Year in Review 2022

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The Harvard Crimson

MAY 2022

COMMENCEMENT 2022

Year in Review

Harvard and the Fight for Foreign Collaboration PAGE 20

H A R VA R D A N D WA R

‘A N O P E N S E C R E T ’

T H E FA L L O F T H E U C

When Russia invaded Ukraine, affiliates with ties to the region reacted with anguish and activism.

H A R VA R D C O R P O R AT I O N

Harvard graduate students decry the pervasive nature of harassment and neglect from faculty.

Throughout its 40-year history, the UC grappled with infighting, inefficiency, dysfunction, and scandal.

Penny S. Pritzker prepares to lead the Harvard Corporation into its next chapter.

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L E G A C Y O F S L AV E R Y

Descendants and advocates seek clarity in Harvard’s $100 million pledge to redress its legacy of slavery.

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The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

Year in Review STAFF MANAGING EDITOR Jasper G. Goodman ‘23 ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITORS Kelsey J. Griffin ’23 Taylor C. Peterman ’23-’24 SECTION EDITORS Brie K. Buchanan ’22-’23 Noah J. Caza ’22-’23 Maliya V. Ellis ’23-’24 Alex M. Koller ’22-’23 Simon J. Levien ’23-’24 Sophia S. Liang ’23 Virginia L. Ma ’23 Hannah J. Martinez ’23 Kevin A. Simauchi ’21-’22 DESIGN EDITORS Camille G. Caldera ’22 Nayeli Cardozo ‘25 Emily N. Dial ‘25 Toby R. Ma ’24 Sophia Salamanca ‘25 Sophia C. Scott ’25 Madison A. Shirazi ‘23 Matthew J. Tyler ’22 COVER DESIGNER Madison A. Shirazi ‘23

Contents

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Year in Headlines The biggest stories, craziest scoops, and hottest takes of 2021-2022, as told by the headlines of The Crimson.

Decades after the landmark statute prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex was enacted, the work towards gender equity remains unfinished.

Year in Quotes The most memorable words, remarks, and witticisms that made onto the pages of The Crimson of 2021-2022.

Year(s) in Covid A look back at how Covid-19 impacted Harvard in 2020-2021 and 2021-2022, from case counts to campus capacity.

How Covid Changed Harvard Harvard has lifted all its campus Covid-19 restrictions. But the impact of the pandemic on students’ social and academic lives is lasting.

PHOTO EDITORS Cara J. Chang ’24 Angela Dela Cruz ’24 Julian J. Giordano ’25 Aiyana G. White ’23 TECH EDITORS Felicia Roman ’23 Justin Y. Ye ’24 PRESIDENT Raquel Coronell Uribe ‘22-’23

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Fifty Years of Title IX

Harvard and War When Russia invaded Ukraine, Harvard affiliates with close ties to the countries reacted with anguish and activism.

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‘An Open Secret’ In the wake of the Comaroff controversy, graduate students say power-based abuse by faculty pervades advising relations.

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Fight for Foreign Collaboration

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The Fall of the UC

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Harvard has emerged as a key player — both target and advocate — in the regulatory battle over how the government should oversee foreign collaboration.

In March, Harvard undergraduates voted overwhelmingly to dissolve their student government.

Its downfall was a long time coming.

The Corporation’s New Chapter As lawyer William F. Lee ’72 steps down, incoming senior fellow Penny S. Pritzker prepares to lead the Harvard Corporation into its next era.

The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

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Student, postdoc, and faculty parents risk financial strain and career setbacks due to the child care offerings at Harvard, they say.

Cambridge’s Housing Crisis More than 20,000 Cambridge residents are currently on the waitlist for the city’s limited number of affordable homes.

How did the city get here?

The People of Allston-Brighton The Crimson interviewed five residents of Allston-Brighton about Harvard’s impact on their rapidly changing neighborhood.

Graduating into a Pandemic For the Classes of 2020 and 2021, graduating from Harvard meant entering a pandemic-stricken post-grad world.

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Does Harvard Care About Child Care?

Year in Photos From Convocation and Head of the Charles to the Hasty Pudding Parade and Housing Day, see how traditions came back to life in 2021-2022.

Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery

Harvard committed $100 million to reckoning with its ties to slavery, but advocates and descendants have questions about the unprecedented pledge.

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Unstandardized Admissions

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Harvard Without Affirmative Action?

Stakeholders throughout higher education — and Harvard itself — are split on the role that standardized tests like the SAT and GRE should play in admissions.

With the Supreme Court on the precipice of striking down affirmative action in higher education, the fate of Harvard College in a world without race-conscious admissions policies remains unclear.

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YEAR IN HEADLINES 2021-2022

June

July

August

Affiliates Celebrate University’s Expanded Pride Programming

In Historic First, Student-Athletes Can Profit Off of Name, Image, and Likeness

CAMHS Launches 24/7 Mental Health Hotline for Harvard Students

Record-High 85% of Admits Join Class of 2025 and 1,962 Freshman to Enroll

Harvard Restores Prof. Fryer’s Roles After Sexual Harassment Suspension

Law School Reveals New Seal, Replacing Crest With Ties to Slavery

Prof. Urton Barred From Campus After Sexual Misconduct Investigation

University to Maintain Indoor Mask Mandate As Delta Varient Cases Climb

‘Excited’ and ‘Ecstatic,’ Students Return to Full Capacity Campus

September

October

November

Harvard Students Return to the Classroom After 18 Months

In an Oversight, Thousands of Private University Documents Left Vulnerable

Cheng and de Kanter Ride ‘Defund the UC’ Platform to Victory

Harvard Will Move to Divest its Endowment from Fossil Fuels

Harvard’s Endowment Soars to $53.2 Billion, Reports 33.6% Returns

Last-Minute Comeback Lifts Football to 34-31 Win Over Yale in 137th Game

Bee Club Buzzes into Former Café Pamplona Location

Graduate Students on Strike Begin Picketing in Harvard Yard, Longwood

Harvard Grad Student Union Ratifies 4-Year Contract With 70.6% Approval

January

February

December College Suspends Standardized Testing Requirement for Next 4 Years

Prof. Comaroff Placed on Leave After Harassment, Misconduct Inquiries

Lawsuit Alleges Univ. Ignored Sexual Harassment Complaints About Comaroff

Harvard Will Move Operations Remote for First 3 Weeks of January

Supreme Court to Take Up Challenges to Affirmative Action at Harvard, UNC

35 Professors Retract Signatures from Letter in Support of Comaroff

Harvard Prof. Charles Lieber Found Guilty of Lying About China Ties

Harvard Students Return to Changed Campus Covid Restrictions

Penny Pritzker to Serve as First Female Senior Fellow of Harvard Corporation

April

May

March

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Harvard to Lift Indoor Mask Mandate on March 14

Gay ‘Thrilled’ to Invite First Ethnic Studies Faculty, Expand Programs

Harvard Faculty Vote to Eliminate Shopping Week

Ketanji Brown Jackson Pledges to Recuse Herself from SFFA Case

Harvard Will Stop Requiring Covid-19 Testing by May 10

Students Hold Dueling Rallies Following Leaked Abortion Opinion

Harvard Students Vote to Dissolve the Undergraduate Council

Landmark Univ. Report Details How Slavery ‘Powerfully Shaped Harvard’

The Crimson Faces Backlash Over Editorial Endorsing BDS Movement

YEAR IN QUOTES 2021-2022 August 2021

September 20221

November 20221

It’s crazy to walk into a dining hall and see all the faces that, for so long, you almost have forgotten existed. [...] To be reintroduced to everyone has been fantastic, and it’s brought a lot of energy and hope back.

So long as Harvard follows through, this is divestment. [...]

This is what they told us for a decade they couldn’t do, and today, the students, faculty, and alumni have been vindicated.

Now that the contract is ratified we enter a new phase in our union’s history. [...] We are excited to enforce our contract on the strongest terms possible.

NICHOLAS J. BRENNAN ’23 Returning to campus for the first time since 2020

CONNOR CHUNG ’23 Organizer with Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard, reacting to the news that Harvard will move to divest its endowment from fossil fuels

HGSU-UAW BARGAINING COMMITTEE After ratifying its first-ever four-year contract with the University

December 2021

January 2022

February 2022

There is now no question that Charles Lieber lied to federal investigators and to Harvard in an attempt to hide his participation in the Chinese Thousand Talents Program. [...] He lied to the IRS about the money he was paid, and he concealed his Chinese bank account from the United States.

The jury followed the evidence and the law to a just verdict.

The Supreme Court decision to review the unanimous decisions of the lower federal courts puts at risk 40 years of legal precedent granting colleges and universities the freedom and flexibility to create diverse campus communities.

Harvard’s continued failure to act on repeated reports of harassment against Professor Comaroff—until spurred to do so by the media—demonstrates an institutional policy of indifference: a system designed to protect the University, its reputation, and the faculty who sustain that reputation at the expense of its students.

NATHANIEL R. MENDELL Acting U.S. Attorney for District of Massachusetts, in a statement after the conviction of Chemistry Professor Charles Lieber

LAWRENCE S. BACOW University President, in a message to affiliates after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which alleges racial bias against Asian Americans in the admissisons processes used by the College

LAWSUIT AGAINST HARVARD Filed by grad students Margaret G. Czerwienski, Lilia M. Kilburn, and Amulya Mandava, who allege Harvard ignored complaints of sexual harassment by Anthropology Professor John Comaroff

February 2022

April 2022

April 2022

We failed to appreciate the impact that this would have on our students, and we were lacking full information about the case. We are committed to all students experiencing Harvard as a safe and equitable institution for teaching and learning.

I was elected on the signature promise of dissolving and replacing the Undergraduate Council. Since that’s been fulfilled, I must step aside so we can turn to our next chapter.

...the truth is that slavery played a significant part in our institutional history. Enslaved people worked on our campus supporting our students, faculty, and staff, including several Harvard presidents.

The labor of enslaved people both far and near enriched numerous donors and, ultimately, the institution.

RETRACTION LETTER From 34 faculty members who signed a letter of support for Professor John Comaroff prior to a lawsuit that expanded on the allegations of sexual harassment against him

MICHAEL Y. CHENG ‘22 Former President of the Undergraduate Council, explaining his decision to resign soon after students passed a referendum to dissolve and replace the UC

LAWRENCE S. BACOW University President, in an email to affiliates about the report on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery

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YEAR IN COVID-19 2020-2021 March 10, 2020

Harvard Sends Students Home

Spring 2020

On Campus: Exceptional Cases Only Coursework: Virtual

Fall 2020

May 2020

First-Ever Virtual Commencement

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On Campus: Class of 2024 Coursework: Virtual Masking: Mandatory Testing: Mandatory, 3x/week Dining: Grab-and-Go

Spring 2021

On Campus: Some of Class of 2021 + 2022 Coursework: Virtual Masking: Mandatory Testing: Mandatory, 3x/week Dining: Grab-and-Go

YEAR IN COVID-19 2021-2022

Fall 2021

May 2021

Harvard Mandates Covid Vaccine

August 2021

Faculty and Staff Return to Campus

On Campus: All Classes Coursework: In Person Masking: Mandatory Testing: Mandatory, 2-3x/week Dining: Mixed

Spring 2022

On Campus: All Classes Coursework: In Person Masking: Optional as of March 14 Testing: Optional as of April 28 Dining: Mixed

Since January 2020

Massachusetts

United States

Worldwide

1,840,000+ Cases

85,000,000+ Cases

527,000,000+ Cases

20,000+ Deaths

1,000,000+ Deaths

6,300,000+ Deaths

14,700,000+ Vaccine Doses Administered

583,000,000+ Vaccine Doses Administered

12,200,000,000+ Vaccine Doses Administered 7

The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

How Covid-19 Transformed Harvard Harvard has lifted all its campus Covid-19 restrictions. But the impact of the pandemic is lasting.

SOPHIA C. SCOTT—CRIMSON DESIGNER

By KENNETH GU and LEAH J. TEICHHOLTZ

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CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

arvard’s campus has undergone a series of radical transformations over the course of the pandemic. From last year’s sparsely populated dorms to this year’s masked instruction, current students have seen a Harvard unlike any other.

A few vaccines later, a sense of normalcy finally seems to be around the corner.

By mid-March, students entered classrooms maskless. By exam period, they no longer received Covid-19 testing reminders. Upperclassmen stormed freshman dorms on Housing Day, undergrads bore it all for Primal Scream, and Swae Lee lit up Harvard Yard for Yardfest. Students flowed into lecture halls for hourslong exams, and seniors will receive their diplomas at an in-person Commencement this week.

But despite much of the Harvard experience returning to its pre-pandemic state, many affiliates have remarked on the profound effects the remote year has had on the school’s academics, social scene, and more.

One fact is certain: Harvard will never be the same.

Here are six ways affiliates say Covid-19 transformed Harvard.

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1. Some extracurriculars lost institutional memory.

Graduating seniors are the only class on campus to have experienced a year at Harvard uninterrupted by Covid-19.

First-Year Outdoor Program leader Lisa Wang ’22-’23 said she believes there has been a “loss of institutional knowledge” in her organization because most FOP leaders, despite being “wellequipped to lead,” have never actually been on a trip.

Alec J. Fischthal ’21-’22, who was a head delegate for Harvard’s Model United Nations, also said his club has seen a loss of institutional memory.

“That resulted in a social experience and a club experience that was a little less robust,” Fischthal said. “You look back to the good old days and you’re like, ‘Man, I missed that.’”

Others, whose clubs were highly dependent on in-person experiences, have watched membership dwindle.

“We used to travel a lot abroad, but because of Covid, the club has kind of died,” said Simon Arango ’22, former president of the Harvard College Japan Initiative.

Still, some students saw a silver lining to this loss of institutional memory in the form of new opportunities for tradition-building within campus organizations.

“It enabled a cultural reset for a lot of groups that are now seeing a large uptick in membership since we’re now back in person,” Abigail J.H. Ory ’21-’23 said.

“People really want to be doing this stuff and everyone is just so excited.”

Some student-athletes also reported feeling a renewed sense of motivation and commitment upon returning to in-person training.

“When we were finally able to compete as a team again, I think that our individual and collective level of play was a lot higher,” said Jay T. Driver ’24, a pitcher on the baseball team. “That was a product of everybody on the team buying into the idea that — rather than be upset about losing two years — to use it to our advantage of really developing as players.”

2. As house life faltered, final clubs and off-campus spaces solidified their monopoly on Harvard’s social scene.

On any given pre-pandemic Saturday night, one could find undergrads partying in staple house spaces like the Mather Junior Common Room, the Currier Treehouse, or the Pforzheimer Igloo.

Due to Covid-19 restrictions, many of these spaces were temporarily shuttered.

But even now that the rules have relaxed, some say Harvard’s once-vibrant house

social scene has lost its grip on students’ Saturday nights.

Mather House Committee chair Ailie S. Johnson ’24 said her group has attempted to bolster house spirit and boost engagement in events post-pandemic, despite challenges.

“Covid definitely changed a lot of our traditions,” Johnson said. “People weren’t as engaged with a lot of the house stuff, and now we’re just rebuilding it.”

On top of that, the population of students living off-campus more than doubled last fall.

“Not only do you have that institutional memory leaving with people graduating, but some people who are seniors aren’t even in the houses — they’re in off-campus apartments,” Katyon Rotenberg ’23 said.

With a mask mandate and other restrictions in place into the spring, socializing in Harvard’s houses was significantly constrained. Meanwhile, final clubs could do as they pleased.

“The only places that were able to have parties were final clubs because they had their own space,” Jahnavi S. Rao ’22 said.

“I don’t think that’s good — it feels very dangerous.”

Joseph T. Johnson ’21-’22 said the impact of pandemic restrictions on Harvard’s social scene was exacerbated by the College’s move to drop its controver-

The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

sial sanctions on single-gender social organizations in June 2020. Johnson believes this increased the social capital of final clubs.

“The University had this goal — decrease the potency of clubs and their effect on social life on campus,” Johnson said. “And five years later now, they’re probably more powerful than they’ve been in 10 years.”

Without the Mather JCR and shut out from the Spee, freshmen have flocked to off-campus spaces, like the Tasty Burger basement — affectionately known as “Tasty Basty” — which clubs and sports teams rent out for socials.

“Finals clubs are not as accessible to first-years, so I feel like that’s part of the reason you see so many first-years in Tasty Basty,” said Mallory E. Rogers ’25, a Tasty Burger basement frequenter. “If it’s going to be really hard to get into a party, I don’t know if I want to go. That’s part of the thing with Tasty Basty — you just walk in.”

“That’s the fun of it,” she added.

3. The College reconsidered widely-beloved traditions.

SOPHIA C. SCOTT—CRIMSON DESIGNER

Though unclear if Covid-19 was a catalyst or a coincidence, some of Harvard’s decades-old institutions met their demise over the past two years.

This semester, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted to end shopping week, a long-time scheduling quirk that allowed students to sample classes before they began. Although the faculty committee that reviewed shopping week was established in 2019, some students charged that Covid contributed to the loss of shopping week, which has not occurred in-person since early 2020.

“Shopping week was a really unique and special thing about the school,” R a o

said. “I think [Harvard] used Covid as a nice smokescreen, and it just went away.”

FAS spokesperson Rachael Dane declined to comment on student criticisms about the end of shopping week.

Dorm Crew, a 70-year old program that employed students to clean dorm bathrooms, completely halted throughout the pandemic. It will resume next semester, but with a smaller cohort of students doing audiovisual work.

Some students charged that the College used the pandemic as an opportunity to end the controversial program.

Harvard spokesperson Michael Conner has previously declined to comment on student criticisms regarding changes to Dorm Crew throughout the pandemic.

4. Zoom created greater academic flexibility.

The basement of Tasty Burger — dubbed “Tasty Basty” by students — has become a popular off-campus party space. ANGELA DELA CRUZ—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Even though most of Harvard’s classes have returned to in-person instruction, Zoom is not a relic of the past.

Instead, many classes now offer students the option to attend lectures virtually when they are sick.

“I myself Zoomed into some in-person classes a number of times, which was actually really helpful because it meant that even though I missed a day, I didn’t miss a lecture,” Ory said.

Juhee Goyal ’22, who has served as a teaching fellow in engineering and physics classes, said the ability to host office hours remotely has made it more convenient for students to attend.

“They’d be all the way in the [Science and Engineering Complex] and not a lot of people would want to go, so having the hybrid option — like having Zoom office hours — helps that,” Goyal said. “If you have one small question, you won’t have to trek all the way to the SEC.” Since classes resumed in-person, Hayato Shiotsu ’22 has had more take-home tests and Zoom options for class sections, a change he said was “pretty nice.”

Arango, who has taken Japanese classes all four years at Harvard, said the department’s pedagogy itself has changed since the onset of the pandemic.

“Before, you had to memorize how to write the Chinese characters, but now you don’t because all the assignments are on Google Docs and the exams are online,” Arango explained.

5. Parts of Harvard went hybrid.

After more than a year of Zoom, some of Harvard has adapted to the digital age for good.

Hannah A. Bottarel ’24, who chairs the Institute of Politics’ John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, said there have been ongoing discussions with the IOP’s Senior Advisory Committee about how the organization will look post-Covid, even as in-person events took place this year.

“We also are able to do more virtual and hybrid Forums, which has been actually really cool in bringing in more international perspectives and bringing in people who maybe wouldn’t be able to come to the Forum space,” Bottarel said.

The move to online has extended to Harvard’s workers. Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers director Bill Jaeger said he believes the increasing adoption of hybrid work is “revolutionary.”

“Our members will report that they’re settling into hybrid arrangements, which are expected to continue indefinitely,” Jaeger said. “For a lot of our members, that’s awesome.”

6. Greater attention is paid to mental health and wellness.

This semester, wait times for therapy appointments with Harvard’s Counseling and Mental Health Services reached six weeks as demand soared. Still, some affiliates described a greater emphasis on supporting student wellness and mental health since the start of the pandemic.

“It was a big adjustment for me going

to online school, and then it was a big adjustment for me coming back,” Ory said.

“It was definitely a semester of regaining my foothold on how to actually be a student again.”

Kevin Huang ’22 noted that he has felt an “increase in empathy” among professors and hopes that it will continue beyond the pandemic.

“I think professors are willing to show more flexibility and understanding,” Huang said. “A lot of professors understand what their students are going through at a more personal level.”

Ian J. Miller, a history professor and Cabot House faculty dean, said he hopes this understanding remains after the pandemic.

“I hope that it’s one of the legacies of this opening phase of the pandemic — that we continue to focus on well-being and to recognize it and normalize appropriate responses to student mental health needs,” Miller said.

For better or for worse, many Harvard students, faculty, and staff said they believe the pandemic has left many legacies on the school — ones that won’t go away with the masks.

College Dean Rakesh Khurana said in a May interview that he believes the pandemic has induced a change in philosophy about the importance of Harvard’s residential experience.

“After chalk, probably one of the most important pedagogical devices in the world is the dining table,” he said. “And I think we will never take that for granted again.” kenneth.gu@thecrimson.com leah.twwweichholtz@thecrimson.com

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The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

Harvard and War

When Russia invaded Ukraine earlier this year, Harvard affiliates with close ties to the two countries reacted with tears, motivation to take action, and frustration for what they see as an inadequate response from the University.

SOPHIA SALAMANCA—CRIMSON DESIGNER

By MILES J. HERSZENHORN

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CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

ika O. Rudenko ’24 and her family first became war refugees in 2014 when she was 13 and forced to flee her hometown of Donetsk, Ukraine.

The second time was on the night of Feb. 23, when Russia began its latest war against Ukraine. Rudenko was in her Mather House suite when friends began sending condolences by text message. She

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checked the news, lay down on the floor of the common room, and bawled. Her parents, asleep in their apartment in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, at first didn’t believe her when she called and said they were under attack.

“It was just horrible,” she said. “They were like, ‘No, nothing is gonna happen, we’re good, everything is safe.’”

“Unfortunately, nothing was good anymore,” Rudenko said.

As the academic year draws to a close,

however, there is still no end in sight. Russia’s efforts to capture Kyiv failed, but Russian forces occupy Ukrainian territory, including the destroyed city of Mariupol, which provides a land bridge to Crimea.

Meanwhile, fighting is still fierce in the eastern Donbass regions. Thousands of civilians have been killed and more than 7 million Ukrainians displaced. Thousands of Russians — especially opposition politicians and journalists — have also fled their homes, fearing persecution and im-

prisonment.

Rudenko, co-president of Harvard Ukrainian Student Association, is one of a dozen Harvard affiliates with close ties to Ukraine or Russia who said that they initially reacted to news of the war with tears, but that their despair quickly turned to a determination to find a way to support Ukraine from halfway across the world.

This drive to speak out against the invasion has been coupled with growing

The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

the war was musical. He demonstrated his support for Ukraine by playing the country’s national anthem on the Lowell Bells the day the war started.

Kent, who is half Crimean Tatar, said he passed Lowell House when walking back to his dorm from class and decided “if there’s any day to play the Ukrainian anthem, now it’d be the day.”

“It was probably one of the most immediate things that I felt like I could do to make a symbolic gesture of solidarity,” he said.

‘FIGHTING WITH FEAR’

Nika O. Rudenko ‘24.

AIYANA G. WHITE—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

disappointment in Harvard, which some students say has fallen short of its promises to support affected affiliates.

‘THIS TRULY AFFECTED EVERY SINGLE UKRAINIAN’ Taisa Kulyk ’22, whose parents emigrated from Ukraine to the United States, said that after learning about the invasion she managed to sleep for a few hours.

When she woke up, she immediately began planning a rally.

“Life just went on as usual in the University whilst the war started,” Kulyk said, explaining that for some students, the news “was life-changing.”

“We wanted for there to be an outlet to gather and to actually process the war together and to protest the war and to come together as a community,” she said. “Because, literally, there was nowhere to go.”

In Cambridge, during the three months since the start of the invasion, Eastern European undergraduate students have organized two rallies in support of Ukraine, created a petition signed by 650 Harvard affiliates to support students affected by the war, organized poetry readings of work by Ukrainian authors, and raised money to help provide Ukraine with medical supplies.

Several hundred people braved the snow on Feb. 26 to attend the first protest against the war in Harvard Yard.

“It was very inspiring to see how many

Taisa Kulyk ‘22.

AIYANA G. WHITE—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

students showed up to support,” Kulyk said of the rally.

Kulyk, who is graduating in May, said she spent most of her final semester at Harvard finding ways to stand up for Ukraine, including meeting with administrators throughout the semester to discuss how the University could support its students affected by the war.

Georgiy A. Kent ‘22.

Asked why she immersed herself in activism during her last months on campus, Kulyk’s answer was simple: “I love Ukraine. I love my people.”

“This truly affected every single Ukrainian,” she added.

For Georgiy A. Kent ’22, a former president of the Lowell House Society of Russian Bell Ringers, his initial response to

AIYANA G. WHITE—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Alexander Zhigalin ‘23.

For Russian students, the urge to support Ukraine was mixed with the horrible realization that their country had brought full-fledged war to Europe in the 21st century, along with fear that they may never be able to return home.

Alexander Zhigalin ’23 and Polina Galouchko ’23 said they were studying in the library of Dunster House when they learned Russian President Vladmir Putin had declared war.

“The first reaction is horror,” Zhigalin said, explaining that he does not think he can return to Russia.

“I feel that it’s not a home anymore,” he said. “Now I need a new one.”

Galouchko said she immediately started texting her relatives and friends in Ukraine and felt the world “basically collapsing” around her.

AIYANA G. WHITE—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

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The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

Displays of support and solidarity with Ukraine, including activism and art, cropped up across campus and Cambridge in the spring.

“Everything stopped making sense,” she said. “It just shattered so many things about my identity.”

Zhigalin said he was “fighting with fear” during the first few days of the invasion, aware that speaking out against the war could result in government retaliation against him

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and his family.

But Zhigalin quickly decided that he could not keep silent.

“I felt that anything we can say or do needs to be said and done,” he said. “I had to speak.”

“This is a country that started genocide on Ukrainian people, that betrayed a long relationship with a separate nation to which there are many ties,” Zhigalin added. “This is just

JULIAN J. GIORDANO AND TROUNG L. NGYUEN—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHERS

evil.”

Galouchko said she was also compelled to denounce the actions of her country’s government.

“It was very important for me to establish firmly the fact that I, as a Russian, am very much against this war,” she said.

“A lot of people have this natural instinct to think, ‘Oh, Russian people, they don’t protest enough against this war, they could have done something to prevent it,’” Galouchko added. “I just wanted to make it very clear that I am definitely not the person who is supporting this war.”

Zhigalin and Galouchko said they both helped organize the second rally in support of Ukraine and students affected by the war.

At the March 26 rally, Zhigalin told the crowd he was calling on the University to provide additional academic support, increase access to mental health services, and suspend its term-time work expectation policy for im-

CAMILLE G. CALDERA—CRIMSON DESIGNER

pacted students.

“We want our second home, which is Harvard — which might be the only home now — to help us,” Zhigalin said.

‘OFFENSIVE AND THOUGHTLESS’ But three months after the start of the invasion, affected students say the University has still not done enough to support Ukraine and its Ukrainian and Russian students.

Rudenko said the “worst thing” about the University’s response to the invasion was President Lawrence S. Bacow’s justification for not sending a University-wide statement condemning the war.

In an interview with The Crimson on April 8, Bacow said that “when people get a message from me, I want them to read it because they know it’s important.”

“If people are getting too many of those, then it loses its impact,” he said. “I try to be thoughtful about when I speak, when I don’t, how I speak.”

Bacow pointed to “a whole series of events” which he addressed through personal remarks posted online rather than with mass emails.

Rudenko said Bacow’s comment made her question her place at Harvard.

“Am I just a data point to show that you have diversity?” she asked. “Or am I actually a valuable human being who you care about in this university?”

The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

Polina Galouchko ‘23.

AIYANA G. WHITE—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

“I thought [Bacow’s explanation] was incredibly offensive and thoughtless,” she added.

University spokesperson Jason A. Newton declined to comment on the criticism of Bacow’s remark.

Diana Lysenko, a student at the Harvard Extension School who is also a co-president of the Harvard Ukrainian Student Association, called the decision

by Bacow not to release a University-wide statement “truly heartbreaking.”

“Leadership is about inspiring people to take action,” Lysenko said. “And so I think him being in that unique position of power and not using it for good is very unfortunate.”

While Bacow has not sent out a University-wide email about the war in Ukraine, he addressed it in an email sent to the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and delivered opening remarks at a panel hosted by the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies on Feb. 28.

In his remarks to the Davis Center panel, which have since been posted on a University website detailing resources for affiliates affected by the war, Bacow said that “now is a time for all voices to be raised.”

“The deplorable actions of Vladimir Putin put at risk the lives of millions of people and undermine the concept of sovereignty,” he said. “Institutions devoted to the perpetuation of democratic ideals

Diana Lysenko.

AIYANA G. WHITE—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

and to the articulation of human rights have a responsibility to condemn such wanton aggression.”

“Harvard will continue to support in whatever ways we can members of our community who face grave uncertainty,” Bacow added.

‘A FALSE SENSE OF HOPE’ But six undergraduate students from Ukraine and Russia who were unable to return home for the summer say Harvard is not supporting them in every way it can.

While the students received summer housing from the University, they had to pay a $200 housing fee and were not offered access to Harvard’s dining halls or financial support to cover meals.

Aleksandra Denisenko ’25, an international student from Russia, said all her “plans for summer got crushed in the end of February.”

After her original plans were disrupted, Denisenko said she got “very lucky” and managed to get a research job at Harvard Medical School. But her work will be unpaid because her application for compensation was rejected.

“I am left without funding,” she said.

“I’m left without any money for housing and for food.”

“I’m still very grateful to have housing, but I don’t have meals,” Denisenko added. “And housing means nothing without

Aleksandra Denisenko ‘25.

dining.”

Denisenko, a member of Harvard’s swimming team, said the lack of access to dining options will inhibit her ability to train for the next season because she will need to work part-time to afford meals.

“I need to swim,” she said. “If I work over the summer, plus do lab research for 40 hours over the week, it doesn’t give me a chance to swim twice a day.”

Harvard College spokesperson Aaron Goldman wrote in a statement that “the College is committed to supporting students from Ukraine and Russia during this extraordinarily difficult time.”

“All students from Ukraine and Russia who requested summer housing were approved,” Goldman wrote. “While meal plans are not included, each student has been assigned to a unit with a private kitchen.”

Zhigalin said he has “some savings” to help afford his meals for the summer, but was disappointed in the University’s decision to maintain its term-time work expectation for students affected by the war who are on financial aid.

Across Cambridge, MIT offered meal swipes and suspended expected spring term work contributions for Ukrainian undergraduates.

Zhigalin said he has found his financial situation especially constrained because he has to support his mother, who he persuaded to leave Russia after he be-

AIYANA G. WHITE—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

gan to openly denounce the war.

“Now she’s renting an apartment, she’s buying food, she’s buying medicines,” he said. “I have to send her money.”

“This affects how you’re studying, this affects your life,” Zhigalin added. “And this is the mission of financial aid to not let this happen — but they let this happen.”

For Zhigalin and Galouchko, the lack of support for dining in the summer and the refusal to alter work expectations demonstrate a failure by the University to put actions behind its words of empathy.

“What is the value of those words if there’s no action that they’re taking to actually help you?” Galouchko asked.

“It would be better if they didn’t say anything, because this offers you a false sense of hope,” Zhigalin added. “And then there is no action that follows.”

Rudenko said her inability to get the University to take more action to support Ukraine and students affected by the war reminded her that she does not “have any influence over them to make them actually do it.”

For now, Rudenko said her plan is to strengthen her ability to effectuate change by receiving “a good education” before going back and rebuilding Ukraine.

“I think that’s kind of my obligation,” she said. miles.herszenhorn@thecrimson.com

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CAMILLE G. CALDERA—CRIMSON DESIGNER

Title IX Turns 50 Decades after the landmark statute prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex was first enacted, affiliates say the work toward true gender equity remains unfinished.

By JAMES R. JOLIN and MAYESHA R. SOSHI CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

W

hen Ruth M. Moscovitch ’69 began her undergraduate studies at Radcliffe College, she was promised a Harvard education, but not the same experience as her male peers.

Standing as the counterpart of Harvard College, Radcliffe enabled female students to receive a prestigious education in the 1950s and 1960s, but excluded them from Harvard’s residential houses, libraries, and athletic centers. Radcliffe women also had to make the lengthy trek between the Radcliffe Quadrangle, also known as the “Quad,” and the Yard to attend classes.

“We were admitted to Radcliffe under the terms that then existed, which was [to] give women a Harvard education, but not make them equal recipients of all that Harvard had to offer,” Moscovitch said.

“That was never part of the package.”

The student divide started to narrow in March 1969, when the Harvard Corporation — the University’s highest governing body — began a merging process to end nearly a century of separation between the two colleges.

Still, many inequities persisted for decades, and the two colleges were not completely integrated until 1999, according to the College’s website.

A milestone piece of legislation signed into law in June 1972 by then-President Richard Nixon, Title IX began the pro-

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cess of bridging the gap between male and female students at Harvard and other higher education institutions.

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance,” the statute reads.

These 37 words transformed higher education over the past 50 years, paving the way for female athletics, sexual harrassment policies, and much more.

Despite this progress, however, alumni, legal scholars, and activists alike agree the work surrounding gender equity remains unfinished.

Wellesley on Thursday, if we can get enough people to come to the game to play.”

“There were no financial arrangements for athletes at all,” she added. “It was all done for the love of sport.”

Despite making no explicit reference to athletics, Title IX laid the foundation for gender equality in college sports, according to Harvard Law School professor Janet Halley.

“When I was a kid, the idea of a woman athlete — what?” she said, reflecting the incredulity of the idea pre-Title IX. “And now, women athletes are all over the place, so that’s a vast change.”

By 2021, the number of female collegiate athletes had increased by nearly 170,000 since the enactment of Title IX in 1972.

‘IT WAS VERY AMATEUR’ In an email, Harvard Athletics Direc“No one ever even dreamed” that fe- tor Erin McDermott lauded the “signifmale athletes — even high-performing, icant increase in the opportunities for three-sport high school varsity athletes girls and women in sports, both on our like Eleanor T. Hobbs ’69 — could be re- campus and nationally.” cruited or succeed in collegiate sports.

For law professor and HLS masters Despite her achievements in sports, student Dionne L. Koller, the “incredibly Hobbs said her athletic endeavors nev- effective” impact of Title IX also stems er arose in her Radcliffe admission inter- from the normalization of female athview. letes.

“It was only the academic part that “We definitely have sort of normalized that,” Koller said of female athletics. counted,” Hobbs said.

According to Hobbs, “there really “We don’t sort of look askance — question wasn’t much in the way of sports” at Rad- whether it’s going to harm women’s fercliffe College, where informal intramural tility, whether girls don’t belong playing athletic programs were the only option sports.” for female athletes.

Despite Title IX’s success, Koller said “It was very amateur,” Hobbs said. “​​ she cautions against losing sight of “perIt was like, well, we’re going to play with sistent inequities” in athletics, including

disproportionate male participation rates and the cutting of women’s athletic programs.

Koller described Title IX as “single access,” meaning it only mandates sex equality, without considering an “intersectional approach” that takes racial disparities into account.

“We need to celebrate where we’ve come, but we need to take stock of the things we need to do,” she added.

‘A LOT MORE TO TITLE IX’ While Title IX and discrimination attorney Naomi R. Shatz recognizes the significance of Title IX to female athletics, she added “there is a lot more to Title IX.” Shatz noted the growing awareness of the statute’s prohibition of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and discrimination against pregnant persons.

“If I were to ask folks, probably 10 years ago, when I was practicing law, what do you think of when you speak to Title IX, they would say athletics,” Title IX Coordinator Nicole M. Merhill said.

“Now, when I ask about Title IX, people speak of the issue of sexual harassment and sexual assault.”

According to Merhill, between 2013 and 2019, the number of disclosures reported to the Title IX Office more than doubled, which she attributes to Harvard’s separation of its Title IX Office and Office of Dispute Resolution in 2017.

In 2018 alone, the Title IX Office saw a 56 percent increase in sexual and gender-based harassment disclosures in the

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wake of the #MeToo movement.

“It’s not an increase in the number of incidents happening,” Merhill said. “It’s an increase in the number of people who feel empowered to share their concerns and seek out resources.”

Still, Merhill said she believes Title IX has a long road ahead despite the strides it has made in the past several years.

“Have we made progress within Harvard and beyond? Certainly. Is there a long way to go? Absolutely. Is Harvard committed to this area of work? Without a doubt,” she added.

HARVARD’S REFORMS Harvard has made an array of Title IX reforms in recent years, but many students on campus remain skeptical of the school’s support for survivors of sexual misconduct.

Our Harvard Can Do Better — a student activist group working to end sexual violence at Harvard — has said Harvard has not done enough for its students historically.

“I don’t think that the school has this robust history of trying to make Title IX policies the best they can be for keeping our community safe,” said William M. Sutton ’23, an organizer with Our Harvard Can Do Better.

Two undergraduates — at least one of whom was a member of Our Harvard Can Do Better — filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights in March 2014 that led the agency to open an investigation into the College’s sexual misconduct policies and procedures.

In 2014, as the investigation was ongoing, Harvard overhauled its Title IX policies to establish a central office to handle cases of sexual assault and harassment

TOBY R. MA—CRIMSON DESIGNER

and enacted a “preponderance of the evidence” standard, which generally requires more than 50 percent certainty to determine guilt.

The new set of policies remained a contentious issue on campus, with undergraduates calling for increased clarity and transparency. Three months after the overhaul, a group of 28 faculty members at Harvard Law School published an open letter in The Boston Globe criticizing the new policies for being “stacked against the accused.”

In 2017, Harvard reformed its Title IX Office by breaking it into two distinct units: one that investigates sexual misconduct complaints — the Office for Dispute Resolution — and another to provide Title IX support, training, and resources, the Title IX office.

In March 2021, the office underwent another major change when it merged with the Office for Sexual Assault Prevention and Response to form the current Office of Gender Equity.

According to Merhill, the merger was initiated to “create a single space to streamline access to resources, to better communicate about the resources available, and expand on prevention and education efforts.”

Some students questioned the new office’s ability to provide a safe and welcoming environment for survivors.

“It’s very important that we separate survivors’ support from the processes that make determinations,” said Harvard Graduate Student Union-United Automobile Workers President Koby D. Ljunggren. “Ensuring that those folks feel safe to go to a survivor-centered location on campus — that not only requires spatial separation, but also institutional separation.”

The OGE is not involved in conducting

In March 2021, the Title IX Office merged with the Office for Sexual Assault Prevention and Response to form the current Office of Gender Equity. ANGELA DELA CRUZ—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

or resolving investigations, which are the responsibilities of the ODR. Within the OGE, counselors are confidential and do not share information they receive with the rest of the office staff.

University spokesperson Jason A. Newton declined to comment.

TITLE IX’S FUTURE IN THE BIDEN ERA In March 2021, President Joe Biden announced that his administration would begin an expansive review of all policies on gender discrimination and reverse many controversial Trump-era rules related to sexual misconduct.

In 2020, then-U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos released a Title IX rule — now expected to change under the Biden administration — that altered the definition of sexual misconduct to “unwelcome conduct that is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive.” The rule also stipulated that for a complaint to be addressed, the incident must have taken place on campus, or in a location or event over which the institution has “substantial control.”

Some activists, including sexual violence prevention non-profit executive Tracey E. Vitchers, view an update to Title IX federal regulations as an opportunity to reduce the heavy “clear and convincing” evidentiary standard which Trump-era regulations allowed universities to adopt when investigating sexual misconduct.

According to Vitchers, the current evidentiary standards are both out of line with those of other forms of misconduct

and reflect the notion that women cannot be trusted to report sexual violence honestly.

But other legal experts worry that the Biden administration will remove some Trump-era regulations that provided individuals with greater protections under sexual harrassment allegations.

“I am very concerned that the Biden Administration may revoke Trump-era rules that provided greater due process protections to those accused of sexual harassment,” HLS professor Elizabeth Bartholet wrote in an emailed statement.

“We need rules that provide fairness both to those charging sexual harassment and those accused of it, and in this connection, the Trump Administration made a major improvement,” she wrote.

Merhill declined to forecast any upcoming changes, but stated that she remains committed to addressing more than the minimum requirements of any new regulations.

“Regardless of what comes out of the regulation, we will ensure that we comply with the regulation,” Merhill said. “I, individually and collectively as the Director of the Office for Gender Equity, am committed to go well beyond the minimum requirements of the Title IX regulation.”

“My hope is that we’ll continue our emphasis on, focus on, effecting change within our culture and climate here at Harvard,” she added. “A proactive approach to truly dedicating our efforts to improving culture and climate for all community members.” james.jolin@thecrimson.com mayesha.soshi@thecrimson.com

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‘An Open Secret’ In the wake of the Comaroff controversy, graduate students say power-based abuse by faculty pervades advising relationships.

By ARIEL H. KIM and MEIMEI XU CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

EMILY N. DIAL—CRIMSON DESIGNER

Content Warning: This article contains discussion of suicide.

S

ebastian J. Rowe almost didn’t apply to Harvard.

As an undergraduate at the University of Alabama, he had heard about a string of four graduate student suicides in

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the 1980s and 1990s in Harvard’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology department.

“It’s an open secret that CCB has long had issues with graduate students being overworked or [feeling] like they’re taken advantage of,” he said.

Rowe only decided to come to Harvard after discovering a program that allowed

him to have other avenues of support beyond CCB. In 1998, the suicide of fifth-year graduate student Jason D. Altom rocked the department.

In one of his suicide notes, he attributed his stress to the imbalance of power between professors and students in the

department.

“Professors here have too much power over the lives of their grad students,” Altom wrote in a note to then-department chair James G. Anderson.

To give students more avenues of support, Altom requested in his note that the department require students to have mul-

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tiple advisors simultaneously. One month later, Anderson announced that the department would implement committees for second-year graduate students, providing students with three advisors instead of one.

Today, the CCB department still requires multiple simultaneous advisors for students.

To help students find a suitable research group, CCB also requires incoming students to sample multiple labs during their first semester. CCB graduate students keep an Excel spreadsheet that lists students who have done lab rotations with different faculty members in the department.

Rowe said he has been able to avoid bad advising relationships by consulting other graduate students about their experiences with faculty members through this “formalized” database.

Thanks to this system, Rowe said he was also able to create a thesis committee he’s happy with.

But this is not the case for everyone.

In interviews this month, nearly 30 Harvard graduate students reported a culture in which senior faculty wield power over their students with little accountability.

Graduate students reported harassment, intimidation, unreasonable expectations, and negligence. Many also reported difficulty in seeking recourse for complaints of harassment, faced with a fear of retaliation by faculty and opaque and inadequate reporting mechanisms. Some students spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.

HARASSMENT AND NEGLIGENCE Financial, academic, and physical vulnerability have characterized the experience of some graduate students for decades. Earlier this year, Harvard found itself embroiled in a new sexual harassment controversy, turning national scrutiny once again to the livelihoods of graduate students.

After a pair of investigations found professor John L. Comaroff in violation of Harvard’s sexual harassment and professional conduct policies, nearly 40 professors — including some of Harvard’s most renowned faculty — signed a letter questioning the results of Harvard’s investigations, sparking national backlash.

Following widespread public indignation and a lawsuit filed against the University by three graduate students, all but three of the signatories of the letter ques-

Lehman Hall, located in Harvard Yard, is the student center of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. ANGELA DELA CRUZ—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

tioning Harvard’s investigations retracted their signatures.

Sexual harassment is among the more egregious forms of power-based abuse in academia. But other, sometimes more subtle, manifestations of this power imbalance are often more pervasive, affiliates said.

Following departmental town hall discussions in the wake of the Comaroff controversy, History professor Andrew D. Gordon ’74 said he heard these subtle abuses take two main forms: harassment and negligence.

“What came forward in those meetings were concerns about not only too much of the wrong kind of attention, but not enough of the right kind,” he said.

In interviews this month, two graduate students in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences reported facing insults and yelling from an advisor and recounted being asked to work unreasonable hours — including days on end without rest.

One of the students said the advisor was always looming overhead, checking in the lab every 15 minutes and expecting responses to phone calls and emails late at night and on the weekends.

Ege Yumusak ’16, a Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy, said she often heard grievances about graduate students asked to do chores without pay when she worked as a bargaining committee member for the Harvard Graduate Students Union-Unit-

ed Automobile Workers.

These chores included writing recommendation letters for undergraduates, cleaning offices or apartments, and taking care of their advisor’s child or dog — all requested with little notice and no pay, according to Yumusak, a former Crimson editorial editor.

Students reported that professors “often resort to harassment” when these tasks are not completed, responding late to emails, making snide remarks, or talking behind the student’s back, Yumusak added.

“There’s often a culture of treating graduate students like servants,” said a graduate student in History.

Other students said they felt neglected by their advisors, citing few and far between check-ins, sparse feedback, and a lack of communication about recommendation letters.

Dana C. Mirsalis, a Ph.D. candidate in East Asian Languages and Civilizations who worked as part of the department’s graduate liaison committee, said several students told her their advisors claimed they did not have time to provide feedback.

In History, Ph.D. candidate Emma C. Friedlander said graduate students and faculty began to discuss unequal advising dynamics in the wake of the controversy surrounding Comaroff earlier this semester.

“Although obviously, that was a case

of really heinous sexual harassment and discrimination, it is an issue that is even more pervasive than that and led to this reckoning of even more issues of if students are being advised well,” she said.

FINANCIAL PRECARITY The power imbalance in the graduate student-advisor relationship is further perpetuated by some graduate students’ financial dependence on their advisor, students said.

After their first year, SEAS Ph.D. candidates take on research assistant positions, making them financially reliant on their advisors unless they are able to secure external fellowships or additional teaching assignments. For students at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the school guarantees financial support for five years through stipends and tuition grants, along with teaching fellowships or research assistantships for the third and fourth years of the program.

This dependence means that when an issue arises between a graduate student and their advisor, students can have a hard time saying no to tasks or deadlines, let alone transitioning out of a poor advising relationship, according to Zhiying Xu, a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science.

John A. Girash, Director of Graduate Education at SEAS, said school-based funding is available for up to a semester for students who may have a gap in their

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The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

advising.

“The goal is always to get the student into a productive advising relationship so that they can continue to make progress towards their degree, which for the Ph.D. largely involves doing research under the guidance of a faculty advisor,” he wrote.

One graduate student in SEAS who wished to transition out of her lab due to a negative relationship with her advisor said they were told they had only one semester to find a different faculty member willing to accept them — a task the student deemed “impossible.”

Not every faculty member will always have enough funding to support an additional student, she noted, and the onus of finding a new lab is placed on the student.

Computer Science graduate student Yaniv Yacoby ’15 and other SEAS students in a peer support group called InTouch have been working with the SEAS Graduate Student Council to design a program that would allow graduate students to be guaranteed transitional funding from the school for 12 months.

A graduate student in Applied Mathematics said students often feel “alone” in their transition, adding that they wish “there was more structure around transitioning” to a new advisor “so that students don’t feel so insecure about their position.”

The tight job market in academia also means students’ careers often depend on their advisor’s prominence.

Mirsalis said within her field of Japanese studies, an advisor could introduce the student to their colleagues in Japan or help the student get access to a religious institution, government office, or archive.

“The downside is that the field is really, really small,” she said. “If your advisor

SOPHIA C. SCOTT—CRIMSON DESIGNER

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decides to blackball you, that’s the end of your career a lot of the time.”

‘TO DEAD END AND DEAD END’ For many graduate students, the primary resource within the department is their advisor. But for those who experience workplace issues with their advisor, students said, resources for support are particularly difficult to identify and use.

In the Arts and Humanities 2021 divisional climate survey, more than half of graduate student respondents reported that they would fear retaliation for a complaint or grievance about “discourteous or offensive behavior,” outpacing faculty, staff, and undergraduate respondents.

Graduate students were also the least likely to agree that clear recourse mechanisms exist within the division. Only 38 percent of graduate student respondents said there are clear reporting channels, and 24 percent said there is a clear conflict-resolution process In the Sciences division 2020 climate survey, only 50.9 percent of graduate students felt comfortable reporting “discourteous or offensive behavior,” the lowest percentage among faculty, staff, undergraduates, and postdocs.

The SEAS 2018 climate survey indicated that affiliates acknowledge the existence of a hierarchical culture that discourages people from coming forward with complaints about “offensive behaviors.” This hierarchy also negatively impacts the school’s handling of reports of harassment and discrimination, per the survey.

Harvard spokesperson Jason A. Newton declined to comment on the Univer-

sity’s Title IX and harassment resolution policies.

Should graduate students have an issue with their advisor, they can usually consult faculty or administrators. But reporting processes vary by department.

Jeffrey A. Miron, the director of graduate studies in Economics, said though there is “no formal process” for reporting inappropriate or negligent behavior from faculty not covered under Title IX, students can speak to any faculty member in the department they feel comfortable with.

“The bigger concern is that students simply don’t always reach out when they have a concern,” he said. “And it’s harder to do something if you’re not aware that there’s a problem.”

Sean R. Eddy, the department chair of Molecular and Cellular Biology, said when students come to him with complaints, he typically seeks to understand both the student’s and professor’s perspectives, if he has the student’s permission to talk to the faculty in question.

Around once a week, students bring complaints that are easily resolved by clarifying instances of miscommunication, Eddy said.

But for instances of faculty-student conflict that extend beyond miscommunication, students said existing resources are opaque and difficult to navigate.

Jessica L. McNeil, a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology who said she had issues with an advisor, said she was referred from her department to GSAS Student Services and back again — “ping-ponging” between her department and the school over the course of six months be-

fore she could get the problem resolved.

“I had to trace my way through all of these people and be able to plot, like, ‘I have complained here, I’ve complained here, I’ve complained here,’ to dead end and dead end, and only then I was able to get anywhere,” she said.

GSAS spokesperson Ann Hall and FAS spokesperson Rachael Dane declined to comment on this story and on individual cases.

Computer Science professor Finale Doshi-Velez, the faculty advisor for InTouch, said faculty face minimal repercussions for fostering poor advising relationships because there exists “no real feeling of accountability.”

Rowe, the graduate student in CCB, said having an abusive or controlling advisor makes it difficult to seek help in the first place, even when program administrators do their best to make sure to set expectations for faculty conduct and make avenues of help accessible.

“Oftentimes the very first thing that people will do when they’re trying to abuse you with their power is isolate you from your resources,” he said. “Even if on paper, you know that you have these rights and you know that you can access any of these people — like your program advisor, your admin, your safety officer, whoever — you feel like you can’t, because you’ve been isolated.”

TACKLING THE ‘POWER DIFFERENTIAL’ Throughout the spring, the graduate student union’s Feminist Working Group

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CAMILLE G. CALDERA—CRIMSON DESIGNER

has been holding teach-ins about the union’s longstanding demand for “real recourse,” or third-party grievance arbitration of cases of sexual harassment and sex-based discrimination. Freidlander, one of four co-chairs of the group, said the working group, as well as many FAS departments, are currently working to address bullying and power-based harassment.

Jason Bryan Silverstein, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School, said more faculty need to listen to the union’s demands.

“I also do hope students know that there are faculty members who are willing to put it all on the line to stand behind them,” he said. “Unfortunately, we may not be the most decorated of the professors, but we’re not a small number either.

At the University level, Harvard administrators have taken first steps toward addressing the results of this power imbalance between graduate students and faculty. Harvard released drafts of the University’s first anti-bullying and

non-harassment policies this April.

The University opened the draft policies to affiliates for feedback until September.

Within departments, faculty members and students are also looking for ways to address the issue.

In 2019, GSAS Dean Emma Dench launched an initiative called the Advising Project that seeks to reform advising for Master’s and Ph.D. students at the school.

The project seeks to gather feedback and data from affiliates involved in the advising process.

Like CCB, many departments across GSAS have formally or informally adopted multi-advisor models. Some departments are establishing codes of conduct for advising relationships.

Gordon, the History professor, suggested that “clarifying expectations” — including about how quickly feedback should be provided on a paper or how much notice faculty should get before being expected to produce a recommenda-

tion letter — could improve the consistency of the graduate student-advisor dynamic.

“None of us really are thrilled with the idea that everything is becoming more and more rule-based and bureaucratic with checkboxes, and yet, here we are, and maybe, to some extent, that’s necessary,” he added.

When graduate students in EALC advocated for advising guidelines last year, many faculty in the department pushed back, according to Mirsalis. She said students wanted to codify these standards so they could have legitimate recourse options when faced with harassment.

For substantive change to occur, students agree that there should exist a better way for their voices to be heard by faculty and administrators.

Yumusak said her department, Philosophy, pays graduate student representatives to sit in on faculty meetings and funds an affinity group of minority graduate students to influence hiring decisions.

She added that departmental union representatives can accompany students to meetings with faculty.

But it is up to the faculty to recognize the “reality of the power differential” in their everyday interactions, she said.

Academia often perpetuates a cycle of mistreatment, Yumusak argued, as faculty reproduce the expectations and conditions they experienced as students.

“We are operating in an industry that mistreats the people at the top and gives them a nice salary to suck it up,” she said.

“I think it’s important to acknowledge the stresses that are placed on the people at the top and the silencing mechanism that their individually negotiated high salaries serve, which keeps this status quo from changing.”

Staff writer Mayesha R. Soshi contributed reporting. ariel.kim@thecrimson.com meimei.xu@thecrimson.com

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Harvard and the Fight for Foreign Collaboration

Harvard has emerged as a key player — both a target and an advocate — in the regulatory battle over how the government should oversee foreign academic collaboration.

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The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

By ERIC YAN and OMAR ABDEL HAQ

F

CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

or more than 30 years, Section 117 of the Higher Education Act was one of the litany of obscure items in the United States federal code that was all but obsolete.

The provision, passed by Congress in 1986, requires American universities to disclose gifts and contracts from foreign sources that total more than $250,000 in a calendar year. But for years, the requirement was often ignored by federal officials and seldom understood by the schools responsible for the disclosures, rendering it to be largely toothless.

Universities handed over data about their foreign contributions only sparsely, and warnings from the government were few and far between. From 2014 to 2017, for instance, Yale did not report any foreign contributions.

That all changed in 2019.

In the final two years of Donald Trump’s administration, the federal government ramped up efforts to monitor how academia handles money it gets from abroad. The Department of Education launched high-profile investigations into 19 U.S. universities, including some of academia’s biggest names: Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT. The investigations represented a marked shift in the government’s handling of the foreign funding requirements — and it didn’t come in isolation.

Just two weeks prior, Harvard’s campus witnessed an even more jarring runin with federal investigators: the arrest of Charles M. Lieber, then the chair of the school’s Chemistry Department, who was hauled out of his office in handcuffs.

Lieber, a renowned research chemist and nanoscientist, was charged with lying to government officials about funding he received from the Chinese government. He was eventually convicted on six felony counts.

The two incidents — Lieber’s conviction and the Education Department’s investigation — ensnared Harvard in a high-stakes policy battle over how the government should oversee foreign collaborations.

Though they involved separate federal laws and were handled by different government agencies, both were part of a growing push to crack down on American universities and researchers that fail to disclose foreign funding.

Debate over the regulation of foreign

money in academia, once an afterthought, has become a microcosm of the U.S.’s attempts to remain the world’s top innovator, exposing a tension between the government’s efforts to remain competitive and academia’s goals to promote innovation and the free flow of ideas. With its global stature, Harvard has emerged as a key player — both a target and an advocate — in the regulatory battle over how the government should oversee foreign academic collaboration, which has played out in chemistry departments, courtrooms, and on Capitol Hill.

As China continues its meteoric rise, the movement to crack down on non-disclosure is part of a broader effort by federal officials to prevent “foreign influence” at universities and protect American intellectual property.

In Washington, there is a bipartisan consensus that universities should face more stringent disclosure and transparency requirements relating to their foreign ties.But many schools say the regulatory efforts go too far, threatening the collaboration that is critical to advancing research, innovation, and the free flow of ideas.

‘LOOKING FOR A NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK’ On Capitol Hill, lawmakers are currently debating new legislation seeking to tighten disclosure requirements for American institutions that receive foreign money. Differing bills were passed in both the House and Senate as part of President Joe Biden’s effort to boost innovation and shore up America’s competitiveness with China.

Higher education is pushing back.

In an interview from Washington, D.C., last week, Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow said proposals that would lower foreign contribution reporting thresholds to $0 and require many schools to create more sophisticated disclosure databases would create “enormous burdens” for administrators and faculty alike.

“The government doesn’t need to know who’s buying somebody else a cup of coffee,” Bacow said.

Terry W. Hartle, the senior vice president of the American Council on Education, which has led the opposition to

the proposal, said bills seeking to police foreign money flowing into universities would only hamper the government’s regulatory efforts.

“This is an exercise in looking for a needle in a haystack,” Hartle said of the legislation, “and what the proposals on Capitol Hill would do is begin by making the haystack bigger.”

Additional requirements, Bacow said, would also make American universities less competitive in the “global market for academic talent.”

“We are often competing with other institutions for faculty — especially, actually, with European institutions these days,” Bacow said. “In that competition, it makes it harder to recruit faculty to the United States when they perceive that our government is imposing burdens and obligations upon them — which makes it harder to secure the kind of support necessary to sustain their scholarship.”

‘HERDING CATS’ The foreign funding kerfuffle kicked off in earnest three years ago when a routine report by a little-known Senate sub-

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The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

billion in previously unreported foreign funds.

“This statistic exemplifies how institutions are both recognizing the gravity of Section 117 compliance and that institutions are largely capable of reporting these foreign gifts and contracts when they choose to do so,” the report reads.

After the Education Department opened the investigation into Harvard, the University submitted updated disclosures including money taken between 2014 and 2018 that it previously failed to disclose.

Daniel G. Currell, who worked as an official in the Trump Education Department, said he believes disclosure gaps from universities were the result of administrative oversight, not malice. The requirement, he said, is often forgotten as administrators come and go from their positions.

“It’s clear to me, watching how schools operate — they’re herding cats trying to get people to disclose all of the things,” he said.

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

‘NOT NATIONAL SECURITY THREATS AT ALL’

committee caught the eye of officials at the Education Department.

The report found that more than 30 American universities failed to properly report funding they received from a Chinese government-affiliated organization for the upkeep of Confucius Institutes — centers for academic and cultural exchange between China and the rest of the world that are sponsored by the Chinese government.

The Senate report said the Education Department did “not conduct regular oversight” into whether universities complied with federal requirements. Prior to the Senate report’s release three years ago, the last time the

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government notified schools about the requirement was 2004.

The findings prompted the Department of Education to release its own report in October 2020, which found that its foreign funding disclosure requirements are “neither complicated nor burdensome.” Instead, the report suggested, the blame fell on universities for submitting “systemically underinclusive and inaccurate” reports.

Universities and many experts reject that notion: The federal requirements are the issue, schools say, because of their opaque and ambiguous language.

Nelson G. Dong, a partner at the law firm Dorsey & Whitney, said the “decentralized nature of reporting” at universities poses difficulties for administra-

tors aiming to keep track of all the foreign funding that comes in.

“Organizations representing research universities have argued for years that it would be a lot easier to make these reports if the Department of Education would simply issue a regulation,” he said.

“The historical position of the Department of Education has always been to say, ‘There are no regulations needed because the statute is so clear.’”

The Education Department under Trump opted instead to open investigations into big-name universities in order to compel compliance with the disclosure requirements.In its 2020 report, the Education Department praised its own investigations, saying the inquiries “catalyzed” schools to disclose more than $6.5

Disputes over foreign funding disclosures have never just been about the money. Agencies across the federal government have long connected the requirements to broader national interests — including protection of intellectual property and national security.

In its 2020 report, the Education Department said efforts to enforce its disclosure requirements are “one part of a collaboration” with other federal agencies to improve oversight of American universities.

“It is not the Department’s statutory mission to police institutions’ entanglements with foreign sources,” the report said. “The facts we have discovered drive home the need for an integrated Federal approach

TOBY R. MA—CRIMSON DESIGNER

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to the national problems posed by the theft of intellectual property, espionage, propaganda, and foreign influence operations on U.S. campuses.”

No government effort seeking to address espionage issues has garnered more attention and controversy in recent years than the Justice Department’s now-defunct China Initiative.

The program — which launched in 2018 as an effort to target “Chinese sponsorship of hacking into American businesses and commercial networks” — led to high-profile indictments of several academics, including Lieber.

But the program increasingly attempted to prosecute “research integrity” issues — which critics say is emblematic of how the program strayed from its initial goal.

Instead, academics have been charged with various counts relating to fraud and misstatements.

According to a database of China Initiative cases compiled in December 2021 by the MIT Technology Review, just 19 of 77 cases brought by the program overall include charges under the Economic Espionage Act. “Where I think some of the problems have come up is that the government, in some of these cases, was trying to bring criminal enforcement actions against professors who really were not national security threats at all,” said Amy Jeffress, a former federal prosecutor.

Lieber was convicted on six counts — two relating to false statements he allegedly made to government investigators and four regarding undisclosed income on his tax returns.

H. Holden Thorp, the editor-in-chief of Science, said the prosecutions of academics amount to government missteps that will “slow down” collaboration between the U.S. and foreign countries, ultimately hampering America’s innovative capacity.

“Ironically, in the name of trying to make U.S. science stronger, the most likely outcome is that Chinese science is going to get stronger because they’re going to be doing more research solely within their country,” Thorp said.

“They are far more nimble and can put resources to work far faster than we can because they don’t have elaborate processes to go through.”

Critics of the China Initiative also accused the DOJ of targeting individuals of Chinese descent.

In an interview, Theodore A. Betley, the current chair of Harvard’s Chemistry Department, lamented the DOJ’s “extreme focus on researchers of Asian de-

scent.”

“Many of [the cases] have not actually materialized into charges that have stuck,” he said. “In that instance, those can be crippling to the careers, and the scientists have been called into question — their integrity has been called into question.”

Stanford chemistry professor Bianxiao Cui said “Chinese-born American scientists” like herself have a permanent tie to China that the DOJ’s prosecutions have made them keenly aware of.

“Because of that, I kind of intentionally have to limit contact in China — any potential collaboration — which I previously would not have been thinking about,” she said.

Betley also said researchers who run afoul of federal reporting requirements should be given the opportunity to “course correct” for mistakes in reporting.

The DOJ ended the China Initiative in February — with a public acknowledgment of the policy’s perceived bias towards individuals of Chinese heritage.

“By grouping cases under the Chi-

na Initiative rubric, we helped give rise to a harmful perception that the department applies a lower standard to investigate and prosecute criminal conduct related to that country or that we in some way view people with racial, ethnic or familial ties to China differently,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew G. Olsen in a speech on February 23.

‘THE GOVERNMENT HAS TO BE INVOLVED’ Outside of criminal prosecution, an array of federal agencies — including the Departments of Energy and Defense, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation — have bolstered oversight of the accuracy of foreign funding disclosures on research grant applications.

Following inquiries launched by the National Institutes of Health and the FBI into potential intellectual property theft at American universities in 2019, Harvard formed an oversight committee to ensure the school complies with guidelines set by

Harvard professor Charles M. Lieber exits the John J. Moakley United States Courthouse in Bostn on the night of December 21, 2021, after he was found guilty on six federal charges — two counts of making false statements to federal authorities about his ties to the Chinese Thousand Talents Program and four tax-related offenses. MAYESHA R. SOSHI—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

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The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

ty from pursuing engagements with academics in countries with which the U.S. has an adversarial relationship.

Rising “transaction costs” for international engagements mean that faculty “really need to have a very good reason” to dedicate their time to the administrative tasks that accompany foreign collaborations, he said.

“I think the pendulum may have gone a little bit too far,” Reimers said.

The net effect, some worry, will be less international collaboration, which could have wide-ranging implications.

“It’s in the long-term interest of peace for those relations to happen — even when it’s challenging,” Reimers said.

‘THE GOLDEN GOOSE’

The Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology is located at Mallinckrodt Labs at 12 Oxford Street. The department was thrust into the spotlight when then-chair Charles M. Lieber was arrested and charged in January 2020. JULIAN J. GIORDANO—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

federal funding agencies.

Many experts say the government’s efforts to prevent espionage through disclosure enforcements are justified in the interest of national security.

Andrew J. Nathan ’63, a professor of political science at Columbia University, wrote in an email that China’s intellectual property acquisition through “both legal and illegal” methods has been a “long-standing reality.”

“In terms of the specific national security/espionage aspect, we have to recognize this is a problem. It does occur,” he wrote.

Because universities “lack the expertise” on national security threats, Nathan wrote that “the government has to be involved.”

David M. Sacks, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said researchers collaborating with individ-

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uals or entities in China may not always understand whether they are engaging with a private or state-sponsored organization.

“The way that China’s system operates is that it is so opaque and it is so difficult to tell where the party ends and where the private sector begins,” Sacks said. “It does kind of take a U.S. government effort to figure that out and to share that information and knowledge with researchers.”

But many researchers take issue with the government’s underlying justification for its crackdown.

The term “academic espionage,” sometimes used to refer to efforts by foreign governments to steal intellectual property from universities, is “in some ways an oxymoron,” said Harvard Dean of Science Christopher W. Stubbs.

“We have nothing that’s classified. We publish all our stuff in the open literature,” he said. “But there still is this sense that somehow people are swooping in and grabbing ideas in the innovation cycle in a way that is somehow not consistent with our norms and expectations.”

Stubbs said faculty are “apprehensive” about international collaborations — in part because of the government’s efforts.

“The government needs to be clearer. There needs to be better coordination across agencies,” he said. “We’re all hoping for more uniformity and more clarity about where the guardrails are.”

Fernando M. Reimers, director of the Global Education Initiative at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said he is concerned that heightened oversight will deter facul-

The debate over how the government should regulate foreign funding remains a live issue as researchers and university administrators continue to face pressure from the government to increase disclosures.

In Trump’s final month in office, his administration issued a memorandum that required research funding agencies to strengthen and standardize federal grant disclosure regulations in an effort to protect against “foreign government interference and exploitation.”

In January, Harvard updated its reporting process for NIH and NSF submissions after the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued new guidance to universities.

Derek Adams, a partner at the Potomac Law Group, said he expects the government to pursue fewer prosecutions of disclosure violations in court, even as individual federal agencies scale up oversight.

“At the agency level, it continues to be a focus — NIH, NSF, DOE, DOD,” he said.

“I think we’re going to see less criminal prosecutions now that the DOJ is moving away from this focus — and we’ll probably see more actions dealt with at the civil level or the administrative level going forward.”

Currently, lawmakers on Capitol Hill are debating a number of provisions that would stiffen foreign funding regulations.

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Universities have lobbied against a Senate-approved proposal that would require foreign gifts and contracts totaling more than $1 million to be preemptively vetted by the federal government if the funding relates to the development of “critical technologies.”

Bacow said last week the proposal would be “extremely burdensome,” adding that the vetting requirement “has absolutely no tie to national security interests.”

“It will be burdensome for institutions, but more than that, it will flood the government with information which the government is not prepared, actually, to process in a timely way,” he said. “It, I believe, will act as a barrier or an obstacle to research support received from a variety of sources.”

Proponents of the Senate proposal — which also includes the more stringent disclosure requirements — contend that looking into foreign funding will help improve competitiveness with China by preventing the country from stealing American intellectual property.

U.S. Senator James E. Risch (R-Idaho),

a key proponent of the provision, called it “a small investment, given the large cost of the [legislation], to protect our ideas, research and intellectual property before it’s too late, which is often the case” in a statement to Axios last year, after it was first proposed in the upper chamber.

I think the government needs to be really attentive to the deleterious effects of some of their policies and not kill the golden goose that’s driving economic progress because of rare outlier instances.

CHRISTOPHER STUBBS Dean of Science

But some academics say the government’s broader effort to regulate universities and their researchers may become

University President Lawrence S. Bacow travelled to Washington D.C. earlier this month. JULIAN J. GIORDANO—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

counterproductive by thwarting international collaboration.

“I think the government needs to be really attentive to the deleterious effects of some of their policies and not kill the golden goose that’s driving economic progress because of rare outlier instances,” Stubbs said.

Still, many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are eager to support legislative efforts seeking to stymie the U.S.’s largest global competitor.

The regulatory efforts have sparked a debate about the government’s responsibility in protecting national security while maintaining international collaboration, with many academics warning that officials should tread carefully to avoid stifling innovation.

“I can tell you with certainty that if American universities lose their connections with the rest of the world and become more insular,” Reimers said, “the great American universities will no longer be great.” eric.yan@thecrimson.com omar.abdelhaq@thecrimson.com

Christopher Stubbs, a professor of physics and astronomy, serves as the Dean of Science at Harvard. PHOTO COURTESY CHRISTOPHER STUBBS

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The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

Why Does Harvard’s Student Government Keep Failing?

In March, Harvard undergraduates voted overwhelmingly to dissolve their student government. Its failure was a long time in the making.

NAYELI CARDOZO—CRIMSON DESIGNER

By J. SELLERS HILL

I

CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

n late March 2022, Harvard students did something unheard of: They turned out in droves to vote in a student government election.

Throughout its 40-year history, the Harvard Undergraduate Council struggled to engage students while grappling with infighting, inefficiency, dysfunction, and scandal — so much so that nearly every ticket in 2021 ran on a platform of fixing a broken system.

But students turned out in March not to decide the Council’s next leaders — that

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vote had occurred months before, handing victory to Michael Y. Cheng ’22 and Emmett E. de Kanter ’24, who had vowed to “defund” the body, in what The Crimson editorial board deemed “A Vote of No Confidence in the UC.” This vote was to realize the ticket’s plan — to completely dissolve the UC in favor of a new structure altogether. And it wasn’t even close: More than 75 percent of voters cast their ballot to scrap the UC, sounding the death knell for the body.

The move appeared radical, but before the decades-long reign of the modern Undergraduate Council, turnover in Harvard’s student government was the norm.

Many variations of councils and committees lived and died on the order of years.

With the failure of yet another governing body, one might ask if there were ever a time Harvard’s student government was truly effective, civil, or respected by the student body, and, if so, just what went wrong.

‘ONLY ASHES’ One of Harvard’s first student governments emerged in the 1960s in the form of the short-lived Harvard Council on Undergraduate Affairs.

In its three years of life, the HCUA

tackled a range of lackluster projects, including measuring lighting levels in lecture halls, before fracturing into two successors. The Harvard Undergraduate Council would address general issues of student life, while the Harvard Policy Committee would research academic policy alongside faculty.

The HPC quickly proved to be the more effective of the two bodies.

“The HPC is the best thing we’ve had yet, but it won’t be the last,” then-College Dean John U. Monro ’34 remarked to The Crimson in 1967.

By 1968, the HUC’s leadership had already fallen into disarray, admitting they

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had lost track of the organization’s finances and blaming their secretary-treasurer. After numerous unsuccessful advocacy efforts — including an attempt to bar women from Lamont Library — the HUC was in a death spiral.

“The HUC has probably become irrelevant,” said then-former HUC member Lawrence M. Lawrence in a 1968 interview with The Crimson. “Now there are only ashes.”

By 1978, the defunct HUC was replaced by the Harvard Student Assembly.

According to former Student Assembly Chair Natasha Pearl ’82, the new Student Assembly occupied a crucial campus role through its capacity to plan schoolwide social events.

But without any budget or official recognition by school administrators, the 96-person Student Assembly again ran up against the same power imbalance suffered by its predecessors and struggled to distinguish itself from other college governance bodies. In 1982, The Crimson deemed the Student Assembly “notoriously inefficient.”

“Undergraduates felt that their voice was not being heard,” then-Dean of the College John B. Fox Jr. ’59 later told the Crimson.

Fox moved to establish the College’s first officially recognized and funded student government, convening the Committee to Review College Governance in the spring of 1980, chaired by then-professor of biology John E. Dowling ’57.

Pearl, who served on the Committee, said in an interview this month that Harvard was an outlier for its lack of an official student government at the time.

The next year, the Committee-produced “Dowling Report” proposed to replace Student Assembly with a representative, 85-member “Undergraduate Council” and called for Harvard to allocate the body a $60,000 yearly budget, raised via a $10 surcharge on each student’s tuition.

A year later, after an arduous constitutional convention, Harvard’s first official student government, the Undergraduate Council, was born.

‘WORRISOME HAUGHTINESS’ Politics quickly found a home in the UC, with progressive student groups lobbying to install a sympathetic leader atop the Council.

But by the end of its first year, the Council, chaired by Michael G. Colantu-

ono ’83, had proven it could at least function, if not incrementally improve student life at Harvard.

Thomas H. Howlett ’84, a Crimson news editor who reported on the UC at the time, called the new Council “auspicious,” but criticized the “worrisome haughtiness” of some Council members who were “willing to sacrifice their direct link to students for junior Congressman status.”

Such a characterization would haunt the UC for the remainder of its existence.

Some past actors even speculated that Harvard’s unique student population made successful student governance difficult.

“The percentage of undergrad incoming freshmen who were presidents of their student government is probably enormously high,” said Tim R. Hwang ’08, who would go on to run as a joke candidate. “You already have this ultra-competitive sort of situation that I think leads to a certain level of toxicity in the culture.”

The Council continued its reign into the late ’80s, throwing public events and advocating on issues

like minority representation among Harvard faculty, South African Apartheid, sexual harassment, and campus keg policies — but struggled to drive student investment.

According to former College Dean Harry R. Lewis ’68, low student interest is not an inherently bad omen.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily a terribly bad thing that you can’t get the student body all revved up about the student government,” Lewis said in an interview this month. “It’s a measure of the diversity of interests of the population.”

Students originally didn’t even express interest in selecting the body’s leader, voting down a proposal that would allow them to popularly elect the Council’s “chair,” who was appointed internally at the time. Only one-third of the student body voted in the referendum.

“One of the main things that people who proposed the amendment intended was to cut down on student apathy,” councilmember Rodolfo Ruiz ’90 said at the time. “You can see the referendum didn’t do that at all.”

“It shows that it’s hard to generate interest in what [the council] is doing,” said another then-UC member.

For a Council trying to shake its melodramatic image, 1992 was a bad year.

Then-Vice Chair Maya G. Prabhu ’94 was accused of tampering with ballots for an internal social

TOBY R. MA—CRIMSON DESIGNER

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The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

committee chair election.

Prabhu professed her innocence, but after a failed impeachment attempt, an anonymous letter of confession, and calls for handwriting analysis of the letter, she stepped down.

The Council made more positive headlines the following year when it selected Carey W. Gabay ’94 as its first Black leader. That same year, the titles of “chair” and “vice chair” were finally changed to the familiar “president” and “vice president.”

With the title change came renewed calls for popular officer elections, something to which the Council’s first leader was opposed.

“If you’re trying to choose effective leadership for the legislative body, I don’t necessarily think that a president is better,” Colantuono said in a 2008 interview with The Crimson. “The race can easily become of much more interest to the tors of future senaA m er ica.”

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Rudd W. Coffey ’97, a councilmember who was an outspoken advocate for popular elections at the time, said the change might have welcomed more drama than it was worth.

“We saw going into campus-wide elections as an improvement, as a way to strengthen it, as a way to tie the key leadership closer to the student body,” Coffey said in an interview this month. “I think it obviously had some unintended consequences.”

In its first year of popular officer elections, the Council moved to recall its vice president after he failed to expel council members with poor attendance. The recall, which the VP called a “political witch hunt,” failed — but six representatives were eventually dismissed through the fiasco.

By 1998, student participation in the UC reached a new low, with just 18 percent of students casting a ballot in its midterm elections.

The Council’s woes continued. In 1998, the UC’s treasurer, John A. Burton ’01, announced an account containing $40,000 of forgotten money — more than a third of the Council’s budget at the time — had been discovered over the summer.

That same year, an election commission member resigned following the revelation that she asked other students to pray for a specific ticket via email.

Jonelle M. Lonergan ’02, writing for The Crimson at the time, said the Council was marred by an identity crisis as its leaders increasingly disagreed on the role of the body.

“Every council meeting became a tugof-war between political activism and providing student services,” she wrote in 1999.

At the onset of a new millennium, UC officer elections soared to new heights as candidates explored the boundaries of campaign finance regulation. Mail drops, stickers, buttons, and lemonade became commonplace during election season as candidates worked to stretch their $100 spending limit.

Tensions flared when an all-white group of UC representatives moved to impeach Burton, who by then was vice president to the Council’s first Black female president, accusing him of stealing buttons from a student group, according to a 2000 Crimson article. The weeks-long controversy led to a complete collapse of decorum within the Council, culminating in a hearing attended by representatives from the Harvard chapter of the NAACP. Burton survived the challenge.

‘LAISSEZ-FAIRE’ AND TOMATO BASIL SOUP

NAYELI CARDOZO—CRIMSON DESIGNER

The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

By the mid-2000s, the Council’s antics had invited parody. In one of the first of many joke candidacies to come, Hwang and Alexander S. Wong ’08 ran a familiar-sounding “Laissez-Faire UC” platform, calling for the Council’s assets to be distributed equally among students via checks.

Hwang said in a May interview the campaign was meant to poke fun at the demeanor of some UC members.

“The UC was a haven for people who took themselves too seriously,” Hwang said. “I think the people who participate in [student governments] often take them beyond a reasonable level of seriousness that doesn’t make any sense.”

Hwang and Wong were unsuccessful in their bid, but attracted formidable student support, something former Crimson news editor Eric P. Newcomer ’12 said bode poorly for the Council.

“The flirtation with an eventual election of the joke ticket was certainly a strong sign from the Harvard undergraduate body that there was not a lot of belief in the Undergraduate Council,” Newcomer said in a May interview.

Accompanying the jokes in the late 2000s was an uptick in Council productivity. A series of uncontroversial leaders led successful efforts to move fall exams to take place before the winter break and establish a College-wide facebook. (Previous efforts to create a facebook were slowed by privacy concerns after Mark E. Zuckerberg used house facebooks to create a website that allowed users to rate students’ attractiveness.)

But the Council’s credibility quickly began to slip once more.

A multi-day election fraud scandal engulfed the UC in 2009, prompting a failed impeachment of the Council’s then-vice president, Kia J. McLeod ’10, the resignation of three members of the election commission, and a full investigation by Harvard IT services.

Just four years later, the Council would see its first and only successful joke ticket, when Samuel B. Clark ’15 and Gus A. Mayopoulos ’15 ran on a campaign to ensure more tomato basil soup was served in the dining halls. Clark immediately resigned following his victory, but Mayopoulos remained, serving an uneventful term as UC president.

The UC was publicly questioning its own efficacy by 2014, when consistently low voter turnout promoted discussion at a general meeting.

“We’re never [going to] see the day where the UC is a fully relevant body at

Michael Y. Cheng ’22 was elected president of the Undergradute Council on a promise to abolish the body. SELLERS HILL—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Harvard,” Jacob R. Steinberg-Otter ’16 said at the meeting.

Few elections following the pair’s satirical victory was without a joke or anti-establishment ticket, but subsequent administrations largely failed to stir the pot.

That was until the campaign of Aditya A. Dhar ’21 and Andrew W. Liang ’21, who vowed, satirically, to “abolish” the Undergraduate Council and sit on Harvard University President Lawrence S. Bacow’s desk until he agreed to serve their agenda.

The pair lost narrowly to James A. Mathew ’21 and Ifeoma “Ify” E. White-Thorpe ’21, who made national headlines for their campaign music video, even appearing on Inside Edition and the Kelly Clarkson Show.

The following year, a cat campaigned for office. The Crimson editorial board deemed UC elections “broken.”

The 2021 election saw candidate disqualifications, reinstatements, nullified votes, and accusations of tax fraud. Just 33 percent of students turned out to elect Cheng and de Kanter on their “defund” platform.

Dhar and Liang would get their wish after all. In March 2022, students turned out in historic numbers to dissolve the UC via referendum in favor of a new structure, the Harvard Undergraduate Association.

A QUESTION OF SINCERITY In light of the UC’s history of tribulations, it seems unlikely that the HUA will be without challenges. But opinions differ on what exactly dealt the UC its fatal blow.

There’s a certain resentment against people who get involved in student government based on assumptions about their motivations.

ANDREW B. HERRMANN ’82 Former Student Assembly Leader

According to Newcomer, who used to cover the UC for The Crimson, the success of the HUA, like its predecessors, will hinge on its ability to assure students it means well.

“Now that the UC has destroyed itself, the UC’s self-important facade is crumbling,” Newcomer wrote in an email. “Unfortunately, I’m sure that the new student government will soon try to convince the world (and The Crimson) that it is doing important work.”

Some say the introduction of popular voting sent the Council down the wrong

path.

“It remains to be seen if [the HUA] is an improvement or a downgrade,” said Coffey, a former Councilmember. “If that was the price of going to campus-wide elections and the in-between was a bunch of joke candidates and people getting more and more extreme, that probably wasn’t worth it.”

Andrew B. Herrmann ’82, a former Student Assembly leader, thinks that problems stem from a nefarious perception of student government leaders.

“The central controversy in this most recent move to redo the student government is the same one that’s probably always been there,” Herrmann said.

“There’s a certain resentment against people who get involved in student government based on assumptions about their motivations.”

Still, Pearl, who helped pave the way for the UC in the early ’80s, was concerned by the disillusionment.

“I sincerely hope that Harvard College students, intentionally or inadvertently, are not discarding their vitally important role as stakeholders in the governance of the college,” Pearl wrote in an email.

But with less than a quarter of students turning out for the HUA’s first slate of officer elections, Pearl is yet to be reassured. sellers.hill@thecrimson.com

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The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

PHOTO BY JULIAN J. GIORDANO—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER. DESIGN MADISON A. SHIRAZI—CRIMSON DESIGNER

The Corporation’s New Chapter As lawyer William F. Lee ’72 steps down, incoming senior fellow Penny S. Pritzker prepares to lead the Harvard Corporation into its next era.

By CARA J. CHANG and ISABELLA B. CHO

I

CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

n 2010, the Harvard Corporation embarked upon a historic first: change.

For the first time since its charter in 1650, the University’s highest governing board committed to a sweeping set of reforms that would nearly double its size, institute term limits, and select a senior fellow instead of allowing the lon-

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gest-serving member to assume the role.

Few Harvard affiliates know much about the President and Fellows of Harvard College, commonly called the Harvard Corporation. The board weighs in on all major decisions at Harvard and holds the power to select — and fire — Harvard presidents. Yet, the Corporation is largely absent from campus life and discourse.

The board is chaired by the University president, but also includes a senior fellow who is billed as “a first among equals,”

leading the body’s major initiatives and interfacing more with top Harvard officials.

Twelve years ago, as it sought to implement its first wide-ranging reforms, the Corporation turned to a quirky intellectual property lawyer with a friendly persona perhaps uncharacteristic of the titles he holds: William F. Lee ’72.

Lee joined the Harvard Corporation six months before the reforms were announced and ascended to the senior fel-

lowship in 2014. Before joining Harvard’s top governing board, Lee, a long-time partner at the legal giant WilmerHale, served on the Harvard Board of Overseers and was a leading patent lawyer, litigating high-profile cases, including the “smartphone wars” trial between Apple and Samsung.

During his 12 years on the Corporation — the maximum any fellow can now serve — Lee helped steer the board through the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis and the

The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

poration Harvard Cor s ance Reform 2010 Govern e Corporation Expanded th rs to 13 Membe

from 7 ar Terms

llows to 2 6-Ye

Limited the Fe

from Senior Fellow Switched the ection Seniority to El or Fellow e Role of Seni Expanded th es on ew Committe Established N d ernance, an Finance, Gov ng ni an Capital Pl e with int Committe Launched a Jo rs Oversee the Board of with Engage More Committed to y it un y Comm the Universit

rporation cus of the Co Shifted the Fo nance er ov G ent to from Managem

height of the Covid-19 pandemic. He led the team that selected University President Lawrence S. Bacow.

When the anti-affirmative action group Students for Fair Admissions sued Harvard over its race-conscious admissions practices in 2014, Lee served as senior litigant, representing Harvard in court pro bono.

Lee’s departure, set for next month, will bring a new era for the board. As he exits, the Corporation has turned to a starkly different figure to fill his shoes: Penny S. Pritzker ’81, who brings deep ties to Washington’s most powerful players and a net worth of more than $3 billion.

When she takes over as senior fellow in June, Pritzker will face a confluence of challenges.

Over the last decade, Harvard’s endowment — which the Corporation is tasked with overseeing — has often delivered lower returns than its most prominent higher education competitors. The SFFA case, now at the Supreme Court, appears on track to reshape college admissions. And across the Charles River in Allston, Harvard continues to pursue aggressive expansion plans in the face of neighborhood opposition.

Prizkter comes to the Corporation with an intertwined legacy of privilege and pathfinding: She is the first woman to rise through the ranks of her family’s sprawling business empire and the first

female senior fellow in the Corporation’s 372-year history. Pritzker’s success is also, though, rooted in the wealth of one of America’s richest dynasties.

Lee, as the first new senior fellow following the 2010 governance reforms, played a key role in determining the Corporation’s place at modern Harvard. Pritzker, set to succeed him next month, will be central to shaping the next chapter of the now-changed — but still ever-powerful — board.

REFORMING A ‘DANGEROUS ANACHRONISM’

In the year leading up to Harvard’s governance reforms, criticism of how the Corporation operates spilled over into public view.

After Harvard’s endowment shrunk

by $11 billion in fiscal year 2009, a pair of prominent professors publicly contended that the Corporation had fundamentally failed its fiduciary duty to Harvard.

In a scathing Boston Globe op-ed, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences professor Frederick H. Abernathy and former Harvard College Dean Harry R. Lewis ’68 wrote that the Corporation is “a dangerous anachronism” that is unaccountable and shrouded in too much secrecy.

The 2010 reforms sought to restructure the Corporation for the modern era.

The board published eight reforms designed to shift the Corporation from a seven-member “multiple executive” cohort to a 13-member body focused on Harvard’s strategic priorities. The board created term limits capping fellows at 12 years of service and established three new committees for finances, facilities and capital planning, and governance. More broadly, the Corporation committed to working more closely with the Board of Overseers — Harvard’s second-highest governing board — and promoting transparency.

Bacow — who was a fellow on the Corporation from 2011 until he became president in 2018 — contends that the reforms

have been successful.

“I think expanding the size of the Corporation gave the Corporation much more bandwidth and much more substantive expertise for managing an institution of the complexity of Harvard,” Bacow said.

Robert D. Reischauer ’63, the senior fellow before Lee, said the close-knit nature of the group has been preserved despite the body’s expansion.

“The culture that had been developed over the centuries from having a small, collegial body of individuals who have mutual respect for each other — weren’t competitive in any sense — has by and large been preserved,” he said.

As the Corporation evolved, so did the role of senior fellow: The 2010 governance reforms redefined the senior fellow as “a lead player within the board” with “a more active part in framing Corporation agendas and setting priorities for its work.” The senior fellow also chairs the governance committee and conducts an annual review of the president.

Scott A. Abell ’72, one of Lee’s classmates and a former member of the Board of Overseers, said Lee’s tenure was “uniquely positive at a time change needed to be implemented.”

“His incredible capacity to listen to

William F. Lee ‘72, right, and co-counsel Seth P. Waxman ‘73, left, speak to reporters outside the John Joseph Moakley U.S. Courthouse in Boston in 2018, midway through the three-week trial of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. AMY Y. LI—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

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people and to value everyone’s opinion, to respect points of view, made that transition work far better than I think anyone would have guessed — and far more quickly,” Abell said.

But the transformation of Harvard’s governance did not stop with the 2010 reforms.

As a fiduciary body, the Corporation is charged with overseeing the University’s finances at a high level — including the Harvard Management Company, which manages Harvard’s $53 billion endowment.

Lee’s tenure has also been marked by change at HMC and in the University’s financial strategy.

In 2016, Harvard’s endowment saw its poorest set of returns since the 2008 financial crisis, losing $2 billion and underperforming relative to peer institutions.

A week after HMC reported the drop, newly-hired HMC CEO N. P. “Narv” Narvekar announced a five-year plan to restructure the firm.

Former University President Drew G. Faust — who led the University through the height of the 2008 financial recession — said the transition from a large inhouse investing team to an external model and its more risk-averse investment approach help explain Harvard’s lower returns.

“It’s hard to avoid this horse race about the number at the end of the year, and which university has what number. But the universities have very different circumstances that they’re taking into consideration,” she said. “There are a lot of elements going into this.”

Under Lee, the Corporation also carried out a historic intervention into un-

dergraduate social life, endorsing the College’s sanctions against single-gender final clubs and Greek organizations in 2017. The Corporation voted to rescinde its support for the penalties three years later.

Lee further redefined his role at Harvard during his time as senior fellow by taking on an usual task: defending Harvard in federal court.

When SFFA sued Harvard over the College’s race-conscious admissions process during Lee’s first year on the job, he led the legal team that successfully defended the school during a 2018 trial and a subsequent appeal.

With the SFFA lawsuit still pending and record-high inflation expected to diminish endowment contributions, the Corporation’s next chapter under Pritzker’s leadership will open where Lee’s era

Loeb House, which is located at 17 Quincy Street, once served as the home of presidents of the University, now houses its governing bodies — the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers . CARA J. CHANG—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

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of change and transition ends.

Pritzker wrote in an emailed statement that serving as senior fellow will be “an incredible honor.”

“I will put my heart and soul into this role to do my part to continue Harvard’s ongoing and important commitment to educating citizen leaders, to pathbreaking research and to creating opportunity and knowledge that help countless people across America and around the world,” she wrote.

PENNY AND THE PRITZKER DYNASTY Pritzker comes from one of America’s wealthiest and most influential families, with roots in Chicago. From Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law to the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, signs of their influence are strewn across the midwestern hub. Since 2019, Penny Pritzker’s venture capitalist brother, J.B. Pritzker, has served as the governor of Illinois.

Since graduating from Harvard College in 1981, Penny Pritzker has co-founded the global private investment firm PSP Partners, started the Pritzker Traubert Family Foundation, and served as secretary of Commerce in the Obama administration.

“She was an integral part of the success of the Pritzker family,” said Louis B. Susman, the former United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom and a former business partner of Penny Pritzker’s uncle, Jay Pritzker.

Jay Pritzker is credited with building

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the Hyatt hospitality empire and the Marmon Group, two of the primary sources of the Pritzkers’ wealth.

But while Penny Pritzker is now one of the most prominent members of the dynasty, she was never guaranteed a stake in the family business: She was the first woman to rise through the ranks of the empire.

“She was not one of the first — she was the first,” said Melvyn N. Klein, a philanthropist and former business partner and friend of Jay Pritzker. “She educated herself and prepared herself for that, and went to then-senior members of the family — and she qualified, and was able to join the family office.”

Following Jay Pritzker’s death, Penny Pritzker helped run the family business alongside two relatives: her uncle Nicholas J. Pritzker and Thomas J. Pritzker, who is Jay Pritzker’s eldest son and primary successor.

While friends and associates point to her as a barrier-breaker for her work in the family business, her stake in Hyatt has not been free from criticism — name-

ly, from some major labor unions.

When Pritzker was nominated by Obama as Commerce secretary, UNITE HERE, a national hospitality workers union, opposed her appointment because of Hyatt’s treatment of workers. The Chicago Teachers Union has also raised concerns about Pritzker in the past, at one point charging that she funneled state money into Hyatt ventures.

Pritzker also faced questions over her executive position in the holding company that owned Superior Bank — which collapsed in 2001, costing U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars — and her family’s use of offshore tax havens.

During the Senate confirmation process, Pritzker also admitted to under-reporting her income on disclosure forms by tens of millions.

Following her graduation, Pritzker remained significantly involved at Harvard, where she has donated tens of millions and served on both of the school’s governing boards.

Carl F. Muller ’73, a former president of

the Harvard Alumni Association, said Pritzker’s familiarity with the University makes her a strong pick for the senior fellow position.

“The fact that Penny is completely familiar with how Harvard works formally and informally is critical to her new role,” he said.

Lee spearheaded the process to pick his successor, which took a year and entailed conversations with past and present Corporation members, as well as Harvard administrators and deans, he said in an interview this month.

“During the course of that process, Penny emerged as someone who — because of her public service, because of her affiliation, association with academic institutions, because of her association with Harvard — was the ideal person to step into the role,” Lee said.

Penny S. Pritzker Education A.B., Harvard University, 1981 J.D., Stanford University, 1985 M.B.A., Stanford University, 1985

Current Roles Founder & Chair, PSP Partners (PSP Capital, PSP Growth, and Pritzker Realty Group) Board Member, Microsoft Board Member, Icertis Board Chair, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Board Chair, P33 Member, President’s Council of Advisors on Science & Tech Director & Co-Founder, Pritzker Traubert Family Foundation Fellow, Harvard Corporation

Past Roles U.S. Secretary of Commerce Member, Chicago Board of Education Member, Stanford Board of Trustees Member, Harvard Board of Overseers

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THE CHANGING FACE OF HARVARD Even within Harvard’s governance, Pritzker is no stranger to historic firsts.

Prior to her selection as the first female senior fellow, Pritzker’s 2018 appointment to the Corporation alongside Carolyn A. “Biddy” Martin finally established gender parity within the body.

Still, the Corporation’s new era will see continued room for improvement.

Despite increases in the Corporation’s racial and gender diversity over the last decade, the group is largely made up of influential business, legal, and academic leaders, leaving it without significant socioeconomic diversity.

Pritzker is not the only Harvard mega-donor on the current Corporation: David M. Rubenstein joined the board in 2017 after co-chairing Harvard’s $9.6 billion capital campaign and has donated tens of millions.

Lee defended the makeup of the Corporation, saying that many members came from “humble” beginnings and that their wealth is a testament to their professional accomplishments Lee also said he expects Pritzker to continue advancing his effort to make the board more transparent — a longtime critique of the way it operates.

“I think we’re doing a better job of that from 2010 to 2020,” Lee said. “The pandemic has interfered with those communications, but I’m sure Penny will pick it up again, now that we’re all seeing each other in person.”

While Corporation members now regularly meet with other Harvard officials, including members of the Board of Overseers and Harvard deans, the Corporation’s meetings remain closed to Harvard affiliates, and there is no formal disclosure of the results of any votes or discussions.

Nathán Goldberg ’18, co-founder of Harvard Forward, a progressive student and alumni organization that has put up petition candidates to serve on the Board of Overseers, said the top governing board remains opaque.

But many members of the body contend that full transparency would be unhelpful.

“The Corporation can’t do its work if it’s perfectly transparent,” Bacow said in an interview earlier this month. “I think that the Corporation has responsibilities to communicate to the community and I think we’ve done that.”

The challenges facing the Corporation

Then-U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny S. Pritzker delivers an address at the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan on October 21, 2014.

Pritzker helmed the U.S. Department of Commerce between 2013 and 2017, serving under former President Barack Obama.

PHOTO BY WILLIAM NG / THE STATE DEPARTMENT VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

also extend beyond its makeup and internal operations to its responsibilities over Harvard finances. Pritzker will step into the recently-adapted senior fellow role as Harvard is recovering from a decade of volatile investments, leaving many eyes on what’s next for HMC.

I hope, with all of my heart, that the commitment that you see of the people who work here, who come here, who teach here, to the mission of the place never changes — because that’s been the key.

William F. Lee ’72 Senior Fellow of the Harvard Corporation

Harvard’s investments have also become an increasing source of political controversy on campus, with activists calling on the school to divest its holdings from an array of areas, including fossil fuels, Israel, and private prisons.

Goldberg said Harvard’s budget and investments can reflect its stance on climate change and racial justice.

“Our values in the endowment and our process of program funding, research funding, are also going to be issues that Harvard is going to continue to grapple with for the foreseeable future,” Goldberg said.

Harvard’s expansion into Allston also looms large for Pritzker, who is a board member of the Harvard Allston Land Company, which manages the development of the University’s proposed Enterprise Research Campus. The project is awaiting city approval, but has received immense pushback from local residents and key elected officials in the area.

Shirley M. Tilghman, a former president of Princeton University who serves on the Corporation, said Allston presents a “once-in-a-century opportunity for Harvard to expand its campus.”

“Luckily, this is something that Penny has enormous insight into because of her day job in Chicago and her serving on the board of the company that was set up to oversee the development of the commercial part of Allston,” Tilghman said.

But the approval process and Harvard’s community engagement in the neighborhood has been bumpy. Harvard has run into roadblocks as elected officials from the area have asked for more specifics about the school’s plans and

commitments to create more affordable housing.

“Harvard’s been a little slow with implementing Allston,” said Mitchell L. Dong ’75, a prominent donor, who added: “Just look at MIT’s expansion, or look at Stanford — they have no limitations on land.”

Still, Dong said, “Allston presents great opportunities.”

As Lee passes the baton to Pritzker, the SFFA case also continues to hang overhead: It is now set to be heard by the Supreme Court this fall, giving justices the chance to end affirmative action in American higher education. Asked about the most important changes during his tenure, Lee pointed to the school’s diversification — which he says would be at stake if the court rules against Harvard in the months ahead.

“The face of the University has changed substantially,” Lee said.

“But I hope, with all of my heart, that the commitment that you see of the people who work here, who come here, who teach here, to the mission of the place never changes — because that’s been the key,” he added. cara.chang@thecrimson.com isabella.cho@thecrimson.com

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CAMILLE G. CALDERA—CRIMSON DESIGNER

The People of Allston-Brighton

The Crimson interviewed five residents of Allston-Brighton about their experience living in the rapidly changing neighborhood.

By MICHAL GOLDSTEIN

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CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

cross the Charles River from Cambridge lie Allston and Brighton, neighborhoods that tens of thousands of families, artists, and immigrants call home. Among residents, Allston-Brighton is known as “welcoming,” “diverse,” and “resilient.”

Among Harvard students, the area is primarily known as an extension of the University’s campus, with landmarks such as the Harvard Athletics Complex, Harvard Business School, and the $1 billion Science and Engineering Complex.

This perception is not necessarily inaccurate; in total, the University owns around one-third of the land in Allston, making it the largest landholder in the neighborhood.

In the late 1980s, the University began covertly acquiring land through an agent, amounting to 52.6 acres of land anonymously purchased over the span of eight years. Today, after several additional explicit purchases in the intervening decades, Harvard and its subsidiaries own roughly 360 acres of land in Allston.

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Harvard’s envisioned future for Allston is a “campus for the next century,” according to its 2013 Institutional Master Plan. In addition to the recently built SEC, Harvard’s plans include a residential unit at 180 Western Ave. and the much-anticipated Enterprise Research Campus, a 900,000 square foot mixed-use development which has drawn criticism from some residents.

Harvard believes that its presence in Allston has led to many “direct benefits” to residents, such as “new parks, open spaces, robust programming, and affordable housing preservation and creation,” amounting to more than $70 million, according to an emailed statement from University spokesperson Brigid O’Rourke. Just last week, University President Lawrence S. Bacow presented the 14th annual $100,000 donation from the Harvard Allston Partnership Fund to local nonprofits.

Residents have praised initiatives like the Harvard Ed Portal, which provides educational programs to children and adults living in the neighborhood, and the Harvard-Allston Task Force, an advisory group for Harvard’s Allston devel-

opments consisting of both residents and University members. But they have also voiced concern over Harvard’s rapid expansion, claiming that the University has not involved residents in the planning process enough.

Allston-Brighton residents also struggle with other key issues, chief among them a shortage of affordable housing and an increase in rent prices.

This piece profiles five residents from Allston and Brighton who are actively dealing with these challenges and envisioning a better future for their neighborhoods. They provide a snapshot of the character of Allston-Brighton, the lives of the people within it — and the way those lives are changing.

MARY E. LAROSEE As Mary E. Larosee spoke about her childhood in Brighton, where her family has lived for five generations, she said an excited hello to her mailman, a testament to how embedded she is into her neighborhood.

In the ’60s and ’70s, when Allston-Brighton was less densely populat-

ed, the neighborhood felt like a “smaller world,” one in which no one ventured far outside their immediate surroundings, according to Larosee. Larosee has enjoyed seeing Allston-Brighton expand and diversify and stated that “change is always good.”

She said that the people are her favorite part about the neighborhood — from those who stop by to talk to her when she’s sitting on her porch, to her immigrant neighbors from South Asia, to the five-year-old living next door who calls her “Auntie Mary.”

“I attend a lot of meetings and I know a lot of people because no matter if it’s a small community or a large community, I’m going to be part of the community and get to know people, because that’s who I am and how I am,” she said.

But Larosee worries about the future of Allston-Brighton when it comes to the area’s affordability. Larosee said that her own two children, now adults, are not able to live in Allston-Brighton because it is “way too expensive.”

According to the Boston Globe, median home sale values increased by about nine percent between 2019 and 2021 in Allston,

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the institution, the ingredients for that certainly aren’t in place,” he said.

For the University’s part, it provides a point-person to facilitate relations and communication with Allston-Brighton residents. Though D’Isidoro said the representative is a “great guy,” he called on Harvard to give residents the opportunity to speak to a more senior member of the administration rather than a “messenger.” He characterized the choice not to do so as a “deliberate strategy.”

“It is just very exclusive, very condescending,” he said. “It’s almost like ‘Hey, we work with governors and mayors, we don’t work with you.’”

To D’Isidoro, Allston is more than just “physical buildings or campuses.” It is a neighborhood of living and working people trying to raise their families and “make ends meet.”

“To me, this is home,” said D’Isidoro.

“Whether I can stay here forever, who knows. That will be seen. But it really feels like home.”

SIOBHAN MCHUGH

Mary E. Larosee. AIYANA G. WHITE—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

and by 12 percent in Brighton. The median price for a house in Allston and Brighton in 2021 was around $850,000.

Larosee secured her house through a lottery for an affordable housing unit.

She explained that her income fortunately fell within the “very narrow window” that was required to enter the lottery; “it couldn’t be too high and couldn’t be too low,” she said.

In addition to the lack of affordable housing, Larosee also expressed concern about Harvard’s planned developments.

She said she is uncertain about what the changes in her neighborhood will look like, claiming that the University’s “lack of communication” has left her in the dark.

Meanwhile, the University contends that there are several points of access for Allston-Brighton residents to connect with Harvard.

“From formal public meetings, to more casual coffee hours, to impromptu check-ins, there are dozens of ongoing ways and opportunities for Harvard and Allston residents to engage on a variety of subjects,” O’Rourke wrote.

Larosee’s home is right off Western Avenue, an area surrounded by more than two dozen Harvard properties. From her house, Larosee can see the fencing that the University has put up in preparation for its forthcoming developments, a signal of the change looming ahead.

ANTHONY P. “TONY” D’ISIDORO After serving in World War II, Anthony P. “Tony” D’Isidoro’s father got married and moved to Allston, eventually purchasing a home with aid from the 1944 G.I. Bill. When D’Isidoro was growing up in Allston, the neighborhood was still affordable and familial, a town where “everybody knew everybody,” he said.

By contrast, D’Isidoro’s description of Allston today emphasized the gentrification of the neighborhood, the housing crisis, and the strain on the public school system. D’Isidoro facilitates conversations about such issues as the president of the Allston Civic Association, a group which provides public forums for Allston-Brighton residents.

As a member of the Harvard-Allston Task Force, D’Isidoro is heavily involved in discussions about Harvard’s expansion and acknowledges both the University’s successes and its failures throughout Allston’s history.

While he lauded efforts such as the Ed Portal, he argued that, at times, Harvard has acted like a “real estate development company” more than a university.

“We’ve been through a lot of traumatic events in our community,” he said, citing Harvard’s secret purchase of land in the late ’80s as as an event “indelibly written”

on every Allstonian’s mind.

“The feeling of the Harvard presence is that it’s not one of accountability and transparency right now. If you want to build trust between the community and

When Siobhan McHugh traveled from Ireland to Brighton in 1989, she was supposed to only stay for her two-week summer vacation. But she unexpectedly found herself in a “home away from home,” sur-

Anthony P. “Tony” D’Isidoro. AIYANA G. WHITE—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

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Siobhan McHugh. AIYANA G. WHITE—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

rounded by enclaves of immigrants within a familial neighborhood. At the end of the two weeks, McHugh extended her stay and has been living in Brighton ever since.

“I felt so welcomed here, and not just by the Irish community. By every community,” she said.

McHugh raised her two children in Brighton and currently runs a family child care service at her house. When she moved to Allston-Brighton, she said that the neighborhood was made up of mostly families. But according to her, those families started moving away a decade ago due to their inability to afford the cost of living in the area.

“Our little league, our hockey teams, soccer teams — the numbers have halved in the last 10 years of kids and families playing sports. Families just aren’t here anymore,” McHugh said.

Even the neighborhood’s affordable housing efforts aren’t enough to sustain the long-term residency of families.

McHugh recounted her experience helping her friends look for affordable housing units and finding that they were too low-income to qualify for the low-income housing.

“What they’re calling affordable housing is not affordable housing,” she said.

From her hilltop home in Oak Square, McHugh has a view of her town, one

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that she said has changed dramatically since she started living there. Part of that change has to do with Harvard’s development in the past couple decades.

McHugh described Harvard’s land acquisition process as “sneaky,” a series of purchases that flew under the radar of many residents.

“Nobody was any the wiser really for a while [of] who was buying the houses,” McHugh said. To her, Harvard’s growing role in Allston-Brighton felt like an “invasion.”

“University representatives routinely participate in public meetings, which are just one of the many ways in which Harvard engages with the Allston-Brighton community to ensure local residents can get answers to outstanding questions, offer feedback and voice concerns,” O’Rourke wrote.

The changes in Allston remind McHugh of past developments in Harvard Square, which she described as a once “thriving” area for small businesses, many of which have since been replaced by chain stores. She said she worries that Allston may follow the same route.

But McHugh still feels optimistic about the integrity of the neighborhood’s residents as they encounter any unwelcome changes. “I don’t think anyone can argue, but we are fighters here in Allston-Brighton,” she said.

CINDY MARCHANDO When Cindy Marchando moved to Allston in 2006, she found the neighborhood to be “intimate,” full of “mom-and-pop” style businesses. She had been living in

the Boston area for around 16 years before then, having moved to the United States from her home country of Trinidad and Tobago in 1990.

As the chair of the Harvard-Allston Task Force, Marchando is familiar with the tensions between the University and Allston-Brighton residents. She has also had personal encounters with Harvard’s developments, including the construction of the Harvard Ed Portal, which happened directly behind her home. The experience was positive, according to Marchando.

“We were able to work together. [Harvard] got their project completed and the impact on the families that live here was minimal,” she said. “The days when they had to really disrupt our lives, they made accommodations for us to be able to not be as disrupted as we were.”

She described her next experience with Harvard as more negative. Marchando said that she faced physical damages to her home in 2014 during the construction of the Continuum, a luxury apartment building at Barry’s Corner built on land owned by the Harvard Allston Land Company.

Marchando claimed that while the contractor was pile-driving into the land, the vibrations shook her and her neighbors’ houses. She said that the University neglected her and other residents when they complained about the damages.

Cindy Marchando. PHOTO COURTESY CINDY MARCHANDO

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Ellen L. Krause-Grosman. AIYANA G. WHITE—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

“[The construction company] kept putting us off and delaying while they kept shaking the home, and then when they were finished, then they decided to put in vibration monitors at our home to prove that we were lying,” she said.

As a result, Marchando said she had to reconstruct her whole front porch out of her own pocket. At the time, her husband was recovering from a heart attack, making her the only wage-earner in her home.

“I should not have to fight for a large university to stop destroying my home and then turn their backs on me and say, ‘Not our problem,’” Marchando said.

Though Marchando believes that “change helps us grow as a community,” she worries that future developments in the area will cause her to be displaced from her home.

When asked about her feelings about the future of Allston-Brighton, Marchando said: “I’m excited, but petrified.”

Now, she serves as a member of the Coalition for a Just Allston and Brighton, a group of residents, local organizations, and elected officials which advocates for the neighborhood.

One of the challenges Krause-Grosman sees in Allston-Brighton is its unaffordability which she said makes no one but the “two-income, serious professional family” able to provide a down payment on a house.

Although Krause-Grosman owns a two-family home, she makes extra income by renting out two rooms of her own unit to international students and renting out the other unit entirely.

During their time living there, her family has rented to more than 60 international students from 20 different countries.

On the bright side, Krause-Grosman said, “I’m an extrovert and my kids had this very interesting upbringing with us.”

On the other hand, she said, “you would look at it and say, I’m 54 years old and I still have housemates.”

The inflation of real estate prices are significantly driving up the number of housing developments in Allston-Brighton, making for a “financially extractive development model” in the neighborhood, according to Krause-Grosman.

Yet, she said she is “deeply not an anti-development person.”

“I like change. I like new. I stand at the edge of construction sites and I’m like, ‘Oh my god, that’s cool. That’s just so cool.’ But it’s about development that has a vision to it,” said Krause-Grosman.

But according to her, the current state of development in the area lacks a clear purpose.

“Uncontrolled growth is cancer,” she said. “Those are cells going out of control in places where they ought not to be.”

In addition to being a Brighton resident, Krause-Grosman is also a Harvard alumna, having attended the Graduate School of Education. She brings her unique perspective as a former Harvard student into her understanding of the changing fabric of Allston-Brighton.

“Last September, I got a letter from Larry Bacow that went to all the Harvard alums about all of the green and sustainable ‘save the Earth’ stuff that Harvard was doing and their important impact in the world,” she said. “And there was not a word or a line about anything in Cambridge or Boston.”

Krause-Grosman calls on the University to focus their efforts locally, too.

Even in the face of what she said are “serious challenges” between Harvard and Allston-Brighton residents, Krause-Grosman remains hopeful for a future where both parties will successfully collaborate.

“Let’s take it on together and let’s do something that’s worthy of replicating in other places,” she said. michal.goldstein@thecrimson.com

ELLEN L. KRAUSE-GROSMAN Ellen L. Krause-Grosman loves Allston-Brighton. She loves Chandler Pond, she loves Johnny D’s Fruit and Produce shop, and she loves her neighborhood’s Jewish community.

Krause-Grosman first moved to the Greater Boston area in 1990 and has been living in Brighton for the past 22 years.

The Harvard Science and Engineering Complex is located in Allston at 150 Western Avenue. JULIAN J. GIORDANO—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

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In August, campus came back to life, starting with a pair of Convocations. Though convocation typically occurs at the start of freshman fall, sophomores were not able to gather in fall 2020 due to Covid-19. After the ceremonies, which were held separately, members of both classes gathered on the steps of Widener Library to take class photos. ZING GEE—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

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In September, Harvard announced that it will divest its endowment from fossil fuels — a victory for activists. PEI CHAO ZHUO—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

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In October, the Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Automobile Workers went on strike for the second time in two years. Graduate students picketed across camps for the duration of the three-day strike, which coincided with Freshman Family Weekend. TRUONG L. NGUYEN AND ANGELA DELA CRUZ—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHERS

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After being canceled in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Head of the Charles Regatta returned in October 2021, bringing thousands of rowers and spectators to the water and banks of the Charles River. Upwards of 11,000 athletes participate in the regatta each year, making it one of the world’s largest rowing events. OWEN A. BERGER—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

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In January, students started the semester by frolicking in the snow, using items like posters and dining hall trays to sled down the steps of Widener Library in Harvard Yard. JULIAN J. GIORDANO—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

FEBRUARY

YEAR IN PHOTOS 2021-2022

In February, Hasty Pudding Theatricals held its 72nd Woman of the Year Parade in honor of actress Jennifer Garner — first Woman of the Year Parade to be held since the onset of the pandemic.

Among the hundreds of onlookers braved the 23-degree weather to enjoy the festivities in Harvard Square. JULIAN J. GIORDANO—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

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YEAR IN PHOTOS 2021-2022

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In February, just days after Russia invaded Ukraine, several hundred demonstrators — waving flags and carrying anti-war posters — rallied in Harvard Yard to support Ukraine and protest against violence. Multiple other demonstrations in solidarity with Ukraine were held in the Yard throughout the spring semester. JULIAN J. GIORDANO—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

MARCH

YEAR IN PHOTOS 2021-2022

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APRIL

In April, the Palestine Solidarity Committee displayed a “Wall of Resistance” in the Yard as part of their programming for Israeli Apartheid Week. JULIAN J. GIORDANO—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

MAY

In March, students celebrated the return of Housing Day, welcoming freshmen to their future homes with riotous dorm-storms. JULIAN J. GIORDANO AND TRUONG L. NGUYEN—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHERS

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YEAR IN PHOTOS 2021-2022

In May, President Lawrence S. Bacow spoke about the legacy of slavery at Harvard, days after the release of a landmark report on the topic. JULIAN J. GIORDANO—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

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The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

Graduating into a Global Pandemic SOPHIA SALAMANCA—CRIMSON DESIGNER

For the Classes of 2020 and 2021, graduating from Harvard meant entering a pandemic-stricken post-grad world.

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efore the pandemic started, Claira Janover ’20 said her post-graduation plans were essentially set in stone. The fall prior, she had accepted a job in management consulting, which she would start full-time after graduation.

She planned to eventually attend graduate school.

Then, Covid-19 hit. Janover, alongside the rest of Harvard’s student body, was evicted from campus amid the escalating public health crisis.

The Class of 2020 graduated from home, scattered across the world, instead of together in Tercentenary Theatre. A year later, the Class of 2021 would do the same.

In the chaos of the pandemic, Janover took a semester off, went viral on social media — which led her company to rescind her job offer — and worked for the Biden campaign. She traveled, discovered new hobbies, and is now employed at a startup.

“I know for a fact that had the pandemic not happened, I would have just immediately graduated, gone into the cor-

By KATHERINE M. BURSTEIN and LEAH J. TEICHHOLTZ CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

porate world, continued that lifestyle,” Janover said. “A lot of my life changed for the worse during the pandemic, but there were so many silver linings.”

I know for a fact that had the pandemic not happened, I would have just immediately graduated, gone into the corporate world, continued that lifestyle. A lot of my life changed for the worse during the pandemic, but there were so many silver linings.

CLAIRA JANOVER ‘20 Graduated Mid-Pandemic

For most graduates, the transition into the real world, even without the pressures of a pandemic, can be daunting. The

added factor of Covid-19 meant that some students began graduate school online, while others entered a remote workforce or had to cancel travel plans.

The Crimson interviewed 12 alumni from the Classes of 2020 and 2021 about their experiences graduating into an ongoing pandemic.

As they encountered the precarity of life outside Harvard, graduates were also forced to rapidly adapt to the realities of a pandemic-ridden world.

‘A GOOD LEARNING OPPORTUNITY’ The proportion of College graduates pursuing further academic studies dipped slightly from the pre-pandemic average of 17 percent to just 14 percent for the Classes of 2020 and 2021, per data from Harvard’s Office of Career Services.

Due to the pandemic, students among that 14 percent encountered a radically different experience than years past.

Daniel K. Ragheb ’20, who started at Vanderbilt Medical School in person, said

the pandemic provided “a good learning opportunity.” He was given the option to care for patients with Covid-19, lending him a “unique perspective” on the health crisis.

“Their thinking, I believe, was along the lines of, ‘This is a medical pandemic and you’re coming to be medical professionals,’” Ragheb said. “​​‘Come learn, come help us in the hospitals, take the necessary precautions, but we’re not going to be changing our timing.’”

While Ragheb said he was able to have a typical clinical experience, he noted that the social dynamics of attending grad school during a pandemic posed challenges.

“You’ve done a full year of this very intensive, rigorous program for 96 students,” Ragheb said, “and at the end of the year, you haven’t seen some of the faces without masks.”

Matthew Thomas ’21 is finishing a masters degree in education through the Harvard Teacher Fellows program, which enables him to teach at a local elementary school while taking classes

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The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

Because of the pandemic, Claira Janover ’20 discovered a passion for the outdoors and applied for a travel fellowship to backpack around the world. “My love for the environment and nature began in Covid actually, because nature was the only recluse or escape from the realities of a very shut-down world,” she said. PHOTOS COURTESY CLAIRA JANOVER

at the Harvard Graduate School of Education — an experience he said has been particularly meaningful during the pandemic.

“Covid, in that sense, was just another reminder of how important relationships are and face to face interaction is for everyone,” Thomas said. “Especially with younger kids who are still developing in so many important ways, both as learning minds, but also just as social human beings.”

Shivani R. Aggarwal ’21, who is studying the philosophy and sociology of medicine through a fellowship, said she was “very much looking forward” to postgraduate studies as a way to regain the years of in-person education stolen by Zoom school.

“I hoped to experience some of what I had lost,” she said. “I was definitely soaking up all I could in my classes here but also really appreciating that it was finally a normal campus experience.”

‘NEVER STEPPED FOOT IN THE OFFICE’ Some students graduated Harvard into a starkly different corporate world than the one they may have imagined when first applying to jobs.

Danica Y. Gutierrez ’20, who accepted a position as a software engineer during her senior year, said she had job security concerns due to the evolving nature of the

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pandemic.

“I was still considering other offers and some of them did have a hiring freeze.

Some of the offers that I had, they were postponed,” Gutierrez said. “There was definitely that uncertainty.”

Diego A. Garcia ’20 wrote in an email that he found it “nerve wracking” when his job’s start date was pushed to August of 2020.

“I couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t suddenly rescind my offer because of economic downturn,” he wrote.

For Hayoung E. Ahn ’20, that fear came true when her job offer at a marketing firm was rescinded.

“It was such a crazy time, and I was devastated,” wrote Ahn, a former Crimson magazine editor.

After reentering the job search, Ahn was hired for a research position at the University of Chicago. She wrote that her redirection has helped her start a “life-enriching chapter.”

Noah S. DiAntonio ’21 said he had originally considered applying to international fellowships, but the ongoing pandemic led him to stay within the United States.

He applied to “dozens” of nonprofits jobs in the Los Angeles area but ultimately received just one offer.

“So many organizations, especially nonprofit organizations, were hurting and were not in a space to be either hiring or taking on the risk of taking on someone with little experience straight out of col-

lege,” he said.

Emanuel “Manny” Contomanolis, who directs the OCS, wrote in an emailed statement that while the pandemic had “some impact” on the job search for Harvard graduates, results were largely “quite positive” and in line with previous years.

The Class of 2020 was faced with a weaker overall job market, delayed job start times, and onboarding into predominantly virtual work settings. Many had to apply to more positions and wait longer to secure their desired work arrangements than would normally be the case.

EMANUEL ‘MANNY’ CONTOMANOLIS Director of the Office of Career Services

“The Class of 2020 was faced with a weaker overall job market, delayed job start times, and onboarding into predominantly virtual work settings,” Contomanolis wrote. “Many had to apply to more positions and wait longer to secure their

desired work arrangements than would normally be the case.”

The Class of 2021 “fared well” amid a “rapidly heating job market,” while the Class of 2022 seems to also be experiencing a strong job market, Contomanolis added.

Flora J. DiCara ’20 said it was difficult getting acclimated to a new job while living thousands of miles from the office.

“It’s a bit more challenging to get a sense of what norms and expectations are when you’re not just always automatically learning through osmosis,” DiCara said of remote work. “I had never considered working from home, ever. And it certainly wasn’t my ideal scenario.”

During his first job, Garcia “never stepped foot in the office,” he wrote. He has since returned to in-person work at a new job, an arrangement he much prefers.

Still, some alums said the pandemic prompted discussions about the value of remote work. Gutierrez said the ability to work from home has been a “blessing.”

“It really challenged the way we think about work-life balance,” Gutierrez said.

“A lot of people nowadays will think about that before taking a job: How flexible is this job? Am I able to work from home or from any other places? What kind of measures are in place in order to take care of employees?”

‘ESCAPE FROM THE REALITIES’

The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

Some alumni, like Janover, have followed more unconventional routes post-graduation.

Janover said she discovered a passion for the outdoors during the pandemic. She applied for a travel fellowship to backpack around the world.

“My love for the environment and nature began in Covid actually, because nature was the only recluse or escape from the realities of a very shut-down world,” she said.

Meanwhile, Ahn said she picked up new hobbies during the pandemic, including rock climbing, graphic design, film photography, and cooking. She also began volunteering remotely for mental health organizations.

“I hoped that I could support others who were struggling during this time,” Ahn wrote. “I just wanted to contribute and make a difference in a time when everything felt far from normal.”

Justin Tseng ’21, who is pursuing a masters in classics at the University of Cambridge, said he has enjoyed traveling

around Europe.

Though Tseng said the constantly evolving health conditions are sometimes stressful, he has found some locales to be less crowded than usual.

“A lot of sites and places that you think are going to be super touristy, super crowded, haven’t been — because of Covid,” Tseng said. “It’s kind of eerie.”

Kayla R. McConnaha ’20 said she worked as a Covid contact tracer in the year after graduation, a job which combined her undergraduate studies in global health with her interest in medicine.

In 2021, McConnaha married her longtime partner in a ceremony with Covid precautions, which she said “luckily” fell during a time of low coronavirus case counts.

“Covid definitely brought with it a lot of challenges regarding the wedding, especially given what I was doing and the fact that I was a contact tracer,” McConnaha said. “I was seeing everyday the consequences that large-scale events could have on individuals and families.”

SILVER LININGS Now, one or two years after they left Harvard for a world marred by Covid-19, nearly 90 percent of the members of the Classes of 2020 and 2021 are planning to return to campus to formally say goodbye to people and places during in-person Commencement exercises this month.

“We’re all graduated, and we’ve all kind of scattered all over the place,” Tseng said. “It’s kind of hard to get everyone back together and have a nice reunion, but I think that’s why Commencement this year is going to be quite nice.”

For many graduates, though the pandemic created challenges, it also offered unexpected benefits. DiCara, a triplet, said she was able to move back home with her two sisters who had been attending different schools since childhood.

“We’d never spent that much time together since middle school. And so that was a really unique opportunity that I certainly wouldn’t have gotten without Covid,” she said.

Socially, Thomas said the pandemic made it easier to sustain long-distance friendships after graduation.

“It became really normal to maintain and keep close friendships across long distances and so has made the transition to postgrad feel not that different in some ways,” Thomas said. “That was one silver lining — getting a chance ahead of time to practice or just to nurture those friendships.”

Leaving campus early also helped some alums understand their identity outside the “Harvard bubble” they lived in throughout their college years.

Aggarwal said entering a world jolted

by Covid reminded her she was “not just a Harvard student” but also a part of “larger communities.”

“It was just a really, really big reminder to engage with things outside of the Harvard community and realize our place in broader society and bigger causes beyond ourselves,” Thomas said. katherine.burstein@thecrimson.com leah.teichholtz@thecrimson.com

Members of the Class of 2020 and Class of 2021 didn’t have the typical experience of walking across a stage at Commencement to recieve their diplomas. Instead, they celebrated the completion of their college careers with friends and family, photoshoots, videochats, and more. PHOTOS COURTESY OF SUBJECTS

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The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

Does Harvard Care About Child Care?

Student, postdoc, and faculty parents say they risk financial strain and career setbacks due to the child care offerings at Harvard.

SOPHIA SALAMANCA—CRIMSON DESIGNER

By SOPHIA C. SCOTT and CLAIRE YUAN

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CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

y now, the challenges of parenting during a pandemic have become so well-known they’re almost trite: crying babies interrupting Zoom presentations, toddlers running into video backgrounds, little kids clamoring for homework help as their parents juggle cooking, cleaning, and their careers all under one roof.

At Harvard, however, working parents report that Covid-19 has also magnified the shortcomings of the University’s child care services.

Cambridge is a city known for its high cost of living, said Maya Sen, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and mother of two, so “child care costs are really expensive and child care availability is really limited.”

Campus Child Care, Inc. is an inde-

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pendent non-profit that operates six child care centers for Harvard affiliates and local Boston and Cambridge residents.

At CCC, the cost of one month of tuition ranges from $2,160 for preschoolers to $3,400 for infants.

Through the University’s Access to Child Care Excellence, Services, and Support program, tenure-track and senior non-tenure-track faculty are prioritized for spots at the CCC centers, but the openings are so limited that they are not guaranteed.

Adnan K. Syed, a sixth-year postdoctoral fellow, recounted that some faculty in his department who were starting families were uncertain whether their children could find a spot in Harvard’s child care centers.

“That’s insane,” he said. “That’s absolutely insane.”

And the odds are even slimmer for non-faculty like Syed himself, who has a young daughter: “So what’s going to hap-

pen with a postdoc if the faculty aren’t even getting promised [spots]?”

‘TREMENDOUS, TREMENDOUS, FINANCIAL STRAIN’ Neither the ACCESS program, which grants faculty scholarships for CCC tuition alongside priority enrollment, nor the Dependent Care Fund, which subsidizes professional travel costs for tenure-track faculty with children, are available to postdocs or graduate students.

As a result, many have struggled to make ends meet. Kelsey Tyssowski, co-president of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Postdoc Association, said postdoctoral fellows experience a “​​lack of support” from Harvard in addition to “less disposable income and less career security.”

“We make a lot less money than faculty and therefore often have much more limited child care options,” Tyssowski said.

“It’s a real struggle for a lot of people just to afford daycare, and I think Harvard could do a lot more to support postdocs by providing child care subsidies, even outside of the pandemic.”

Nicholas Short, a Ph.D. candidate in Government and Social Policy, said that paying for University child care on a graduate student stipend put his family “under tremendous, tremendous financial strain.”

Then, after Short accepted a fellowship from Harvard to fund the completion of his dissertation, he discovered that his new status as a fellow now disqualified him from certain benefits he’d received in the past, such as partial reimbursements for child care and his children’s medical and dental insurance.

“It just left me with the impression that it’s not like the University is indifferent to the plight of student parents,” Short said. “It’s almost like they’re vindictive and out to get us in trying to make our

The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

experiences as hard as possible.”

‘SIGNIFICANT INSTABILITY’ Even the parents fortunate enough to access Harvard’s child care centers are not always able to utilize them. During the pandemic, a combination of staffing shortages, Covid-19 outbreaks, and public health precautions forced the centers to intermittently shut down or run on limited hours.

According to Sen, the centers closed for four to five months starting in March 2020, and they reopened only part-time.

Only some of the centers have since reopened full-time.

Conor J. Walsh, a professor of mechanical engineering at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, tallied up the shortened hours and full-day closures to estimate that his children have received 400 fewer hours of child care than usual since the beginning of 2022.

To make up the difference, parents had little option but to leave work to pick up or care for their children.

“It’s just really left parents in a huge lurch,” Sen said, adding, “now that it’s been dragging on for so long, it’s starting to very strongly negatively impact people’s careers and their ability to keep things together.”

Walsh echoed this sentiment, writing in an email that the “significant instability” of Harvard daycare availability has taken time away from his professional obligations.

“This made it very hard to find focused time for balancing all my Un iversity responsibilities (of teaching, research, mentoring, and service),” he wrote. “In reality many aspects suffered, but mostly the ability to spend quality time mentoring students and members of my research group.”

But tensions SOPHIA SALAMANCA—CRIMSON DESIGNER

arose between faculty parents, who were calling for the reopening of child care centers, and the centers’ employees, who were concerned about the potential health risks of working through a pandemic.

“One side is mad about risk: exposure to illness and callousness of the faculty parents,” said Samuel J. Gershman, a Psychology professor with a child at one of the CCC centers. “And the faculty parents are mad that they’re being deprived of their work time and that these child care providers are not providing child care.”

‘AN OBSTACLE TO CRITICSM’ Gershman said that in January, faculty parents’ successful outcry for Harvard to reopen campus daycare centers led to “a pretty problematic rupture in the relationship between parents and teachers — which is really not something you want if you’re putting your small children in the care of other people.”

He noted that the University has made some progress in improving its child care services, citing the implementation of Covid-19 testing programs and the construction of a new child care center in Allston.

“I do believe that the University has a lot of goodwill and is trying hard to meet this very challenging situation,” Gershman said, but “the needs are greater than what Harvard is willing to meet at this point.”

But Syed said when he raised concerns about unequal access to child care services for postdocs as compared to faculty, administrators were unsympathetic.

“When I complain about it, I’ve literally been told by the administration, ‘if you don’t like it here, it’s your choice to be here. You can go get a postdoc somewhere else, where you’re treated better,’” Syed said.

Some faculty members feel unable to bring up these concerns to their supervisors at all, for fear of jeopardizing their future career opportunities.

The Office of the Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity administers the ACCESS Program and Dependent Care Fund to assist faculty with their child care needs — and its top administrator also plays a key role in the tenure promotion process.

The stated goal of the office is to “recruit and retain outstanding scholars and teachers as we continue to diversify the faculty.”

Judith D. Singer, who did not respond

Radcliffe Child Care Center is one of six locations operated by Campus Child Care, Inc. for Harvard affiliates and local residents. JULIAN J. GIORDANO—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

to a request for comment, has served as its head since 2008. She serves as a “key adviser” in the ad hoc tenure process, according to her Harvard bio, and the chair of the Provost’s Review Committee on Faculty Appointments.

Gershman said this “poses an obstacle to criticism” for faculty parents without tenure to freely voice their concerns about campus child care shortcomings.

“If you want people to give you honest feedback, or to be able to advocate for themselves, then you have to create conditions in which they don’t feel like their jobs are jeopardized,” he said. “I’m not suggesting anything nefarious here. It’s just one reason why some people feel more comfortable advocating in this area than others.”

One untenured junior faculty member, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said she worried about having discussions regarding child care with administrators involved in the tenure process.

“Every parent recognizes how much everyone is trying to make child care work and how difficult it is to do that in a pandemic, but it’s hard to have those conversations with the same people that are assessing your tenure case,” she said.

“I would like to separate my child care and my job, because it just gets awfully complicated,” she added.

‘A NEAR BREAKING POINT’

The FD&D mission statement says that the office is “especially attentive to … the concerns of women and minority faculty at all academic ranks.”

But several faculty members said inaccessible or unstable child care disproportionately affects women and minority groups traditionally underrepresented in academia.

“Being a mom who is responsive” and a tenure-track faculty member “sometimes feels like it’s hard to do both at once,” the junior faculty member said.

“And when the child care is not reliable, it feels like that’s an equation that doesn’t add up,” she said.

Syed said that the lack of affordable child care also results in less racial diversity among Harvard’s scholars.

“People wonder why we don’t have a lot of minority people in our postdoc population — I think that’s one real clear reason why,” Syed said. “It’s not that they don’t want to be at Harvard or they’re not good enough to be here. It’s that they simply can’t afford it.”

“I’ve constantly been put in this position of ‘do I choose my career or do I choose my family?’” he said. “That should never be a situation anybody is in.”

University spokesperson Jason A. Newton declined to comment. sophia.scott@thecrimson.com claire.yuan@thecrimson.com

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The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

Cambridge’s Housing Crisis TOBY R. MA—CRIMSON DESIGNER

More than 20,000 Cambridge residents are currently on the waitlist for the city’s limited number of affordable homes. How did the city get here?

By KATERINA V. CORR and ELIAS J. SCHISGALL

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CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

f there is a refrain in local Cambridge politics, it is the phrase “affordable housing.”

In the thick of Cambridge’s city manager search, residents have said time and time again that affordable housing is the city’s preeminent concern. All nine city councilors’ campaign platforms list affordable housing among their top priorities. During mid-May hearings on the city’s 2023 budget, funding for affordable housing emerged as a key point of deliberation.

According to the Community Development Department, in 2021, Cambridge contained about 57,500 homes. Of these, around 8,500, or about 15 percent, are considered income-restricted housing.

And the waitlist for these affordable homes? More than 20,000 names long.

How did Cambridge get here?

‘YOU WAIT, YOU WAIT, AND YOU WAIT’ When asked about the housing application process through the Cambridge Housing Authority, James G. Stockard Jr., a former Housing Authority board member of about 40 years, smiled slightly.

Then, leaning back in his chair in the outdoor courtyard behind the Harvard University Graduate School of Design —

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where Stockard serves as a lecturer in urban planning and design — he fell silent for nearly ten seconds.

Finally, he said, “it’s like that.”

After an applicant meets preliminary qualifications for CHA housing — a quick intake process, according to Stockard — “you have a number. And you wait, and you wait, and you wait.”

The waiting list, Stockard said, is “certainly measured in years.”

Of the names on the waitlist, Michael J. Johnston, executive director of the Cambridge Housing Authority, estimated that about 6,000 live or work in Cambridge.

Eligibility for affordable housing is calculated as a percent of the median income in a given area. In Cambridge, the maximum eligible income for the federal Section Eight voucher program — vouchers given to low-income, elderly, and disabled individuals that subsidize private-market housing options — is half of the city’s median income. This maximum ranges from $49,100 for a one-person household to $70,100 for a family of four.

City Councilor and former Mayor Marc C. McGovern said people who apply for affordable housing are often misunderstood or thought of as a “mysterious group,” in some cases reflecting racist or classist stereotypes.

“There’s a lot of stigma,” McGovern said. “You’re talking about a teacher, or a social worker, or a nurse, or an office manager.”

Rebecca M. Schofield, co-chair of the board of directors for A Better Cambridge, a housing advocacy group, argued that the actual demand for affordable housing in Cambridge cannot be quantified solely by the CHA waitlist, as many residents do not realize that they are even eligible to apply.

In addition to the income threshold, policymakers frequently define housing as “affordable” if rent lands at or below 30 percent of a tenant’s income. But Schofield noted that many Cambridge affordable housing residents are considered “rent-burdened,” meaning that their rent exceeds this 30 percent limit.

“A lot of people in Cambridge pay half their income, 60, 70, [or] more percent of their income towards housing only, which definitely indicates how crunched we are,” Schofield said.

For those in exceptional situations — for instance, victims of domestic abuse — there is an expedited process to cut the waitlist line, though Stockard described its eligibility criteria as “extremely narrow.”

Johnston described repeatedly having a “very difficult conversation” with housing applicants who he said did not qualify for emergency status.

“You actually have to sit there and tell them, ‘your situation doesn’t meet the criteria in a way that I can jump you ahead of all the people that have already applied,’” he said.

Stockard said that determining which

criteria constitute a housing emergency was “heartbreaking.”

“You could pretty much argue any family who’s applying for housing at the Cambridge Housing Authority has got something that many of us would consider to be an emergency in their lives,” Stockard said.

McGovern described the experience of one resident he spoke to during his tenure as mayor. A woman and her three children came to visit McGovern’s office after her husband — whom she had been taking care of after his cancer diagnosis — recently died. With her landlord raising rent, the woman, whose children all attended Cambridge Public Schools, could no longer afford to stay.

“I have her crying, the three kids crying, begging me to find them a three-bedroom unit that they could afford in Cambridge and I couldn’t do it,” McGovern said. “I never want to sit across the table from somebody in that situation and say, ‘I can’t help you.”

For the fortunate individuals and families who successfully find affordable housing in Cambridge off the waitlist, McGovern called the experience “life-changing” and “powerful.”

“A lot of things fall into place when you have that housing security,” he said.

Johnston said the one resident who “has always stuck out in [his] mind” was a Korean War veteran who was given a housing voucher after long-term homelessness. Several months after being

The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

housed, the resident’s son called Johnston to share that his father had died.

“He passed away in his own bed, in his own apartment,” Johnston said. “[His son] wanted me to know how much that meant to his dad.”

‘WE’VE MADE IT ILLEGAL TO BUILD HOUSING’ To get people off the waitlist and into housing, the city will need to dramatically increase its supply of affordable units.

When asked what the largest barriers to expanding this supply are, several advocates and policymakers pointed at the city’s own code of laws.

Cambridge, like nearly every other city in America, uses an extensive zoning code to regulate land use and development. All land in the city is classified as one of several zoning districts, each with its own permitted uses.

Beyond classifying property for various types of commercial, residential, and industrial uses, Cambridge’s zoning code also places limits on a building’s height, size, and density, and often requires developers to provide a minimum number of parking spaces or build a minimum distance from the street.

Many large developments or projects that need exceptions to certain zoning regulations require additional permission from either the Cambridge Plan-

ning Board or the Board of Zoning Appeal, which can be a lengthy and sometimes contentious process.

These barriers, City Councilor Burhan Azeem argues, mean that “we’ve made it illegal to build housing.”

Some areas in Cambridge — including most of the largely white and wealthy neighborhood of West Cambridge — are zoned to permit only single- or two-family housing. Azeem noted that many existing buildings with several units, such as the one he lives in, would not be permitted to develop under current-day regulations.

“I live in a triple-decker,” Azeem said.

“If that triple-decker was hit by a meteor tomorrow, you would not be able to rebuild it as a triple-decker. It’s illegal. It would have to be built as a single-family home.”

Azeem also connected current zoning regulations to the racist historical practice of redlining, in which banks would deny loans to Black mortgage applicants in what white residents believed were more desirable neighborhoods, such as West Cambridge.

Now, many of the city’s dedicated affordable housing developments are located in areas once marked as least desirable during the 1930s, when Cambridge was first redlined. Meanwhile, West Cambridge contains next to none.

“Why is it that five minutes from one of the biggest T stations we have mansions that are ex-

The Cambridge Housing Authority — the city agency in charge of public housing — is located at 362 Green Street. JULIAN J. GIORDANO—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

tremely expensive and cost millions of dollars when they could be affordable apartments?” Azeem said, referring to the Harvard Square T station. “We have explicitly racist policies that did that.”

Azeem said that the city should “dramatically upzone” the area to allow for denser residential development.

Cambridge’s flagship attempt at making zoning regulations more amenable to affordable housing came in the 100 Percent Affordable Housing Overlay, an amend-

ment to the city’s zoning code passed by the City Council in October 2020.

The AHO facilitates the process of building affordable housing by relaxing certain zoning restrictions and expanding maximum height and density caps for developments.

If the proposed building

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The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

In April, Lesley University agreed to sell the school’s property at 1627 Massachusetts Ave. to Homeowner’s Rehabilitation Inc., a local affordable housing nonprofit. The purchase is funded in part by Cambridge’s Affordable Housing Trust. JULIAN J. GIORDANO—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Jefferson Park Federal is a public housing development in North Cambridge. A modernization of the development under provisions of the Affordable Housing Overlay will preserve 175 units and add up to 103 more units of affordable housing. JULIAN J. GIORDANO—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

meets a set of design standards and every unit is affordable, the city is required to approve its construction.

The City of Cambridge and Homeowner’s Rehabilitation, Inc., a nonprofit affordable housing developer, recently announced its purchase of a Lesley University building along Massachusetts Avenue, which will be converted into affordable housing.

The building itself may only support four units, according to HRI project manager Eleni T. C. Macrakis. She said the nonprofit is considering constructing more units in the building’s parking lot, a prospect made possible by the AHO. “Now, with the Affordable Housing Overlay, there’s a lot of opportunity there,” Macrakis said.

Still, the AHO is no panacea for Cambridge’s housing waitlist.

Lee Farris, the president of the Cambridge Residents Alliance, a neighborhood advocacy group, argued the AHO has failed to promote development in areas of the city that do not already have abundant affordable housing.

“The idea, as the city pitched it, was to get more affordable housing into the neighborhoods who don’t have it,” Farris said. “However, the way that the Af-

build offices, laboratories, or market-rate housing, have a massive financial advantage over the nonprofits.

“Developing market-rate housing in Cambridge,” Stockard said, “is pretty much like getting a money-minting machine in your basement.”

Cambridge has steadily increased its financial support for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, a public fund for affordable development. The proposed city budget for the 2023 fiscal year allocates more than $38 million to the trust, a $6 million increase from 2022.

Azeem called for further increases, saying the city should aim to fund the construction of 250 affordable units each year.

In the coming weeks, Azeem said the Council was likely to increase linkage fees — a per-square-foot fee paid to the trust by market-rate developers — over the current fee of about $20 per square foot.

Although affordable developers and city policymakers commended initiatives like the AHO and the trust, they acknowledged that a considerable share of funding for affordable housing comes from the state of Massachusetts or the federal government. Many said that their efforts were underfunded.

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fordable Housing Overlay has turned out so far, is that developers are, in most cases, simply adding new buildings to affordable housing developments that already exist.”

Of the five projects currently being developed under the AHO, three — Jefferson Park Federal, Walden Square Apartments, and 116 Norfolk Street — are renovations or expansions of existing affordable developments.

“The only way you can really benefit from [the AHO] is if you own the land already,” Azeem said.

‘WHY I HAVE GRAY HAIR’ Zoning regulations are not the only challenge plaguing affordable housing developers and preventing the waitlist from shrinking. Even with zoning regulations relaxed through the AHO, Johnston described searching for new sites for affordable development as “almost impossible.”

“That’s why I have gray hair,” Johnston said.

The Housing Authority and nonprofits like HRI compete with private developers for scarce and expensive Cambridge property. These developers, who often

“Please don’t tell me there’s no money,” Stockard said. “There’s plenty of money.

The Congress just doesn’t care about poor people.”

Stockard credited the creativity of the city and the CHA in finding workarounds for additional funding and resources.

One solution, he said, was the CHA’s establishment of three nonprofit organizations, which are controlled by the CHA, but can take advantage of loans and tax credits for affordable development that a government agency cannot.

“We’ve kept trying to increase the number of homes we have, by hook or by crook,” Stockard said.

As much as Cambridge’s local efforts to promote affordable development are commendable, Johnston said, the housing crisis is a regional, if not national, issue. He called on state and federal lawmakers to develop a comprehensive plan to fight the crisis.

“There’s no way we can house 21,000 people,” Johnston said. “The list is going to grow unless the country, and even state government, can start putting together a roadmap on how are we going to fix this.” katerina.corr@thecrimson.com elias.schisgall@thecrimson.com

TOBY R. MA—CRIMSON DESIGNER

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Seeking Clarity in Harvard’s Historic Pledge

SOPHIA SALAMANCA—CRIMSON DESIGNER

Harvard committed $100 million to reckoning with its ties to slavery, but advocates and descendants have questions about the unprecedented pledge.

By CARA J. CHANG and MEIMEI XU

J

CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

ust after midnight on June 2, 2020, Jordan A.W. Lloyd received an email that changed her life.

“I have reason to believe through archival records that you could be the descendant of Tony and Cuba Vassall, two slaves taken from Antigua by a founding member connected to Harvard University,” it read.

The email was sent by Carissa J. Chen ’21, then a Harvard undergraduate researching the lives of people enslaved by University affiliates — a project that ultimately connected her with 50 living descendants. Lloyd said her family reacted with “excitement” upon learning that they were descendants.

“There was obviously a lot of questions,” she added.

In the 18th century, Lloyd’s ancestors Tony and Cuba Vassall were owned

by Henry Vassall and his wife, Penelope Royall Vassall — the sister of Isaac Royall Jr., who endowed Harvard’s first law professorship. Cuba was born and enslaved in Antigua, while Tony was taken from Jamaica. Tony and Cuba’s son, Darby Vassall, spent his life advocating for Black rights, co-founding Boston’s African Society and frequenting the New England

Anti-Slavery Convention.

Last month, Harvard released a landmark report that found that faculty, staff, and leaders enslaved more than 70 Black and Indigenous people over 150 years, including some who lived and worked on campus.

Harvard also benefited from its “extensive financial ties” to slavery well into the 19th century, with numerous donors to the University profiting from the slave trade and enslaved labor. The University was historically home to faculty and administrators who promoted eugenics and racial discrimination under the guise of academic research, but also to many Black graduates who sought to combat racism.

Slavery “powerfully shaped Harvard,” the report concluded.

Following more than 50 pages of historical findings, the report put forward seven broad recommendations, ranging from offering educational support for marginalized groups and facilitating the memorialization of enslaved people to identifying and engaging with direct descendants of people enslaved by Harvard affiliates.

When he announced the publication of the long-awaited report, University President Lawrence S. Bacow wrote that the school would commit $100 million to Harvard’s Legacy of Slavery initiative.

“I believe we bear a moral responsibil-

ity to do what we can to address the per- right place — a place of deep altruism and sistent corrosive effects of those histori- a place of really, really wanting to reccal practices on individuals, on Harvard, oncile what happened, really hoping to and on our society,” Bacow wrote in a make an amends — but so far, [it] seems public statement. pretty self-serving.”

Former Law School Dean Martha L. Minow will lead a separate implementation committee to carry out the report’s recommendations.

But many Harvard affiliates and other advoRecommend ations to the cates remain skeptical of P r e s id e n t a the school’s promises, callnd Fellows o f Harvard Co ing them “vague.” Citing ll e g e From the Ha a need for increased clarrvard Legacy of Slavery Re port ity, they raised concerns Engage and Su pport Descen about what they see as the dant Commun

by Leveraging ities Harvard’s Ex cellence in Ed opaque management of ucation Honor Enslave d People thro funds, the University’s ug Research, Cu rricula, and Kn h Memorialization, owledge Di ss em lack of acknowledgement ination of — or communication Develop Endu ring Partners hips with Blac Colleges and k with — descendants, and Universities the omission of 21st cenIdentify, Enga ge, and Supp ort Direct Descendants tury vestiges of slavery.

Lloyd said she holds Honor, Engage , and Suppor out hope that Harvard’s t Native Communities Legacy of Slavery initiaEstablish an Endo tive will herald substanSupport the Un wed Legacy of Slavery Fu nd to iversity’s Repa tive change for the Unirative Efforts versity.

Ensure Institu tional Accoun tability “I’m praying,” she said. “I’m hoping that this is coming from the TOBY R. MA—CRIMSON DESIGNER

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The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

‘A DROP IN THE BUCKET’ The $100 million pledge Harvard made to implement the recommendations of the report comes after 15 years of scholarship at the University. In 2007, History professor Sven Beckert launched a seminar on the history of slavery at Harvard after Brown University released a report on its ties to slavery the year prior. In 2016, former University President Drew G. Faust publicly acknowledged Harvard’s ties to slavery and convened a committee to study Harvard sites connected with slavery and consider future memorials.

Bacow announced the Legacy of Slavery initiative in November 2019, committing an initial $5 million and convening a committee of faculty members to produce a comprehensive record of Harvard’s connections to slavery and recommendations on “how we might address the ramifications of what we learn.”

As soon as the report was published in April 2022, the $100 million figure dominated national headlines. The magnitude of Harvard’s financial commitment to a reckoning with slavery is unprecedented in higher education.

Nevertheless, affiliates are skeptical of how this dollar amount compares to the wealth the University has amassed based on profits from slavery. Today, Harvard’s endowment is over $53 billion.

Dennis E. Lloyd — Jordan Lloyd’s father and another descendant of Tony and Cuba Vassall — said $100 million is “a drop in the bucket” for Harvard.

Benjamin F. Bryant ’22, who wrote his senior thesis on Harvard’s connections to

SOPHIA SALAMANCA—CRIMSON DESIGNER

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racial capitalism, called the University’s report “the most comprehensive account of Harvard’s ties to the institution of slavery today.” Still, he said the research in it does not adequately reflect how slavery financially contributed to Harvard’s rise as a leading academic institution.

Going forward, Bryant suggested the University continually renew its pledge by allocating one percent of the donations it receives to the Legacy of Slavery fund. “​​It’s important that this isn’t just a one-off reparative commitment,” he said.

Bacow wrote in the initial announcement that the $100 million will be divided between current use and endowed funds, with the latter allowing Harvard to sustain the Legacy of Slavery initiative in the future.

Still, affiliates raised concerns that the momentum behind the Legacy of Slavery initiative would ebb, bogged down by bureaucracy.

When he saw the $100 million figure, Jordan Young ’25 — president of the Generational African American Students Association, an undergraduate Black advocacy and affinity group that focuses on the centuries of Black heritage and identity in America — said he felt hopeful. That hope, he explained, faded as he read the report and its recommendations, which he called “performative.”

“There was very little specificity, and it was just generally vague, and that for me was disappointing — that there was no real action items,” Young said.

The recommendations were meant to be broad, Legacy of Slavery committee member and History professor Tiya A. Miles ’92 wrote in an email.

“Although the work of recognizing

Dennis E. Lloyd is the great-great-great-great grandson of Tony and Cuba Vassall, two people enslaved by Harvard affiliates in the 18th century. Tony and Cuba Vassall’s son, Darby Vassall — who is buried in Christ Church — was a renowned Black rights advocate in the Boston area.

ANGELA DELA CRUZ—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

and responding to slavery and its legacies at Harvard is already in motion, it will be inherited by people in the future who will certainly face different institutional and community circumstances,” she wrote.

“For the current implementation committee to do its best work, and for university units and groups that want to be involved to do their best work, and for Harvard to be maximally respectful of descendants, descendant communities,

and local communities, flexibility — room to adjust and grow — is critical,” she added.

Young also questioned how much of the fund will focus on Black students, especially generational students, noting that Harvard has very few Black tenured faculty members and mental health services specifically for Black affiliates.

As of this year, only 4 percent of tenured Harvard faculty identify as Black —

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fewer than 50 professors out of more than 1,000.

Aja M. Lans, a postdoctoral research fellow, also called on Harvard to diversify its faculty to promote understanding of Black history.

“If the University truly is committed to this, then it’s going to need to really rethink the support for Black folks at the University and increas[e] diversity and support so that the work can be done properly,” she said.

Going forward, Jordan Lloyd said she would like to see transparency in the allocation and rollout of the $100 million fund. She hopes the administrators managing the fund will consult her family about the fund’s usage, Lloyd added.

“I would like to have a sit-down with them, [for] members of my family to be able to go and speak with them, and to have them hear our ideas, because I know that I’m just one person — I have my ideas, but a cousin or sister of mine might have completely different ideas,” she said.

TONY AND CUBA, RENTY AND DELIA After learning about their connection to Tony and Cuba Vassall, the Lloyds said they emailed the University and spoke with Harvard faculty and staff, including the Legacy of Slavery chair, Radcliffe Institute Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin.

In an interview last month, BrownNagin said Harvard has already begun identifying the direct descendants of people enslaved by Harvard affiliates, per a recommendation of the report.

Jordan Lloyd agreed Harvard should continue identifying living descendants

and actively communicating with them.

She also called for curricula about the life of Darby Vassall in local schools and universities, echoing another recommendation from the report.

Last year, Dennis and Egypt C. Lloyd, Jordan Lloyd’s father and sister, founded the Boston-based Slave Legacy History Coalition to help other descendants learn about their past and spread awareness of the history of slavery. Egypt Lloyd added she would like Harvard to support the coalition while Jordan Lloyd called for economic reparations.

“Because slavery was an institution that deprived my ancestors, the enslaved, of their wages for working and had an impact on them creating generational wealth, there should be some type of stipend allotted to us as descendants of the enslaved,” Jordan Lloyd said.

Monetary reparations are not mentioned in the University’s report.

The Legacy of Slavery initiative is not the first time Harvard has had to grapple with the question of reparations and direct descendants. For the past three years, the University has been embroiled in a lawsuit over what are purportedly some of the nation’s oldest photographs of enslaved people, commissioned by 19th-century Harvard professor Louis Agassiz, who promoted debunked “race science.”

In March 2019, Tamara K. Lanier filed suit against Harvard for unlawfully possessing and profiting from the daguerreotypes that she claims depict her greatgreat-great grandfather, Renty, and his daughter, Delia.

The case is now before the Massachusetts Supreme Court after Lanier ap-

Tamara K. Lanier, left, alongside civil rights attorney Benjamin L. Crump, at a press conference in November 2021 after a hearing before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court..

RAQUEL CORONELL URIBE—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

pealed a lower court’s dismissal.

The Legacy of Slavery report does not mention Lanier’s suit, although it mentions Renty and Delia in the context of Agassiz’s career and the daguerreotypes.

Lanier said she felt “frustrated” the report did not include her case.

“I saw it is an opportunity for Harvard to come clean with all of its past misdeeds and all of its past indiscretions,” she said.

“By the omission of my information, it made me feel like the report lacked credibility.”

Harvard spokesperson Jonathan L. Swain declined to comment on the case as it is pending litigation.

Caitlin G. DeAngelis Hopkins who researched the history of slavery at Harvard for the school before Bacow commissioned the Legacy of Slavery initiative, said the omission of the Lanier case and potential repatriation efforts made the report “toothless.”

“How are they going to say that they are going to work with descendants when they have not made a show of good faith?” she said. “They have not worked with the descendants who are right in front of them. In fact, they fought them in court.” cara.chang@thecrimson.com meimei.xu@thecrimson.com

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The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

EMILY N. DIAL—CRIMSON DESIGNER

Unstandardized Admissions

Stakeholders throughout higher education — and Harvard itself — are split on the role that standardized tests like the SAT and GRE should play in admissions.

By ALEXANDER I. FUNG, PATON D. ROBERTS, and ERIC YAN

I

CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

n 2019, a high school student checking off the list of requirements for their college application may have needed to sharpen their number two pencils in preparation for the SAT. Three pandemic-defined years later, colleges across the United States are reconsidering their longstanding standardized testing requirements.

Harvard — alongside many of its peer institutions — lifted its undergraduate testing requirements for the duration of the pandemic, and the College announced last December that it will extend its test-optional policy for at least the next four years.

Graduate schools are taking a similar

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route.

At Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, just 24 of 76 degree programs required applicants in 2021 to submit scores for the GRE — the standardized test that has historically been required by graduate schools.

Many programs within the University’s other graduate schools — including the Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Graduate School of Education, and the Harvard School of Public Health — have also removed their GRE requirement for the upcoming application cycle.

As graduate schools ponder the future of standardized testing in their admissions process, some students, administrators, and higher education experts argue that testing requirements impose financial and logistical hurdles that limit the diversity of applicant pools.

“It’s been proven that relaxing the test

requirement removes a barrier [and] increases applications from underrepresented students, and that’s a good thing,” Jay Rosner, an admissions test expert, said. “What remains to be seen is things like how long test-optional lasts — how long test-free lasts.”

‘A RICHER DATASET’ At GSAS, the shift away from standardized testing began when the school removed its GRE general exam requirement in the spring of 2017.

GSAS spokesperson Ann Hall wrote in an email that the school made the change following an inquiry from the Astronomy Department “about the validity of the GRE General Test as a tool for measuring PhD student success.”

The decision allowed each department to decide whether it would require or al-

low applicants to submit GRE scores. Previously, applicants to any degree program were required to submit GRE general exam scores, while subject test requirements varied by program.

The Astronomy Department subsequently lifted its testing requirement, becoming the first Harvard department to do so. Since the 2018-2019 admissions cycle, the department has not accepted GRE general exam scores.

David B. Charbonneau, who serves as the department’s chair of admissions, said concerns about the high cost of the exam and the ability of international applicants to access tests played a role in the decision to eliminate the requirement.

“If you know only someone’s test score, the thing you can best predict actually is their race and gender,” he said.

“Since we can just ask people about that without charging them any money, we

The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

thought there was no need to do that.”

Charbonneau added that following the decision, the department saw a “statistically significant” increase in applications from underrepresented minority students in the United States, as well as female international students.

Some GSAS faculty involved in graduate admissions for their departments similarly said they believe the information they garner from GRE scores can be determined from other components of the application.

David F. Elmer, department chair for the Classics Department, said the writing sample required by his department gives him “much more confidence” in a candidate’s analytical and writing skills than the GRE. The submission of GRE general scores will be optional for Classics Ph.D. applicants for the first time this fall, in what Elmer described as a “trial” run.

“We’re going to see how it goes, evaluating these applications just on the basis of other components,” Elmer said. “They require a lot more care and consideration, but in some ways, they’re also a richer dataset.”

John A. Girash, director of graduate education at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, said undergradu-

CAMILLE G. CALDERA—CRIMSON DESIGNER

ate transcripts reveal “much more finegrained information” about an applicant.

“The transcript tells us exactly what courses the applicant took and their grades,” Girash said. “The GRE doesn’t tell us that — if they get a low score, it tells us there’s something that they’re missing, but it doesn’t tell us what.”

Since the Astronomy Department led the shift away from standardized testing for Harvard’s graduate programs, several schools across the University have followed suit.

Currently, Harvard’s School of Public Health, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Divinity School all do not require standardized test scores in applications to some master’s or Ph.D. programs. The GRE is optional for the HGSE’s master’s programs, but required for Ph.D. applicants.

Other schools at Harvard have moved to test-optional temporarily in light of the pandemic or have adopted varying standardized test policies by program.

THE RISE OF ‘GREXIT’ As early as 2016, graduate programs nationwide began dropping GRE requirements, with the life sciences at the fore-

front of the movement. According to an analysis conducted by Science Magazine, 44 percent of molecular biology Ph.D. programs and approximately one-third of neuroscience and ecology programs stopped requiring GRE scores by 2018.

As part of a coalition nicknamed “GRExit,” scores of graduate students, activists, and professors from across the

U.S. are pushing to eliminate GRE requirements.

Rosner pointed out that the willingness of several prestigious schools to forgo standardized tests has boosted public confidence in test-optional application processes.

“Moving away from the test implies to some people — wrongfully — that you’re

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The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

lowering standards,” he said of common misgivings. “Now to make that argument, today, one is going to have to say that UCLA and Berkeley and Caltech are lowering standards by not requiring the test.”

University of Southern California Rossier School of Education professor Julie R. Posselt criticized the use of standardized tests, noting that the social identities of test-takers — and related stereotypes — can impact test performance.

“People earn significantly different scores based on whether the proctor of the exam is of the same social identity that they are as a test taker,” Posselt said.

She added that other considerations, such as grade point average, do not result in disparities across genders and racial groups. GPA is “more predictive of student success in the long-term than are GRE scores,” she added.

Mayank D. Kumar, an HDS student who was not required to submit scores, cited both test anxiety and Covid-19 as reasons for avoiding the GRE. An international student from India, Kumar said the test disadvantages international students by asking them to analyze passages about American culture.

“A lot of people have issues with the cultural references — things like that — that are in the reading [and] writing sections that make it hard for people to do well,” he said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t have the competency to read and write well and think critically.”

‘LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP’ Despite the growing popularity of test-optional admissions, many schools have yet to make the switch. For Harvard Law School, accreditation remains the deciding factor in setting its testing re-

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The Harvard Divinity School is one of the schools at which the GRE is optional for numerous programs. JULIAN J. GIORDANO—CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

quirements.

The American Bar Association recently released its second memo in four years recommending law schools stop requiring students to submit LSAT scores. But schools wanting to maintain their ABA accreditation cannot make the change until the memo receives a vote of approval from the organization’s top council.

“The ABA still requires those tests,” admissions expert Anna Ivey said. “Law schools don’t have any choice.”

Harvard Law School moved to allow applicants to submit either the GRE or LSAT in 2017, following a 2016 study that demonstrated the two tests equally predicted academic performance at HLS. Some experts argue that the objectivity of standardized test scores helps admissions officers compare candidates from different backgrounds.

Christopher F. Chabris ’88, a cognitive psychologist at Geisinger Health System, said he believes standardized testing allows admissions officers to find applicants whose scores make them “stand out” from their backg round,

CAMILLE G. CALDERA—CRIMSON DESIGNER

such as high school students who live in poor school districts but perform well on exams.

“People who talk about the unfairness of standardized tests don’t really think that there’s a fairness to standardized tests that can help a lot of people who wouldn’t, I think, be found and helped — at least not in any objective way,” he said.

Elizabeth M. “Betsy” Fawcett, an HGSE student who took the GRE in October 2020, also noted her “love-hate relationship” with standardized tests.

“On one hand, I know that they are not necessarily the best measures of a student’s ability to be successful in college,” she said. “But at the same time, data in education is really important for us to be able to measure if our systems are equitable, or they’re improving, or if they’re helping students achieve the outcomes that we want them to achieve.”

‘CAN WE MAKE IT MORE EQUITABLE?’ As schools grapple with the question of whether to eliminate or continue requiring standardized tests, higher education experts stress the importance of crafting application processes that promote equity in access to graduate education.

Joshua S. Wyner, the executive director of the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program, which aims to improve student outcomes, argued that calls for equitable access to education need to ex-

tend beyond the undergraduate level.

“If it takes a graduate degree to get into certain professions — and we know it does — then we need to focus on equity in graduate education, but we tend to stop with undergraduate degrees,” Wyner said.

Stella M. Flores, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said higher education institutions should focus on finding a better alternative to current tests rather than eliminating testing altogether.

“Getting rid of one doesn’t mean another one won’t come in its place,” she said. “If there’s going to be another form of assessment, can we make it more equitable?”

Wyner similarly called for schools to consider how they might use standardized tests to further goals of diversity, dismissing the idea that anti-test movements such as GRExit will provide a panacea to issues of accessibility.

“Standardized tests are a tool that can be used for good but also used for discrimination,” he said. “We act as though they’re inherently good or bad, when in fact, they are a tool and the question is, ‘What are you trying to accomplish with them?’”

“I worry quite a bit that we believe that if we eliminate a tool or use a tool, that it will get us all the way there,” Wyner added. “And the answer is it won’t.” alexander.fung@thecrimson.com peyton.roberts@thecrimson.com eric.yan@thecrimson.com

The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

Harvard Without Affirmative Action?

With the Supreme Court on the precipice of striking down affirmative action in higher education, the fate of Harvard College in a country without race-conscious admissions policies remains unclear.

SOPHIA SALAMANCA—CRIMSON DESIGNER

By RAHEM D. HAMID and VIVI E. LU CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

W

ith the United States Supreme Court’s expanded conservative majority set to take up lawsuits seeking to strike down affirmative action in American higher education, analysts on both sides of the issue seem to agree about one thing: race-conscious admissions policies are likely on the way out.

The suits, which target the use of race in admissions at Harvard College and the University of North Carolina, have thrust Harvard to the forefront of the latest chapter in America’s decades-long debate about affirmative action.

The anti-affirmative action group Students for Fair Admissions first sued Har-

vard in 2014, alleging that the school’s admissions practices discriminate against Asian American applicants. Two lower courts ruled in favor of Harvard, in 2019 and 2020.

Affirmative action has narrowly survived several Supreme Court scares before. But now, experts say the court — made up of six conservative and three liberal justices — is likely to overturn four decades of precedent allowing schools to consider race in their admissions processes.

It remains less clear what might come next.

Should the court rule in favor of SFFA, admissions policies at colleges and universities across the country would be thrown into flux. Schools like Harvard, experts say, could turn to race-neutral admissions alternatives.

Scholars have said racial diversity at Harvard and other elite institutions may decline — but exactly how the decision will manifest remains unclear even as Harvard’s court date nears.

‘A COURT THAT DOESN’T REALLY CARE ABOUT PRECEDENT’ If the court rules against Harvard and UNC, justices would overturn long-standing precedent regarding the use of race in college admissions. In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke that race could be considered in admissions processes, though it held that racial quotas were unconstitutional. The precedent was subsequently upheld in numerous challenges, including the 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger and the 2016 case Fisher

v. Texas.

But experts expect this time to be different.

“The leaked opinion in the abortion case, if it holds up, makes clear that this is a court that doesn’t really care about precedent,” said UNC law professor Theodore M. Shaw, referring to a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that would strike down the landmark 1973 ruling Roe v. Wade, which protects legal access to abortion nationwide.

SFFA petitioned the Supreme Court to take up the affirmative action case last February, asking justices to overturn precedent established by Grutter v.

Bollinger.

Opponents of affirmative action have rallied around SFFA’s case. Earlier this month, more than 80 Republican lawmakers signed onto an amicus brief

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CAMILLE G. CALDERA—CRIMSON DESIGNER

asking the court to end the use of race in admissions.

Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. ’53, a Government professor at Harvard, said overruling affirmative action is “long overdue,” adding that the policy is “insulting” and “underhanded.”

“You pretend that people have merit,” Mansfield said. “It fundamentally denies equality, while pretending to promote it.”

But others — including Harvard — say universities should be able to consider race as a factor in admissions in order to promote diversity.

David Hinojosa, director of the Education Opportunities Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said the SFFA’s lawsuits aim to return college admissions to outdated methods.

“We’re confident — if the court decides to follow precedent and decides to follow with the spirit of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause — that race-conscious diversities and the compelling interest in diversity will be upheld,” Hinojosa said, referring to the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

Peter F. Lake ’81, a professor of law at Stetson University, said he finds “tremendous historical irony” in the Supreme Court moving toward originalism and textualism — interpreting the Constitution as it was written and intended by its framers — but choosing to act in a way the authors “wouldn’t have tolerated” by telling Harvard how to conduct admissions.

“The idea that the federal government could tell the Harvard Corporation in 1787 how to run its admissions? That’s exactly why the First Amendment was there in the first place,” Lake said.

Shaw said the conservative composition of the court will make opportunities for African American and Latinx students less available.

“That’s what SFFA wants,” Shaw said. “They are opposed to any efforts that end up protecti n g

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opportunities for Black and Brown people, whether it’s in higher education or in political participation.”

In an emailed statement, SFFA President Edward J. Blum contended that many Black and Hispanic people oppose policies allowing schools to consider race as a factor in admissions, citing surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center.

A 2022 Pew study found that 59 percent of Black people said race should not be considered as a factor in college admissions — down from 62 percent in 2019.

Other public opinion polls have shown, though, that Black people broadly support affirmative action in large numbers: A 2018 Gallup survey found that 72 percent of Black respondents support affirmative action for minorities.

“Those who advocate for the continuation of race as an admissions factor are working against the convictions and preferences of blacks and Hispanics,” Blum wrote.

‘UNCHARTED TERRITORY’ While 15 legal and admissions experts said in interviews with The Crimson this month that the Supreme Court is likely to side with SFFA in the fall, few were sure of how Harvard’s admissions process would transform as a result.

Vinay Harpalani, a law professor at the University of New Mexico, said elite private schools like Harvard may soon enter “uncharted territory” by being unable to consider race in admissions for the first time in history.

In a brief filed with the Supreme Court in opposition of SFFA’s case, Harvard said diversity enabled by race-conscious admissions promotes a “more robust academic environment.”

Many experts suggested that if affirmative action is outlawed, Harvard could more heavily consider other factors in admissions, such as geography or socioeconomic status.

“They can emphasize admitting students for whom English is a second language, and that will increase diversity in a variety of ways in terms of ethnicity and national origin,” said David B. Oppenheimer, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “Because most of the United States is very, very segregated residentially, geographic diversity can be a tool to increase racial diversity.”

Joshua S. Wyner, the executive director at Aspen College Excellence Program, said

Harvard could bolster transfer programs from community colleges and admit more veterans in an effort to maintain diversity.

Darnell Hunt, the dean of Social Sciences at UCLA, said high school conditions — a factor that UCLA and Berkeley consider in admissions — can serve as a proxy for race.

“Students who do really, really well in under-resourced high schools and have overcome all kinds of barriers are going to get a bump in the process,” he said. “The theory is that if they have the tenacity and the stick-to-it-ness to achieve in that environment, … at a UCLA or a Berkeley, they’re going to thrive — and in fact, that’s what we found.”

Still, experts maintained that no other factor is as effective as race in achieving racial diversity in admissions.

“The reason that universities have considered race for so long is that they’ve looked at many factors, and there are not good replacements,” said Kimberly J. Robinson, a professor of law and education at the University of Virginia. “These are all going to be imperfect alternatives.”

Other scholars say colleges should not consider demographics at all in admissions. Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan M. Dershowitz advocated for a “totally non-discriminatory” and “purely meritocratic” admissions system without preference for factors that are currently weighted in admission, such as legacy status, athletic ability, gender, or race.

“I believe that a purely meritocratic method of admission will result in diversity,” Dershowitz said. “The time has come to understand that the role of the university is academic. And that meritocracy has suffered enormously by artificial efforts at superficial diversity.”

Harvard College spokesperson Rachael Dane declined to comment for this story, saying the school “will not speculate.”

ley “never quite recovered” after Proposition 209 passed, banning race as a consideration in public school admissions. At these schools, the enrollment numbers for African American and Latinx students have not risen to pre-1996 levels, but minority enrollment is rising again at less selective California state schools.

Hinojosa said many universities, including California’s public colleges, “still struggle” with enrolling underrepresented minorities.

Of the students admitted to Harvard’s incoming Class of 2026, 15.5 percent are African American and 12.6 percent are Latinx. Experts say they would anticipate those numbers to decrease — similar to UC Berkeley — if the Supreme Court rules in favor of SFFA. During a 2019 trial in federal court, both Harvard and SFFA hired economists to simulate what the racial composition of Harvard College’s Class of 2019 would have been if the school eliminated the consideration of race as a factor in its admissions process.

Both simulations showed that the number of Black students at Harvard would decrease by more than half, enrollment of Latinx students would decrease by almost a third, and Asian American enrollment would increase by nearly 30 percent.

Harpalani, the UNM professor, said resources that Harvard and other selective private institutions have at their disposal give the schools a greater opportunity to enhance diversity compared to most public schools in states where the use of race is banned.

“They’re not constrained by other state policies in terms of where they draw their students from,” he said. “They have the resources to do a lot of things that other universities may not.”

‘A SUBSTANTIAL DROP’ IN DIVERSITY?

On Harvard’s campus, students said they are fearful of the potential impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in the SFFA case.

Some leaders of cultural and ethnic organizations on campus are concerned that the loss of affirmative action would mean unequal access to education and decreased diversity on campus.

John S. Cooke ’25, who serves on the board of the Harvard Black Men’s Forum, said using race as a factor in admissions allows for a more “equitable admissions process.”

“I’m fearful that future generations of

Though the Supreme Court’s ruling could strike down the use of race as a factor in admissions nationwide, nine states — Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and Washington — already bar race-based affirmative action.

In California, residents voted to eliminate affirmative action in 1996 on Proposition 209, a decision upheld by voters again in 2020. According to Shaw, Black student enrollment at UCLA and Berke-

A ‘FEARFUL’ CAMPUS

The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2022

Harvard students — or students at whatever university — will not have their full stories heard,” Cooke said. “Being of a disadvantaged community, of a minority community — obviously, there’s certain disadvantages that go into that that aren’t exactly brought to light just by looking at a student’s grades or their scores.”

Thuong Quynh “Alexandria” Ho ’24, co-president of Harvard Asian American Women’s Association, said AAWA and other cultural organizations at Harvard will continue advocating for campus diversity, even if the Supreme Court bans race-based affirmative action.

“The way the media portray it is like an issue of Asian Americans versus other ethnic groups, but I want to show people that the solidarity is there,” Ho said. “It’s not just ‘us against them.’ It’s us against these racist efforts that want to hurt diversity.”

Cooke said he believes affinity groups, especially for Black and Latinx students, will become “a lot more important” for students of those identities if the Supreme Court rules against Harvard’s race-conscious admissions.

“The support that both groups can provide will be really beneficial, especially in a community where maybe one in 10 of the students in your classes have the same background as you,” Cooke said.

Jane Sujen Bock ’81, who serves on the board of the Coalition for a Diverse Harvard — an alumni organization dedicated to improving diversity at the University — wrote in an email that Harvard must increase curricular diversity offerings in the face of the affirmative action suit.

“With the rise of voter suppression, white supremacy, educational censorship, LGBTQ opppression, abortion restrictions, and hate crimes, Harvard must focus not only on student and faculty diversity but on curricular offerings like Ethnic Studies and community engagement experiences that will educate leaders who can bring us together,” Bock wrote.

Some students said they fear that a ban on affirmative action will have broader cultural implications on campus.

“This entire campus is filled with diversity,” said Ali A. Makani ’24, the co-president of Harvard’s South Asian Association. “To threaten that and to question that really throws off the entire campus culture that we’ve cultivated here.” rahem.hamid@thecrimson.com vivi.lu@thecrimson.com

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