The Harvard Crimson - Volume CLII, No. 2

The Harvard Crimson

love and preserving privacy. Some are ready to take their chances.

A Trail of Grievances at Bay Cove Shelters

Harvard Removes Transgender Inclusion Policy From Athletics Site After

Harvard Athletics removed a policy promising inclusion for transgender athletes from its website Wednesday after President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning transgender women from competing in girls’ and women’s sports at the school and collegiate levels.

Through Tuesday, Harvard Athletics’ Transgender Inclusion Policy affirmed Harvard’s commitment to creating “a space that is welcoming and inclusive to all identities; including but not limited to gender, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, the policy had been removed from Harvard Athletics’ webpage. The department’s other Equity,

Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Policies — featured on the same page — still included language protecting students and staff from exclusion based on “sex, including sexual orientation or gender identity.”

Trump’s order, titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” allows federal agencies to reinterpret Title IX and define “sex” as one’s sex assigned at birth. It would effectively disallow transgender women from participating in women’s athletics.

Under the order, the federal government will cut funds to educational institutions that allow trans women to compete in women’s sports. The order also directs the U.S. Department of Education to “prioritize” Title IX actions against schools that do not bar trans women from women’s locker rooms.

The order comes one day after three former athletes at the University of Pennsylvania sued Harvard, Penn, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and the Ivy League for allowing transgender swimmer

Lia Thomas to compete for Penn’s women’s team in the 2022 Ivy League Championship, claiming the defendants violated Title IX regulations.

Harvard defers to NCAA regulations for policies governing trans athletes’ participation in specific sports.

Trump’s order could force the NCAA to alter its policies for allowing transgender athletes to compete. Currently, the NCAA’s transgender athlete participation policy allows athletes to compete on women’s teams if their testosterone levels remain below a maximum limit, determined on a sport-bysport basis.

NCAA President Charlie Baker ’79 wrote in a press release that Trump’s order “provides a clear, national standard.”

“The NCAA Board of Governors is reviewing the executive order and will take necessary steps to align NCAA policy in the coming days, subject to further guidance from the administration,” Baker wrote. “We

stand ready to assist schools as they look for ways to support any student-athletes affected by changes in the policy.”

The executive order, Trump’s 46th since taking office on Jan. 20, joins a series of other actions aimed at limiting trans rights.

Trump called the ban “common sense” at the signing ceremony, which happened on National Girls and Women in Sports Day, and signed the order while surrounded by young female athletes.

Trump previously signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to remove policies that “promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology.” He then signed another order reverting Title IX policies to those in place during his first term, a reversal of an overturned Biden-era widening of Title IX understanding that increased protections for trans students.

As the Trump administration threatens deportations across the country, Harvard is standing behind its policy to direct federal officers seeking access to non-public spaces to the Harvard University Police Department or the Office of the General Counsel — without elaborating on what happens next.

In an email obtained by The Crimson, Dean of Arts and Humanities Sean D. Kelly referred faculty to guidelines from the OGC, which have been in place since at least 2020.

The policy instructs Harvard affiliates to direct federal agents to the Harvard University Police Department if they request access to a “nonpublic space.” If the officer presents a warrant, the policy directs affiliates to contact the OGC “immediately.”

“If the officer expresses an urgent need to move quickly, you should not attempt to stop the law enforcement officer, but call HUPD immediately,” the guidelines state. The guidelines do not elaborate on what

the OGC nor HUPD will do beyond the initial interaction with law enforcement.

In 2016, former HUPD chief Francis D. Riley wrote that in a letter to Harvard affiliates that it is HUPD’s “long-standing policy and practice” to not “police the immigration status of members of our community.”

“Over the past several days, the question has also been asked whether the HUPD inquires about the immigration status of faculty, students or staff or is involved in the enforcement of federal immigration laws,” Riley wrote. “In both cases, the answer is no.” HUPD has not released a similar statement since President Donald Trump was elected. Nor has Harvard taken public stands against Trump’s immigration crackdowns. In 2017, Harvard filed amici briefs against Trump’s attempt to ban travel from some Muslim-majority countries. In 2020, Harvard joined MIT in a lawsuit against ICE and the Department of Homeland Security over a bid to remove international students taking all online courses during the pandemic.

The leader of the Religion and Public Life program at the Harvard Divinity School departed suddenly in January, creating turnover at the top of an initiative that became a lightning rod for controversy over Israel and Palestine at the University.

RPL Associate Dean Diane L. Moore retired effective Jan. 27, almost a semester before her planned departure at the end of the academic year. She did not appear at an RPL webinar she was scheduled to chair that day.

One day later, her assistant dean — Divinity School lecturer Hussein Rashid — announced his planned departure in a scathing resignation letter that accused Harvard of interfering in RPL programming and condoning hate against Muslims and Arabs. Rashid will leave Harvard effective June 30. Controversy around the RPL program began in October 2023, when a group of RPL faculty and administrators — including both Moore and Rashid — sent a newsletter ask-

ing Divinity School affiliates to “challenge single story narratives that justify vengeance and retaliation” shortly after

Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Days later, the

School’s interim dean issued a statement distancing the school and the RPL program from the sentiments in the newsletter. Since then, RPL has been a target for critics who see its leaders’ statement and

HANNAH S. LEE — CRIMSON DESIGNER

$252 MILLION IN DEBT, BARNARD TO CUT FACULTY AND STAFF BENEFITS

faculty and staff benefits in 2025 as part of an effort to pay back their $252 million debt and repair a growing deficit, the Columbia Spectator reported Tuesday. The deficit, which is projected to be $23.3 million at the end of the fiscal year, has grown by over $20 million over the past decade. The Barnard chapter of the American Association of University Professors wrote in a statement to the Spectator that faculty and staff have been “shut out of all financial decision-making,” and are now being asked to make a “series of sacrifices.”

COLUMBIA SPECTATOR

PRINCETON FACULTY INTRODUCE NEW PH.D. PROGRAM

The Daily Princetonian reported on Tuesday that university faculty approved changes to academic verbiage and a new Ph.D. program. In a 10-minute meeting, attendees passed amendments on topics such as changing academic calendar mentions of “final examinations” to “final assessments.” The meeting concluded with a vote to approve a new materials science and engineering Ph.D. program that will accommodate eight students a year with an enrollment rate of 40 graduate students over the program’s five-year length. THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

The Dartmouth reported on Monday that Faculty Dean Elizabeth Smith will be stepping down from her position after eight years on Sept. 1. Smith, originally appointed in 2017 and reappointed in 2022 for another five-year term, will be leaving two years early to return to teaching biology. Her decision comes as the role has been changed to report to the new Dean of Arts and Sciences. John Carey, former associate dean for the social sciences, will replace Smith as interim dean for the rest of the term. THE DARTMOUTH

CORNELL CIRCULATES PROTOCOL FOR POTENTIAL FACULTY INTERACTIONS WITH ICE OFFICERS

DARTMOUTH FACULTY DEAN TO STEP DOWN NEXT FALL Cornell University recently circulated protocols for how staff and faculty should handle potential external law enforcement interactions, the Cornell Daily Sun reported on Wednesday. This move comes in the wake of a recent arrest by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in downtown Ithaca. The distributed document instructs staff to “be calm and courteous; do not take any action that could be perceived as interfering with an officer’s official duties.” The protocol also states that ICE agents generally are not permitted to access student information or search the University campus without “valid legal authorization.”

THE CORNELL DAILY SUN

In Photos: Lunar New Year Celebrations Around Campus

Kirkland House on Sunday. In the Kirkland dining hall, students enjoyed the buffet, which included sushi platters, egg tarts, boba tea, dumplings, fried rice, and little red bags filled with Asian sweets and snacks.

Many students flocked to the lower level of Grays hall to enjoy Asian delicacies, paint wooden snakes, and craft paper dragons on Friday.

CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

MARINA QU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

FRANK S. ZHOU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

On Friday, the Harvard Foundation of Intercultural and Race Relations organized “Lunar New Year Foundation Friday.”

TRUMP PROPOSES U.S. TAKEOVER OF GAZA AND SAYS ALL PALESTINIANS SHOULD LEAVE

President Donald Trump proposed that the U.S. seize Gaza and displace its population of more than 2 million Palestinians at a Tuesday press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the New York Times reported. The seaside stretch of land bordering Egypt and Israel, which Trump proposed turning into a “Riviera of the Middle East,” has been devastated by an Israeli campaign against Hamas after the group’s Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack.

EL SALVADOR OFFERS TO HOUSE CRIMINALS FROM U.S., INCLUDING U.S. CITIZENS

President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele announced in a Monday post on X that El Salvador had offered to jail undocumented migrants and convicted criminals from the United States, including American citizens, “in exchange for a fee” — an unprecedented move that would amount to an outsourcing of part of the U.S. prison system. The move, which was confirmed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, came on the back of a trip by Rubio to El Salvador. Though Rubio said that he had briefed President Donald Trump on the offer, it remains unclear whether the United States can legally imprison convicts abroad.

TRUMP DELAYS TARIFFS ON MEXICO, CANADA BY 30 DAYS AFTER LAST-MINUTE DEALS

Two days after President Donald Trump announced 25 percent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, among the United States’ largest trading partners, last-minute deals were struck with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to delay implementation by thirty days. In exchange for the delay, Sheinbaum announced that Mexico would deploy 10,000 security officers to the U.S.-Mexico border, and Trudeau committed to implementing a previously-announced $900 million border security plan and stationing 10,000 “frontline personnel” at the U.S.-Canada border.

SENATE PANEL SUPPORTS RFK JR.’S CABINET NOMINATION, CLEARING PATH TO CONFIRMATION

Services, with all Democrats voting against and all Republicans voting to move him forward. The vote puts Kennedy, whose history of vaccine skepticism and limited knowledge of federal healthcare programs featured prominently at a contentious confirmation hearing late last month, on a glide path towards approval by the full Senate.

NEXT WEEK 3

What’s Next

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

Friday 2/7

HPT 176: 101 DAMNATIONS

Farkas Hall, 8:00-10:00 p.m.

Join the Harvard Hasty Pudding Theatricals this Friday for their 176th musical comedy spectacular: 101 DAMNATIONS. Tickets to the production, which was written by Rodmehr Basidj and Jackson Coombs, are available for purchase.

Saturday 2/8

LANDSCAPES OF WAR, LANDSCAPES OF VICTORY: UKRAINE’S CHANGING ENVIRONMENT

Tsai Auditorium, 9:45 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.

Join the Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program for their 2025 conference which will discuss the denial of Ukrainians’ right to rebuild a safe environment under constant pressure from Russia.

Sunday 2/9

VOYAGES THROUGH EARTH, SEA, AND SPACE

Harvard Film Archive, 3:00-4:30 p.m.

Join the Harvard Film Archive as they show the works of Georges Méliès, whose voyage films depict absent-minded, abusive and disaster-prone characters as they bumble through wonderous settings and unknown places, often easily distracted from their missions or halted by missteps.

Monday 2/10

DEMOCRACY, CULTURE, AND CIVIL SOCIETY

JFK Jr. Forum, 7:30-8:30 p.m.

Grammy award-winning musician, Wynton Marsalis, is coming to the Institute of Politics to discuss the importance of arts to strengthening democracies and shaping effective public leaders.

Tuesday 2/11

HEARING LVIV OUT OF WAR, 1939: SONIC EVIDENCE AND ITS SUNG LIMITATIONS

CGIS South, 4:30-6:00 p.m.

Join University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Associate Professor, Andrea Bohlman, as she discusses a 1939 sound recording made in Prenzlau, Germany.

Wednesday 2/12

PANDEMICS AND DISASTERS: LESSONS FOR THE FUTURE Kresge Building, 12:30-1:00 p.m. Former assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Dawn O’Connell, will provide her insights on how the U.S. can prepare for the next national emergency.

Thursday 2/13

THE ENVIRONMENT FORUM | A CONVERSATION WITH ELIZABETH KOLBERT

TBD, 6:00-7:00 p.m.

Join the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard as they host Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer and journalist Elizabeth Kolbert.

Friday 2/14

THE ODYSSEY AT A.R.T. Loeb Drama Center, 7:30 p.m.

Acclaimed writer and adaptor, Kate Hamill, reimagines Homer’s Odyssey in an adaptation of the stories of both Odysseus and his wife, Penelope. This adaptation expands on how humans can embrace healing and forgiveness to end cycles of violence and revenge.

ARWEN T. ZHANG — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

MUHAMMAD H TAHIR — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Former Penn Swimmers Sue Harvard

Three former swimmers at the University of Pennsylvania sued Harvard in federal court for allegedly violating Title IX by allowing transgender swimmer Lia Thomas to compete at the 2022 Ivy League Swimming & Diving Championships.

The suit — filed against Harvard, Penn, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and the Ivy League — alleges that each defendant violated Title IX regulations by allowing a “trans-identifying male swimmer” to compete in the women’s championship hosted at Harvard.

The lawsuit comes one day before President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order barring transgender women from competing in girls’ and women’s sports, following his campaign promise to handle “the transgender issue” in women’s collegiate athletics.

The suit claims Harvard is at fault for allowing Thomas to compete at the Ivy Championships, which it hosted on campus at Blodgett Pool. The plaintiffs also allege that Harvard violated Title IX by not providing a “unisex bathroom or separate bathroom for Thomas to use or for any other women to use who did not want to use the Women’s Locker room while Thomas was using it.” Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesperson James M. Chisholm wrote in a statement that the University does not comment on active litigation.

Thomas, who swam for Penn and graduated in 2022, won the Ivy League championship her senior year in the 500 freestyle, 100 freestyle, and 200 freestyle individually, as well as the 400 freestyle relay.

Her victory sparked a backlash against transgender athletes’ par-

ticipation in women’s sports. Sixteen athletes — led by Riley Gaines, a University of Kentucky swimmer — sued the NCAA over its eligibility policy for trans competitors.

Shortly before the 2022 Harvard meet, the NCAA adopted sport-specific regulations on transgender athletes, based on guidelines from each sport’s governing board. USA Swimming regulations require that athletes assigned male at birth must suppress their testosterone for 36 months while keeping their levels of the hormone under a maximum threshold.

The suit argues that Thomas had not been suppressing her testosterone for 36 months before competition, claiming that there had been no scientific analysis “conducted to establish Thomas

did not retain male competitive advantage.”

The plaintiffs asserted that Thomas’s victory “displaces the names of rightful women champions in Harvard’s Blodgett Pool and at UPenn,” attributing Thomas’s victory to the sex she was assigned at birth.

Thomas could not be reached for comment.

The lawsuit alleged that the Ivy League and its leadership “labored for months behind the scenes to engineer a public shock and awe display of monolithic support for biological unreality and radical gender ideology by America’s oldest and most storied educational institutions.”

The suit claims that the 2010 NCAA Transgender Student-Athlete Participation Policy — which

allowed trans female athletes undergoing testosterone-suppressing treatment to compete on women’s teams after one year of treatment — was “intentionally designed and was purposefully implemented” by the NCAA to give its member institutions “an excuse for violating Title IX by allowing men to compete on women’s teams in intercollegiate sports.”

The plaintiffs alleged that the regulation prioritized the rights of trans women over those of people assigned female at birth.

Harvard Athletics’ Transgender Inclusion Policy states that “Harvard Athletics actively seeks to create a space that is welcoming and inclusive to all identities; including but not limited to gender, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.”

The policy then defers to the NCAA rules for its athlete participation policy.

Schuyler M. Bailar ’19, the openly first transgender swimmer to compete in the NCAA Division I, competed for Harvard’s men’s team.

The three swimmers who brought the suit — Grace Estabrook, Ellen Holmquist, and Margot Kaczorowski — competed alongside Thomas at Penn between 2018 and 2024. At the 2022 championship, the three athletes allege that “Thomas competing on the UPenn women’s team deprived Ellen Holmquist the opportunity to compete in the 2022 Ivy League Championships.”

Although Estabrook and Kaczorowski were able to compete at the race, the suit alleges that the

swimmers finished one place lower than what they would have if Thomas had not been allowed to compete.

Kazcorowski was the only swimmer of the plaintiffs to compete in an individual event against Thomas — the 100 and 200 freestyle — where Kazcorowski placed sixth and seventh, respectively. Bill Bock, the plaintiffs’ attorney, wrote in a statement that “the Ivy League believed that if America’s oldest and most storied educational institutions led the way, Americans would suppress common sense and submit to radical policies that steal young women’s cherished sports opportunities and obliterate biological reality.”

“This lawsuit exposes the behind the scenes scheming that led to the attempt by Harvard University, UPenn, the Ivy League and the NCAA, to impose radical gender ideology on the American college sports landscape,” he added. The plaintiffs seek “damages for pain and suffering, mental and emotional

Nearly 200 students, faculty and other Harvard affiliates filed discrimination complaints with the University alleging a “hostile environment” against Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims following Harvard Medical School’s cancellation of a panel featuring patients from Gaza. The complainants included 32 faculty, 36 students and 30 staff members, as well as alumni. They submitted complaints both through an online portal maintained by Navex EthicsPoint and through direct emails to Harvard Medical School and Harvard University administrators. In a Tuesday press release, complainants asked Harvard to formally apologize to students and patients for cancelling the event. They also called for an institution-wide investigation

into anti-Palestinian bias, mandatory training in anti-Palestinian bias, the foundation of an Institute of Palestine Studies and the condemnation of hate speech against Harvard programs studying Palestine.

An ad hoc group of Harvard affiliates organized the campaign, according to the press release and Sara al-Zubi, an HMS graduate and a medical staff at an HMS-affiliated hospital who is also a member of that group.

“We have observed clear patterns of discrimination — patterns of being treated unfairly based on our national origin and religion. This has created a hostile environment for us at Harvard,” al-Zubi wrote in a statement.

Harvard Medical School spokesperson Ekaterina Pesheva wrote in a statement that HMS “remains committed to combatting all forms of discrimination and harassment.”

“We will continue to advance our efforts to ensure that

all community members belong on our campus and in our classrooms, and are supported in their learning, research, and professional work,” Pesheva wrote.

The complaints come less than two weeks after Harvard quietly resolved a U.S. Department of Education investigation into a complaint of anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian discrimination.

At least two Harvard employees announced plans to quit their jobs last month, alleging that Harvard has fostered anti-Muslim bias and suppressed pro-Palestine speech.

Both Jay Ulfelder, program director of Harvard Kennedy School’s Nonviolent Action Lab and Hussein Rashid, Assistant Dean of Religion and Public Life at the Harvard Divinity School, submitted resignation letters in January.

As Harvard students begin to complete Datamatch’s annual survey on Friday, memories of last year’s data leak may force them to contemplate more than just what their “Roman Empire” is.

Last February, the student-run matchmaking organization’s reputation was put through the wringer when participating students’ personal information was leaked online. Sungjoo Yoon ’27 created a website and uploaded students’ initials alongside their Rice Purity Scores — scraped from Datamatch. According to Yoon, the site’s data security weaknesses remain. Still, many students said they were excited to use the service, unconcerned with data privacy.

“I’m looking for stories. For lore,” Linden A. McCarl ’28 said.

“Just take my information. It’s okay,” she added when asked if she was concerned about data protection.

Datamatch — which annually blasts a humorous multiple-choice survey to undergraduates looking for love and friendship — was founded at Harvard in 1994, and has since expanded nationally to schools like Princeton and Vanderbilt. Harvard students who register receive 10 platonic or romantic matches on Valentine’s Day, when they can begin going on dates entirely sponsored by Harvard Square businesses.

According to Datamatch co-president — or “Supreme Cupid” — Howard R. Huang ’26, the crux of the site’s data insecurity last year was Datamatch’s search function. Previously, participants could search other users to match directly with them — a feature that required students’ data to be public to users,

making the data scrapeable, Huang said.

“It was pretty straightforward to scrape everyone’s data, essentially, if you wanted to,” he said. “There wasn’t really a way for us to effectively block it, because otherwise we’d have to disable the feature.”

The search function has been removed since last year, Huang said. To match with specific people, Datamatch participants can instead use the “crush roulette” function, which allows users to submit two emails and increase the probability that the algorithm matches them.

But Yoon said the removal of Datamatch’s search function “doesn’t do anything to change any of the structural vulnerabilities,” due to a lack of encryption.

Jackson Moody ’26, a member of Datamatch’s website team, wrote that the group has “looked extensively at our security following the exposure of last year’s vulnerabilities” in a statement to The Crimson. Moody wrote that no vulnerabilities have been identified in Datamatch 2025.

“This year, we have reduced the amount of personally identifying information stored on our backend and performed rigorous testing to ensure that all data stored is secure,” he wrote.

Huang said the group has worked to better document its code base, in order to combat loss of institutional memory in the club’s student turnover.

But Yoon insisted that there are “plenty of vulnerabilities that are left.”

“They should be particularly careful about how they store user messages in their database and how easily those can be spoofed,” he said.

Moody said the Datamatch team has “addressed” the spoofing issue.

When asked if he planned to investigate Datamatch’s vulnerabilities again, Yoon said that he will “not publish anything this year.”

“I think I’ve made my point,” Yoon said. “I don’t plan on doing anything like what I did last year, but that doesn’t mean that they changed or fixed it.”

Though Yoon’s concerns linger, many Harvard students seemed unfazed by last year’s leak. Kate O. Gilliam ’26, who plans to participate in Datamatch this year, said she is “not really that worried about the data getting accessed.”

“I just think nothing on there is that serious,” she said. Isabela C. Gonzalez-Lawand ’26 — who has participated in Datamatch every year — was unperturbed by the breach.

“I didn’t really care,” Gonzalez-Lawand said. “I don’t read any terms and conditions for apps and stuff, so I feel like I was already giving my data out.”

But Gonzalez-Lawand said she did not plan on participating in this year’s Datamatch since she “gets the same three matches every year.”

Some students, like Silas Camp ’26, said they plan to exercise caution when using Datamatch after learning of last year’s leak.

“It won’t refrain me from using the website, but I definitely will be more cognizant of the information I put in,” he said. “I’m not personally worried, but I do understand why other people might be hesitant to use the resource.”

Claire S. Elliott ’26-’27, who plans to participate in this year’s Datamatch, said she isn’t troubled by the possibility of her data being released.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” she said.

hosted the Ivy League Swimming

HGSU Withdraws Unfair Labor Practice Charge

LABOR. Following changes to the U.S. labor board, Harvard’s graduate student union withdrew a spring labor complaint

BY HUGO C. CHIASSON AND AMANN S. MAHAJAN CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Harvard’s graduate student union withdrew a labor complaint that accused the University of violating workers’ rights during the spring pro-Palestine encampment last month, citing concerns about changes to the U.S. labor board under the Trump administration. The Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Auto Workers dropped the Unfair Labor Practice charge it filed in May — which alleged that Harvard illegally surveilled workers during the encampment and denied them access to union representation during disciplinary hearings — on Jan. 10, in advance of

Health and

President Donald Trump’s inauguration. The National Labor Relations Board formally approved the withdrawal on Monday.

According to HGSU-UAW trustee Sudipta Saha, the union was concerned that the administration’s “radical rebating of various federal institutions” would take advantage of the complaint to roll back additional labor protections. “We just don’t know if they might be pulling out long-held labor rights that NLRB has historically protected,” Saha said. “And so out of an abundance of caution, we didn’t want to bring some of these questions in front of the board.”

Just a week into his term, Trump dismissed NLRB board member Gwynne Wilcox and the board’s general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo — an unprecedented challenge to the board’s independent authority. The firings also left the board without a quorum, making it unable to issue rulings.

“Right now, the NLRB is essen-

Human

tially paralyzed,” Saha said. Union officials also said the complaint addressed time-sensitive issues, including Harvard’s decision to briefly place encampment participants on involuntary leave, which had already been settled.

Services Dept. To Investigate HMS

BY DHRUV T. PATEL AND GRACE E. YOON CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

The United States Department of Health and Human Services launched a Title VI antidiscrimination investigation into Harvard on Tuesday over pro-Palestine messaging worn by Harvard Medical School students at graduation ceremonies — the latest effort by the Trump administration to crack down on protesters.

In a letter notifying Harvard of the investigation, HHS Associate Deputy Director Daniel Shieh wrote that the department initiated the proceedings because of a Jan. 27 New York Post article that showed students wearing keffiyehs and stoles displaying the Palestinian flag.

HHS will investigate whether Harvard’s response to Commencement protests failed to protect Jewish students. A press release announcing the investigation — which also targets medical schools at Columbia University, Brown University, and Johns Hopkins University — described the imagery displayed by students as “offensive” and antisemitic.

HMS will have to provide “books, records, accounts, and other sources of information” that may be pertinent to HHS’s probe on antisemitism at Harvard’s commencement in May, according to Shieh’s letter, which was obtained by The Crimson. The letter also asked Harvard for a list of Medical School employees who witnessed the May 2024 protests.

HMS spokesperson Laura Decoste wrote in a statement to The Crimson that Harvard administrators are “reviewing the request from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights and will work to address their questions regarding the 2024 Commencement ceremony.”

“Harvard Medical School condemns antisemitism and remains committed to combatting all forms of discrimination and harassment,” Decoste wrote.

The New York Post article that sparked the investigation was based on a study by medi -

cine professors Stephen Roth and Hedy S. Wald, published in January, which reviewed footage from the commencement ceremonies of 25 American medical schools. The study classified common pro-Palestine messaging — including keffiyehs and calls for divestment from Israel — as antisemitic.

The HHS investigation will examine whether the four medical schools “acted with deliberate indifference regarding events that may have impacted Jewish students’ rights to access educational opportunities and benefits,” wrote Anthony

sion of pro-Palestine speech.

In April, students at HMS and the Harvard School of Dental Medicine alleged administrative censorship after pro-Palestine imagery was cut from a student-produced music video celebrating new admits.

In May, dozens of HMS graduates staged a silent protest during the school’s Class Day ceremony, donning keffiyehs and graduation caps with statements in support of Palestine.

And, just last month, HMS canceled a planned lecture and panel with Gazan patients in response to complaints that the lecture would be one-sided because

Archeval, the Acting Director of the Office for Civil Rights at HHS, in a Tuesday press release. In the press release, Archeval noted that the schools’ receipt of federal funding requires them to comply with federal antidiscrimination law. Harvard was given $686 million in federal funding last year, a significant fraction of which was directed toward medical research.

The Medical School has been at the center of controversies over both complaints of antisemitism and of the suppres -

students would not also hear from Israelis affected by the war.

The HHS’s investigation is one of several measures President Donald Trump instructed federal agencies to undertake as part of his executive order last week that targeted pro-Palestine protests on campus. On Monday, the Department of Justice created its own task force to investigate complaints of antisemitism at U.S. colleges and universities.

The charge was filed one day after protesters agreed to end their 20-day encampment in Harvard Yard. According to Saha, at least 15 members of the graduate student union, which represents roughly 5,000 teaching and research assistants, were affected by disciplinary action. Referencing an earlier statement on the case, Harvard spokesperson Jason A. Newton wrote that “the University does not believe participating in the encampment occupation that occurred in Harvard Yard is related to student worker working conditions, and as such is not a protected activity under the NLRA or the parties’ collective bargaining agreement.

hugo.chiasson@thecrimson.com

Faculty Report Finds Students Do Not Prioritize Academics

WILLIAM C. MAO AND VERONICA H. PAULUS CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

A Faculty of Arts and Sciences committee released a report Friday concluding that many Harvard College students self-censor when discussing controversiasl topics and frequently prioritize extracurricular commitments over their academics.

The committee recommended strengthening course attendance requirements, discouraging phone use in class, standardizing grading, and amending student and faculty handbooks to include a classroom confidentiality policy.

The group — dubbed the Classroom Social Compact Committee — was convened by FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra in February during a moment of both hand-wringing and soul-searching over the state of free speech on Harvard’s campus.

And its report comes amid a wider push from faculty to bring students back into the classroom amid complaints that students underemphasize academics and seek out easier courses.

“Many Harvard College students do not prioritize their courses and some view extensive extracurricular commitments as a more fulfilling, meaningful, and useful allocation of their time,” the report’s authors wrote. “Most faculty view student curricular disengagement with alarm.”

The committee, led by History professor Maya R. Jasanoff ’96 and Economics professor David I. Laibson ’88, was tasked with developing guidelines for student engagement and classroom dialogue. Its seven members conducted more than 30 listening sessions and reviewed 11 surveys of students, faculty, and alumni, including undergraduate course evaluations.

FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra endorsed the committee’s recommendations in a letter to Jasanoff and Laibson, writing that they “promise to bring us closer to a learning environment that is worthy of Harvard and aligned with what are emerging as our shared aspirations as a faculty.”

The report concluded that some undergraduates avoid po -

litically fraught conversations, opting instead to socialize and take courses with like-minded peers and instructors. Only 33 percent of graduating College students feel free to express their views on controversial issues, according to a 2024 survey of graduating seniors cited in the report.

Though the committee did not collect quantitative data on extracurricular involvement, the group found in listening sessions that students frequently prioritize activities over their academics, Laibson said in an interview Friday.

“Students are hungry for pre-professional guidance and seek it outside the classroom and curriculum,” the report read.

The committee’s findings on student disengagement with courses follows several initiatives across the University aimed at refocusing students on academics. Last spring, the College’s Program in General Education updated its guidelines to standardize grading across amid concerns that students treated Gen Ed courses as easy A’s.

The FAS voted in December to amend the Harvard College Handbook so that students who miss more than two weeks of class will be placed on involuntary leave beginning next year.

In its Friday report, the committee recommended that instructors mandate class attendance — except in courses approved for asynchronous enrollment — and stated that professors “are under no obligation” to provide make-up opportunities for student absences, including job interviews and travel for athletic events.

The committee also urged the FAS to consider standardizing grading scales and workload expectations across departments, divisions, and schools.

The report suggested instituting a new digital device policy which would heavily discourage students from using cell phones and other internet-enabled devices in class, except when given explicit permission by an instructor or to accommodate a disability.

Undergraduates whose responses were reviewed by the committee reported hesitation to speak up in class for fear of

flubbing responses or posing questions with obvious answers. Graduate students likewise reported pressure to appear as if they had already mastered course material. Some undergraduates reported picking classes that reinforce their preexisting opinions or else aim for higher grades by answering assignments in line with their instructors’ perceived politics.

Meanwhile, graduate teaching fellows in College courses said they worried undergraduates attributed low grades to TF bias, rather than the quality of their work, and felt unable to provide critical feedback to students without jeopardizing their teaching evaluations.

The report proposed student and faculty handbook amendments that would explicitly bar grading based on political beliefs.

“Student speech, assignments, and exams can be evaluated by instructors as factually incorrect or poorly argued, for example — but a student’s status in a course, including their grades, will not be affected by their political or ethical point of view,” the new language reads. The committee also recommended updating the handbooks to adopt the Chatham House Rule, which allows students and instructors to share the contents of classroom discussions but not the names of speakers. In October, the University-wide Open Inquiry and Constructive Dialogue working group issued a similar endorsement of classroom non-attribution policies, which are already in place at three Harvard schools. Some of the committee’s recommendations will be considered at Tuesday’s meeting of the FAS, including the proposed handbook updates, which also explicitly establish an expectation that students “prioritize their coursework.”

The FAS will vote on the handbook changes in March. Other recommendations — like standardized grading and the digital device policy — may be delegated to working groups or addressed at a later date.

HGSU-UAW is a union representing student workers across Harvard. FRANK S. ZHOU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

BY

The United States Department of Health and Human Services will investigate Harvard JONATHON G. YUAN — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

COVER STORY 6

Alleged Hostility and Unsanitary Conditions at Bay Cove Shelters

“No matter the obstacles, every individual in these shelters deserves fairness, security, and respect,” she wrote. “At this moment, I am not convinced that Bay Cove has met that standard.”

BY LAUREL M. SHUGART

Residents and former staff of three shelters operated by Bay Cove Human Services in Cambridge alleged — in a public meeting, messages to city officials, and interviews with The Crimson — that staff members berated residents and shelters persistently harbored unsanitary conditions.

The complaints came to a head at an Oct. 23, 2024, meeting of the City Council’s Human Services and Veterans Committee, when five residents shared stories of mistreatment. But some former staff say problems have stretched back years.

The allegations are documented in more than 500 pages of correspondence between residents, Bay Cove staff, and city officials over the past 10 months, acquired by The Crimson through a public records request.

At the hearing and in conversations with The Crimson, more than 10 current and former residents and staff of Bay Cove shelters said that staff yelled at residents, sanitary facilities were often inaccessible, and some grievances were not addressed promptly when residents filed them.

Records show that city staff corresponded regularly over the past year to address complaints of poor conditions in the shelters — all three of which are funded by the city.

In a partially redacted August 2024 email from The Crimson’s records request, Mayor E. Denise Simmons wrote to Bay Cove senior program director Maureen Cunningham that she had repeatedly been notified of “bad experiences” involving residents and shelter staff.

“I do not know [redacted] personally and cannot verify how accurate his relaying of these events is but I am concerned that these matters continue to be brought to my office,” she wrote.

In a statement to The Crimson, Simmons wrote that she had received “numerous complaints” from Bay Cove residents. The complaints spanned “from reports of stolen personal belongings — including critical items like phones and medications — to inconsistent enforcement of shelter rules, unresponsive or indifferent staff, unclear and inconsistent grievance procedures, and, most troublingly, residents feeling unsafe due to bullying and physical assaults from other shelter residents,” according to Simmons.

Though she wrote that such issues were not unique to Bay Cove, Simmons described them as unacceptable.

During the October meeting, councilors committed to monitoring the allegations before adjourning.

Bay Cove chief development officer Arlene Fortunato wrote in a statement to The Crimson that staff “strive to provide a safe and welcoming shelter for all guests,” but noted that the organization does not disclose “personal information of any kind related to persons served.”

“We cannot dispute that you have been told what you report,” she wrote, but “we do dispute that what you have been told accurately reflects the general conditions and operations of the shelter.”

But residents maintained that Bay Cove staff consistently failed to live up to the shelter’s internal procedures and the conduct expectations outlined on its website.

“They should be left up to a higher standard than the way they’re acting,” said Bay Cove resident Jeramy Dalpe.

Allegations of Hostility

Bay Cove, which now manages three low-threshold shelters in Cambridge, first moved into the city in 2014. Collectively, the shelters receive millions of dollars from the city annually, and Cambridge officials meet regularly with Bay Cove staff to discuss shelter operations — including responses to resident complaints.

According to the emails released in the public records request, city officials repeatedly fielded grievances about poor conditions and verbal abuse at various Cambridge Bay Cove shelters.

Hannah Daniel — a program manager for the city’s Multi-Service Center — wrote in an April 25, 2024, email to Department of Human Services Program planning and development manager Elizabeth Mengers Magargee and other officials that “clients are reporting being woken up around 5am and verbally abused until they leave earlier than the 7am closing time.”

In response to a request for comment, Magargee acknowledged that she and Daniel had received complaints. She wrote that DHSP and MSC staff “have responded to complaints in a timely and empathetic manner” but often were not able to bring complainants’ names to Bay Cove, since many preferred to remain anonymous.

“A challenge in respecting such requests is that this anonymity can make it difficult for BayCove to investigate specific incidents without disclosing details of the persons involved,” she added. And over the summer, a former Bay Cove resident sent the

City Council and City Manager Yi-

An Huang ’05 an email alleging “bullying, baiting, verbal abuse, psychological abuse, and intimidation by the directors.”

“I had also been subject to severe harassment, manipulation, threats, theft, and intimidation, all by staff members,” he wrote. “While some of the staff members are nice and kind, the management has been very toxic.”

Thomas R. Brown, who formerly oversaw Bay Cove’s peer specialist program across the region, said staff were often hostile to residents — a pattern he said he noticed since the beginning of his time with the nonprofit in 2006, during which he visited shelters across southeastern Massachusetts.

“These staff people hated the residents so much that they were just furious with them at all times,” Brown said in a November interview. “These people who are supposed to be helped by this organization are having their trauma repeated again in a place that is meant to be safe for them.”

Brown worked for Bay Cove for nearly 14 years before retiring in 2019.

Another Bay Cove resident alleged that a staff member told residents if they called the police or ambulance, they would be “kicked out from the shelter and back to the street,” even if other residents experienced theft or injury. The resident, whose name was redacted in the records received by The Crimson, wrote to city staff in June 2024 to complain.

In the October hearing of the Human Services and Veterans Committee, five residents recounted similar experiences, alleging that staff members barred them from calling emergency services. Other current and former residents, however, said they did not experience such incidents. Multiple Bay Cove staff members affirmed that the shelter maintains no such policy.

Cambridge spokesperson Jeremy C. Warnick wrote in a statement that the city was “looking into” the complaints raised at the October hearing and is “following up with Bay Cove to address the broad issues cited related to staff training and grievance procedures.”

“We work closely with the agency’s leadership to respond to complaints and strive to continuously improve operations and outcomes for people in crisis,” Warnick wrote.

Residents also complained about poor physical conditions at Bay Cove. Emails show staff members corresponding about lice outbreaks across the Cambridge shelters, as well as inaccessible showers and laundry machines.

City staff repeatedly flagged lice as a concern at Bay Cove’s Winter Warming Center in April, which Daniel, the Multi-Service Center program manager, attributing the pests to “the lack

of showers and not washing the blankets,” according to public records obtained by The Crimson. The shelter was later fumigated as a result.

John C. Mulhern, a current resident of Bay Cove’s 240 Albany St. said that Bay Cove never addressed the broken showers and laundry machines, and reports of lice throughout the women’s floor of the Emergency Services Center at 240 Albany St. persisted from at least April 2024 through January 2025.

“The reason why they had a bug issue was because there’s candy and coffee and everything brought into the dorm,” Mulhern said. “And the staff goes in and does a half-hour daily check every time, and they don’t notice that.”

“Beyond obtuse, it’s oblivious,” he added.

‘You Get So Frustrated’

Bay Cove’s shelters offer residents a grievance form to share their concerns with staff. But residents say the process is not as easy as it seems.

The complaint form is given to residents upon entry into Bay Cove-operated shelters. Under the organization’s official grievance procedures, grievances are sent to Bay Cove’s human rights or compliance teams, who schedule a meeting with the complainant within five days of the filing and issue “corrective action” in the 10 business days following the meeting. Some residents said the process could be a dead end.

In emails with city staff, two residents alleged that grievance forms were often thrown in the trash instead of addressed by staff. Dorothy Borkiewicz, who worked for Bay Cove in multiple roles between 2005 and 2018, said that when residents did file grievances, they were often “sweeped under the rug.”

Bay Cove’s grievance policy points residents to external human rights managers if they are not satisfied with the handling of their grievance. But Mulhern, the 240 Albany St. resident, said his attempts to contact offsite staff were met with silence.

“I called over 50 times over the course of several weeks with no response at all. I left several, several voicemails. I even went down there in person and was told that there’s no one available to speak with you,” Mulhern said.

“After a while you get so frustrated you don’t want to try anymore,” he added.

In an email to The Crimson, Bay Cove’s Chief Development Official Arlene Fortunado wrote that the non-profit had a “clear grievance process in place, and respond quickly to address actionable complaints.”

“We take all grievances seriously and are committed to quick and satisfactory resolutions. When we receive actionable griev-

ances, ones that include enough information to allow us to act, we take action,” Fortunado wrote.

Vice Mayor Marc C. McGovern — who chairs the City Council’s Human Services and Veterans Committee — said that “the system is not set up in a way that leads to more success” in a November interview with The Crimson.

“You have a really hard time finding people who will want to work in these programs or these facilities. It’s often hard to find people who have more extensive experience,” McGovern said.

Despite what he described as Bay Cove’s structural issues, McGovern said he saw a motivation to “improve and to better serve their clients” in conversations between the organization and the city.

“I think it’s very easy to be on the outside — whether you’re a politician or an advocate or a reporter — just sit on the outside and say, ‘Oh, I’m hearing all these things, and I’m going to form a judgment,’” McGovern said. “Unless you’re in those shoes and you’ve actually experienced it for yourself, you don’t know for sure what’s going on.”

“It’s very easy to sit on the outside and looking in,” he added.

‘A Good Provider, Not Perfect’ Bay Cove has worked with the city of Cambridge since 2014, when the organization — which has operated throughout the region for more than 50 years — helped bring existing shelter services in Cambridge back from the brink.

The Cambridge And Somerville Programs for Addiction Recovery, which operated in the city since 1970, was at risk of closing in 2014 due to repeated cuts in its state funding. Bay Cove then merged with CASPAR, preserving its original operations

and expanding further through Cambridge.

Over the past 10 years, Bay Cove has expanded to three shelters across Cambridge — all of which have received funding from the city since 2017. Bay Cove has operated the Winter Warming Center since 2018 and opened a Temporary Wellness Center in 2020 to relieve overcrowding at 240 Albany St.

“These shelters provide support to guests with complex needs, including guests who many other shelters are unable to serve or who are actively in crisis,” wrote Warnick, the Cambridge spokesperson, in a Nov. 19 statement to The Crimson. The city is the primary funder for the Winter Warming Center and Transitional Wellness Center — which received more than $480,000 and $2 million this fiscal year, respectively. Though 240 Albany St. is primarily funded through the state, the city provides supplementary funding to support operational costs.

What Does Harvard Look For in a College Dean?

discussions, and handed out snacks to students relaxing after studying and staging protests alike.

Former Dean of Freshmen

Thomas A. Dingman ’67 said he thought Harvard may want a College dean who is “very comfortable amongst undergraduates.”

Afamiliar face. An effective fundraiser. A faculty member with a first-rate curriculum vitae — and an easy rapport with undergraduates.

As Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra looks to select a new College dean this spring, she has a long list of credentials she could look for and three decades of precedent to consider.

Harvard has historically chosen College deans from within its own ranks, favoring tenured faculty with either administrative experience or extensive familiarity with undergraduate life.

All six College deans who have held the post since it took its current form in the 1990s have been internal appointments. Two, including outgoing College Dean Rakesh Khurana, previously served as faculty deans in undergraduate Houses.

When Khurana sought the position, he had sat on multiple committees related to student life, including the Academic Integrity Committee and the College’s alcohol policy committee, in addition to serving as Cabot House faculty dean.

Similar characteristics might give a boost to his successor.

“It’s extremely, in my view, important for the Dean of the College to have a detailed understanding of the culture of the college community — the structures that support that community,” said Eliot House faculty dean David F. Elmer ’98. Khurana went on to model a vision of the College dean as a ubiquitous presence in undergraduate life. He snapped selfies with undergraduates, moderated dinner table

OGC POLICY FROM PAGE 1

The next College dean is almost certain to be a tenured professor with strong credentials as an academic. In the 1990s, Harvard switched to tapping faculty, rather than career administrators, for the deanship.

Dingman said Khurana’s scholarship — on organizational behavior at Harvard Business School and in the Sociology department — gave him “credibility with his peers.”

Having a tenured professor at the helm of the College might encourage other faculty to become involved in undergraduate life and help with the recruiting of faculty deans, Dingman said.

Once appointed, the next College dean will inevitably have to make careful decisions about which parts of Khurana’s legacy they want to continue. But, as Hoekstra considers the internal Harvard politics, she will also have to consider pressure from outside Harvard’s gates.

The next Dean of the College will have to grapple with continued uncertainty from Washington. Following his inauguration in January, President Donald Trump issued an array of sweeping executive orders targeting higher education.

The policies included directives to scale down university diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, as well as threats to deport international students who broke the law while participating in pro-Palestine demonstrations.

Dingman said he thought the ability to navigate changing tides in Washington should be a priority in the search.

“Higher ed in general is under assault,” Dingman said. “You have to keep figuring out how best to

stand up for the things that matter to you and withstand some of the outside pressures.”

As Harvard fine-tunes its messaging to the second Trump administration, the next College dean may have to balance two roles: serving as a spokesperson to Washington and the public, while addressing fear and discontent among undergraduates.

Past College deans — including Khurana, who served during Trump’s first presidential term — have spoken out on policies affecting College students. In response to moves from the White House to limit the rights of undocumented and transgender individuals, Khurana affirmed the College’s commitment to educating all students.

Though the College dean is not traditionally a leader of Harvard’s fundraising campaigns, Hoekstra may choose to select a candidate who can appeal to donors and alumni — especially after a year when Harvard doubled down on its fundraising efforts amid donor backlash.

In his first sit-down interview as dean with The Crimson, Khurana said he planned to be “present” at the College, not to focus on fundraising. But Dingman said Khurana has been instrumental in fundraising for the College.

“Beyond all of his on-campus presence with Instagram,” Dingman said, “he was really good on the road in inspiring donors to dig deep and support some of the causes that he cared a lot about,” Dingman said.

Khurana has become the public face of the College’s Intellectual Vitality Initiative, which aims to support free speech and respectful dialogue among undergraduates — confronting public perceptions that have haunted Harvard for years.

The next College dean will also be tasked with overseeing efforts to change the academic culture among College students, addressing grade inflation and concerns over course attendance.

A report recently released by an FAS committee found that many students at the College frequently prioritize their extracurriculars over academics. The committee recommended strengthening course attendance requirements, discouraging phone use in class, and standardizing course grading. Its recommendations lend fuel to an ongoing push to make Harvard courses more rigorous and keep students in classrooms — which has been championed by Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh, widely seen as a frontrunner to succeed Khurana.

Eric Beerbohm, the faculty dean of Quincy House and director of the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics, and Anne Harrington ’82, the former faculty dean of Pforzheimer House, have also emerged as possible candidates for the role.

“I truly love being a faculty dean — it’s the best job I’ve had in my 17 years on the faculty at this University. I don’t want to leave that job,” Elmer said.

Originally, History 10 professor

Maya R. Jasanoff ’96 and Economics professor David I. Laibson ’88 were also thought to be frontrunners for the deanship. But both told The Crimson they were not interested in the position.

Claybaugh and Beerbohm did not respond to inquiries from The Crimson, and Harrington declined to comment. No one at Harvard has publicly indicated interest in the deanship.

Elmer, who began serving as faculty dean of Eliot House last summer, said he is not interested in serving as dean of the College.

“I truly love being a faculty dean — it’s the best job I’ve had in my 17 years on the faculty at this University. I don’t want to leave that job,” Elmer said.

Originally, History 10 professor Maya R. Jasanoff ’96 and Economics professor David I. Laibson ’88 were also thought to be frontrunners for the deanship. But both told The Crimson they were not interested in the position.

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

As Trump Orders ICE Raids, Harvard Stays Quiet

Then-Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow wrote in a 2020 statement that the order’s “cruelty” was “surpassed only by its recklessness.” But this time, Harvard has remained quiet, choosing not to speak on immigration issues even as University President Alan M. Garber ’76 sent affiliates an email blast on Trump’s attempt to freeze federal grants.

At least two Faculty of Arts and Sciences divisional deans, including Kelly, have shared the OGC guidelines with faculty. “I have been informed that there is no plan for broad distribution of this guidance to faculty at this time,” Kelly wrote in the email. “Please feel free to share this information with faculty and others in your department if they have questions.” Kelly forwarded information he received from the Office of the President of the Provost — clarifying that “law enforcement includes ICE,” or federal Immigrations and

DEPARTURES FROM PAGE 1

Customs Enforcement.

“Please note that this guidance applies to all non-public spaces including offices, labs, and classrooms,” Kelly added. The policy does not explicitly state if student dormitories are also defined as a non-public space.

The University’s commitment to its existing policies comes as the Trump administration threatens to deport certain pro-Palestine international students.

President Donald Trump is-

Leaders Leave Suddenly

the school from Moore’s newsletter. Terrence L. Johnson, a professor of African American Religious Studies at HDS, is expected to start as the new RPL director.

A Harvard spokesperson declined to comment for this article, and Johnson and Moore did not respond to requests for comment.

Rashid, who planned his resignation before he learned of Moore’s departure, wrote in an email that he did not know why she retired early. Divinity School faculty were not widely notified in advance.

The Religion and Public Life program was launched at HDS in 2020 at the recommendation of a faculty advisory group — led by Moore — to study religion, peace, and conflict and to improve public understanding of religion.

Harvard Hillel executive director Rabbi Jason B. Rubenstein

’04 wrote in a Tuesday afternoon statement to Hillel affiliates that “three of the most vocal anti-Zionists” have left roles at Harvard, referring to Moore, Rashid, and a former Harvard Kennedy School staff

member who left over Harvard’s response to student protesters. Rubenstein celebrated the departures as a “a type and pace of change” that he would not have anticipated even when Harvard settled two antisemitism lawsuits last month, adopting new protections for Jewish, Israeli, and Zionist students.

Harvard, along with other U.S. universities, is under heightened pressure to address antisemitism complaints on campus following a barrage of directives from Donald Trump’s administration urging investigations of universities and student protesters.

In a Jan. 30 executive order, Trump directed federal agencies to issue reports on antisemitism allegations at universities and identify enforcement mechanisms. Since then, at least one agency — the Department of Health and Human Services — has launched an investigation into Harvard. Rashid wrote in his resignation letter that Harvard had failed to adequately respond to statements against RPL by Harvard-affiliated

groups, which he described as racist and false.

“I have no choice but to read them as official policy: it is OK to be racist against certain people at Harvard,” he wrote.

Rashid also criticized Harvard more broadly, claiming that the University “has consistently weaponized scholarship to further oppression” and failed to protect Muslim and Arab affiliates.

“My experience within RPL has been absolutely lovely,” Rashid said in an interview. “Unfortunately, I feel that Harvard is not the right place for me. There’s a misalignment in values and ethics, and I’m choosing not to remain here.”

In his statement, Rubenstein wrote that he was hopeful for RPL’s future under Johnson, with whom he wrote that he had a half-hour conversation.

“After months of playing defense, this conversation reignited in me a dormant sense of possibility,” Rubenstein wrote.

sued a Jan. 29 executive order instructing federal agencies to assist universities in investigating and deporting pro-Palestine international students who broke the law during protests. No Harvard students were arrested during last spring’s encampment or at any protest since Oct. 7, 2023, though two graduate students face charges for their participation in an October 2023 die-in demonstration.

Harvard spokesperson Sar-

ah Kennedy O’Reilly wrote in an emailed statement that Harvard “continues to monitor any changes to policies and practices to understand how they might impact members of our community.”

“Harvard is committed to keeping our international students and scholars informed on any changes, and to providing appropriate support,” O’Reilly added.

matan.josephy@thecrimson.com laurel.shugart@thecrimson.com

HUPD, Admin Respond After Man Exposes Himself in Pforzheimer

BY MATAN H. JOSEPHY AND LAUREL M. SHUGART CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

mer House residents Thursday afternoon, one day after The Crimson first reported the incident. The email to all residents added that “several students independently reported seeing” the man.

HUPD spokesperson Steven G. Catalano declined to comment on the incident, citing HUPD policy “to not comment on open and active criminal investigations.” A College spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on the incidents.

In response to the incident, Roy urged residents to use “common sense safety practices,” including keeping doors closed and locked.

“Even just beyond HUPD, the entire staff is totally doing their best to get to the bottom of this, make sure it stops, make sure we’re all safe,” Chelsea J. BohnPozniak ’27, a Comstock resident, said. “I’m more concerned about the fact that children live here, and — whether it’s a student or not — it’s inappropriate and disturbing,” Bohn-Pozniak said.

matan.josephy@thecrimson.com laurel.shugart@thecrimson.com

Harvard Offers To Remove Time Caps for Preceptors

BY HUGO C. CHIASSON AND AMANN S. MAHAJAN

STAFF WRITERS

Harvard has agreed to end term limits on preceptor positions as part of a bargaining proposal offered to Harvard’s union for nontenure-track faculty at a bargaining session on Thursday, walking back a firm line against changing the structure of academic employment.

The proposal allows preceptors who reach the end of their initial appointments to be considered for a series of tiered promotions. The final promotion allows workers to receive unlimited reappointments, exempting them from the time caps that other academic workers, such as lecturers, would still be subject to.

But for the proposal to go into effect, Harvard Academic Workers-United Auto Workers would also have to accept a separate bargaining article on discipline and dismissal that distinguish-

es non-reappointment decisions from dismissals. The union has not offered a counter proposal on the discipline and dismissal provision put forth by the University. HAW-UAW — which represents roughly 3,700 non-tenure-track faculty — has been at the bargaining table for its first contract since September.

But for years before the group unionized in April 2024, academic workers have pushed for the elimination of time caps, which put hard limits on the amount of time a faculty member can be employed by Harvard — capped at two, three, or eight years depending on the position.

In October, the University rejected a request to temporarily suspend term limits for the duration of bargaining.

“We appreciate the Union’s desire to suspend a policy with which it disagrees,” a University spokesperson wrote in October. “The University will not, however, waive long-standing policies as part of a

stand-alone proposal before the parties have fully engaged in bargaining and considered the issue of term limits in the full context of this first contract between the parties.”

According to bargaining committee member Adam Sychla, the new proposal to end time caps for preceptors is a major step forward in negotiations, though the union still plans to push for eliminating all time caps. “We feel that this should be eliminated completely, and we’ll be continuing to work along that,” Sychla said. A University spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday evening.

Sychla said that union members were “quite happy” with the number of counter proposals the University brought to the table.

“We’re looking forward to seeing a continuation of this sort of pace for the next session,” he said.

hugo.chiasson@thecrimson.com

amann.mahajan@thecrimson.com

XINYI C. ZHANG — CRIMSON DESIGNER

Lobbying Spending Rose 17% in 2024

FUNDING. Harvard increased its spending for federal lobbyists by $90,000 in 2024 amid major funding threats

BY SAKETH

Harvard spent $620,000 on lobbying the federal government in 2024 — the most it’s spent since 2010 — as the University attempts to dissuade lawmakers from imposing a larger endowment tax and other financial penalties on the heels of a 2023 leadership crisis.

The 17 percent rise in lobbying expenditures — a $90,000 increase compared to 2023— comes on the heels of a damaging congressional investigation into Harvard’s response to antisemitism on campus and threats from the Trump administration to revoke federal funding. Collective Ivy League federal lobbying expenditures also surged by 21 percent.

According to filings with the Clerk of the House of Representatives, Harvard’s lobbying efforts primarily sought to protect federal research funding, oppose higher taxes on its $53.2 billion endowment, and advocate for immigration policies benefiting international Harvard affiliates.

Harvard employs an in-house team of lobbyists in its Washington, D.C. office. Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 also personally made several trips to Washington to meet with lawmakers and address their concerns.

The threat of an endowment tax in particular has mobilized the University’s lobbying arm. In April, Garber described the possibility of an endowment tax hike as the “threat that keeps me up at night” in remarks to faculty. Over the past year, House Republicans have introduced several proposals to raise the federal endowment tax from 1.4 to 10 percent, as part of renewed efforts to target the financial holdings of private universities. Harvard’s filings for the last five years name the endowment tax threats as a focus of their efforts. Harvard was not alone in lob-

HBS Task Forces Recommend Anti-Bias Training Updates, Applaud Non-Attribution

announced by Datar in Nov. 2023 and were created to address antisemitism; anti-Arab bias and Islamophobia; classroom culture; and free speech.

Task forces to address antisemitism, Islamophobia, and free speech issues at Harvard Business School recommended policy updates and endorsed the school’s existing non-attribution rules of non-attribution in an update released last week, reporting a pervasive “feeling of invisibility” among Jewish, Arab, and Muslim students.

The four working groups suggested updates to the school’s social media policies and protest restrictions to mirror University-wide policies, established partnerships with Project Shema and the Islamic Network Group, and endorsed HBS’ decision to adopt the Chatham House Rule in the fall. In a message posted online announcing the recommendations, HBS Dean Srikant M. Datar wrote that further work will be conducted by a faculty and staff steering committee chaired by Senior Lecturer Kristin Mugford ’89, an HBS associate dean.

“For many Jewish, Israeli, Arab, and Muslim members of our community, the past year has been deeply painful,” Datar wrote, adding that affiliates “have felt unsafe and unwelcome at Harvard.”

“This reality was unusual for our community,” Datar wrote. “In the past, many of the challenges we have faced as a School largely united us: from economic downturns to the pandemic, we had a common obstacle to overcome.”

Datar did not explicitly accept the recommendations in his message and a HBS spokesperson declined to comment on if the recommendations will be implemented.

The four working groups were

Since then, the groups have surveyed over 200 HBS affiliates and reviewed both formal policies and informal practices at the business school.

“A recurring theme across the working groups was the feeling of invisibility or exclusion experienced by Jewish, Muslim, and Arab community members,” according to the update. “While HBS wants every member of our community to feel valued, the lived experiences of these individuals after October 7 revealed gaps between these ideals and day-to-day reality.”

“Jewish and Muslim students, faculty, and staff expressed belief that their identities were misunderstood or ignored, leading to feelings of isolation,” they added.

The Antisemitism Working Group and the Islamophobia and Anti-Arabism Working Group recommended a series of educational programs and reading lists to educate affiliates on antisemitism and Islamophobia. They also recommended reevaluating hiring practices to recruit and retain more Arab and Muslim faculty members.

“At HBS, while there is significant student and alumni representation, it is a particular challenge for students who see little representation of these identities among the faculty,” they wrote.

The school has agreed to partner with Project Shema and the Islamic Network Group to provide educational resources and training.

Project Shema, an organization focused on addressing antisemi-

tism and “how anti-Jewish ideas and implicit biases can be carried alongside conversations about Israel and Palestine” according to their website, has been enlisted to train faculty and staff.

According to the report, “educational efforts are also underway” with the Islamic Network Group, which provides educational resources and lesson plans on Islamophobia and Islam.

These working groups have also called on HBS to rework its curriculum to accurately reflect Jewish, Israeli, Arab, and Muslim identities while avoiding “tropes and harmful stereotypes.” They recommended that the Masters in Business Administration program add more cases and class discussions that do so, along with addressing tropes and stereotypes in existing cases.

“HBS can broaden these discussions and contribute to a more nuanced understanding of cultural and religious diversity in business,” they wrote. “The School must explicitly equip students to identify and address intolerance they are likely to encounter in their professional and personal lives.”

According to an October 2024 pulse survey at HBS, 35 percent of student respondents described themselves as “somewhat or very reluctant to speak up and give their views on controversial issues in the classroom.” Of those students, 90 percent cited concerns that other students would criticize their views and opinions outside of the classroom environment.

In response, HBS has adopted the Chatham House Rules, which allows students to discuss comments made in classrooms but without attributing them to classmates. The policy has been adopted by several other Harvard

schools and was included in a University-wide report on free speech in the fall.

“Because personal reputation is a cherished asset at HBS, community members worry that the potential cost of well-intended speech outweighs its benefits,” the update read.

In his message accompanying the update, Datar said the changes will align with Harvard’s recent settlements for antisemitism lawsuits. He wrote that the school will follow “guidance from the U.S. Department of Education in considering the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism” — a particularly controversial agreement among Harvard faculty and students for its classification of certain criticisms of Israel and Antisemitism.

But in the update, the task forces provided two additional “widely-used” definitions from the Anti-Defamation League and the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism to consider.

“In the future, while efforts to combat hatred and religious intolerance of all types should be central to the HBS agenda, an instinct toward even-handedness must be balanced with a thorough understanding of the distinctive perils of antisemitism,” they wrote.

“The School must take up efforts to address bigotry and hatred of any sort and be alert to the specific attention and measures required to combat antisemitism,” the report added.

According to the update, more recommendations by the free speech working group will be included in an upcoming 2023 Community Values Report.

saketh.sundar@thecrimson.com

HKS Economist Cleared of Plagiarism

BY WILL P. COTTISS AND ELISE A. SPENNER CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

An inquiry into plagiarism allegations against Ricardo Hausmann, a prominent political economist at the Harvard Kennedy School, concluded after determining the accusations did not meet the University’s definition of research misconduct.

Hausmann was informed of the decision via a Jan. 23 email.

César A. Hidalgo, a professor at the Toulouse School of Economics and Hausmann’s former collaborator, publicly accused Hausmann of plagiarism in a post on X in August.

Hidalgo, with whom Hausmann had worked closely from 2006 to 2013, alleged that Hausmann failed to properly cite his 2023 peer-reviewed paper in two working papers published in April 2024.

Both Hidalgo and Hausmann requested that the University investigate the allegations. But six months after the allegations surfaced, the Kennedy School closed its process without initiating a full investigation.

Harvard’s first step in investigating research misconduct complaints — such as plagiarism allegations — is a preliminary screening to determine whether the accusations are credible. If so, a committee begins an inquiry to review evidence and decide whether to proceed with an investigation.

According to the email sent to Hausmann, the inquiry committee determined that the allegation did “not fall within the definition of research misconduct in the Policy” and thus an investigation was not warranted.

HKS Dean Jeremy Weinstein reviewed the inquiry report and con-

firmed the conclusion, the email said.

“I am happy to see this over, to close this chapter,” Hausmann said in an interview. “This was an unpleasant experience, and it was resolved the way it should have been resolved.”

Hausmann said he participated fully in a “thorough” inquiry, providing the committee with documentation, a written statement, and an interview.

“They even took my computer to find any relevant materials,” said Hausmann. “But when there’s nothing there, there’s nothing there.”

In an interview after the inquiry’s closure, Hidalgo said he thought there was enough “substantial overlap in the papers” that the Kennedy School should have conducted a full investigation. Hidalgo was not informed of the results of the inquiry, though both he and Hausmann participated in an evidentiary hearing along with other faculty.

“The promise that I was given was that they were going to reach out to me with a conclusion,” Hidalgo said. “I think it’s the honorable thing to do. I’m waiting for them to keep their promise.”

Hidalgo said he felt the Kennedy School did not communicate with him during the inquiry.

“I don’t feel like I had access to the process,” he said. Harvard Kennedy School spokesperson Daniel B. Harsha referred to Section E of the University’s guide to responding to allegations of research misconduct, which does not entitle complainants “to receive information about the status or outcome of the process.”

elise.spenner@thecrimson.com will.cottiss@thecrimson.com

THE HARVARD CRIMSON

If Harvard Bends to Trump, It’s Already Lost

BY WALTER JOHNSON, RICHARD F. THOMAS, AND KIRSTEN A. WELD

It’s no secret that the next four years will be turbulent for higher education, and for us.

During his campaign, President Donald Trump pledged to abolish the Department of Education, weaponize the college accreditation system, and end federal spending on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Now, Trump’s opening volley of directives — apparently instructing universities to monitor the political speech and beliefs of international students, targeting DEI, and suspending federal research funding — aim to make good on these threats.

As the poet Maya Angelou reminds us, “when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

Republicans have vowed to target Harvard and a handful of other elite universities, invoking the specter of a hefty endowment tax to compel acquiescence. And indeed, one of Trump’s first DEI-related orders directed federal agencies to specifically pursue institutions of higher education with endowments above one billion dollars.

How should Harvard respond? Unfortunately, thus far, University administrators seem to be favoring the path of anticipatory obedience.

To wit: In January, the University hired Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm linked to top Trump officials, presumably to reassure legislators of Harvard’s collaboration and thus forestall punitive measures.

And a day after the presidential inauguration, to settle two Title VI lawsuits accusing Harvard of toler-

COLUMN

ating antisemitism, Harvard adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism.

The IHRA definition was never intended for use in university disciplinary procedures. Don’t take our word for it — that characterization comes from Kenneth S. Stern, the lawyer who led its drafting two decades ago; he has since critiqued the definition’s function as a “blunt instrument to suppress pro-Palestinian speech.”

Not to mention, the University’s own Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism, led by our scholarly experts, did not advocate adopting the IHRA definition — or any other — in its preliminary recommendations. (How and whether to define antisemitism remains a subject of live debate among Middle East scholars; for example, Omer Bartov, a leading Israeli-American historian of genocide, called Harvard’s adoption of the IHRA definition “shameful” and “cowardly.”)

But vocal, and influential, opponents of campus protests did. And in the end, the Office of General Counsel’s judgment was allowed to supersede that of our scholarly experts — another indication of the sorry state of shared governance at Harvard.

Some colleagues argue that the IHRA definition poses no threat to academic freedom, given that the policy updates apply to harassment and bullying and not to speech. We disagree. The possibility of formal sanction is only one dimension of the policy’s chilling effect. As anyone who has been at Harvard since Oct. 7, 2023 must be aware, the suppression of speech occurs when political speech is redefined as interpersonally or socially aggressive or as provoking discomfort.

This new policy, with its excessively broad defini-

tion, not only reconfigures the field of formal disciplinary processes but also encourages self-censorship and the informal suppression of speech. We ourselves have already heard from one untenured faculty member wondering not only whether they can still put books like Edward Said’s “Orientalism” on a syllabus – they can, of course – but, more worryingly, whether doing so is worth the potential risks.

The Office of Community Conduct’s FAQ about the changes does not reassure, stating: “Ordinarily, it will not violate the NDAB Policies for members of the Harvard community to make controversial statements in the course of academic work or in scholarship; express disagreement with another person’s political views; or criticize a government’s policy or the political leaders of a country.”

Ordinarily. That word affords discretionary latitude — the sort that provides precisely the opportunity for abuse of which Stern warns.

Which members of our community, and which opinions, are likeliest to be viewed as “controversial” and targeted accordingly? And when that occurs, what specific guarantees of their academic freedom and speech rights can faculty and students expect? The recent cancelling of a panel on wartime health care in Gaza at Harvard Medical School — for, apparently, being one-sided — suggests an answer.

We fear that University administrators may be using the current climate as a pretext for tamping down the active campus debates that have attracted the disapproval of outspoken donors and congressional committees alike. As New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg observed, the forces working to disrupt the norms of academic freedom and institutional independence at Harvard may in fact be “pushing

on an open door.”

Anticipatory obedience, however, is not how to best weather the coming storm.

We have already seen the benefits of a more courageous approach. During the 2024 pro-Palestine encampment, for example, University President Alan M. Garber ’76 declined to involve police, despite demands for an aggressive response like that deployed at more than 50 other colleges.

Given the urgent public safety threat our community now faces, with Trump threatening to seek the deportation of international students with criminal charges or records stemming from pro-Palestine protest activity, we see even more clearly the stakes of calling the police on students – and the wisdom of President Garber’s restraint in that moment. It is essential that the University maintain this stance going forward.

Recall, too, that in 2020 Harvard and MIT joined forces to sue the Trump administration over a policy that aimed to strip visas from international students during the Covid-era pivot to online instruction – and they won. In sum, we urge Harvard to refuse the illusory safety of anticipatory obedience and the moral compromises it will inevitably demand. The University must not simply survive the next four years, but must do so with its values intact.

– Walter Johnson is the Winthrop Professor of History and a professor of African and African American Studies. Richard F. Thomas is the George Martin Lane Professor of the Classics. Kirsten A. Weld is a professor of History. They are members of the executive committee of the American Association of University Professors-Harvard

To Harvard Students Who Have Never Met a Conservative

BY HARVEY C. MANSFIELD

Iam a conservative Republican plucked out of retirement (where I belong) to help Crimson readers discover how much diversity they can stomach. Somehow, the more DEI we have, the less there is diversity of opinion.

A rare bird at Harvard, I have plenty of my type in the country we inhabit. Recent events have made it harder for this fact to be ignored, especially the Supreme Court’s decision against affirmative action in a case involving Harvard and the disastrous encounter of Former Harvard President Claudine Gay with Rep. Elise Stefanik ’06 (R-N.Y.). And this is to say nothing of threatening gestures from Congress and the Trump administration. Should Harvard do battle with the Republicans or change course and make peace?

Though a normal partisan, I am also a teacher, offering arguments on the character of the two-party system. I will not pitch a tent in the Yard and chant slogans. Instead of going on the attack, I shall begin from a competition between the favorite virtues of each of our parties — an approach seldom taken at homogeneous Harvard, where party discourse is scarce. What do parties in the rest of the country say to put their best foot forward? Since Republicans are almost unknown at Harvard, whether among students, faculty, or administration, I shall begin from the Democrats we know here as an unchallenged majority.

Readers can judge which party is better — or truer. It will seem strange to look to our parties for truth, for parties seek victory more than truth. They are biased; they exaggerate and even lie. Yet when they speak, they do not merely express opinions. They address one another; they argue. Most observers of parties overlook or greatly underestimate the fact that parties argue with one another.

We can get to what Republicans believe by asking what they object to. They object to the thinking of Democrats that typically denies the value and importance of differences. Democrats stand for inclusiveness. They want to include everybody in a whole community of equal individuals, equal because this is the only, or the best, way to include everybody.

Equality is best shown in the body that everyone has as needy and mortal, whereas soul or mind is the source of inequality. Equality of body keeps Democrats focused on material well-being, as in “the economy, stupid.”

Concern for inclusiveness turns Democrats’ attention mainly to those who are excluded from the whole, whether by design or neglect: the poor and the oppressed. If not excluded, these people are marginalized. They are vulnerable. Democrats care for them, a word they like. For them, the appropriate virtue is compassion or empathy, which they praise and claim for themselves.

Caring can include coercion, typically in the form of taxation, which Democrats prefer to voluntary charity. The unequal rich must “pay their fair share.” Fairness is unequal contribution to equal-

ize individuals who deserve help because they are needy, or less than equal. Fairness aims to eliminate or reduce inequalities arising from differences.

The Democratic ideal is a whole with differences but without inequalities. They maintain the equality of differences by not passing judgment on anyone — except those damn Republicans. Democrats keep a soft face to the world, but they can be very hard to those they consider hard. At Harvard, progressive Democrats support Palestinians, who mostly support Hamas, which practices savage rape and murder of Israeli citizens.

Then what do Republicans say in reply? It’s not a secret, but at Harvard, it’s unheard. Republicans for their part want a whole of variegated individuals, in which some are held more valuable than others. These folks are thought more valuable because they contribute more. The wealthy contribute their investments and their taxes, making the country prosperous and thriving rather than equal in mediocrity. The military serve: “Thank you for your service!” and others excel in some useful way.

Republicans praise those taking risks as opposed to living in security, though they like security after success in risk-taking. They prefer looking up with admiration to looking down with compassion.

Of course, the virtues they admire have to be accommodated to the opinions of a democratic republic in a democratic age. They themselves feel vulnerable not because they are excluded but because they are open to attack as rich and privileged. They have to be sensitive to the charge of “oligar-

chy” that is always available to their opponents. Republicans think of themselves as givers rather than takers — to use the private formula of Mitt Romney in 2012 — but they present themselves as ordinary and normal folk who earn their living rather than living off the government and the taxpayers. They are just as materialistic as Democrats, but they cover their desire by praising ambition or entrepreneurial spirit. They are generally competitive rather than greedy, and they disdain all but the “truly needy.”

Here is a sketch of the parties of equality and inequality that comes down to compassion versus admiration. Of course there are admiring Democrats and compassionate Republicans, because it is not possible to be fully human and not both admire and feel pity. But there seems to be division as to which should be emphasized, and there is no easy way to choose both. The argument is over how a democracy should treat its inequalities: should we equalize them or value them? The wish to do both should soften your anger against the party you don’t choose.

Harvard students and faculty should use their vaunted skepticism on themselves and check out the other side — and that starts by taking a look upward.

This is the first of a series to come.

–Harvey C. Mansfield ’53 is the Kenan Research Professor of Government at Harvard.

I Reported on a School Shooting. Harvard is Unprepared for a Crisis.

BY RACHAEL M. PERROTTA

In late October, an intruder entered a Harvard Law School classroom, approached a student, and shut the student’s laptop atop their desk. A month later, a man was arrested at Hemenway Gym — located at HLS — for allegedly “photographing and disseminating a photo of an unsuspecting nude person.” If you haven’t heard of these incidents, you’re not alone. Neither — I’d wager — has most of the Harvard community. As an HLS student, I’m unaware of any emailed safety notices after these security breaches, leaving me and other students to find out from word of mouth, The Crimson, or not at all. Even students who experienced the October incident did not receive clarity until a meeting with a Harvard University Police Department liaison two weeks later. These situations are symptoms of a larger problem: Harvard is unprepared for a campus crisis. Across the country, universities are routinely plagued by gun violence. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The University of Virginia. Michigan State University. University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Morgan State University. The list goes on. Yet, Harvard does not require its students to complete specific gun violence readiness training. It is shocking that I received more robust preparation for school shootings in elementary school than at one of the most well-resourced universities in the nation. Harvard needs to lead higher education in treating school gun violence as seriously as it does other modern safety threats. Gun violence readiness training at Harvard should mirror other orientation requirements for students, like those regard-

ing sexual misconduct. Indeed, there are few better ways for Harvard to spend its $53.2 billion endowment than on protecting its community. Other initiatives are useless if students are not here to use them.

HUPD’s current offerings are woefully inadequate. Its website includes a slideshow that emphasizes college campuses’ safety and the “extremely rare” nature of active shooters at universities, saying that “your mind comes to be dominated by the horrific consequences of low probability events.”

For an estimated 2.5 million college students, such horror is reality. Harvard could easily be the next name strewn across the news alongside a death count. I’ve written those headlines, and I know what it feels like to be mere miles away from unthinkable violence. After reporting on the Covenant School shooting, I wondered what I would have done if the shooter had been in my classroom or on my campus. With the backdrop of sirens delivering children and teachers to my university’s hospital, I came up with nothing — and Harvard does not fill in the blanks.

This reality is reflected in current statistics about school gun violence, which are not included in the slideshow. In it, HUPD fails to use data from this decade and draws many of its school shooting statistics from 1992-2012. Comprehensive statistics are tough to come by, but CNN reports that there have been 342 school shootings in the 2020s alone — far more than HUPD’s mention of 67 occurring between 1992-2012 and 62 active shooter incidents between 2000-19. Outdated information entrenches students in ignorance about what to do in the worst-case scenario. Notably, the slideshow states that HUPD’s active shooter guidelines came in response to student, faculty, and staff requests following nationwide

school shootings. HUPD would inspire more confidence in our safety by proactively updating and mandating Harvard-wide engagement with these materials, rather than waiting to be prompted by fearful community members.

Students, faculty, and staff must ask these questions in today’s climate of senseless gun violence at American schools. It is time for Harvard to provide some answers.

–Rachael M. Perrotta is a 1L at Harvard Law School.

Mandatory shooting preparedness training is also needed at Harvard because many students will not think about searching for optional resources until it is too late. Others may be confused about the guidance. For instance, if following the “run, hide, fight” approach, where should students run or hide if they are on an open lawn with a shooter nearby? Where should we assemble if we evacuate a classroom? When there is an intruder in a Harvard building – like there was at HLS last fall — should we wait to act until the individual opens fire?

Harvard’s Settlements Threaten Free Speech

LIMITING SPEECH. Updated policies complicate distinctions between acceptable critiques of Israel and antisemitism — effectively chilling Harvard’s speech culture in the process.

BY

On the second day of President Donald Trump’s second term, Harvard settled two lawsuits that claimed the University inappropriately handled cases of antisemitism on campus — a startling move of acquiescence with real implications for campus culture.

As a result, the University revised its Non-Discrimination and Anti-Bullying Policies and Procedures page to include specifications involving antisemitism and Islamophobia, including adopting the widely controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. The moves will harm Harvard’s speech culture: freedom from discrimination on the basis of political opinion should be guaranteed, but freedom from criticism should not. And that is precisely where Harvard’s new policies fall short.

Fundamentally, Zionism, anti-Zionism, and non-Zionism are opinions about the world. As such, they should be — and now explicitly are — protected by NDAB policies: someone should never be shunned, harassed, or otherwise intimidated on account of political belief. But by their very nature, political beliefs or opinions should be open to all manner of criticism — “sunlight is the best disinfectant,” the refrain goes.

Some progressives might conceivably claim that the United States is a racist endeavor as a matter of politics, but a similar claim of Israel might result in sanctions or remedial measures — maybe?

Under the IHRA definition, “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” is antisemitic. At the same time, the definition uses “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic” as a guiding principle. According to that, such a claim of Israel wouldn’t be antisemitic at all. It is this very confusion — what counts as legitimate criticism and what does not — that marks the definition as unsuitable for use and produces a chilling effect on speech culture.

But don’t worry: The University solemnly swears academic discourse shall not be infringed upon, stating that controversial statements in academic work or scholarship will “ordinarily” not violate the NDAB policies. When deciding whether to charge an affiliate with antisemitism, we would hope the University would have more to go on than the word “ordinarily.”

With such little clarity, affiliates may feel pressure to clam up. We’ve already seen one such example — the program director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Nonviolent Action Lab resigned in protest of the IHRA definition’s adoption.

So, where should the University go from here?

Harvard will be updating the NDAB Policies and Procedures in the next four months. Instead of more reactionary decisions driven by lawsuits or other external factors, Harvard should proactively seek input from those most impacted — students and faculty — when revising policies.

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

Dissent: Why Is Protecting Jewish Students Up For Debate?

BY MARGOT I. CERBONE AND JANE S. LICHTMAN

Fifteen months after the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee first held Israel “entirely responsible” for the October 7th massacre, Harvard’s Jewish and Israeli students have finally secured a victory. According to the Editorial Board, that’s a problem.

Last month, the University updated its guidance for applying anti-discrimination policies to define both antisemitism and Islamophobia and give useful descriptions of what constitutes harassment of Zionist and pro-Palestine students. Harvard also adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which is widely used by groups like the United States government (an IHRA member) and the European Commission.

The IHRA definition acknowledges the somber truth that antisemitism takes many forms — and it’s not always as straightforward as an antisemitic cartoon.

We are glad that Harvard’s policies finally reflect

that other manifestations of antisemitism can be just as insidious — from minimizing Jewish historical oppression to holding Jewish students responsible for Israel’s every action. Indeed, the Board’s specific arguments in opposition to the new policies only underscore their necessity.

For example, the Board argues that people should be protected from discrimination based on their identity or political views, but not guarded against criticism of their beliefs. But in the case of Zionism, the line between critiquing ideology and excluding based on identity is not so clear.

Even Zionism’s fiercest critics must acknowledge that identifying as a Zionist is not equivalent to being a Democrat or a Republican. Unlike a mere political belief, Zionism, for many Jews, is deeply intertwined with their religious, national, and ethnic identities, as well as the broader imperatives of Jewish safety and survival.

The Board’s belief that criticisms of political beliefs can be tidily separated from exclusion based on them disregards Zionism’s unique role in Jewish life.

Furthermore, the Board asks why a student be allowed to call the United States a “racist endeavor,” yet

Will You Monitor Us, Harvard?

BY ANDRÉS MUEDANO

Since coming to Harvard, I have never been to a protest. For international students like myself, to protest is to risk suspension — and, in turn, deportation.

Trump’s recent executive order does not change that. Born and raised in Mexico City, I have witnessed the power of protest and civil disobedience to mobilize society — demanding justice for missing students in 2014, opposing femicides and gender-based violence in 2020, and resisting Mexican judicial reform in 2024. I also stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine. Witnessing “the first live-streamed genocide in history,” to quote Palestinian novelist Susan Abulhawa, I have grown frustrated at Harvard’s continued investments in companies tied to weapons manufacturing and Israeli settlements.

Nestled within Trump’s order lies an instruction for government agencies to familiarize universities with “the grounds for inadmissibility” under which an international student could face deportation. This familiarization, the order suggests, would request higher education institutions surveil international students and report them for suspected antisemitism.

The executive order barely articulates any novelties. International students who break the law have long faced the risk of deportation. Similarly, under certain circumstances, higher education institutions have long been required to report information about F-1 visa holders, the majority of international college students.

What is novel about the order, then, is its very articulation: How it devotes an entire subsection to international students and threatens to deport those engaging in unlawful antisemitic harassment.

Without concretely defining what is meant by such harassment, the executive order leaves ample room for interpretation. In an environment where criticism of Israel has already been conflated with antisemitism — as evidenced by Harvard’s controversial adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Al-

liance’s working definition — this lack of clarity risks suppressing legitimate political speech.

Now, it is evident that antisemitism is a serious problem. Jewish students across campuses in the United States, including Harvard, continue to voice the growing estrangement they face today. Equally evident is the fact that any person who conscientiously breaks the law — American or international, student or otherwise — should expect to face the legal consequences of their actions.

What is not evident to me, therefore, is why the executive order singles out international students as uniquely subject to surveillance and repercussions. Why emphasize the implications for a group that, as of 2023, only constitutes 5.6 percent of college students in the United States? Perhaps the answer lies in history. Just like “the

be labeled antisemitic according to the IHRA definition for making the same claim about Israel.

First of all, the IHRA language makes clear that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.” But more importantly, the Board’s allegation of a double standard forgets the reality that Israeli and Zionist students have faced their own double standard over the past year.

Why is the issue of Israel exceptional? Because the anti-Israel movement has made it so. Israel is the only nation in the world whose very right to exist is so regularly criticized at Harvard. This kind of antisemitic rhetoric has become dangerously normalized.

The Board also argues that future updated policies should be subject to broad community input. But this argument rings hollow, serving as further evidence for the double standard to which Jewish and Israeli students are regularly held.

When other marginalized groups speak out about the discrimination they face, their experiences are not treated as matters for debate — nor are the policies to protect them crafted by those responsible for the harm.

Defining antisemitism is about protecting Jewish students. Consulting the Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism may have been appropriate, but it seems absurd to suggest that Harvard should seek input from every corner of campus. Would we include those who have openly called to “globalize the intifada” — as some of our classmates have — in discussions about the definition of antisemitism? Regardless of the Board’s concerns, these policies affirm a simple principle: Jewish students’ identities deserve the same protections as any other — and that’s not up for debate.

a

Margot I.

Opinions:

is

charge of antisemitism is being used to dispossess the Palestinian people of their last resource of land,” as Israeli poet Yitzhak Laor wrote in a letter to the London Review of Books in 2003, so too are accusations of antisemitism today being weaponized against foreigners in America.

The executive order’s unique fixation on monitoring international students sets a dangerous precedent. If universities like Harvard are to uncritically comply with vague mandates to monitor us, they risk legitimizing a broader culture of surveillance — one that fosters xenophobia against international students, all while normalizing the policing of political expression on campus.

In light of this, Harvard now faces a question: Will it allow fear to dictate its values, acquiescing to external pressures and risking the safety of its student body? Or

will it reject any role in facilitating political repression, affirming its commitment to free expression?

Upholding the latter will require an explicit refusal to surveil internationals — a reaffirmation of Harvard’s commitment to uplift all of its students. At stake is more than just the ability of international students to engage in protest — it’s

Muedano ’27, a

The adoption of the IHRA definition and the updates to the NDAB FAQ page signal that the external pressure of a lawsuit is enough to force Harvard to step away from its purported commitment to the free exchange of ideas. We hope Harvard won’t endure more

THE CRIMSON EDITORIAL BOARD

FRANK S. ZHOU— CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

How to Make Cambridge More Affordable

mons University student support center

The affordable housing crisis has plagued Cambridge for more than a decade. As Councilors have failed to reach a consensus on how to address the issue, upzoning proposals consistently occupy Cambridge City Council meetings week after week. Meanwhile, residents are dealing with soaring prices and struggling to make ends meet.

“I have a six figure job, and I still struggle to pay rent in this area,” Cambridge resident Heather D. Ranken said.

As the council nears a vote to ban exclusionary zoning — a policy that experts say contribute greatly to the ongoing nation-wide housing shortage — Cambridge residents and advocates have cautioned that the proposal has not undergone adequate public discourse.

So what do Cambridge residents think will solve the city’s housing issues? The Crimson interviewed residents across the city — from the Charles River to Porter Square and everything in between — for their ideas on making Cambridge a more affordable place to live. Responses — which were summarized for concision — ranged from ending occupancy limits to raising property taxes to investing in public transport. Proposals fell broadly into three categories: financial incentives, maximizing space, and regional collaboration.

Creating Financial Incentives and Disincentives

Simplify assistance applications: Establishing a simpler platform to apply for payment assistance vouchers would make it easier for individuals to access assistance when they need it. Matoaka T. Kipp, Director of Sim-

Establish a Land Value Tax: Instead of taxing people based on their homes’ value, tax people for the land on which their property lies. This would encourage vertical developments because then many occupants could divide the land tax among themselves. David Halperin, software engineer Increase assistance accessibility: Increase the annual income required to qualify for the first-time home buyer assistance program. This would allow middle-class families who do not currently qualify for the program but cannot afford to buy a house either to receive government assistance. Michael B. Jefferson, academic adviser at Harvard Extension School

Mixed-income housing: Create new housing developments in which some units are designated affordable housing and the rest are sold at the market price. This structure raises revenue that can then be reinvested back into a development fund. Lee Farris, retired community organizer, Cambridge Housing Justice Coalition and reiterated by Justin N. Saif ’99, attorney Utilize pre-existing structures: Rather than tearing down existing buildings that serve as naturally occurring affordable housing, the city should incentivise the maintenance of existing housing which protects the historic character of neighborhoods and feeds the local tourism industry. Francesca Gordini, architect, Cambridge Citizens Coalition

Raise property taxes: Increase property taxes to encourage homeowners to sell their land to developers who will build more housing options. The increase in revenue could be used to fund affordable housing units. David Halperin, software engineer Rent control: Don’t allow landlords to increase rent prices beyond the annual inflation rate. Jeremey J. Johnson, Artificial Intelligence engineer End broker fees: Eliminate broker fees or mandate that landlords, rather than tenants, pay them

to lower the upfront costs of renting. Maya C. Gibbons, financial analyst

Maximizing Space

Make use of “blighted” properties: Invoke eminent domain to build affordable housing on investment properties that are left vacant. Brendan M. Hickey, software engineer Increasing oversight: Prevent short term rental properties — which are often left vacant — from taking up valuable space. Suzanne P. Blier, Harvard professor Allow more co-ops: Cambridge ended the policy that limits

Boston-Area Tatte Workers Forced To Resign

Service in the terminated employees’ social security records forced their hand.

Tatte Bakery and Cafe forced roughly 60 Boston-area workers to resign last fall after discrepancies in their paperwork cast doubt on their legal authorization to work in the U.S. — a move which advocates say could foreshadow a crackdown on undocumented workers under the Trump administration. Large scale terminations due to undocumented status appear rare in the Boston area. Yet the incident at Tatte revealed how tensions have been heightened within local healthcare and food service industries, which heavily rely on undocumented workers, amid pledges from the Trump administration to crack down on illegal immigration.

A company that knowingly employs undocumented workers is committing a crime under federal law, which forbids companies to offer employment to “an alien knowing the alien is an unauthorized alien.”

“There are entire industries in this country that have been built on the system of having wide access to immigrant labor,” said Shannon E. Liss-Riordan ’90, an employment lawyer in Massachusetts.

“It’s going to come back to haunt many of these industries who are not going to be able to continue in the way they have if they don’t have access to this large supply of labor,” added Liss-Riordan, a former Crimson editor.

In a statement, Tatte said that repeated discrepancies raised by the Internal Revenue

“While supporting our employees is a priority, we must comply with the law,” Tatte spokesperson Diana C. Pisciotta wrote in a statement, calling it “disheartening” to “inform valued, hard-working members of our team that by law they cannot remain with Tatte if they cannot correct the issue.”

The company provided affected workers with the chance to consult an immigration attorney at Tatte’s expense after the termination. Pisciotta added that Tatte offers all employees of over two years who meet some weekly hours requirements with up to $4,000 in financial support for immigration-related expenses. In a statement, Leslie T. Ditrani, an immigration lawyer and the founder of the nonprofit Pathway for Immigrant Workers, defended the company’s decision.

“Tatte faced a difficult situation,” Ditrani wrote in a statement. “Immigration and Customs Enforcement could determine that the company has violated the law by employing undocumented workers.”

When the IRS identifies a discrepancy in identification in an employee’s paperwork, a “no-match” letter is then sent to their employer by the Social Security Administration. Such letters are not unusual, and “can also just occur due to bureaucratic errors” according to Liss-Riordan, including typos.

While employees have the opportunity to fix such errors in the system after they’re flagged, repeated no-match letters may

indicate something more than an error — like false documents used by someone who lacks authorization to work.

Liss-Riordan pointed out that even workers with legal employment authorization could face more scrutiny if the federal government cracks down on undocumented employees, because of such errors.

“A lot of people can get caught up in this problem who actually are legally qualified to work in the U.S.,” she said.

Ditrani said the tension is exacerbated by an insufficient supply of workers nationally.

“Across the country, most states, including Massachusetts, are experiencing moderate to severe worker shortages,” Ditrani said. “When the government makes it harder for employers to hire the workforce needed to sustain and grow the economy, everyone loses.”

A report last year by the U.S Chamber of Commerce found that Massachusetts had just 42 available workers for every 100 jobs open, labeling its worker shortage “most severe.”

Amid a heightened federal focus on prosecuting undocumented immigrants, both Liss-Riordan and Ditrani said such crackdowns could have serious consequences for both affected workers and the local economy that depends on them.

“There can be really terrible effects from driving workers further underground who are doing their jobs, supporting their families, contributing to our society, who are in living fear of what may happen,” Liss-Riordan said.

the number of unrelated individuals who can occupy a dwelling. This change could allow multiple residents to live in some of Cambridge’s larger historic homes and share the cost of that property. Heather D. Ranken, fraud systems engineer

Changing regulations: Change fire codes to require only one staircase rather than two — and build using inflammable materials instead — to maximize living space. Also, expedite the approval process for 100 percent affordable housing designs and shelters. Brendan M. Hickey, software engineer University support: The local universities should provide

more housing for their students and staff in order to decrease demand for apartments in the city. Charles R. Norris, architect Regional Outreach

Collaboration across cities: The housing crisis is larger than just Cambridge — so the solutions should be, too. Cambridge should ask for help from other municipalities and the state government to tackle larger-scale projects than the city could tackle alone. Stephen E. Coit ’71 , artist and former high-tech investor

Improve public transportation: By simplifying bus routes and investing in public transportation to make it a faster commuting option, more people who work in Cambridge could live in neighboring towns, reducing the demand for housing within the city. Brendan M. Hickey, software engineer ...for example, constructing a high-speed rail system: The federally-funded construction of a highspeed rail system that serves New England would make it easier for

Cambridge Maps Out Proposed Changes to Bike Lanes

After a proposal to construct separated bike lanes on Broadway drew criticism from residents who feared drastic parking reductions, the city of Cambridge held an open house on Tuesday to gather public feedback.

The Broadway Safety Improvement Plan would add roughly 1.4 miles of separated bike lanes on Broadway between Quincy Street and Portland Street to the city’s existing network. Under the 2020 Cycling Safety Ordinance, Cambridge has committed to installing 25 miles of separated bike lanes by Nov. 1, 2026.

The Broadway proposal was met with criticism when it was unveiled, as it would reduce street parking by 60 percent to accommodate the bike lanes.

Dozens of residents attended the open house Tuesday, held in the Fletcher-Maynard Academy Gymnasium, where they provided direct input on the proposed changes to intersections, parking, and traffic patterns.

Maps laid out on the gym’s folding tables displayed the level of usage of Broadway street parking along with areas where parking would be lost. Attendees could leave sticky notes to mark comments on specific areas.

Representatives from the Department of Traffic, Parking, and Transportation helped answer residents’ questions.

Several Cantabrigians walked through the elementary school gym sporting their bicycle safety gear. Sue Downing wore her bedazzled white bike helmet and new silver reflective jacket to the meeting. Downing has been biking in

Cambridge since becoming a resident in 1977. She said Cambridge has become safer to bike in since she was first riding with her children, but she is still concerned by the deaths of Kim Staley, Minh-Thi Nguyen, and John H. Corcoran ’84 last year.

Downing said she was impressed with the speed of Massachusetts’ reaction following the death of John H. Corcoran ’84 in September — but wondered why the changes hadn’t happened earlier. Within weeks, the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation lowered speed limits and improved infrastructure on Memorial Drive near the Boston University Bridge.

“They had a temporary plan already implemented,” Downing said.

“It’s sad that it takes a death.” With the parking reduction laid out more clearly, some residents said their fears of snarled traffic and limited access to residential parking had not been allayed. Ronald Inniss lives near Fletcher Maynard Academy, which he attended as an elementary school student. He cycles and drives in Cambridge and often has issues with the congested side streets blocking his residential parking.

“We look at this project and we’re losing 60 percent of the parking — I just feel it’s going to be a nightmare,” Inniss said. The organizers of the open house said they see holding in-person, walk-in meetings as the best way to hear and address residents’ worries.

“People are able to look at the plans, they can zoom in on the areas of most concern to them, and give us really detailed feedback,” Transportation Commissioner Brooke M. McKenna said. As residents strolled through the elementary school gymnasium, Ian F. McGoldrick — a member of Cambridge Bike Safety and a new father — said he thought new bike lanes would be especially important for children.

“People in their 80s, people in their 60s, young children, high schoolers, all need a safe space to navigate Cambridge’s roads in a network of completely protected lanes,” McGoldrick said. “I want to see a city in the future that gives my kid the option to be able to bike to school safely,” he added.

BY SHAWN A. BOEHMER AND JACK B.

Harvard’s Allston Developments Boom

Harvard is soon to bring hundreds of new housing units online in Allston as the University approaches several major construction milestones in its long-running expansion across the river.

The new home for the American Repertory Theater at 175 North Harvard St. topped off last month, and is expected to come online next year, adding 276 units of housing for Harvard affiliates. And Harvard expects some of the residential units under construction at the Enterprise Research Campus — a mixed-use district of commercial lab space, shops, and more than 340 apartment units — to be complete this summer. This year marks a moment of exceptionally high development activity for Harvard, with con-

siderably more than two million square feet of development underway. That includes its four-building ERC, a new ART with the housing complex for Harvard affiliates next door, and another three-building, mixed-use campus for the life sciences next to the Massachusetts Turnpike. Adding to the building frenzy is a pair of affordable housing developments Harvard is facilitating by donating the land for their construction — as in the case of the 43 condominiums at 65-79 Seattle St. — or by funding their purchase, which it did for the site of a 49-unit senior housing complex at 279 N. Harvard St. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu ’07 announced the funding for those projects at the Harvard Ed Portal last month. She also committed to making them zero-emissions through city design standards.

Though Harvard will not play a role in the actual development of either, the two affordable developments are among the community benefits Harvard has committed to provide in order to offset its rapid growth into the neighborhood.

Many new biotech workers brought in by Harvard-linked lab

developments, along with graduate students and other affiliates, increase the competition for a limited housing supply in the area. When pressure on the housing market grows, lower-income renters are often the first to feel it, meaning affordable housing is frequently a top demand from Allston residents negotiating benefits from the university.

In negotiating benefits for the first phase of Harvard’s ERC in 2016, residents won a $25 million commitment to fund affordable housing projects over a 12-year period — and a promise to make twenty percent of the new units income-restricted.

But as separate negotiations unfold to approve still more construction on Harvard’s academic campus in Allston, including its sports facilities and the business school, residents are calling on the University to do more.

In a recent letter to Harvard, a city-appointed task force of residents called on the university to increase its support for affordable housing in the area, citing “skyrocketing home prices.”

“We call on Harvard University to take bold and meaningful

that she felt the district was not living up to their initial statement of having more freedom of school choice, as students are only guaranteed a spot at MLK or King Open.

While Cambridge Public Schools works to transition students from the Kennedy-Longfellow School, following a December vote to close the school, some parents and staff say they need more agency and clarity over what happens next. In a Tuesday School Committee meeting, Interim Superintendent David G. Murphy said there is “a need to move at an urgent pace” to transition students, but acknowledged “external variables ranging from the federal government to the weather that affects how and when we move.”

“I want to be very upfront and transparent about the fact that given the volume of challenges that we are trying to confront, there is, to some degree, some physics that play a part with regard to just how quickly we can move,” Murphy said. Murphy added that K-Lo staff had contacted “100 percent of the families” about their choice for fall 2025 enrollment. While 32 students have chosen to participate in a special lottery across the district, the remaining students will be sorted into the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and King Open schools based on their grade. At the meeting, Cambridge Education Association President Dan Monahan said that while there have been “some initial agreements for educators on the impact of the closure,” they have not yet discussed the reassignment of teachers.

“I urge you to move with all expediency to resolve these issues, because I hear deep uncertainty from many educators, which is both unsettling to them as well as reason for them to look to positions elsewhere,” Monahan said.

In interviews with The Crimson, K-Lo parents said the transition has not adequately involved parents and students.

Jia-Jing Lee, parent of a third grader at K-Lo, wrote in an email

“During the few caregiver community meetings with the superintendent, he assured us that the district would review each student’s data and work with families to determine the best school placement for each child,” she wrote. “However, we have not seen this happening at all.”

Murphy wrote in an email statement that students participating in the lottery were able to speak to staff at each school and to make a choice amongst available seats.

“If any individual family feels their child may require a specific accommodation in the course of this transition, families are again urged to bring this to the attention of the Kennedy-Longfellow team,” Murphy wrote. “The efforts by the district to respond to individual family needs will be ongoing throughout this transition.”

“The district has and will continue to be fully responsive to family needs when they are brought the attention of school staff,” he added.

While the district solicited volunteers on Jan. 22 to join an advisory and steering committee on the K-Lo transition, Lee wrote in her email that committees are not making meaningful progress.

“It now appears that the superintendent is not moving forward with this, as his staff is handling the transition instead,” she wrote.

“Instead of prioritizing administrative convenience, the district should be genuinely serving each and every K-Lo student—as well as all students across the district—by ensuring proper placements that truly meet their needs,” Lee added.

CPS did not respond to a request for comment on the current state of the committees.

Kate I. Whelan, parent of a K-Lo fourth and fifth grader, said she worries that the transition would not solve — and only worsen — the issues that lead to the closing of the

school.

“They’re saying the reason for the closure is that the kids have effectively not been treated equally because of a number of things that have happened,” she said. “But it feels like the result of that is that they’re not going to treat the kids very fairly.”

“The thing you need to do is to make sure that doesn’t happen anymore, right? Rather than further disrupt kids that you’re saying have already kind of negatively impacted,” Whelan added.

In the statement to The Crimson, Murphy affirmed the dedication and professionalism of K-Lo teachers and staff.

“The challenges experienced by the Kennedy-Longfellow School are largely attributable to the systemic conditions under which the district has operated the school,” he wrote.

Anne M. Coburn, parent of a kindergartener and a K-Lo fifth grader, said that educators at K-Lo “took on a huge, huge portion of the work” to contact families and “are doing an amazing job under painful, painful circumstances.”

“They have to contact all of these kids and say, ‘Okay kid, we’re going to send you off into the rest of the district, right away from us. We’ve done our absolute best to protect you, to treat you softly, at a time when you are really not feeling soft,’” Coburn said.

“The character that that shows is profound,” she added.

As Whelan navigates the transition with her family, she said it is a “real shame” that the students are leaving a school that has given “a lot of kids a real positive experience.”

“It would be, I think, very positive to keep as many of the staff — like go with them if they want to as well — so they just have some kind of continuity of care, given that everything else around them is changing,” Whelan said.

action by donating a portion of its dormant land holdings in Allston to address Boston’s growing housing crisis and lack of homeownership,” the task force wrote. While the letter did not include specifics about what or how much land Harvard might donate, such questions are likely to

prominently in the

tiation over its Institutional Master Plan — which will require the city’s final approval and the sup

port of local representatives. In their letter, the Harvard Allston Task Force emphasized the institution’s “significant influence on the Allston-Brighton

angelina.parker@thecrimson.com emily.schwartz@thecrimson.com

City Council Approves Surveillance Technologies

BY MATAN H. JOSEPHY AND LAUREL M. SHUGART CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

The Cambridge City Council narrowly approved the Cambridge Police Department’s request to obtain two surveillance technologies amid fierce pushback from residents, but postponed voting on the purchase and use of drones by city police.

Police Commissioner Christine A. Elow said in remarks to the City Council on Monday evening that CPD needs surveillance drones to “improve situational awareness,” help locate missing persons, and provide evidence in criminal cases. But nearly 30 Cambridge residents pushed back against the police department’s request during public comment, voicing concerns that data collected by CPD using new surveillance technology could be shared with the federal government.

“With a slew of executive orders coming from the White House right now, people don’t feel safe in our communities already,” Jennifer Warren, a Cambridge resident, told the council.

“Tacking on continued surveillance is only going to heighten the sense of unrest and feeling unsafe where we live,” she added.

Despite the pushback, in a 6-3 vote, the council approved roughly 15 to 20 Automated License Plate Recognition units — fixed cameras that capture images of license plates, turns the license plate to

a text file, and stores the data for 30 days. The cameras will not record sound or video, and cannot be viewed in real time, according to a report on the technology filed by CPD.

“We are fully committed to balancing the needs of effective law enforcement with the protection of individual rights,” Elow said, noting that the license plate software will not use facial recognition.

Still, some residents fear that data collected will be used by the federal government to target undocumented residents amid heightened immigration enforcement nationwide — despite Cambridge’s sanctuary city ordinance.

“ALPR technology, like the one produced here, are shared expansively across agencies,” Cambridge resident Tesla Wells said in public comment.

“This means Cambridge residents will be surveilled — not just by the CPD — but would enable surveillance of Cambridge residents by agencies on a state and federal level.”

City solicitor Megan Bayer affirmed CPD’s compliance with the sanctuary city ordinance, noting that they do not “voluntarily do the work of federal immigration officials or provide information.”

The council also approved a “GrayKey” device, which will allow the police to access data from locked phones, though they must obtain a warrant, consent from the owner, or prove exigent circumstances. Currently, CPD can only access this device through the state.

Elow attributed a lack of evidence that has left a slew of recent homicides uncharged to the absence of technology necessary to solve the crime.

“It’s just a tool that we utilize anyway, and this would put us at the top of the line as far as investigations go,” Elow said.

“We’re still trying to get a phone analyzed from our homicide last year,” she added.

Although Cambridge residents have expressed concern about gun violence in the city — including a fatal shooting less than three weeks ago — residents at the meeting lacked confidence that increasing surveillance will solve the issue.

“The timing of this seems like a way of preying on concerns about public safety, capitalizing on tragedy in order to expand their budget and expand their militarized capacities,” said Sean Joyce-Farley, a resident of North Cambridge, where a 21-year-old was fatally shot last month.

While the council ultimately approved two CPD surveillance technologies, they referred the discussion on drones to the council’s Public Safety Committee.

“It’s just the normalization of increasing militarization of police technology is super concerning on another level,” Mila Halgren, a member of MIT Coalition Against Apartheid, said in an interview before the council meeting.

matan.josephy@thecrimson.com laurel.shugart@thecrimson.com

The

J-LO DAZZLES IN ‘KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN’

BY JOSEPH A. JOHNSON CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

rapped in a sparkling black dress bejeweled with faux spider webs, Jennifer Lopez teared up before a crowd of more than 2,000 people after the premiere of “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”

“I’ve been waiting for this moment my whole life,” she said, addressing her lifelong desire to star in a musical like the ones she grew up watching with her mother. Lopez, along with co-stars Tonatiuh and Diego Luna, put out career-defining performances in this film adaptation of the popular 1990s stage musical of the same name. Set in an Argentinian prison during a time of political upheaval in the 1980s, the film follows cellmates Luis Molina (Tonatiuh), a gay window dresser, and Valentin Arregui (Diego Luna), a Marxist revolutionary, as they navigate the backward conditions of a corrupt, junta-controlled penal system. At first, Arregui doesn’t take to Molina’s peppy, outspoken personality. But Molina doesn’t

take no for an answer and wins over Arregui through vivid retellings of classic films starring actress Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez). Lopez steals the show in her musical performances as Luna’s film-within-a-film character Aurora, who hires an esteemed photographer for her magazine only to fall deeply in love with him. The catch: Any man Aurora falls in love with must be sacrificed to the deadly Spider Woman, also played by Lopez. No doubt “Kiss of the Spider Woman” is ambitious, juggling Arregui and Molina’s unlikely, budding relationship, 1980s Argentine politics and LGBTQ+ culture, Ingrid Luna’s fictionalized filmography, Old Hollywood homages, and grand musical numbers. In spite of the odds, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” brilliantly coalesces these

subjects in a feat of parallel plot

structure that constantly enhances and recontextualizes — rather than merely repeats — its subject matter.

In “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” the characters are up against the world, and they don’t always win. In a pivotal scene, as Arregui narrates the film within a film, he explains the terrible feeling of being

In “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” the characters are up against the world, and they don’t always win.

unable to express your mutual love because of uncontrollable external forces. Such external forces, whether the prison warden beset on Molina and Arregui or the Spider Woman beset on Aurora’s true love, allow themes of resilience, personal growth, and togetherness to take hold through the characters and their ever-adapting, interconnected stories. These stories couldn’t visu -

ally look more different, but it quickly becomes clear that looks aren’t everything. The technicolor dream world of Molina’s favorite musicals and the drab industrial gray world of Molina and Arregui’s prison cell are equally restraining — places where characters and audience members alike must confront their preconceived notions of what is inherently right and socially acceptable, especially when lives are at stake. Contrary to Arregui’s insistence, the musical numbers of the film within a film aren’t varnished and out-oftouch; they’re a way of fighting back, harnessing beautiful art to strike down the ugliness of corruption and exploitation.

Betrayal and the potential for betrayal loom large in “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” and every character must make important decisions at the expense of themselves, their closest friends, and the ideals they represent. There’s rarely a perfect, selfless, ready-made solution to any one problem, making every moment a revelatory peek into the true motivations underlying the film’s characters. Ultimately, there’s a sense of something bigger than yourself — some grand story, of love most likely, that orchestrates all other stories.

Molina often calls on Ingrid Luna for advice in his own life, and the film wonderfully

‘If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’ Will Leave You Frenzied

BY JOSEPH A. JOHNSON CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

blends reality reality (prison) and film reality (the film within the film) to pull back the curtain on life itself. In “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” life doesn’t imitate art, and art doesn’t imitate life; life is art, and art is life. It’s this throughline that allows every uncompromisingly individual and chaotic piece of the film to gel under one definitive umbrella. By seeking out the things that make art great in real life, real life becomes great — and vice versa. Every character learns this lesson time and again, even if it means rejecting the comforts of normalcy, stubbornness, and bodily safety to carve out their own slice of lifely contentment.

“What I love is to capture the spirit of those old movies, but not to just imitate them,” director Bill Condon said, referencing the Old Hollywood musicals that inspired him and cinematographer Tobias A. Schliessler. “You know, [“Kiss of the Spider Woman” is] its own thing.”

5 STARS

joseph.johnson@thecrimson.com

“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” is no doubt a taxing watch, but the experience is worth it, if only to shed a light on the absurdity of life itself. Sometimes you just have to kick back, crack a smile, and enjoy the show — a sentiment that James (A$AP Rocky), a superintendent at the motel where Linda temporarily lives, embodies to the fullest. James, along with Linda’s therapist (Conan O’Brien), provide a welcome touch of levity that doesn’t come solely at the expense of Linda; both actors are naturally hilarious, drawing on their bank of artistic experiences to create humor in as little as a glance.

When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares right back, and so does the hole in Linda’s ceiling.

Linda’s ceiling hole is another character, which elicits sympathy, laughs, and horror at every turn. When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares right back, and so does the hole in Linda’s ceiling. When she stares into it, she becomes engulfed by its magical, dream-like, iridescent qualities. Narration — usually advisory or critical — also engulfs her in these moments. “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” doesn’t merely add insult to injury, the film gashes open said injury and unloads heaps of salt into the festering wound. But what’s the point? Is there

What’s it like to be a mother? How about a real-life person in a dog-eat-dog world? Sincerely? “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” a tad more chaotic than the average film about motherhood and work-life balance, addresses these questions without sugarcoating any of the answers. Linda (Rose Byrne) is a therapist who, in a feat of therapy-ception, goes to therapy on a daily basis to talk about her life, which is falling apart. Her terminally ill daughter (Delaney Quinn) isn’t gaining weight fast enough; her husband (Christian Slater) is away on a work trip; one of her patients (Daniel Zolghadri) inwardly loves her, and another (Danielle Macdonald) ran away and can’t be found; she can’t ever seem to find a legal parking spot; and, to top it all off, her apartment ceiling came crashing down, creating a mysterious hole that continues to grow bigger. It all might sound random, but there’s an intricate method to director Mary Bronstein’s jumbled-up madness. Every shot, every cut, and every sound are curated to enforce a hectic craziness that never lets up. As an effective gimmick, the film never actually shows Linda’s daughter in frame; instead, Linda herself is made the focal point, repressing her anxiety about her daughter, husband, therapist, patients, irregular motel neighbors, and crumbling ceiling in close-up after intense close-up. Just when Linda’s life can’t get any worse, it does, then it does again, then again and again and again.

a point? Is “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” just trying to get a rise out of its audience, generating buzz to generate buzz? “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” — a mouthful or, better yet, a typeful — has a fascinating perspective that opens itself up to a discourse about sinkor-swim situations, about confronting problems or wallowing in self-pity. You’re only dealt one hand of cards in life; you either play them to the best of your ability, or they play you. What’s interesting is that “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” doesn’t necessarily reject the notion of leaving the card game behind altogether. Sometimes sinking, not swimming, is the solution. This dismal outlook culminates in a gripping, eye-opening film, and in no way worsens it. A film doesn’t need to be agreeable to be good, and this film certainly abides by that philosophy.

“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” lacks an overarching, cohesive narrative, is too heavily reliant on symbolism, and has a main character that doesn’t do all that much; yet, it’s a film that has a lot to say and says it with such grandeur, flavor, and cleverness that it’s easy to overlook any one of these flaws.

A24 has done it yet again with “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” as the film is certain to be another of the production company’s signature indie horror hits.

4 STARS

joseph.johnson@thecrimson.com

FROM SUNDANCE

‘Bubble & Squeak’ Is Quirkiness Galore

BY KAI C. W. LEWIS CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Bubble and Squeak — the dish — is an English dish made of boiled cabbages and potatoes.

“Bubble & Squeak” — the film — is the debut feature of Evan Twohy which uses the unique sounds of the dish being cooked to characterize the complementary and conflicting dynamics of a relationship: the bubblers and the squeakers.

Set in a fictional pseudo-Slavic nation where cabbages have been outlawed and possession of said vegetable can result in violent punishments and death, newlywed Americans Delores (Sarah Goldberg) and Declan (Himesh Patel) must spend their honeymoon as outlaws when accused of smuggling cab -

The serendipitous timing of Max Walker-Silverman’s melancholic “Rebuilding” cannot be overstated, released as the loss experienced from the Los Angeles fires reverberates through the news.

Josh O’Connor plays a Coloradan rancher named Dusty who, after losing his home to a wildfire, finds solace in a FEMA camp with others who have lost their homes. He balances his fluctuating relationship with his former wife Ruby (Meghann Fahy) and daughter Callie Rose (Lily LaTorre).

“Rebuilding” is an intimate and quiet film that allows its emotional beats pool in the audience through the slow pacing, much like Walker-Silverman’s debut feature, “A Love Song,” which premiered at Sundance in 2022. In the hands of other directors, such patience could easily bore an audience. Yet Walker-Silverman’s sincerity for the characters and the story is so palpable that viewers lose themselves in the hopeful yet omnipotent nature of the American West.

Such sincerity is born from the tragedy that Walker-Silverman and his family had to endure. In an interview with IndieWire, Walker-Silverman said that his grandmother’s house in Colorado burned down in a terrible fire, but that it “brought the family together.”

bages into the country. Originally written for the theater, the synopsis is destined to attract filmgoers who seek out absurd and whimsical stories that aggrandize reality in order to make sense of it. In “Bubble & Squeak,” the cabbage is a polysemic entity. It predominantly frames itself as the inner burdens that individuals bring to a relationship but at other times represents the corrosive forces of American interventionism. The title becomes a characterization of the screwball yet highly endearing couple in the centre of all the cabbages: Delores as the imaginative and unfettered bubbler. Declan as the stringent and pedantic squeaker. Patel and Goldberg have complete conviction in their roles as they assimilate to the wackiness of Twohy’s world. Goldberg is the standout, as her comedic brilliance — already showcased in HBO’s “Barry” — is fleshed out through playing an overly naive version of Bonnie Parker.

Walker-Silverman balances this devastation and magic in “Rebuilding” by immersing the viewers in a dialectic philosophy where destruction sows the seeds for the creation of a community.

O’Connor returns to his roots of playing quiet, reserved characters (for example, Arthur in “La Chimera” and Johnny Saxby in “God’s Own Country”) after his Oscar-snubbed role as the unkempt and cunning Patrick Zweig in “Challengers.” He adopts a boyish frame for Dusty as though his adulthood burned along with his house and masterfully expresses sorrow with his eyes while attempting to find meaning amid his loss. Yet he undergoes a slow and almost indiscernible transformation as he claims his new home and reignites his relationship with his family that only a seasoned actor can accomplish.

In the hands of other directors, such patience could easily bore an audience.

His family, Ruby and Callie Rose, are given the opportunity to rekindle their relationships with Dusty. Once Dusty’s assumed absence from the family is broken, a certain awkwardness can be felt in their family dynamic that holds not monstrosity but curiosity about

Unfortunately, the audience’s ability to wholly invest themselves in “Bubble & Squeak” is hindered by how much of a pastiche Twohy’s film is, even if the characters and narrative are suitably entertaining.

Within the first few minutes of the film, the audience is invited into a world of perfectly symmetrical cinematography met with stilted, deadpan dialogue that ultimately reads as a synthesized work of Yorgos Lanthimos and Wes Anderson.

However, to Twohy’s credit, he manages to find his own voice in the final act.

T.S Elliot once said, “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal” — a phrase that Quentin Tarantino has adopted into his own creative process. For Twohy, in constructing such a

this lost father figure. When Dusty appears at Ruby’s doorstep, she is quietly bewildered by his presence. Callie Rose and Dusty’s first outing together lingers in prolonged silences. But any community portrayed in “Rebuilding” welcomes curiosity with towers of kindness.

LaTorre’s child performance as Callie Rose hints at a very successful future in her career for her wistful characterization that captures the traits of both her fictional parents. Lahy as Ruby and her character’s mother Bess (Amy Madigan) are also wonderfully magnetic and comforting presences in Walker-Silverman’s world, acting as assiduous anchors for Dusty’s lost soul.

Beyond the complicated portrayal of family, the highlight of “Rebuilding” is the ensemble of actors in the FEMA camp that display the resilience and autonomy to choose hope when home is out of reach. What makes this ensemble so captivating and moving to discover is how they transmogrify the most minute instances of affection into an enriching renewal of an audience’s heart. Nancy Morlan and Kathy Rose as an elderly couple in the camp are particularly moving with their joyful screen presence.

Mother and widow Mali (Kali Reis) is the first of Dusty’s new neighbors to casually invite him to dinner among his new community played by a group of talented local actors.

mimetic aesthetic, his original voice is completely overshadowed by the quirky filmic tapestry of bigger directors. This then creates an exhaustive watch for two-and-a-half acts where even the insanity of the plot never feels grounded in the director’s own vision. The film becomes mostly quirky for quirk’s sake.

Cinematographer Anna Smoronová directly cites Lanthimos as an influence for the visual elements of “Bubble & Squeak,” which is evident through the ultra-wide lenses that frame customs waiting rooms as entire, expounded worlds.

However, to Twohy’s credit, he manages to find his own voice in the final act, where his world-building and intentions are finally discernible beyond the familiar aesthetics. A majority of the film takes place in the unnamed country’s forest, a limbo of a setting because the whimsy of the world never physically manifests itself beyond the trees and lakes. Yet once the outlawed couple leave the for -

Reis plays Mali with the same dignity, grief, and skill as O’Connor, which makes her character beautifully earnest in a rare way. Even the visual language of the film is poignant, with cinematographer Alfonso Herrera Salcedo bringing a delicate and tactile relationship to the San Luis Valley reminiscent of Robby Müller’s desert work in Wim Wender’s “Paris, Texas.” Salcedo understands the unpredict-

ests and immerse themselves in the culture of this imagined land, Twohy’s intentions — in retrospect — and artistry truly shine.

“Bubble & Squeak” is a hyper-indie film where Twohy mainly executes an exhaustive style that oscillates between being creatively inventive and stylistically tedious. Yet this is also a story about a land that outlaws cabbages with an earnest relationship in its orbit, a combination that will never bore an audience even if it all seems rather familiar.

An honourable mention goes to the memorable Dave Franco, who braves the skin-suit of a bear to smuggle cabbages.

able sensibilities of nature and so visualizes the narrative with alternating shots of its monstrosity in barren woodlands and divinity through its enrapturing pink sunsets.

Walker-Silverman’s sophomore feature is proof that a director who cares about the material and understands the pulse of the film’s environment can create something universally captivating. “Rebuilding” is constantly gracious and kind,

FIFTEEN MINUTES 15

David A. Sinclair is a Professor in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

FM: To start out, you study aging and longevity — why do we age?

DAS: Well, scientists still debate what fundamentally causes aging, and there are at least a dozen socalled hallmarks of aging.

In my lab, we hypothesized that there’s an underlying cause of all of these hallmarks, which is a loss of information. We call it the information theory of aging. The theory is that we lose the two types of information in the cell over time. One is genetic, and the other, which we think is most important, epigenetic — the control systems that tell each cell which genes to switch on and switch off, and so that over time, our cells lose the ability to regulate their genes, and the cells lose their identity. They become dysfunctional, and they get diseases of aging. And the theory also predicts that aging will be reversible, because we have a backup copy of useful information in every cell.

FM: Mastering aging in humans may be quite a ways away. But how far are we from, say, an immortal mouse?

DAS: Oh, still, a long way from an immortal mouse. For the last 100 years, we’ve been working on this as a field, and the longest we’ve made a mouse to live is about three times longer.

Immortality seems a long way off currently, even for a mouse. We can’t even make an immortal yeast cell.

FM: If you could choose — how long would you like to live?

DAS: I would put it this way: If I remain healthy, then I can’t imagine there would be a day I would want to die.

I just have so much to do that I still haven’t achieved. Making a medicine that treats diseases of aging. Improving the health of children. Having aging declared a treatable medical condition.

FM: My sense is that anti-aging research has seemed to gain a lot of momentum recently. What do you think has enabled the field to grow so much?

Q&A:

DAVID SINCLAIR ON AGE REVERSAL, EXERCISE, AND IMMORTAL YEAST CELLS

THE HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL PROFESSOR sat down with Fifteen Minutes to discuss the genetics of aging, science in the media, the desire for immortality — and his very forthright grandmother.

BY COREY BECKER CRIMSON MAGAZINE EDITOR

er lost memories and improves memory in a model of Alzheimer’s disease — leading us to the hypothesis that diseases of aging, no matter what they are, can be cured, or at least treated, by making the body younger again. And then the body heals itself.

FM: What brought you into this specific field of medical research?

DAS: Well, it wasn’t really a field of much when I started.

My grandmother was a very forward-thinking — and also forward — person, and said, ‘David, one day I will die, your parents will die, your cat is going to be dead, and then you’ll die.’ And I was four years old, and that was a lot to take in at the moment, and I still remember that. My grandmother was a real influence on me. She inspired me to do great in the world. She had escaped from Hungary after World War II and saw the worst of humanity.

DAS: Three things happened. One is that the field advanced to a point where we were making a lot more progress. Given trials had started, I think it became more realistic that we could not just treat worms and flies and mice, but perhaps people one day.

The second thing that happened was the pandemic forced everybody to understand their mortality, even if they were young. That led to an increase in health and wellness interest and industry. And then the third is scientists. A few of us in the field wrote books, and those books sold well. My book has sold over a million copies, and I think that that has helped increase the public’s awareness of longevity as something that might be treatable.

FM: I know it takes a significant amount of time and due diligence to translate laboratory findings into something that can be safely used in the clinic, and my sense is that this has driven a lot of medical researchers to be somewhat guarded about what they say and the ways they share their research.

Do you think longevity researchers have been too cautious with what they share or not cautious enough? And how do you communicate promising research to the public in a way

that doesn’t overpromise?

DAS: It’s difficult to talk to the legacy media and not have words twisted or hyped, and I’ve experienced that my whole career. But it’s a trade off. I do feel that scientists have a responsibility to talk about the research that the public pays for with their taxes and to start a conversation in the public about the future and also the ethics of what’s going on.

I’ve accepted interviews on occasion with the media and been as honest and transparent as I could about the research. And I know that that frustrates some colleagues who believe that scientists shouldn’t be talking to reporters often when they call. But it is very difficult to stop the exaggeration, because that’s how the media works. And even if my colleagues and I would give the nuance that we don’t know much yet, the headline would often ignore the subtleties of what we were saying and make an outrageous claim — much to the chagrin of colleagues.

FM: Why do you think a lot of this work has been met with controversy?

DAS: One reason is the psychology

of it — that it was, until recently, considered selfish to talk about slowing down aging, because the prevailing view was that aging is something you have to accept.

But more and more in the public and in the medical profession, we no longer accept that it’s okay to go blind and deaf and to lose our memory at any age.

You know, another controversy is that the field has received a lot of media attention because it’s new, and it could be world changing, and secretly, many people want to live longer — even if they don’t admit it. And so there’s some resentment that the field got and continues to get media attention.

I’d say resentment from colleagues mainly, the public just doesn’t mind.

FM: To talk a little bit more about your research specifically, your research has led to some very promising therapeutic developments, perhaps the most prominent being vision restoration. Could you talk a little bit more about that work?

DAS: The information theory of aging predicts that every cell in our

bodies has a backup copy of information to be young again. We think that it’s epigenetic information, and we’re looking for where it’s stored. But we did discover — even without knowing where this backup copy of information is — how to turn it on, how to reinstall the software itself.

First of all, we showed that we could reverse aging, for the first time period, in an animal. Then we also showed that it led to improvements in the nerve function, and in the case of old age and glaucoma, marked improvements in vision.

So now we’re at the point where monkeys have been treated with the three-gene therapy, and their visual function has been improved. And if all goes well, the first blind patient will be treated in August of 2025.

In collaboration with George Church’s lab, we’ve been able to show that the lifespan of mice can be increased as well — which means it’s not just the eye that we can improve in health, it’s seemingly the entire animal.

Now we’re finding that reversing the age of a mouse’s brain allows it to learn again, and even seems to recov-

She thought that in my generation, we could reach our real potential — rather than fighting with each other, killing each other. So I was really inspired by my grandmother to make use of my life and to have as great an impact as I can. I think what’s still driving me — though she’s

FM:

DAS:

If

Harvard Blown Out 7-1

three weeks — but the Monday matchup proved a long night for the Aurora, Ont. native. On the powerplay twice in the first period, the Crimson brought its best hockey against freshman Terrier goalie Mikhail Yegorov, with Harvard reigning down nearly twice as many shots on net.

Athe 72nd annual Beanpot Tournament, the Harvard men’s ice hockey team (7-11-2, 6-72 ECAC) dropped the semifinal game to the Boston University Terriers (14-9-1, 10-5-1 HE) in a crushing 7-1 defeat. The Crimson faced the loss in front of a sparse crowd in TD Garden as part of the annual faceoff between Harvard, BU, Boston College and Northeastern. Able to start the game on time and score the first goal early in the first period, Harvard would go on to repeatedly turn the puck over and allow BU to penetrate the zone for easy scores in front of the net, which piled up in the second. Freshman goaltender Ben Charette began in net for the Crimson, his first Beanpot appearance, looking to snag his second win in

On the first powerplay opportunity, a puck battle in front of the net initiated by junior forward Joe Miller let the puck slide free and onto the stick of fellow junior forward Casey Severo who put it into the open net, giving the Crimson an early 1-0 advantage.

Harvard Head Coach Ted Donato ’91 praised Severo’s performance in an interview after the game.

“The two guys on his line right now can make plays in space and can make plays off the rush, but Casey really goes to the hard areas of the ice,” he said.

But Harvard’s success was short-lived. On the next chance it seemed as though Harvard was playing defense for most of the penalty kill.

Once cleared, the Terriers began to find its footing, and with five minutes left in the period strung together a play beginning behind Charette’s net. The puck was carried by senior BU forward Jack Hughes who passed it off to junior

forward Devin Kaplan, who then tucked it just over the goaltender’s left pad. The Crimson came back on the ice playing well through the first few minutes. They shut down crucial BU passes in front of the Harvard net and entered the zone seemingly as well as it did in the first.

For the rest of the period, though, the Crimson was unable to withstand the Terriers’ pressure — allowing 5 goals in the second period alone.

“I thought in the first period, we kind of took the plays that were right in front of us and made them have to play in their own zone, and I think we got away from that and tried to force some pucks in the middle,” Donato said of the team’s slip in performance.

“They’re a team that’s super dangerous off the rush,” he added.

“And then once they get you in their zone with their D being as offensive and as mobile as they are they’re going to be able to hold you in there and get some great chances.”

A careless high-sticking call against sophomore forward Ben MacDonald put a stop to the Crimson momentum and gave BU its first powerplay of the night.

It took just the opening seconds of the attack for the Terriers

to capitalize on Harvard’s mistake.

Sophomore forward Shane LaChance scored his 9th goal of the season from a pass in front of the net before knocking the puck miraculously through Charette’s legs, hitting the top corner.

A routine push up-ice for the Terriers, also in the first six minutes, presented another opportunity to increase the lead.

Freshman BU defenseman Cole Hutson carried the puck from the blue line into the offensive zone, making a forehand-backhand deke in front of the net before forcing it through the arm of the goaltender. BU now led 3-1 with still over half a game to be played.

Hutson’s success in his first Beanpot meant all the more to the Chicago, Ill. native as the third Hutson brother to play in the tournament as a Terrier. His older brother Lane Hutson is one of the top rookies in the National Hockey League playing for the Montreal Canadiens, and junior Quinn Hutson plays alongside his brother.

“I mean, super excited,” said the youngest Hutson of his chance to win a Beanpot. “Obviously got a chance to do something Lane hasn’t done. So hopefully we can get a win.” Crimson sophomore forward

Cam Johnson did his best to bring the team back into the game with his positioning on the ice, setting up a handful of Harvard shots on Yegorov, but all were defended well.

The collapse continued as Harvard allowed another three goals in the period from Sophomore Terrier forward Jack Harvey, Kaplan and Quinn Hutson. The Crimson finished down 6-1 on the scoreboard with a -15 shot differential on the game.

Harvard settled down in the final period, but, despite earning another powerplay chance, it could not get a goal to go.

Shot attempts in front of the net, from the blue line, and several moments of prolonged offensive zone time failed to make the BU defense and goaltender budge.

A penalty against freshman forward Will Hughes and a second goal for BU’s Hutson would finish the night for Harvard.

Harvard hopes to at least keep pace with the loser of the Northeastern-BC matchup next Monday after tonight’s disastrous loss.

“We’ll try to take what we need to take from this game and then flush it and move on to the next one,” Donato said.

After scoring 27 points in his first collegiate game for the Crimson, first-year guard Robert Hinton immediately turned his focus to the Cornell game, where his older brother Adam, now a junior, would soon be taking the court.

“To this day, he’s still the best role model, his personality, his character,” reflected Hinton. “He’s a really relentless guy, and he pushes me so much, and I can’t wait to beat him twice this year,” Hinton added with a grin.

Hinton will have to wait for his first win over his older brother, however, as the Big Red generated a second half-storm Saturday night to blow past the Crimson, 7560, in the first back-to-back weekend of the Ivy season.

Harvard (7-12, 2-4 Ivy) came into its matchup with Cornell (136, 5-1 Ivy) less than 24 hours after securing a hard fought 90-82 victory over Columbia (11-7, 0-5 Ivy) at Levien Gymnasium in New York City. Needing a win against the Lions to stay on pace for a spot in the Ivy Madness tournament, the Crimson were led by massive offensive performances from Hinton and junior captain Chandler Piggé, who scored 28 and 26 points respectively, both career-highs.

Piggé continued to show why head coach Tommy Amaker has repeatedly called him the team’s MVP, also adding a team-high eight rebounds, three assists, and three steals.

“We played hard,” Hinton reflected after the game. “The coaches had told us before the game that it would be a game of runs. We

came out really fast at the start. Columbia fought back, but I thought we showed a lot of fight and a lot of composure — except for the end maybe.”

Harvard led for all but 26 seconds of the contest, although it let its lead slip from 13 to seven in the closing minutes of the game, giving the hosts a glimmer of hope.

Any signs of fatigue from the night before were not visible at tipoff on Saturday, as the Crimson rushed out to a 12 point lead against Cornell inside five minutes.

Sophomore forward Thomas Batties II imposed himself on the game, scoring 10 points, including a pair of three-pointers to help the Crimson into a 32-23 lead with four minutes to play in the first half.

Despite Harvard’s early momentum, the Big Red were able to gain a footing, scoring the last sev-

en points of the half, and five more unanswered to start the second, taking its first lead of the game 3532. Cornell would stretch that 12-0 run into an extended 22-2 run, leaving Harvard with an 11-point deficit, 45-34, and 15 minutes to play.

Without sophomore forward Luka Ace-Nasteski, Harvard were at times overpowered by Cornell’s big men, ultimately being outscored 44-26 in the paint.

Despite its best efforts, the Crimson could not regain the momentum they started the game with in front of the roaring Cornell crowd.

The Big Red would stretch its lead to as much as 20 points and never let Harvard within three possessions.

The Crimson heads to Dartmouth (9-10, 3-3 Ivy) next Saturday. Six games into the Ivy League season, Yale (13-6, 6-0 Ivy), Cor-

nell, and Princeton (15-6, 4-2

Ivy) seem to have a firm grip on three of four Ivy Madness spots, with Dartmouth currently holding the fourth spot over Harvard, Brown (10-9, 2-4 Ivy), and Penn (6-13, 2-4 Ivy), by just one win.

Harvard will hope to pull even with Dartmouth in the standings, before a Valentine’s Day rematch against the Big Red in Cambridge the following week.

MEN’S BASKETBALL

Jones Makes NFL Debut

FORMER FOOTBALL

CAPTAIN Truman Jones

‘23 reflects on his NFL debut with the New England Patriots, his journey from the Kansas City Chiefs, and his aspirations for the 2025 season.

BY PRAVEEN KUMAR

On Jan. 5, former Harvard Football captain and defensive end Truman Jones ’23 accomplished every young football player’s professional dream: taking the field in a regular season matchup for the first time in his career.

Ahead of their last regular season matchup against the Buffalo Bills, the New England Patriots signed Jones to the 53-man roster.

Jones described the experience as a major milestone in his professional career — and a goal he’d been pursuing for years.

“The emotions were just all over the place, but the main thing was just joy,” Jones said. “I remember looking around and just feeling myself smiling all game even though it was 30 degrees and pretty windy. I was in a good mood, in good spirits.”

“Now, being out here with a helmet on for the first time in an NFL game on a Sunday felt really special,” he added.“I was really taking it all in.”

Jones joined the Kansas City Chiefs as an undrafted free agent in 2023 following his graduation from Harvard. The 6-foot-3, 250 pound defensive end spent all of last season and part of this season with the reigning Super Bowl champions, winning a ring himself.

Jones, who was elevated from the practice squad, joined the Patriots on Dec. 3rd after being released from the Chiefs just a week earlier.

Despite not playing in the regular season with the Chiefs, Jones still appreciates the importance of his time with the organization and being a part of a winning culture.

“I was just enjoying gameday and that’s something that I think not playing on gamedays really teaches you for so long is just how to enjoy the moment, enjoy the atmo-

sphere,” he said.

and

think pre-snap, but after a certain point, you have to turn your mind off and really just lock in and focus on being as explosive, as powerful, and as forceful as possible,”

After making an active roster for the first time in his career, Jones hopes to carry momentum into the 2025 regular season, particularly in a weaker unit that ranked 27th in hurries and last in sacks this season.

Jones enters the offseason as an exclusive rights free agent, meaning that the Patriots are in a position to offer him a one year, league-minimum contract. If the Foxborough-based organization offers this tender, Jones would not be eligible to negotiate with other teams. However, if the Patriots decline to offer him an EFRA tender, Jones will become an unrestricted free agent.

Just over two years ago, Jones donned a number 90 Crimson jersey with a block “C” in the top left corner. The memories and lessons he learned in Cambridge still stick with him as he works his way up the ladder in the NFL.

“Being the captain at Harvard was just such a unique position, but I think one thing it taught me was how to lean on other people to lead and to get people on the same page and that’s something now, a skill that I feel like I have is just the ability to read a locker room to see who has been here the longest, and who knows what,” Jones said. As a pass rusher for the Crimson, Jones appeared in 30 games and recorded 28.5 sacks along with 88 total tackles. In addition to leading the league in tackles for loss during his senior campaign, Jones was unanimously named to the AllIvy League first team and won the Bushnell Cup, honoring the best defensive player in the Ivy League.

Now, Jones’ attention is immediately turning to the offseason, where he hopes to enjoy some time with family, but quickly get back to work ahead of the 2025 season.

“Every offseason is big just in terms of recovering the body, but then also becoming bigger, faster, and stronger,” he said. “I feel like now I have a clearer sense of what the Patriots are looking for in terms of a defensive end or outside linebacker, and so I can really just kinda transform my body to be that.”

praveen.kumar@thecrimson.com

Columbia Stifles Harvard Comeback

In the biggest game of the Ivy League season so far, Columbia (15-4, 6-0 Ivy) bested Harvard (153, 4-2) 80-71 at Lavietes Pavilion in the Crimson’s worst defensive outing of the season. Four Lionesses scored double figures, including 26 points from Riley Weiss and 22 points from Kitty Henderson. The loss extends Harvard’s regular season losing streak against Columbia to six years, with the last triumph dating back to February 8, 2019.

“That team did what we typically do to other teams,” coach Moore said. “Need a bit more from our upperclassmen in terms of their leadership from playmaking, toughness, vocalness, all of it. We’re learning right now… we can be a much better version of ourselves.” Senior Harmoni Turner and junior Saniyah Glenn-Bello led the Crimson offense with 21 points and

16 points, respectively. Glenn-Bello and junior Gabby Anderson maintained a strong defensive presence, racking up three steals each. Despite her final total, Columbia did a good job of limiting Turner, who put up most of her points in the fourth quarter with the game out of hand.

“My hope for her is she can dictate more than she allows good, physical teams in our league to dictate what she does,” said Moore.

“She’s got to find ways to get to her spots, that’s what really good players do.” Though the matchup was billed as No. 1 offense versus No. 1 defense, Columbia played like it held both accolades, forcing seven turnovers and shooting 50% in the first quarter.

“When talent meets talent, there has to be an edge of some sort,” said Moore. “Against them, we just don’t play smart enough. We didn’t get to places we needed to because of the press.” Anderson gave Harvard’s only lead of the game when she stripped

the ball and took it coast to coast, sending Lavietes into a frenzy. The raucous crowd did not faze the Lions who continued pressing to force turnovers and fuel a 7-0 run.

Despite a Harvard timeout, Columbia continued to attack all areas of the floor, extending its lead to 18-7. Turner and sophomore Karlee White offered spurts of success on offense but Weiss’s 10 point quarter, including a buzzer beating floater to end the quarter, left Columbia in front 23-14.

Harvard started the quarter strong with freshman Lydia Chatira knocking down a pull up jumper and the defense forcing a shot clock violation. Glenn-Bello took charge of the offense, converting a three-point play and another layup to cut the deficit to 27-23. Columbia capitalized on consecutive turnovers from Harvard’s offense to balloon the lead to 31-23. A timeout briefly helped the Crimson as a Turner triple and senior Elena Rodriguez’s layup closed the gap to 33-28. The Lions responded with another 7-0

run, reaching its largest lead of the game. Desperately needing a basket, Chatira battled through contact and layed the ball in, ending Harvard’s scoring drought and cutting the deficit to 40-30 for halftime.

Columbia’s Henderson muscled her way inside for a scoop layup then intercepted an errant Turner pass for another layup, extending the Lions lead to 44-30. The Crimson continued to struggle with the Lions’ press, unable to string together consistently productive possessions. Twice, Harvard cut the lead to single digits, but the Lions steady offense pulled through, extending the lead to 6046 heading into the fourth quarter.

The Lions shot a perfect 6-for6 over the first three minutes of the quarter, gaining an insurmountable 73-54 lead. The Lavietes crowd did not abandon their Crimson, cheering on massive play one after another as Harvard strung together a 10-0 run and unlocked the bonus with four minutes left trailing 73-64.

Columbia’s offense found its form once again, not allowing Harvard to close the gap further.

A late three pointer by Turner cut the lead to 78-71, but with only 20 seconds remaining, the Crimson would need a miracle to win. The Lions denied any miracle, closing the game on top 80-71.

“I love that they fought at the end,” Moore said about her team.

“I feel we’re so much better than what we just showed. I hope it mo-

Harmoni Turner huddles with her team. COURTESY OF HARVARD ATHLETICS

Hasty Pudding Honors Cynthia Erivo and Jon Hamm

BY CRIMSON MULTIMEDIA STAFF