goes up. In 1950, when Harvey Mansfield was but a freshman at Harvard, the average GPA was estimated at 2.55. Now, it’s much closer to 3.80. Keep in mind these numbers are estimated from Crimson surveys that represent only a part of the student body, combined with third-party analy ses of Harvard records, so try to focus on the longterm trend rather than specific GPA averages at any point in time.

In addition to GPA, Harvard uses several grade classifications like summa cum laude or the less er known Dean’s List. In fact, the Dean’s List used to be a brag-worthy achievement. Harvard Pres ident Nathan Pusey, according to Harry Lewis’ “Excellence Without a Soul,” boasted in 1954 that Harvard students “may take pride in the fact that last year forty percent of all Harvard undergrad uates were on the Dean’s List.” By the time Har vard moved to abolish the Dean’s List, 92 percent of students qualified.

It’s hardly a surprise to anyone who studies or teaches here that grades have risen over time. But grade inflation is inextricably linked to a worse problem, one that is seldom discussed: grade compression.

Harvard is not alone in rising grades. Most universities have experienced grade inflation, according to retired Duke Professor Stuart Ro jstaczer’s research at gradeinflation.com (not to be confused with gradeinflation.net, which redi rects you to Harvard’s homepage — not a joke).

Importantly, the pace of grade inflation – i.e. the rate of grade increases — needs to be dis tinguished from rising grades. In other words, grades may still increase for the foreseeable fu ture, but will they do so at a slower or faster rate

Think of a bell curve get ting tighter and taller, as more and more student GPAs get closer and closer to around a 3.8 or 3.9. Recent data support this view, as grades are in creasingly compressing around 3.85, meaning there’s less grade variation between students.

Why is this a problem? Grade compression stops students from making the best pedagogical choices.When grades weren’t as inflated, a stray C+ or B- was to be expected. As A-’s become the new default and grades stabilize at the upper end, any lower grade is seen as a failure. Because most students receive consistently high scores, the cost of experimenting with hard classes or new sub jects substantially rises.

A study of Duke students found that they were more likely to take classes from professors who graded more easily. Harvard students, who can be very risk-averse and afraid of failure, will cer tainly err towards easier classes or departments.

Grade compression ultimately perverts the liberal arts education, which should center on risk-taking and pushing oneself intellectually in stead of sheltering in “easy-A” classes. Harvard hopes that its “liberal arts and sciences philos ophy encourages students to step outside their comfort zone,” but how can students ever exhib it genuine curiosity or experiment academically when the potential damage to one’s transcript is so high?

Further, the social economy of grades, in which students receive more praise for getting an A in a gem than they would if they chose to strug gle through a truly challenging course and get a B, has taken on a life of its own.

There’s no easy solution to either grade infla tion or grade compression. Other colleges have experimented with grade deflation or rationing

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The damage of grade inflation has largely been done as there’s no hope of returning to a grading scheme where a C is average. But we can still resolve the growing threat of grade compression before it wreaks further havoc on Harvard’s education.

of As, but changes as radical as those are unlikely to be implemented soon.

Instead, I think sunlight is the best disinfec tant. Harvard should immediately release annu al grade distributions (they stopped doing so in 2006), allowing greater understanding and anal ysis of the problem. We can’t, after all, confront a reality we can only understand through extrapo lated estimates.

More importantly, if average grades for class es or departments were released, then students’ transcripts could be put into greater context. You may have gotten a C in Math 55 but your poten tial employer could see the average grade was a B+. Curious students would no longer have to fear pursuing a harder class or concentration.

The damage of grade inflation has largely been done as there’s no hope of returning to a grading scheme where a C is average.

But we can still resolve the growing threat of grade compression before it wreaks further hav oc on Harvard’s education. Maybe it’s time for an other “Committee on Raising the Standard” — 128 years later.

I WANT US TO MAKE THE CHOICES NOW THAT WILL LEAD TO BROAD

OF NONBINARY PEOPLE and reduce trans and nonbinary death down the line.

BY CHRISTINA M. XIAO

Reiterated in socially conscious spaces un til it makes me want to gouge my ears out: “Nonbinary people don’t owe you androg yny!”

I’m sure people who say this are supportive and generally understanding of the plight of gen der in modern American society. Perhaps a stu dent in a Women, Gender, and Sexuality semi nar says this to snaps around the table. Perhaps they were themself filled with nonbinary rage at the machine of society that demands this exact ing display of equal male and female character istics from us.

I bought into this rage, heavy, when I was younger and starting to toe the edges of gender; I didn’t owe anyone else a window into my gen der identity. Now, I am a cynic: To be broadly seen as nonbinary, you must present as androgynous.

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I refuse to argue the existence of nonbinary gender identity. Eighty-two percent of transgen der individuals have considered suicide, as have 94 percent of nonbinary individuals; 40 percent of each group has attempted.

The existence of 1.2 million people who iden tify as nonbinary in the United States alone, re gardless of whether that identity can be consid ered “real” (and really, what is real when we talk social constructs), is enough to warrant solving the issues they face. We kill trans and nonbinary people with our inaction. Thousands upon thou sands of bodies slump over for the last time, as we argue over whether we even see them.

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There is a gap between self-defined identi ty, which describes how one internally identi fies, and other-imposed identity, which refers to how they are externally perceived. In a typical example concerning race, one might self-define as consider themself Chinese because they were raised in a culturally Chinese household that cel ebrated the Lunar New Year and split mooncakes during the Mid-Autumn Festival. That same per son might be widely perceived as some flavor of vaguely East Asian based on the tint of their skin or the skew of their eyes.

In determining other-imposed gender iden tity, we are evaluated in accordance with the es tablished looks of men and women. We all know what male and female look like — or at least, we think we do, according to the notions of gender expression developed by our surrounding soci eties. Every recorded civilization has had at least the two genders of male and female. Gender has a look refined over human history, as conveyed by hair, makeup, clothing, size, stature, bone struc ture, et cetera. Men have muscles, body hair, and rugged faces; women have curves, long silky hair, and a softness to their edges.

I can’t escape this judgment. No one has ever seen me, with my medium wolf cut, winged eye liner, and high-waisted pants, and thought any thing other than “woman.”

If I wanted them to think otherwise, I would need to change parts of me. I’d cut flesh from my chest, build structure in my jaw, shave my head, grow five more inches. I’d flee my own body.

***

People describe others with their own per ceptions, until they learn that others’ self-defined identities differ, and they care enough to update their perceptions. Human beings are duck test able: If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck — and to call a duck anything other than a duck is ridiculous.

Even at Harvard, where students campaign for social justice, the duck test is used without asking whether someone identifies as a duck first. The most socially progressive people I know have defaulted to “she/her” for me. I don’t blame them for it. It’s easy to advocate for respecting gender identities at large; it’s hard to deliver the requisite respect in individual situations when the right answer seems already too apparent, when we’ve been raised to assume that gender is generally ob vious.

We could use neutral pronouns for each oth er until otherwise specified. In theory, this would solve all thorniness; in practice, no one ever does it. Only around half of all Americans are even somewhat comfortable using gender-neu tral pronouns when specifically asked to do so; it seems reasonable to assume that the percent age of Americans comfortable with using gen der-neutral pronouns even before being asked to do so is much lower.

Overall, the trendline for national comfort with gender neutrality is depressingly static. Cou pled with the disinclination to explain one’s en tire identity to a new group of peers, the duck test seems unlikely to leave us anytime soon, at Har vard or beyond.

***

If you want to be widely perceived as nonbina ry, you need to present like the single socially-un derstood look. Nonbinary people might not have

the same history of civilizations established on male and female to define what our gender iden tity looks like — but we have a look nonetheless, defined in the space between male and female.

It’s androgyny: the perfect blend between masculine and feminine.

Think of every “gender envy” Pinterest board of skinny, pale, smudged-out teens with dark hair and worried knuckles. You want to be perceived as neither male nor female, but neutrally? You need a neutral body.

Never mind the fact that this might not be how you personally identify. Nonbinary identity rare ly files perfectly down the center of the male-fe male continuum. Rather, nonbinary identity en capsulates a large swathe of gender identities, from feeling like both man and woman in dif ferent amounts, to feeling no gender at all. It’s a three-dimensional identity that we attempt to collapse down to the two-dimensional scale be tween male and female.

Never mind the fact that you might not want to change the body you grew up in, which has served you for all these years. Many nonbinary people do not want to pursue hormone therapy or gen der-affirming procedures. They are not nonbina ry souls “stuck in the wrong bodies,” as the popu lar myths would claim; their bodies are their own, made nonbinary by their identities.

Finally, never mind the fact that body change to the androgynous ideal might not even be possi ble. A thin, white, childlike body is unachievable by much of the nonbinary population due to ge netics alone. For many nonbinary people, striv ing towards an androgynous body is a hopeless act towards an unreachable fantasy.

The fantasy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, either. Even if you fit the model of androgyny to a tee, you are not guaranteed an other-imposed non binary identity. People still perceive you with out your clarification all the time, while passing you on the street or participating beside you in section. Androgyny only works as shorthand for nonbinary if the audience’s duck tests are updat ed to recognize this latest model of nonbinary ap pearance. You’re entrusting the reception of your identity to people who, statistically speaking, are in the 73 percent of Americans who have heard little to nothing about nonbinary identity. One in five Americans know someone who identifies as nonbinary; likely even fewer grasp the nuances of how that person conceptualizes their complex gender identity.

Here is the crux of the nonbinary tragedy: We need to perform to be recognized, that per formance might not be how we want to be rec ognized in the first place, and even then, the performance doesn’t always work to generate recognition.

We want to be perceived as we perceive our selves, so badly. But the journey is treacherous, consuming our bodies and agency for a chance at public acceptance. Maybe that’s why 94 percent of us want to kill ourselves: It’s the last act of agen cy we can afford in a system that grants us none.

I do not want nonbinary people to die. I want nothing but euphoria and gentle endings for my nonbinary siblings.

History bears witness to how people like me have tried for a kinder future. Activists have re defined gender neutrality and resisted gender norms since the 1970s. Younger generations are rewiring how we think about gender beyond the man-woman binary. But we need more.

I am tired of waiting for the dead to accumu late. Perhaps it’s too existentially difficult for us to decouple the body from the identity, to wipe our mechanisms of perception, such that nonbina ry people are freed from their Sisyphean torture. But we can control the extent to which these per ceptions are verbalized. We can default to gen der-neutral language. We can refrain from com menting on each others’ bodies. We can change the behemoth of culture one surface-level action at a time, until it becomes second nature and it self culture.

If we can create this culture change anywhere, it’s at the microcosm of Harvard, a campus so overwhelmingly liberal that we had a near-scan dal over the lack of conservative voices. Use “they/ them” before anyone else. Check your biases be fore making assumptions about others’ gender identities based on their bodies. Do it for the at least 2.7 percent of current Harvard students who identify as nonbinary. Do it to save lives.

***

This LGBTQ+ History Month, as we celebrate the queer trailblazers who have carved our pas sage towards civil rights into the deepest granite of time, I also want us to look to the future birthed by today’s history. I want us to make the choices now that will lead to broad acceptance of non binary people and reduce trans and nonbinary death down the line.

Until then, nonbinary people are saddled with this ugly tragedy, the dichotomy of choice between self-respect and others’ respect. I don’t want to owe you androgyny, but you’re going to ask for it anyways.

—Christina M. Xiao ’24, an Associate Editorial Editor, is a joint concentrator in Computer Sci ence and Government in Eliot House.

Nonbinary People Don’t Want to Owe Androgyny, But We Do It to Survive

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IN FIVE

Harvard Campus Crime Rate Drops

campus experienced just 17 re ported burglaries in 2021 — down from 58 reported incidents in 2020.

Reported motor vehicle thefts on campus spiked to a total of 37 reported incidents last year, more than three times as many as 2020. Twenty-two rapes were re ported on Harvard’s campuses in 2021 — up from 16 the previ ous year. All but one took place on campus property.

HUPD officers made just four arrests around Harvard’s cam puses in 2021, including one near its Longwood campus in Boston and three in Cambridge. Three arrests were related to weapons violations, while one was for a drug violation, according to the report. The department also is sued nine “disciplinary actions” — eight for liquor violations and one for a drug law violation. The 2021 arrest total was down from six in 2020.

The department reported four bias-related crimes on campus last year, with three occurring in Cambridge and one in Long wood. One incident of “vandal ism motivated by religion” and two assaults — one motivated by disability and another motivat ed by race — took place in Cam bridge, according to the report.

One “act of intimidation motivat ed by race” was reported in Long wood, the report said.

The department’s crime anal ysis covers the first five months of police chief Victor A. Clay’s ten ure. Clay assumed HUPD’s top post in July 2021, promising to re form a police force that has been rocked by allegations of work place toxicity, sexism, and racism in recent years.

While preparing the annual report, HUPD requests crime in formation from the Massachu setts State Police and some mu nicipal departments, including Cambridge, Somerville, and Bos ton.

The Harvard Environmen tal Health and Safety Department also released its annual report on fire safety on Friday, in accor dance with the Higher Education Opportunities Act. One fire was reported in 2021, up from none the previous year.

Allston Residents Oppose Rezoning Plans

BY YUSUF S. MIAN AND CHARLOTTE P. RITZ-JACK CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Allston residents expressed op position to the Boston Planning and Development Agency’s re zoning plans for the Western Av enue Corridor at a public meeting on Thursday.

Rezoning for the Western Ave nue corridor — the area between Barry’s Corner and Leo Birming ham Parkway — would permit the construction of taller build ings of greater density, allowing for more housing units. The pro visions are meant to incentivize developers to create more afford able housing.

During the meeting, some All ston residents raised concerns that the proposal could result in rising housing costs and in creased traffic.

Paula Alexander, a longtime resident of Allston, questioned the proposal’s ability to decrease housing costs.

“How can you look at us straight in the face, straight in the eye, and say that the density and height equals lower rent when it doesn’t?” Alexander said.

Other attendees raised con cerns about the plan’s impact on congestion in the area.

“How can you claim that this is good planning if you are allowing developers to build huge build ings and you know that we may only end up with two, one lane of traffic roads?” Eva Webster, a meeting attendee, asked.

Joseph Blakenship, senior transportation planner at the BPDA, discussed the plan’s goals to increase public transportation and access to sidewalks and bike lanes by 2030, starting with the creation of protected bike lanes

along Western Avenue.

Still, Webster was skeptical of the plan’s focus on cyclists and pe destrians over drivers.

“There is a certain mindset right now that dominates devel opment issues in city hall,” she said. “That makes things really good for bicyclists, but bicyclists are only 5 percent of the road us ers, so how can you possibly turn your back on motorists?”

Cambridge Set to Review City Charter for First Time in 80 Years

BY KATERINA V. CORR AND ELIAS J. SCHISGALL CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

For the first time in 80 years, the City of Cambridge is launching a comprehensive review of its gov ernment structure.

A group of 15 Cantabrigians selected by the city will make rec ommendations to the City Coun cil over the next year on how to “improve and modernize” the city’s charter, according to a press release from the mayor’s office.

Any suggestions approved by the City Council from the com mittee will then be voted upon by Cambridge residents before im plementation.

Ellen Shachter, a Cambridge resident and Somerville city of ficial, said in an interview she joined the committee to examine the charter “through the lens of government efficiency and dem ocratic decision-making.”

While the mayor, who is elect ed by fellow City Councilors, serves a role akin to chair of the Council, the city manager han dles the day-to-day operation of the city, its departments, and its budget.

The council-manager form of government has been criticized by some councilors and residents for the concentrated influence of the city manager over city opera tions.

But some committee mem bers said it was too early to say whether a wholesale restructur ing of the government might be on the table.

Shachter acknowledged that a major question for the review committee is whether to alter the role of the city manager, but said the issue might not be addressed in the next year.

“I’m not sure whether we’re going to be addressing in this next year those really big questions or not,” she said.

The first charter of the City of Cambridge was adopted in 1846, featuring a City Council made up of two bodies: the board of al dermen, which was elected by all the city’s voters, and the common council, which was elected by dis trict.

The mayor, also elected atlarge, would handle “the admin istration of all the fiscal, pruden tial and municipal affairs” of the city.

In 1915, Cambridge switched to a Plan B government — a struc ture that included fifteen coun cilors, some elected at-large and others elected by district. The mayor was elected from among the councilors.

The introduction of a city manager to the Cambridge po litical system came in 1940, with the adoption of the Plan E char ter. The Plan E charter — which has remained largely unchanged since its adoption — also called for of up to nine city councilors, elected at-large.

Fans, players, and commen tators of the Boston Red Sox hailed former pitcher and NESN color commentator

Dennis Eckersley, who is retiring after 50 years in playing and commentating on professional baseball.

Dennis Eckersley, who boasts a 24-year playing career, saddened many fans with his retirement announcement this August.

Eckersly has been part of NESN’s broadcast team for two decades.

After leaving baseball, Eckers ley plans to move to the Bay Area with his wife to be closer to his daughter and grandchildren.

“This is my place. This is the constant. It’s where my heart is. But I’ve been in baseball for 50 years. Fifty years! For 50 years, it’s always about the next game, the next season. There’s no time to be a whole person,” Eckersley said in a conversation before Wednesday’s game, according to the Boston Globe.

HEALEY PROMISES MARIJUANA PARDONS IF ELECTED MASS. GOVERNOR

Democratic nominee Maura Healey promised to pardon all state convictions for marijua na possession convictions if elected governor.

The move comes after Pres ident Biden announced that he would pardon all federal mari juana possession convictions and called upon governors to do the same in their own states.

Governor Charlie Baker, who is not running for re-election, has not yet announced if he will do the same.

Massachusetts voters le galized marijuana in 2016, but current state laws require pre vious defendants of marijuana possession to apply to have their records cleared.

CITY COUNCIL VOTES IN FAVOR OF SALARY INCREASES FOR MAY OR, COUNCILORS

The Boston City Council unan imously voted on Wednesday to increase the salary for top city leadership posts, includ ing the mayor and councilors.

The measure is part of an effort to ensure city positions remain competitive in pay to attract talent and to match the salary of other cities. The pay raise, which will take place in 2026 for the mayor and 2024 for the councilors, exceeds the raised proposed by Boston May or Michelle Wu.

When the raises go into effect, they will represent a 20 percent pay increase for both the mayor and city councilor posts.

In response to ongoing resi dent concerns, Blankenship said the plan draws on the views of multiple stakeholders.

“No plan can build 100 per cent consensus, but I think we’ve done a pretty good job of hearing as many perspectives as possible and crafting a vision of this plan that we think is sound,” Blanken ship said.

The new zoning plan comes after three years of conversations between the BPDA and residents.

Thursday’s meeting began the final phase of the planning pro cess. After receiving input from local stakeholders, the plan will be considered by the Boston Plan ning and Development Agency for approval.

yusuf.mian@thecrimson.com charlotte.ritz-jack@thecrimson.com

“I really want to provide in put that has some balance be tween making sure that we have really strong grassroots dem ocratic processes in the City of Cambridge, but also that the gov ernment is able to function effec tively and efficiently,” she said.

Another committee member, Jessica De Jesus Acevedo, who owns a daycare business, said she hopes to amplify perspectives she feels are underrepresented in city government, such as young adults, women of color, and busi ness owners of color.

“I really want to be an advo cate for residents that aren’t nec essarily being accounted for,” Acevedo said in an interview.

Cambridge operates under a Plan E charter, which features an elected City Council and an ap pointed city manager.

James G. Stockard Jr., a com mittee member and lecturer at the Graduate School of Design, said he felt Cambridge has histor ically been “quite well-governed.”

Both Stockard and Shachter said they were waiting to confer with the rest of the committee be fore taking a firm position on ma jor changes to the charter.

The review committee formed as a result of a November 2021 bal lot question, which called for a re view of the charter every 10 years.

The proposal passed with nearly 70 percent of voters in fa vor.

Acevedo said she hopes Cam bridge residents will be “a part of the conversation and a part of the changes that are going to happen,” and called on any resi dent with input or suggestions to reach out to the committee.

The review of the charter that began in August follows the se lection of a new Cambridge city manager, Yi-An Huang ’05, who took office last month.

Shachter said the start of Huang’s tenure will serve as a test of the council-manager form of government.

“The pressure is going to be on the new city manager to make sure that he is really promot ing an administration that is re sponsive to grassroots commu nity participation, that is open, that is accessible,” Shachter said, adding Huang must prove he can “run the city efficiently” with the city manager government struc ture.

katerina.corr@thecrimson.com elias.schisgall@thecrimson.com

The owner of an American flag signed by former Patriots legend Tom Brady filed a law suit against the team.

New Hampshire resident Dan iel Vitale, a longtime Patriots fan, bought the signed flag, which had flown over Foxboro Stadium 11 years ago, in 2020.He loaned the flag to the Patriots Hall of Fame in June 2021.

Vitale alleges that Brady’s signature on the flag was sign ficantly faded when he received the flag back — damage he esti mates lowered the flag’s value by as much as $1 million.

The glass of the Hall of Fame display case and the hall’s light ing were not designed to protect memoriabilia like the flag, he argues.

The lawsuit claims the team violated its contract with Vitale and engaged in negligent and fradulent misrepresentation.

When Vitale agreed to loan the flag to the team, he says, he was assured it would be cared for properly.

BRANDON L. KINGDOLLAR — CRIMSON DESIGNER/FLOURISH

BRANDON L. KINGDOLLAR — CRIMSON DESIGNER/FLOURISH

FAN SUES PATRI OTS, ALLEGES THE TEAM IRREPARABLY DAMAGED U.S. FLAG SIGNED BY TOM BRADY

Larry Hogan Lays Out a Moderate’s Path to the Presidency at IOP Forum

Hogan recounted the story of Jan. 6, 2021, when he sought to mobilize the Maryland National Guard, but was delayed because he lacked authorization from the Department of Defense.

BY YUSUF S. MIAN

CHARLOTTE P. RITZ-JACK

Maryland Governor Lar ry Hogan outlined a po tential path to the White House for a moderate Republi can candidate in 2024 at a Har vard Institute of Politics forum on Wednesday — but offered little in sight into his own political ambi tions.

Hogan’s appearance at the IOP comes as he is reportedly weigh ing a run for president. Earlier this week, the news outlet Mary land Matters reported that Ho gan recently met with a group of supporters to discuss a potential White House bid and he has made appearances in New Hampshire, an early primary state.

Hogan, who will leave office in January after two terms, said the primary process “does not favor people that are willing to work to gether across the aisle,” but said a centrist candidate could still have a path in a crowded GOP field.

“If you have 10 or 12 people all running in the Trump lane, there is certainly a lane of close to 30 percent of people that want to go in a different direction in a Re publican primary,” he said.

Hogan, who described him self as “a common sense conser vative” and did not support for mer President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, was not asked

whether he plans to run in 2024.

Hogan noted that many of the early primary states have open primaries, which allow voters to pick which primary they vote in, regardless of registration.

“If people were so motivated — they were frustrated enough with where we were as a country

— and said, ‘we want to vote for something different,’ it could to tally upset the apple cart,” he said.

The forum was moderated by Institute of Politics fellow Mat thew H. Mead, who served as the governor of Wyoming from 2011 to 2019.

Hogan also discussed politi

cal extremism and the Jan. 6 at tack on the U.S. Capitol, which he called a “terrible assault on de mocracy.”

“Our democracy is at stake,” he said. “I’m going to stand up, whether my fellow Republicans like it or not. I’m going to tell it like it is.”

“It’s crazy to me that we’re still at that point, where that many people are still denying the elec tion and think it was okay to try to overturn the results of an elec

I really don’t care about the politics. I think it’s why I’ve been successful in Maryland.

tion,” he said.

Hogan was asked by Eric Ev ans, a fellow at the Kennedy School who attended the event, about the prospects of third par ties, like the recently founded Forward Party.

Hogan acknowledged the “70 percent of people frustrated with both parties,” but, he said, “we’d be better off trying to fix the bro ken parties.”

He also discussed his ascent to the governor’s mansion in Mary land and undergoing cancer treatment during his term.

“I really don’t care about the politics,” he said. “I think it’s why I’ve been successful in Maryland — because I haven’t cared about politics.”

Between classes, during lunch breaks, and while completing assignments, hundreds of Harvard Law School students partici pated in a day-long sit-in on Tuesday to demand that the school’s administra tion increase educational opportunities related to re productive rights. Members of the Harvard Law School Alliance for Reproductive Justice organized the protest, encouraging passersby from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. to sit on the floor of Wasserstein Hall’s lobby and sign on to a letter the student organization will present to HLS leadership on November 1.

Dunster House Resident Dean Bikes From California to Harvard

BY DARLEY A. C. BOIT CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Dunster House Resident Dean Michael Uy arrived at the upperclassman house on his bike “Dragon” Saturday — af ter completing a 42-day, 13-state cross-country cycling trip.

The trip had been a long-term goal of Uy’s, though he had not previously been an avid cyclist. His work sabbatical this year pro vided him with the opportunity to bring the idea to fruition as his first long-distance cycling trip.

“It’s always been a dream of mine, almost a fantastical type of idea,” said Uy.

Uy left his parents’ house –and childhood home – in Orange County, California, on his birth day, Aug. 18. His parents, Abe and Julie, accompanied him for the first four days, providing ex tra rest stops as he traversed the mostly unpopulated Arizona des ert.

The trip was physically and emotionally demanding, he said. He averaged between 80 and 100 miles each day across interstate highways and rocky trails, biking for up to twelve hours some days.

Family served as a big source of support for Uy on his journey, Uy said. His father even joined him by car for the second half of

the journey.

“As I was saying goodbye to my dad on the fourth day — it was a really emotional day for me be cause it had been so challeng ing. He brought up this idea of possibly joining in Kansas City,” Uy said. “The nature of the trip changed and instead of just me biking across the country, it also became a father-son journey to gether.”

During the journey, Uy incor porated stops to visit friends in Cleveland, Ohio; his godson in Erie, Pennsylvania; and a Har vard alumnus in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

“I didn’t realize how much it would mean to me to see him and to be with someone that I knew,” Uy said, referring to his visit in Albuquerque. “You come across a lot of strangers, but there’s not quite that same familiarity or that comfort with seeing some one that you know. It was almost like he was kind of a guardian an gel at the time.”

The trip did not come with out its pitfalls. On various occa sions, Uy was driven off the road by reckless drivers, he said.

“My main concerns before the trip were drivers, extreme weather, and injury. All of those things manifested at some point throughout the trip,” Uy said.

Though the trip was ex ceptionally difficult, he said, it proved to be rewarding and per spective-broadening as well.

“You do see so much more of those small towns than even if you were to drive through it,” Uy said. “You see the places that are thriving, you see the places that are not doing so well or have been abandoned and experiencing de cline. That was all very eye-open ing to me as I was going through the country.”

If

have a goal,

and do it,

for

then also be open

ways that the journey

Asked about his takeaways from the trip, Uy said he was grateful that his yearslong dream was able to come true.

“If you have a goal, then pre pare for it and do it, and then also be open to ways that the journey might change,” Uy said. “I’m in credibly grateful for having had that opportunity.”

IOP LAUNCHES FUND TO SUPPORT PUBLIC SERVICE

The IOP last week launched a new initiative that will provide support for Col lege students and student organizations to engage in public service. Students can apply for up to $100 in funding to support expenses related to public service, such as purchasing business attire, organizing student-led events, and traveling for pro fessional purposes.

Anti-War Activists Protest Harvard Kennedy School Prof.

BY MILES J. HERSZENHORN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Over a dozen anti-war activists staged a protest against Har vard Kennedy School professor Meghan L. O’Sullivan Tuesday morning, disrupting a class she was teaching to first-year mas ter’s of public policy students.

The protesters denounced O’Sullivan’s affiliation with Ray theon Technologies, a weapons manufacturing firm, and her role in the Bush administration during the wars in Iraq and Af ghanistan.

O’Sullivan served as depu ty national security advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan in the Bush administration prior to joining the Harvard Kennedy School. She currently sits on Raytheon’s board of directors.

The protestors, most of whom were not affiliated with Harvard, burst into the classroom chant ing “Meghan O’Sullivan, you can’t hide, we can see your war crimes” and “When missiles fly, people die, and O’Sullivan’s profits mul tiply,” while holding up a banner critical of O’Sullivan in front of the class.

HKS security personnel and the Harvard University Police Department responded to the demonstration, but no arrests were made as the protestors left campus on their own. It remains unclear how the protestors en tered the Kennedy School.

Kennedy School Dean Doug las W. Elmendorf wrote in a state ment Tuesday evening that the school “encourages constructive discourse, including dissent and protest.”

“But students and teachers have the right to be heard in the classroom and to listen to others in the classroom, and disruption of those interactions hurts learn ing and is not tolerated,” Elmen dorf said.

O’Sullivan declined to com ment on the protest and the activ ists’ criticisms.

The protest at HKS was co-or ganized by Resist and Abolish the Military Industrial Complex — an activist group that has previous ly staged protests against Ray theon in Rhode Island and Cam bridge — and United Against War and Militarism, an anti-imperial ist organization.

A RAM INC spokesperson criticized Harvard’s decision to

employ O’Sullivan as a professor because of her past work for the U.S. government and her affilia tion with Raytheon.

“We want to expose the fact that Harvard Kennedy — in spite of the image it’s putting forward — is employing someone who profits every time bombs or mis siles are dropped or launched at Palestine and Yemen,” the spokesperson said.

Quint Forgey, an HKS student who was in the classroom when protestors burst inside, said that “the class was definitely shaken” following the protest.

While the class was not can celed as a result of the incident, O’Sullivan did not return to teach ing the planned material, accord ing to Forgey. Instead, O’Sullivan and the students spent the rest of class time discussing the disrup tion.

“It transitioned into a frank, honest, and open dialogue be tween the students in the class room and Professor O’Sullivan about her time in the Bush ad ministration and students’ var ious reactions to the episode,” Forgey said.

From Weeks to Weld.

Governor Larry Hogan spoke about bi partisanship at a Harvard Institute of Politics forum.

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan spoke at a Harvard Institute of Politics forum on Wednesday. CORY K. GORCZYCKI — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

HLS

Michael Uy biked for 42 days across the country, beginning in California on Aug. 19 and finishing at Dunster House on Oct. 1. COURTESY OF MICHAEL UY

Larry Hogan Governor of Maryland

Michael

Dunster

Resident

‘Bros’ is Just Your AverageBromance

BY BRADY M. CONNOLLY

STAFF WRITER

n “Bros,” the new romantic comedy from famed produc er Judd Apatow, the answer to this question is a resound ing “sometimes.” Billy Eich ner, best known for his icon ic series “Billy on the Street,” co-wrote the film’s screenplay and also stars as the sarcastic yet lovable protagonist Bobby Lieber. Despite constantly mentioning to his friends that he is “emotionally unavailable,” Bobby finds himself falling for Luke Macfarlane’s Aaron, a buff lawyer who also fears committing to their burgeoning relationship.

While the film is notable for be ing one of the first gay romantic com edies from a major studio, its bound ary-breaking nature cannot make up for what it lacks in the way of con sistent humor and strong perfor mances.

By marketing itself as a new R-rated comedy from Eichner, one of the funniest and most boisterous co medians working today, “Bros” sets high expectations for the level of hu mor at which it will operate. And in many moments, this bar (or some thing near it) is reached, with Eich ner’s highly niche popular culture quips hitting the mark. Specifical ly, Eichner’s jokes about having the lanky phsyique of a grown-up Evan Hansen, the cliché nature of “The Of fice” gifs, and straight actors playing gay characters to win Oscars were pitch perfect, eliciting the type of uproarious laughter from the audi ence that is increasingly rare in mov ie theaters today. Such sharp and ob servant sarcasm, which has always been Eichner’s trademark, certainly keeps the film afloat.

Unfortunately, these sporadic moments of laughter fail to make the movie consistently enjoyable, and it often suffers under the weight of its own mission to be a defining gay romantic comedy. While increased representation in Hollywood is un doubtedly a good thing, “Bros” feels slightly heavy-handed in its pursuit to remind audiences that they are watching a film about being gay in modern America.

This singular fo cus seems to restrict some of Eich ner’s obvious comedic talents, lim itting the possibility for more subtle and varied cultural commentary that is not contingent on having an explicitly gay-centric punchline.

(For evidence of a recent romantic comedy that achieves a greater lev el of nuance in its humorous anal ysis of the gay experience, viewers should watch Andrew Ahn’s “Fire Is land.”)

Despite some of its comedic shortcomings, “Bros” largely suc ceeds at fulfilling its promise to be a romantic movie. The chemistry between Bobby and Aaron is play

Welcome to Central Square Attractions

BY SOPHIA S. PASALIS CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Looking to get out of the Harvard Square bubble, but don’t want to go across the river? Look no fur ther than Central Square. A twen ty-minute walk from Harvard’s campus, Central Square is an easy field trip for students and tourists alike. Here are some recommen dations for the beginner Central Square traveler:

BOOMERANGS

Head to Boomerangs on Mass. Ave. for some of Cambridge’s best second-hand picks and hid den treasures. It hosts a range of thrifted finds — from clothes, shoes, to household items. A trip to Boomerangs could take anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour, depending on the time available for a thorough thrift shopping experience.

For book and crystal lovers, Seven Stars on Mass. Ave. is the perfect place to browse for new reads. The store has a large selection of spiritually-oriented books for those interested in exploring different forms of religion and spirituality from around the world. In front of the cash register, a glass display case holds a range of crystals, like amethyst and rose quartz.

CHEAPO RECORDS

Across the road from Boomer angs, Cheapo Records sells a huge variety of records, and music enthusiasts can spend hours combing through their collection. The store also sells clothing, including an array of band tees.

CICADA

A prime eavesdropping spot located on Prospect Street, Cica da is a bustling cafe that serves expertly crafted Vietnamese dishes, coffee, and pastries. Try out a new coffee order, like their Sai Gon Espresso Latte , or grab a drink in the evenings in the comfort of Cicada’s lush, lively ambience, accentuated by large, leafy houseplants. Live-sketches and Polaroids of the cafe, stacks of books, and abstract art line the walls. Make sure to invite friends or even a first date.

All things considered, Central Square is a perfect diversion from the day-to-day routine of Har vard Square. There’s always more to explore with endless coffee shops, amazing restaurants, and Central’s graffiti wall!

ful and believable, leading the audi ence to be genuinely invested in the outcome of their predictably tumul tuous relationship. It is in the realm of romance that the film explores the idiosyncrasies of the gay experi ence with far more thoughtfulness, as Eichner expertly hones in on the many differences between straight and gay relationships. Employing the ironic adage “love is not love,” the film foregrounds a diverse array of queer characters who share their experiences of romance with heart felt meaning. The pinnacle of all these moments occurs when Bobby shares his self-confidence struggles with Aaron on a beach in Provinc etown, by far the most moving and powerful scene in the film.

“

Billy on the Big Screen may not change the world, but it’s an admirable attempt and a positive step towards greater inclusion in Hollywood.”

As for the acting — Eichner’s per formance feels lived-in yet slightly strained, with moments of Bobby’s anger coming across as particularly shaky. However, all is forgiven when Eichner tosses out his masterfully searing criticism or a witty remark, often sealing the deal with a car toonish eye roll. Macfarlane plays a hyper-masculine foil to the effu sive Bobby, and he is perfectly ad equate at slowly revealing glimps es of Aaron’s more vulnerable side. Aside from the two main characters, there are several well-placed cameos in the film, with Debra Messing and Bowen Yang providing particularly fantastic moments of engaging, un bridled comedic chaos.

Ultimately, “Bros” ends up being a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy, which would be sufficient if it were not for the knowledge of Eichner’s remarkable comedic prowess. Au diences should be sure to familiarize themselves with “Billy on the Street” YouTube clips after the film, the for mat where Eichner truly dazzles. However, no harm will come to those who buy a ticket for this movie and subject themselves to watching Bob by try to shove through a crowd of gay men in a club who just “can’t stop voguing,” and other such gags. Billy on the Big Screen may not change the world, but it’s an admirable attempt and a positive step towards greater inclusion in Hollywood.

Poster for “Bros,” courtesy of EPK.TV.

SEVEN STARS

NEW YORK FASHION WEEK: MAYBE SHE’S BORN WITH IT

‘La Bohème’ Review: Boston Lyric Opera Gloriously Reimagines Puccini’s Masterpiece

BY EVELYN CARR CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

In the 21st century, the dilem ma facing many opera com panies around the world is how to refresh centuries-old operas to appeal to a mod ern audience. Giacomo Pucci ni’s masterpiece “La Bohème,” cut one of the most beloved piec es in the classical repertoire, has been a particular target of such reimaginings. Past productions have seen the tragic tale of im poverished artists in 1830s Paris interpreted as everything from a wordless ballet set in the 1950s to a futuristic love story that unfolds in outer space. These adaptations have been met with varying de grees of affection from die-hard opera fans, but Boston Lyric Op era’s excellent and unorthodox staging of “La Bohème” is sure to please even the most staunch op era purists.

Produced in conjunction with Detroit Opera and Spoleto Festi val USA, stage director Yuval Sha ron’s visionary interpretation of the classic opera stages its events in reverse chronology. The per formance begins where Pucci ni’s original work ends — with Mimì’s (Lauren Michelle) trag ic death in Act IV — and moves backward in time from there,

culminating with ill-fated lovers Mimì and Rodolfo’s (Jesus Gar cia) first meeting in Act I. Besides this restructuring, Puccini’s mu sic is relatively untouched, save some generous cuts in Act I that slim the opera’s runtime down to a trim 100 minutes with no inter mission — an impressive feat for a show that usually commands almost three hours, and likely an attempt to make the production more accessible to new audience members.

Bohème’s episodic construc tion beautifully lends itself to this reverse-linear adaptation. The libretto, which is based on the French play “Scènes de la Vie Bohème” by Henri Murg er, is structured in a series of vi gnettes that could easily stand on their own, allowing each act to retain its emotional poignancy despite the Boston adaptation’s reversal in chronology. Addition ally, the movement of the stage, which is built on a rotating, cir cular platform, helps orient the audience through the changes in time, while shifts in lighting tran sition us from the bleak days of sickness and financial stress to the rose-colored scenes of young love, and add nuance to the other wise minimalist set.

Yuval Sharon’s adaptation also includes the addition of a new character called “The Wan

derer” (Marshall Hughes) who provides spoken English-lan guage introductions to each new act. Though The Wander er is helpful in guiding the audi ence through time jumps, his ad ditional appearances throughout the opera are superfluous at best and distracting at worst, especial ly in instances where his lines, of ten in the form of rhetorical ques tions, interject in key moments of the opera’s action.

Despite the interruptions, Boston Lyric Opera’s production of “La Bohème” was triumphant, fresh, and touching. For an opera so prominent in the cultural mi

Despite the interruptions, Boston Lyric Opera’s production of “La Bohème” was triumphant, fresh, and touching.

lieu, starting with Mimì’s death is not a “spoiler,” but has the effect of shadowing the rest of the opera with a potent bittersweet atmo sphere not present in other pro ductions. A scene particularly of note is Mimì’s famous aria “Sì, mi chiamano Mimì.” This scene is usually a charming introduction to her character, but in Boston Lyric Opera’s production, it func

tions as a touching eulogy to a woman gone too soon. Addition ally, key symbols such as Mimì’s pink bonnet take on new mean ing after the audience sees their significance at the end of Mimì’s life.

As for the cast, Lauren Mi chelle as Mimì is a clear stand out. Michelle has a voice that brings tears to the eyes and shiv ers down the spine; her excellent, soaring soprano never falters de spite the physical demands of portraying a character dying of tuberculosis and prone to violent coughing fits and sudden faint ing spells. The rest of the cast has excellent chemistry and im pressive vocal power, and reflects Boston Lyric Opera’s recent com mitment to make opera a more inclusive space for people of all backgrounds and identities.

“La Bohème” has graced the stages of opera houses across the world for over a century, and dif ferentiating a new production of the opera from the scores of earli er iterations is no easy task. How ever, Boston Lyric Opera and Yu val Sharon rise to the occasion spectacularly, bringing the time less story of love and loss to audi ences in a way never before seen without compromising Puccini’s original vision.

evelyn.carr@thecrimson.com

While having rich and well-connected parents has been among the most bankable paths to success in most celeb rity professions for decades, nepotism and high fashion modeling are a match made in heaven. In this think piece, contributing writer Benji L. Pearson takes a look at the lucky few models who had the good fortune of being born to parents who can give them the industry connections to get a stilettoed foot in the door. They’re known as “nepotism babies,” and New York Fashion Week is crawling with them. Every runway seems to fea ture at least one. Some, like Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner, have succeeded in catwalking out of the shadow of their parents’ and siblings’ profiles to be taken seriously as models in their own right. Other newer faces to fashion, like Kaia Gerber, Sophia Richie, and Ella Emhoff, still have their families to thank for their quick rises onto the most coveted runways.

In the supermodel heyday of the ‘90s, he writes, the models’ appeal came not only from their long limbs and perfect pouts but from the illusion that anyone could be them. Cindy Craw ford, arguably the preeminent ‘90s supermodel, was famously discovered by a local photographer while shucking corn during her summer job in high school. She dropped out of her first se mester of college and soon found herself gracing the cover of Vogue Magazine.

This story struck the perfect alchemy of relatability and aspiration. Young people latched onto this Cindy-rella story and others like it because it started at such an accessible, quo tidien place — remember, she was shucking corn — but quickly ascended to glamorous heights. Young people and media alike latched onto this narrative that anyone from anywhere could be a star with some luck.

With social platforms democratizing media, traditional media sources have lost control of pushing similar aspirational narratives. Now, many people fixate on stories that don’t instill hope but instead reinforce inequality. These rags to runways narratives have been replaced by the less heartening reality that, in order to succeed in modeling, you can’t just be a Cindy, you have to be her daughter.

It makes sense that modeling is filled with the daughters and sons of A-listers. Modeling is often far from financially sustainable, and when you’re paid in designer t-shirts and exposure instead of money, it helps to have parents that can supplement your income.

It’s disheartening to confront the reality that most celebrity-ori ented professions are almost impossible to break into or profit from without the support of rich and famous parents. But it’s also demystifying: Isn’t it better that we at least know how the machine really works rather than clinging to handpicked, embellished origin stories that provide us with a false sense of proximity to celebri ties? Maybe, with newfound clarity, young people will look beyond professions that have a history of underpaying and exploiting their workers.

Maybe, we should leave those lines of work to the Jenners, Had ids, and Gerbers (by way of Crawford) who don’t need the extra cash anyway.

‘Best Barbarian’ Review: A Voice That Must Be Returned To BY SEAN WANG ZI-MING

WRITER

In the world of fine dining, es taBold and ambitious, Roger Reeves’s second poetry collec tion “Best Barbarian” is a trium phant testament to the power of the Black voice. Reeves forges ahead and puts forth an intense body of work that examines is sues of race, war, and even climate change without compromising its lyricism. Recipient of a Whit ing Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation, Reeves is gripping in his examina tion of the apocalyptic state of hu manity, making it impossible for the reader to look away.

Ruminations on abstract con cepts like death, loss, grief, and pain become achingly familiar as Reeves’s speakers trace the con tours of their familial history. At the beginning of the collection, the speaker grapples with the complicated entanglements of lineage and trauma in poems such as “The Alphabet, For Naima,” “In Rehearsal For The Funeral,” and “After The Funeral.” The death of a father casts a shadow that is felt throughout the collection, but it never feels repetitive. The under current of pain runs through the piece in an electric display of cre ativity, whether it’s in contrast to his daughter’s “invisible breath ing” in “After Death” or by taking the form of the German Feldgeis ter in “Cocaine and Gold” — his dead “father the corn-wolf”.

As much as it is personal,

Reeves’s depiction of suffering is not strictly individualistic. His po etry engages with a range of glob al literature and contemporary is sues as well. His examination of the assassination of the Palestin ian writer in “The End of Ghassan Kanafani” broadens into a consid eration of the painful consequenc es of war. Likewise, in “Children Listen,” the poem spans the “Ro man sky” to “Gaza” to Kazimierz,” imbuing his rallying imperative “You must grow wildly over the graves” with a universal quality. He captures microscopic and macro scopic perspectives with ease.

Featuring frequent allusions to the Anglocentric literary can on, Reeves pushes his writing to its creative limits, constant ly incorporating different voic es with remarkable freshness. These span from Beowulf to the Bible and from Augustine to Walt Whitman. By engaging with these works, he places his own poetry in conversation with a canon that has been historically exclusion ary. This ambitious undertaking leads to a fascinating exploration of the potential of Black poetry — able to simultaneously accom modate and interrogate the cor nerstones of Western history and culture. Noticeably longer than the other poems in the collec tion, there are echoes of epic poet ry in “Domestic Violence,” where named characters move along side literary allusions and vic tims of police brutality, framed by epigraphs from Dante’s “Divine Comedy” and “The Kybalion.” Al legorical, dense, symbolic, and es oteric: It is this very complexity

that insists the reader slows down and takes the time to consider the many connections Reeves creates between the past and the present.

What stands out is the way Reeves’s voice holds its own even as it draws upon giants in liter ary history. In “Fragment 107,” he gives Sappho’s disembodied voice a new life as he addresses her di rectly: “Do I long for my virginity, Sappho?” This strength of voice reaches its fever pitch in “Prayer Of The Jaguar,” where the speak er appropriates the symbol of the jaguar to embody his voice’s pre cise and calculated power: “the golden heaven rising / Above him, the hush of a slamming door.” It is in these depictions of nature that Reeves’ poeticism shines through. The world, through his eyes, is at once beautiful and trau matic, sometimes in insepara bly complex ways. As such, nat ural imagery intermingles with contemporary injustice in “Rat Among The Pines.”

“A white moon Leaning on the night’s neck

With its hands in its pocket Moon hung calm above

Catastrophe, the police Breaking the neck of a man

Who had just brushed summer’s First bead of rain from his eye-”

Moreover, the power of his voice also draws strength from the Black canon Reeves evokes. References to legendary artists like Aretha Franklin, Louis Arm

strong, James Baldwin, Marion Brown, Beyoncé, and others po sition the collection amidst a cel ebration of Black artistic excel lence. Specifically, in “Something About John Coltrane,” Reeves transfigures a pivotal moment in Black history — Mahalia Jackson’s

wig flying off in the heat of per formance — into a transcendent act of liberation. Here, the act of “Jackson’s wig flying” is “as if a star / Suddenly freed from the mouth of God / A Black tooth blessing.”

His words strike at something be yond, mining the ordinary for mo ments of divinity.

To cover all the nuances of a book mired in historical, literary, and religious contexts is impossi ble in a review or even a singular thesis. This complexity does not mean that casual readers should be put off. The richness of his de scriptive imagery, the vulnerabil ity of his personal narratives, and his concerted engagement with contemporary issues are acces sible and universal. This is a col lection that warrants multiple re-readings, each time with new insights to be discovered within his lush words. As he says in the collection’s final poem, “You are in a beautiful language.” It is truly a marvel to behold.

Reeves is gripping in his examination of the apocalyptic state of humanity.

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“LA BOHEME” IMAGE COURTESY OF OLIVIA MOON PHOTOGRAPHY

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Q&A:

DANIELLE ALLEN ON THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY, PRACTICAL PUBLIC PROBLEM SOLVING, AND MINECRAFT

BY HARRISON R. T. WARD CRIMSON

sible in our lifetime.

FM: When you think of demo cratic leaders and represen tatives, what are the most im portant traits — ethically, morally, intellectually — that those leaders possess?

DSA: It’s really important that people in leadership roles be able to be synthetic, to synthe size across a whole lot of kinds of expertise and viewpoints. So it’s not the case that any single kind of expertise ever has the answers to a problem, because multiple kinds of expertise and conflicting frames will always be relevant. We want a broad community en gaged in that process of diagnosis and solution, identification and decision, and so forth.

FM: One thing we’ve touched on a little bit earlier: Facebook has had a profound impact on democracy, both good and bad. In your mind, is there a version of social media that can have a net positive impact on democ racy?

D

anielle S. Allen is a pro fessor of political phi losophy, ethics, and public policy as well as the director of the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics. She has chaired a number of commis sions on the present and future of democracy and is a former candi date for Governor of Massachu setts. This interview has been ed ited for length and clarity.

FM: How did you get into aca demia?

Danielle S. Allen: My sophomore year at Princeton, I wandered into a class on ancient Athenian de mocracy in the spring semester.

There was something that was bugging me all the way through.

I finally figured it out halfway into the semester. I raised my hand and said to my professor, “Did they not have prisons in ancient Athens?” So I ended up writing my senior thesis and then went to graduate school at Cambridge in the UK to write that dissertation that my professor had suggested.

FM: Would you describe your self generally as an optimist?

DSA: That’s funny. I get asked that question a lot. People say, “Dan ielle, you’re so optimistic. How can you be so optimistic? It’s such a horrible world.” And you know what I always say back? It’s not exactly that I’m an optimist; I’m just a person who believes that failure is not an option. So I’m a “not-an-optionist!”

FM: Something that struck me when I read about your guber natorial campaign was that it filled you with a renewed sense of hope. Since so many people leave politics disillusioned, I’m interested in how you seeming ly left with another perspec tive.

DSA: Let’s be honest — when I started my campaign, I had basi cally zero name recognition. So as I would visit with people, they were incredibly frank and ready to share really personal experi ences, challenges, worries, and concerns. So you develop this very deep sense of responsibility for the stories and hopes people would trust to you.

The other lesson that was just so profound was that we talked so much about how much cynicism there is in our politics, and yet they wanted to share, they want ed to tell somebody who might be governor! That’s how much faith we continue to have that our in stitutions can actually do right for us.

FM: For many undergradu ates, Harvard is a very insulat ed environment. What is your recommendation for how can integrate a broader social per spective into our lives?

DSA: The University is so in tellectually rich, and it’s a real ly wonderful place to be. We put all these amazing opportunities in front of people, and that can mean that you get sort of pulled inside. I do think one has to be in tentionally proactive about tak ing all that richness and connect ing it to real-world contexts. I think that the Mindich Program for engaged teaching and learn ing is really terrific, but it’s a sort of set of courses that do really link up the classroom context to work

in a variety of different kinds of civ il society organizations and the like. So it really connects good, old-fash ioned book learning with proj ect-based learning and starts to fuse those things together.

FM: One of the things that I thought was interesting about the Undergraduate Council ref erendum last year was that there was a lot of vitriol and a lot of an ger despite the absences of any political parties. I am curious, do you have any perspective on why that might be?

DSA: Well, I think you’re naming an experience a lot of people have. Vitriol is a part of all of our lives, I think, at a rate we all would prefer not to have. So I do think the prob lem is not just about partisanship but that there’s a kind of broader set of challenges that also do affect how our parties operate. They’re part of the same environment. I was a part of something called the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Youth and Participatory Politics for an eight- or nine-year stretch, just after Facebook was invented, and I do think that social media, if you are in an algorithmically driven uni verse that rewards outrage, has had a broad effect on our culture, our practices, and habits of interaction. So I think we are in a place where we need to proactively learn how to have decent fights.

FM: What are the biggest road blocks to those kinds of civil dis cussions?

DSA: There are some basic things that people can learn. There was one student who said, “I learned how to really dissect a question and how to fully process something be fore speaking on the subject.” That sounds like a small thing, but if you are doing that really intentionally with others, it really can change the

dynamic of a conversation. This is where I would pull togeth er the issue of practical public prob lem solving with relational chal lenges. When you have an actual problem that doesn’t have an ideo logical frame that you have to solve together, then you can build a rela tionship to solve that problem. But in the course of doing that, you ac tually learn ways of talking through and about ideological differences.

FM: That’s very interesting. I think Gretchen Whitmer said at the beginning of her campaign for Governor of Michigan, “fix the damn roads,” which I guess is a very common cause place to start. On the topic of common cause, what is your perspective on what we as citizens owe each other at this moment?

DSA: I would just quote Martin Lu ther King, Jr. and say we owe each other the full sharing of power and responsibility. Then the question is, what does it actually take to de liver that to each other? It takes re spectfulness. It takes participation, not just letting males do all the work, not being a free rider; it takes chip ping in. But it all flows from the fact that we owe each other full sharing of power and responsibility.

FM: I think there’s a lot of policy implications that stem from that in a very immediate sense that are fairly profound. One of the poli cies you suggested was expand ing the House of Representatives. That’s something that sounds ini tially very small. But when you think about what the practical implications are, they’re actually fairly large.

DSA: It wouldn’t have been large if they had not bothered to cap the House 100 years ago. They pro duced a problem that we didn’t need to have. That’s what’s frustrating

about it, because it should have been a slow evolution, one decade to the next. That’s what it was built to do.

Basically, this is a beautiful, very sig nificant example of deferred main tenance. We have deferred mainte nance on our House, on Congress, and therefore it is much harder to do than if we have been, every 10 years, expanding the House.

FM: I suppose, in many senses, de ferred maintenance is kind of the broader perspective we’ve taken on American democracy for may be the last 50 years: democracy is something that’s innate to Amer ica. It’s something we know how to do, so it’s not something we need to practice.

DSA: I think that’s right. I think the deferred maintenance metaphor is a very helpful one for understanding where we are. And it’s hard because it’s not the whole story — because the House as originally built was never built for everyone, and some people were stuck in the dark base ments while other people had lightfilled rooms. So it’s a kind of combi nation of deferred maintenance and a meaningful renovation.

FM: I think that many people have a firmly rooted conception of what the House, or the Sen ate, look like. How feasible do you think it is for Americans to get out of that mindset? Are these going to be things we’re going to be able to change, perhaps, in our life times?

DSA: It’s true, we look at the world and it’s so big and so complex it just feels really set in place, and we feel so very powerless in relation to it. I think the most important thing, honestly, is to connect people to their power again. And the truth is, if you can connect people to their pow er, then things begin to feel possible. So yes, I think these changes are pos

DSA: The great thing about the challenges we face with social media is how many people are thinking about them now. That’s the beautiful thing about human beings — once we all get clear that something is a problem, we solve it eventually. Lots of folks are just focused on how we reg ulate the social media platforms. But that’s honestly just a por tion of it. There’s a question of how we redesign other elements of our institutions to mitigate against the negative externali ties that flow from social media. But then there’s this sort of third bucket of positive experimenta tion. There’s a tool called Polis, a technological-based way of poll ing opinion but looking for syner gies and common points of view, instead of trying to bring out the things that create outrage.

FM: Recently, with the anni versary of Jan. 6, there was so much media attention on the Civil War in America. My ques tion for you as someone who is very solution-oriented: the discussion of a potential civil war, the death of democracy — are those productive conversa tions to be having?

DSA: I really appreciate that there’s a lot of anxiety in our en vironment. People are stressed out about the events on Jan. 6. They were scary and anger-in ducing. So the question is really, given the significance of the epi sode and the kind of emotions it stirred up, how do we walk from that to something productive?

That’s where I am a big supporter of trying to take things out of the national politics framework, look more locally, build partnerships. I don’t really think we can actual ly solve any of our problems with out just literally building partner ships between people.

FM: That makes a lot of sense. I have a short final question: What media are you consum ing?

DSA: I have to admit, in the media department, I’m really driven by my children. I took my daughter to a Cavetown concert, who was playing in the House of Blues. My son is totally dedicated to Mine craft, so I spent a lot of time con suming stuff about Minecraft or with him in relation to Minecraft.

FM: That’s very interesting. I guess Minecraft is really one of those places of communal problem solving.

DSA: But it’s also the toxicity that you were mentioning. My poor son, he just had all of his resourc es wiped out by some Minecraft bully, who convinced him they were doing a trade, and then, like, got his code and destroyed every thing he built for months. So it’s bad out there!

THE

SOPHIA

HES Students Ask for Degree Name Change

degree names would allow de grees from the school to com mand “dignity and respect.”

A group of about 20 Har vard Extension School students rallied in Har vard Yard on Sunday morning to call on the school to change the names of the degrees it offers.

The protest came one day af ter the Extension School hosted its first in-person Convocation ceremony since 2019.

Extension School students have called on Harvard for years to remove “in Extension Stud ies” from degrees offered by the school, saying the label does not accurately reflect students’ fields of study.

Rallygoers on in Harvard Yard on Sunday held up signs saying “Remove in Extension Studies Now,” “We Stand with HES Students,” and “No One at Harvard Studies in Extension Studies.”

Degree-granting programs currently offered by the Exten sion School include a Bachelor of Liberal Arts and Master of Liberal Arts. Regardless of stu dents’ fields of study, all grad uates of the school receive de grees “in Extension Studies.”

Out in the world, we face discrimination

being a part of the Harvard Extension School.

Jennifer R. Nessle, a Bach elor’s degree candidate study ing psychology at the Exten sion School, said changing the

“Out in the world, we face dis crimination for being a part of the Harvard Extension School,” she said. “I’ve personally had someone tell me to give up on my dreams because I don’t study at the ‘real Harvard.’”

“Our degrees should at least reflect the hard life-changing work that we have poured our blood, sweat, and tears into,” Nessle added.

The dean of Harvard’s Di vision of Continuing Educa tion, Nancy Coleman, wrote in a statement that the DCE “will continue to explore the ques tion of degree naming in appro priate governance venues.”

“We acknowledge that the degrees awarded through Har vard Extension School follow a naming convention that is dis similar from those awarded by continuing education programs at peer institutions,” Coleman wrote.

At the rally on Sunday, Rob ert E. Manning, a Master’s de gree candidate studying in ternational relations at the Extension School, said having “in Extension Studies” on the degrees hampers students’ job prospects.

“The purpose of the rally was to have ‘in Extension Studies’ re moved from our degree so that we could have an equal degree with the rest of Harvard,” he said.

Kody Christiansen, the pres ident of the Harvard Extension Student Association, said he is working to get a statement of support for the degree name change from the newly-formed Harvard Undergraduate Asso ciation.

“I think we need our adminis tration and our fellow students

and our professors to speak up,”

Christiansen said.

Former Division of Continu ing Education Dean Hunting ton D. Lambert expressed sup port for the degree name change prior to his departure, saying in 2019 he had raised the issue with the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing board.

Our degree name must be distinctive, yet recognizable to future employers and in line with our peer institutions.

The 2021 student satisfac tion survey report, published by the DCE in June, indicated that many respondents were con cerned about the degree name.

In response to the survey, Coleman wrote in a statement posted on the DCE’s website that she wants “to ensure that we have a degree name that is academically correct and accu rately represents the interdisci plinary learning as well as high academic achievement of our post-traditional degree candi dates.”

“As a unique entity within Harvard, our degree name must be distinctive, yet recognizable to future employers and in line with our peer institutions,” she said in the statement. “A degree name is a once-in-a-century de cision. The request must be ful ly informed with eye toward the future.”

Students Circulate Petition to Remove Sackler Name

family and of Purdue Pharma can be traced back directly to Arthur Sackler,” the proposal reads.

Spokespeople for Purdue Pharma and Jillian Sackler — Arthur Sackler’s widow — did not respond to repeated re quests for comment.

Activists have previous ly called for the removal of the Sackler name from campus buildings. Following protests in 2019, however, University Pres ident Lawrence S. Bacow said it would be “inappropriate” to re move the name.

Jay P. Garg ’24, the policy chair for HCOPES, said he hopes going through the now-formal ized FAS process for removing controversial names will be a more effective way to push for change than past protests.

“There’s a committee of peo

ple who are going to look at it and try to grapple with how cen tral this is to University life and how central this is to the history of this country, and what should be done as a result of it,” Garg said. “I’m hoping that the pro cess itself will make it a little eas ier to get something done.”

Allan M. Brandt, a History of Science professor and HCOPES faculty adviser, expressed his support for the proposal in an emailed statement and said the Sackler name on campus build ings poses an “important repu tational risk” to Harvard.

“I urge the University to act positively on this important and thoughtfully presented request to dename the buildings cur rently named for members of the Sackler family,” he wrote.

David M. Hogg ’23, whose tweet last month calling on Har

vard to remove Sackler’s name garnered more than 10,000 likes and a thousand retweets, said he believes the presence of the Sackler family’s name on cam pus buildings is “terrible.”

Hogg added that Harvard’s mission, which he described as “creating better citizens and citi zen-leaders,” does not align with “celebrating” the Sackler family.

“Citizen leaders help address the injustices that come before us and acknowledge that we may not necessarily be responsi ble for creating them ourselves,” Hogg said.

“But we do have a responsi bility to address them and find some form of justice. I think a first step in the right direction is changing the name — but it’s not the last step.”

Bertozzi ’88 Wins Nobel Prize

UCSF (where she was a postdoc) and, of course, Stanford.”

In an interview with The Crimson, Bertozzi said that she was woken up by a phone call from the Nobel Committee at 1:43 a.m. Wednesday.

“I looked at the number, and it was a weird international number — and it’s from Sweden — and I saw that, I was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no,” she said. “So, suddenly, the chair of the Nobel committee is on the phone con gratulating me and giving me the news.”

Bertozzi — who had initial ly planned to pursue medicine when she was an undergrad — said Harvard was influential in her path to becoming a chemist.

After taking Chemistry 17: Principles of Organic Chemis try, Bertozzi “killed the premed idea,” she said.

“I just knew I wanted to be an organic chemist, and Harvard did that for me,” she said. “Har vard brought me and organic chemistry together.”

“I would want to be left alone on Friday and Saturday night just to read o-chem books in the library,” she added.

While at Harvard, Bertozzi, a Quincy House resident, was in ducted into Harvard’s chapter of academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa and played in a band called Bored of Education along side future Rage Against the Ma chine guitarist Tom B. Morello ’86.

“Both orgo and playing with Tom Morello, both were sort of the substance of my sophomore year,” she said. “Playing in that band was really just a highlight of my college years — and get ting to play with someone as gift

ed as Tom was phenomenal.” Bertozzi said that while the Nobel Prize recognized her work on bioorthogonal chemis try, her work has become more “clinical” in recent years.

“I’m trying to get some of these technologies translat ed into human medicines, and I have a couple of molecules in two of my companies that are in clinical trials now,” she said.

Within 10 minutes of the No bel Committee’s announcement Wednesday morning, a Stanford press group was at Bertozzi’s door, she said. Bertozzi spent the rest of the day celebrating and meeting with press and uni versity leaders.

“‘I’m losing my voice, I’m ex hausted, sleep deprived. And I’m overjoyed,” Bertozzi said.

rahem.hamid@thecrimson.com

Jennifer

“

Nancy Coleman Dean, Division of Continuing Education

Harvard Splits Pair at Home

BY NOAH JUN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

T he Harvard women’s vol leyball team hosted a com petitive dou ble-header as it continued Ivy League play in front of students, alumni, parents, and fans this past weekend. The hosts showed their resilience, bouncing back from the previous weekend’s loss to Dartmouth and topping Penn in a tight five-setter for its second win of the season on Friday. The next day, however, the Crimson, despite respectable performanc es from its players, came up short against a strong Princeton of fense. Saturday’s matchup was a headline of the Title IX Celebra tion Weekend, which commem orated the 50th anniversary of women’s athletics at the College.

Harvard (2-9, 1-2 Ivy League) got out to a slow start in each set against the Tigers. The first, for instance, was agonizing for Crimson fans. Princeton (11-2, 3-0 Ivy League) capitalized on aces and kills to take an early 8-1 lead, which it would then translate to 10-3.

Princeton’s senior outside hitter Avery Luoma dominated the net, contributing four kills in this 13-point span and 18 on the night. The hosts finally managed to find their footing after this ini tial slide, however. They brought themselves within two after a quick five-point run and even lev eled the score at 14-14, setting the Malkin Athletic Center (MAC) aroar.

Jaimie Rao. One player who has stood out in offsetting these loss es is senior captain Bella Alman za, who posted seven kills, a teamhigh five blocks, and nine digs on the night.

A shining moment of Al manza’s leadership came in the third set when Harvard went on a four-point run that consisted of an Almanza kill, block (with help from junior middle block er Ariana White), Vorhies slam that occurred because of an Al manza save, and another Alman za/White block. This series pro pelled the Crimson to a 16-14 lead in a set that began with a 7-2 Princ eton advantage. Harvard then closed out the set, 25-20, courtesy of a kill from junior middle hitter Olivia Cooper.

This third set victory marked a reversal from the previous one’s 25-18 gap that went in favor of the Tigers. The New Jerseyans once again had a strong start, going up 5-2 before the Crimson leveled the score at five apiece. There was a deadlock from then until the half way point of the set. The teams traded two- or three-point runs, and the score tied four times at 7-7, 10-10, 12-12, and 14-14. In the end, Princeton demonstrated its resilience by pulling ahead 22-18 before closing it out with a kill, ace, and block.

2-9

This comeback, an example of Harvard’s strong efforts this weekend and throughout the sea son as a whole, came in part off the arm of junior outside hitter Katie Vorhies. Vorhies posted 18 kills on the night and has led the team in kills in each Ivy League match this season, tallying 130.5 points over 39 sets played.

The rest of the first set was a game of catchup for the Crimson, as kills were traded between Lu oma and junior middle blocker Ava Rauser and sophomore out side hitter Corinne Furey. Furey and Rauser had the second- and third-most kills for the team in the match respectively, and the latter also contributed four blocks. Nevertheless, Princeton’s offense, aided by Harvard errors, claimed the first set, 25-22, for the visitors.

Injuries have plagued the Crimson this season, forcing the Cantabrigians to play without key offensive components such as ju nior setter/hitter Ashley Wang and senior right side attacker

The applause was still rever berating throughout the MAC as the two teams took the court for the fourth set. The Tigers put a quick end to this celebration, however, as they took a quick 4-0 lead, which they translated into a 11-4 edge. From there, Har vard managed to find its footing, as Vorhies kills and three errors from Princeton’s senior outside hitter Melina Mahood closed Princeton’s lead to 12-11. No team could secure more than two points in a row for the next 19 ral lies, and the score settled at 21-21. With the end in sight, the Tigers made one final push, combining two Luoma kills with two Crim son errors to seal the set, 25-22, and with it the match.

This disappointing loss fol lowed a closely-contested victory over Penn (1-12, 0-3 Ivy League).

Vorhies, Almanza, White, and Cooper once again dominated the offensive game, contributing to the 21-25, 25-22, 25-16, 23-25, 15-7 win. The Crimson will stay at home for one more weekend in a double-header against Yale and Brown, the latter of which will conclude the Title IX celebra tions.

WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL posted mixed results against Dartmouth, Penn and Princeton in a weekend tourna ment celebrating the 50th anniversary of Title IX

WOMEN’S

Harvard Loses Rocky Ivy Opener, Downs BU

MEN’S SOCCER started off the weekend

a

Harvard 2, Cornell 3

MEN’S

MEN’S TENNIS BOUNCES BACK

con tested

over Boston University.

not carry over to Harvard’s

League opener, losing

against

BY MADDIE B. BARKATE CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

exciting

T he Harvard men’s soccer team (5-4-1, 0-1) dropped a close contest to the Cornell Big Red in its Ivy League opener, but bounced back quickly a few days later by shutting out its crosstown rival, the Boston University Terriers. Although the loss was unde niably a disappointing start to its Ivy League campaign, the Crimson was undeterred and performed well against the Ter riers.

Harvard 1, BU 0

The Crimson rallied after the weekend loss to face the Terri

ers on their home field in its fi nal non-conference road game of the season. In a low-scoring game, the Harvard defense did its job, holding BU to no shots on net for the entire 90 minutes. Ju nior forward Ale Gutierrez net ted the game-winner in the 25th minute, which was all the Crim son needed to emerge victori ous.

Gutierrez’s goal was a team effort. Junior defender James Fahmy played a give-and-go back to junior midfielder Kaoru Fujiwara, who passed the ball to a waiting Gutierrez. From 18 yards out, Gutierrez drove it home in the bottom left corner to give Harvard the lead.

Tuesday night was a game of firsts for the Crimson, with firstyear goalkeeper Cullen Mac Neil notching the first collegiate shutout of his career, and giving Fujiwara the first point of his college career. Other Harvard players were also able to add to their stats, with Fahmy earning his third assist and Gutierrez his third goal. This game moved the Crimson to 28-16-8 all-time against the Terriers.

Crimson sophomores Sam Bjarnson and Alessandro Ar lotti put on a show in Ithaca this past Saturday, but ultimately it was not enough to overcome an early deficit against the Big Red.

It was a record day for Bjarn son, who netted his first career goal, which came off of sopho more Marko Isakovic’s third as sist of the season.Arlotti con tinued his strong start, as it was the second straight game he had scored a goal and he now has 10 points on the year. Junior Wil lem Ebbinge assisted Arlotti’s goal, bringing his tally up to a team-high five assists on the season.

The Big Red took an ear ly lead, with Cornell fifth-year Emeka Eneli scoring first in the 34th minute. Harvard equalized in the 44th, as Isakovic drove a free kick into the box, where Bjarnson headed it into the net.

The game continued score less for almost 30 minutes un til Big Red senior Brandon Mo rales put Cornell up 2-1 in the 70th. This would not be the last

time Morales struck against the Crimson, as in the 79th minute, Big Red freshman Ben Goulding finished a ball Morales drove into the penalty area, putting the pressure on Harvard to come up with answers. True to form, Ar lotti found one, cutting the mar gin to one in the 81st minute off an Ebbinge corner. However, it was not enough for the win, and the Crimson ultimately fell 3-2 to the Big Red.

Despite the loss, many play ers still impressed. After his per formance at Cornell, Ebbinge leads the team with 11 points, and has recorded a point in sev en of the team’s games this sea son. Arlotti follows close be hind, with his goal this weekend marking his 10th point of the season. Junior defender Nik White and sophomore defend er Jan Riecke both played all 90 minutes for Harvard, building on their stability and success from the previous season.

Harvard is looking to im prove on its 2021 season, which was their strongest in years with an overall record of 8-5-3, and 3-2-2 in conference. To contin ue building on its success, the Crimson will need to rely on last year’s leaders: Ebbinge, Arlotti, and senior forward Martin Vi cian. Arlotti led the team in 2021 with 25 points, with Vician and Ebbinge following close behind with 19 and 14 points, respec tively. For his efforts last season, Arlotti earned the Ivy League Rookie of the Year title and First Team All-Ivy accolades. Arlotti was joined on the first team by Ebbinge, with Vician earning second team honors, and Riecke receiving an honorable mention nod.

However, it is not only Har vard’s goal-scorers that the Crimson will need to make an impact for the team this year. White and Riecke regularly play the entire game, and Riecke has played all 900 minutes this year.

Both defenders are coming off of strong 2021 campaigns and are looking to build on that success through the rest of this season.

The Crimson will return to action in its second Ivy League matchup against Columbia on Saturday, Oct. 8 at home.

The second day of the Intercollegiate Tennis As sociation All-Americans saw Harvard’s men’s tennis bounce back on Thursday, following a tough loss on Wednesday, October 5. No. 18 Henry von der Schulenburg and No. 39 Harris Walker defeated their ranked op ponents in the main draw consolation bracket. Walker started out strong with a 5-0 lead in the first set against No. 83 Franco Capalbo from Utah, who retired following injury. Von der Schulenburg defeat ed No. 41 Peter Makk (USC).

The Harvard women’s tennis team completed its competition at the Intercol legiate Tennis Association’s Northeast Regionals strong last weekend. Sophomore Rachel Arbitman and senior Mihaela Marcuelscu teamed up for doubles, going unde feated in tournament play and qualifying for the super regionals after defeating UMass’ Krasakova and Senli 8-3. Senior Sophia Ho fell just short of qualifying for the super regionals after falling to Brown’s Ali Benedetto. The super regionals will be Oct. 2124 at Yale University.

Seniors Stephanie Hong, Shea Jenkins, and Meredith Langmuir will serve as the Harvard women’s lacrosse team captains, Head Coach Devon Wills announced Thursday. Hong is a midfieler from Bethesda, Md. an All-Ivy League Honorable Mention selection in her first full season of college lacrosse. Jenkins is midfielder from Newburyport, Mass., a twotime All-Ivy honoree, earning First Team honors in 2022 and Second Team honors in 2019. Langmuir, a midfielder from Providence, R.I., became a regular contributor in 2022.

Sophomore midfielder Marko Isakovic dribbles past a defender in a 2-1 victory over Bryant on Sept. 6, 2022. DYLAN J. GOODMAN — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

WOMEN’S TENNIS WRAPS UP COMPETITION

WOMEN’S LACROSSE HAS NEW CAPTAINS

Harvard men’s soccer team’s overall

2022 campaign.