Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 166

From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences could lay off up to one quarter of its staff this summer as part of a sweeping administrative overhaul that would consolidate departments, centers, and institutes into shared administrative “clusters,” according to two people familiar with the plans. The proposed structure, developed by the FAS Task Force on Workforce Planning with support from McKinsey & Company, would likely replace many unit-level administrative roles with staff who serve multiple academic units, according to an internal slide deck obtained by The Crimson.

The overhaul is intended to help close FAS’s projected $365 million budget deficit. But it would also mark one of the school’s most significant staff reorganizations in years, with layoffs likely to strongly impact department administrators — staff members who manage finances, human resources, and personnel matters for individual FAS units...

The proposed reductions in FAS staff positions would follow similar cuts at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, which laid off roughly 15 percent of its staff in October. But many FAS department administrators are not represented by a union, leaving them with few formal protections if their positions are eliminated. Several have worked at Harvard for decades...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/5/20/administrative-restructuring/.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 165

From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard faculty voted to impose a roughly 20 percent cap on A grades beginning in fall 2027, approving the College’s most aggressive attempt in decades to reverse grade inflation and reshape academic standards. Faculty voted 458 to 201 for the first plank of the three-part proposal, which will limit A grades in undergraduate courses to 20 percent of enrollment, with flexibility for up to four additional A’s. The measure passed with 69.5 percent of votes cast.

Faculty also approved a companion measure to use average percentile rankings, rather than GPA, to determine internal awards and honors. That measure passed 498 to 157, with 76 percent of participating faculty in favor. But faculty rejected the proposal’s third plank, which would have allowed courses to petition to opt out of the A cap if they were graded on an unsatisfactory, satisfactory, and satisfactory-plus basis. That measure failed 292 to 364.

Together, the votes represent a sweeping intervention in Harvard College’s academic culture — one that will sharply reduce the share of A’s and place new constraints on grading decisions traditionally left to individual instructors...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/5/20/fas-passes-a-grade-cap/.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 164

From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard asked a federal judge Monday to dismiss the Department of Justice’s lawsuit accusing the University of failing to protect Jewish and Israeli students, arguing that the Trump administration’s claims are outdated and legally deficient. In a 49-page motion filed in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, Harvard’s lawyers argued that the government failed to plausibly allege a continuing violation of Title VI, which bars discrimination in programs that receive federal funding. They also contended that the Justice Department cannot use the lawsuit to claw back nearly $1 billion in already spent federal grant money. The motion is Harvard’s most forceful response to the DOJ’s March lawsuit, which alleged that the University was “deliberately indifferent” to antisemitic and anti-Israeli harassment after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

The government has asked the court to impose sweeping remedies, including the appointment of an outside monitor, a bar on future federal funding, and restitution of federal grants issued during the period of alleged noncompliance. Harvard’s lawyers rejected that account..., writing that the complaint relies on “a snapshot in time that does not exist today” and ignores a long list of steps the University says it has taken to combat antisemitism...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/5/19/harvard-doj-antisemitism-dismissal/.

Life around Harvard Square

Seen on the bulletin board of an ice cream shop.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 163

From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard reported $126.6 million in legal fees in its Form 990 filing released Friday, up from roughly $80 million in fiscal year 2024 — a 58 percent increase. The spike marks a dramatic rise from recent years, when Harvard’s legal expenses hovered around $20 million. The University spent $19.5 million on legal fees in fiscal year 2023 and $20 million in fiscal year 2022. The total is reflected in Harvard’s Form 990 filing for fiscal year 2025, which ran from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025, and includes program service, management and general, and fundraising expenses...

The heightened legal expenses came as Harvard faced broad financial pressures, with University officials warning that costs across Harvard are rising faster than revenues. Harvard reported an operating loss of $113 million in fiscal year 2025 — its first budget deficit since the pandemic — on $6.7 billion in total revenue. Harvard has been at legal odds with the White House since the spring, when the Trump administration conditioned billions of dollars in federal funding on a list of demands to the University. When Harvard rejected the conditions, the administration froze $2.2 billion in federal funding, prompting Harvard to sue nearly a dozen federal agencies and their leaders...

The legal fees reported in the filing capture only the early months of Harvard’s escalating fight with the Trump administration. Later lawsuits — including two filed by the Department of Justice this year — will not be reflected until future filings...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/5/16/harvard-legal-fees-surge/.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 162

From The Free Press: In June 2019, the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates appeared before a congressional committee to make the case for reparations. Advancing an argument he’d laid out in The Atlantic years earlier, Coates contended that America owed a debt to its black citizens not just for slavery but for generations of plundered wealth. Over the next few years, the issue had grown in visibility, and slogans like “Black Lives Matter” had entered mainstream political discourse. “It is impossible to imagine America without the inheritance of slavery,” Coates told the committee. Six months later, Harvard University took up the cause when Harvard president Lawrence Bacow convened a faculty committee to excavate the university’s historical involvement in the Atlantic slave trade.

...The university then established what it called the “Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative,” which aimed to “remedy harms to descendants, to our community and the nation, and to campus life and learning.” It committed an extraordinary $100 million to the initiative and promoted Sara Bleich, a professor of public health policy, to vice provost for special projects to shepherd the effort.

...One of the Legacy of Slavery Initiative’s first hires was a man named Richard J. Cellini. His job was to find those descendants. At that point, Harvard had identified 79 individuals who had been enslaved by university affiliates, but it had yet to locate a single living relative. “I don’t think Harvard really understood what they were getting themselves into,” Cellini told me. Cellini, 62, is not the sort of person you might expect to do this kind of work. He describes himself as an “Eisenhower Republican” rather than a “social justice warrior.” Genealogy, which is now his avocation, came to him late in life. He began his career as a lawyer on Wall Street, and then spent three decades “growing and selling” technology companies.

...Harvard soon discovered that Cellini was a forceful advocate for his work, determined to find as many descendants as he could, no matter the consequences. Meanwhile, Harvard was clearly getting nervous about the potential scope of his efforts. ...[Harvard's] anxiety was not entirely irrational. Every name Cellini added to the ledger represented a potential claim on Harvard’s commitment. Cellini pushed to enlarge the list of potential beneficiaries by including the names of slaves owned by members of the university’s governing boards—a category administrators had debated. He won that debate—and the pool grew accordingly. A research trip to Antigua, following the discovery of several hundred individuals enslaved there by Harvard affiliates between the 17th and 19th centuries, yielded an additional hundred names from public archives. Cellini and his team also met with Antigua’s prime minister and discussed opportunities for collaboration between the university and the island nation, a conversation that likely did little to reassure Harvard administrators about the project’s scope.

...Shortly after Cellini and his team returned from Antigua in January 2025, they were all fired by Harvard. The university subsequently outsourced the work to American Ancestors, a New England genealogical nonprofit now on a three-year contract. Harvard has declined to provide a specific rationale for the change. American Ancestors has denied that the university has imposed any constraints on their research...

...Harvard, like any institution invested in its own survival, is not about to bankrupt itself. Its effort will likely follow the well-worn path of local reparations programs across the country: introduced with a bang and then quietly abandoned as the logistics and finances prove untenable...

Full story at https://www.thefp.com/p/harvard-reparations-plan-failure.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 161

From the Harvard Crimson: Former Harvard President Claudine Gay earned more than $1.5 million in 2024, according to Harvard’s annual tax filings, receiving a higher compensation package in the year after she resigned from the presidency than she did during her six months in Massachusetts Hall. Gay’s compensation rose from the more than $1.3 million she earned in 2023 — which spanned the end of her term as Faculty of Arts and Sciences dean and all six months of her presidency. Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 earned more than $1.6 million in 2024, his first compensation reported while serving at Harvard’s helm. Garber served as interim president from January to August 2024, when he was appointed to the position permanently.

And Harvard Management Company Chief Executive Officer N.P. “Narv” Narvekar — the highest-paid employee across HMC and Harvard — earned more than $6.2 million in 2024, a slight increase from his $6 million payout in 2023. The compensation, released as part of the University’s Form 990 tax filings for fiscal year 2025, is required annually by the Internal Revenue Service for tax-exempt entities. Salaries are reported for the 2024 calendar year...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/5/15/harvard-form-990-gay-garber-2024/.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 160

From the Harvard Crimson: At least 259 Harvard officials enslaved more than 1,600 people over a 229-year period. Researchers expect both numbers to grow as they continue working to identify enslaved individuals. Harvard officials enslaved more than 1,600 people from 1636 to 1865, new research released Tuesday shows. Harvard University shared details in a new database about the people who were enslaved as well as those who owned them. Researchers with the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative say they’ve found at least 259 Harvard university leaders, faculty, staff and board members who enslaved individuals. 

The initiative, which began in 2022 as a way to identify the descendants of enslaved individuals, partnered with American Ancestors, a national genealogical nonprofit, on the project. Harvard officials said the database is expected to grow beyond the initial 1,613 people. In a 2022 report, the university identified 70 people who were enslaved... Henry Louis Gates Jr., a Harvard professor who directs the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research and serves on the initiative’s advisory council, said in the university’s news article that he hopes Harvard will be a leader “in demonstrating institutional honesty and humility in confronting the complexities of our institutional past...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/05/13/harvard-tallies-how-many-people-officials-enslaved.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 159

From the Harvard Crimson: A group of former Harvard athletes who are now physicians and scientists pitched the University’s sports medicine team last summer on disclosing the risk of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy to contact-sport athletes. Nearly a year later, the group says they have heard nothing back. At least seven former Harvard football players have been diagnosed with CTE, a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated head impacts that can only be confirmed via autopsy, according to Christopher J. Nowinski ’00, the co-founder and CEO of the Concussion & CTE Foundation. The most recent diagnosis, Jim Higgins ’70, came earlier this year.

The other publicly identified cases are James M. Peccerillo ’78, Toby Brundage III ’95, Mike T. Brooks ’01, Dick Clasby ’54, Hank Keohane ’60, and Christopher J. Eitzmann ’99, a former Harvard football captain who went on to play for the New England Patriots. The youngest of the seven died in his 30s. Nowinski, a former Harvard defensive lineman, said he first raised the issue with Harvard Athletics Director Erin McDermott at an Ivy League Football Association dinner in January 2025...

Nowinski said communication from Harvard Athletics stopped after the presentation. “We could not get emails returned,” he said, “so we suspect they did not go forward with our proposal to provide education on CTE to Harvard athletes.” ...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/5/6/cte-training-unanswered/.

Straws in the Wind - Part 340

From the LA Times: ...Today’s college students say that picking a major that’s “AI-proof” feels like shooting at a moving target as they prepare for a job market that could be fundamentally different by the time they graduate. As a result, many are reconsidering their career paths. About 70% of college students see AI as a threat to their job prospects, according to a 2025 poll by the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School, while recent Gallup polling found that U.S. workers are increasingly concerned about being replaced by new technologies. The uncertainty appears most concentrated among those pursuing degrees in technology and vocational areas of study, where students feel a need to develop expertise in AI but also fear being replaced by it.

A recent Quinnipiac poll found that the vast majority of Americans believe it’s “very” or “somewhat” important for college and university students to be taught how to use AI, as Gallup Workforce polling has found that AI is getting adopted in technology-related fields at higher rates. Meanwhile, students studying healthcare and natural sciences may be less affected by AI overhauls, Gallup found.

...A recent Gallup poll of Generation Z youths and adults ages 14 to 29 found increasing skepticism and concerns about AI. Although half of Gen Z adults use AI at least “weekly,” and teenagers report higher use, many in this generation see drawbacks to the technology and worry about AI’s effect on their cognitive abilities and job prospects. About half, 48%, of Gen Z workers say the risks of AI in the workforce outweigh the possible benefits.

Part of the challenge for college students is that the experts they would typically turn to for advice, such as advisors, professors and parents, don’t have any answers...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2026-05-05/college-students-are-in-search-of-ai-proof-majors.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 157

From the Harvard Crimson: The Harvard Kennedy School is weighing a visiting faculty program to expand intellectual diversity on campus as administrators explore new ways to address criticism that Harvard’s faculty leans overwhelmingly liberal. The proposal, discussed with top-dollar donors at a Dean’s Council meeting last October, would bring scholars to HKS for yearlong fellowships with the goal of retaining some as permanent faculty, according to Mark R. Wittcoff, a member of the Council’s Leadership Circle.

The idea has also surfaced in recommendations from a task force convened by HKS Dean Jeremy M. Weinstein to reimagine the school’s leadership and academic priorities. Though not yet formalized, the initiative would align the Kennedy School with a broader University-wide push to expand “viewpoint diversity” among faculty. Over the past year, Harvard administrators have explored raising funds for new endowed professorships — which can cost roughly $10 million each — aimed at increasing ideological representation across schools and departments.

At the October meeting, Weinstein told donors the Kennedy School was working to build a more balanced professoriate, Wittcoff said. Weinstein raised the issue unprompted, according to Wittcoff, framing it as part of an effort to respond to public perceptions about the school. “He said, ‘We’re still being mischaracterized or misperceived as a liberal institution, we’re trying hard to get a more balanced faculty, and we’re doing it,’” Wittcoff said...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/22/visiting-faculty-viewpoint-diversity/.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 156

From the Harvard Crimson: The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study implemented a series of staffing cuts Wednesday, laying off employees and reducing positions as it grapples with mounting financial uncertainty. The Institute laid off four employees, shifted three staff members to part-time roles, and eliminated eight vacant positions, according to a Radcliffe employee familiar with the matter.

In [an] email to staff — which was obtained by The Crimson — Radcliffe Institute Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin described the decision as “painful,” citing “a wide range of federal actions targeting Harvard, cost pressures, and market volatility.” She said Harvard’s central administration had directed units to pursue “structural cuts.”

“We will operate with substantial financial uncertainty for the foreseeable future — years, not months — and we have been asked to respond accordingly,” Brown-Nagin wrote... 

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/30/radcliffe-layoffs/.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 155

From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard faculty are weighing an amendment to a proposed cap on undergraduate A’s that would substantially reduce the number of A’s awarded in smaller courses, the latest revision to a policy faculty have debated for months. The current proposal would cap the number of A’s in any course at 20 percent of enrolled students plus four. The amendment, drafted by Physics professor Matthew D. Schwartz, would replace the flat addition of four with 0.6 times the square root of the total number of students.

Across all courses, the two formulas would produce roughly the same overall share of A’s — 31 percent under the amendment, compared with 32.3 percent under the current proposal. (The current share of As awarded to undergraduates is substantially higher at 63 percent.) But the amendment’s impact would be far more pronounced in smaller courses. In courses with 12 or fewer students, the maximum allowed share of A’s would fall from 70.8 percent to 51.1 percent. In larger classes, Schwartz’s formula would slightly increase the cap, raising the allowed share of A’s by one to three percentage points in courses with more than 30 students...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/27/grade-cap-amendment/.

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From the Harvard Crimson: Enrollment in Harvard’s Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies program has fallen to a more than 15-year low, as cuts to teaching positions and federal scrutiny of gender and sexuality-related programming raise questions about the program’s long-term sustainability. 22 undergraduates are currently concentrating in WGS, including joint and double concentrators, according to data from current and past concentration handbooks. The figure is the lowest since 2010 and represents a more than 50 percent decline from the program’s 2022-23 peak of 55 concentrators.

Only two are sophomores — the most recent class to declare their concentrations...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/22/wgs-concentrators-drop/.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 154

From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard Medical School faculty offered diverging assessments of the school’s revised mission statement, with several professors welcoming a tighter focus on patient care and research while others said the rewrite stripped out language central to the practice of medicine. HMS dean George Q. Daley ’82 unveiled the new statement on April 9, defending it as a “leaner” articulation of the school’s purpose. The previous version opened with a pledge to “nurture a diverse, inclusive community dedicated to alleviating suffering.”

The revised statement removes that language and centers the school’s work on improving “health and wellbeing,” with the diversity commitment relocated to a separate community values statement that affirms HMS as “a diverse and inclusive community.”

Several faculty members said the revision was an improvement... HMS professors Hao Wu and Joseph P. Newhouse offered similar assessments. Wu wrote that the previous statement “sounded a bit sad,” while Newhouse called the revision “appropriate.” ... Other faculty were sharply critical... David S. Jones, a professor of the culture of medicine at HMS... questioned whether political pressure had driven the revision... Christophe O. Benoist, a professor of immunohematology, said he understood the criticism but saw the changes as a strategic concession... Stephen Lory, a retired microbiology professor, said the revisions would not change the day-to-day work of the school’s labs...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/27/hms-mission-faculty-reactions/.

Straws in the Wind - Part 327

From the Columbia Daily Spectator: Amid a national reckoning with grade inflation, Columbia’s undergraduate schools have been considering changing the way the University weighs A-pluses. It is unclear when these changes would take effect if approved. The Committee on Instruction, which governs the curriculum for Columbia College and the School of General Studies, has considered decreasing the weight of A-pluses for at least the past year, three COI members told Spectator. While the registrar currently weighs A-pluses as a 4.33 in its cumulative grade point average calculation, the COI proposed weighing A-pluses as a 4.0—the same as an A. Under this proposal, individual professors could still award A-pluses, which would continue to appear on students’ transcripts.

The proposal comes as peer institutions consider drastic efforts to curb grade inflation. This fall, a report issued by Harvard University found that over 60 percent of grades awarded to Harvard undergraduates were A’s. Harvard proposed capping the proportion of A’s awarded for each class at 20 percent, though it delayed voting for the proposal until fall 2027...

Full story at https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2026/04/21/columbia-proposes-reducing-weight-of-a-pluses-amid-national-reckoning-with-grade-inflation/.

As we have noted in the past, the problem with grade inflation - unlike price inflation - is that grade inflation is capped. With a cap, everyone ends up with the same grade. Lowering the cap as a "solution" is, quite frankly, a ridiculous idea. But de facto, that's what the proposal above amounts to.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge - Part 153

From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard deliveries have been disrupted... as graduate student workers picket loading docks across campus — at times prompting drivers to turn away rather than cross the line. Some delivery drivers declined to complete drop-offs after speaking with picketers, while others attempted to reroute shipments through alternate routes. According to Evan R. Lemire, a HGSU executive board member, drivers from companies including UPS, USPS, Airgas, Taylor Oil, and Arrow Paper Corporation have been unable to access multiple docking sites in Cambridge since the strike began.

A UPS driver said packages scheduled for the Harvard Yard Mail Center at 1 Oxford St. were not delivered Wednesday because drivers were unwilling to cross the picket line. Instead, the packages are expected to be retrieved from a UPS facility by Harvard Transportation Services staff. UPS drivers are represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, whose contracts allow workers to honor picket lines...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/24/delivery-delay-hgsu-strike/.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 152

From the Harvard Crimson: Leaders of Harvard’s non-tenure-track faculty union quietly called off plans for a spring strike, overriding a membership vote after concluding the walkout risked failing to win approval from the United Auto Workers. At a... general membership meeting attended by roughly 150, workers represented by the Harvard Academic Workers-UAW voted to close an ongoing strike authorization vote on Friday and begin striking as early as next week, according to an attendee. But in an abrupt about-face, the union’s bargaining committee extended the voting timeline the following day — a move that rules out any strike this semester.

...The committee said the combination of low participation and a tight turnaround between the proposed vote closure and strike date created a “substantial” risk that UAW’s international leadership would not authorize its strike in time. Without that approval, workers would be ineligible for strike pay and other union support — and the authorization process would have to start over.

...The move strips HAW-UAW of a key source of leverage this semester as negotiations for its first contract with Harvard stretch into a second year. It also means that the non-tenure-track faculty will not picket alongside Harvard’s graduate student union, which previously began striking... 

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/24/haw-strike-vote-override/.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 151

From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard College Dean David J. Deming said [last] Thursday that he would cut administrative functions before scaling back student-facing programming as the College braces for significant reductions tied to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ $365 million structural deficit...

Deming pointed to the federal endowment tax — raised to eight percent last summer under the Republicans’ tax and spending bill — as a major driver of the FAS’ budget shortfall. “That blew a hole of roughly $100 million per year in the FAS budget,” Deming said. “That’s not a one-time thing. That’s an every year thing that is enshrined into legislation.” ...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/24/deming-administrative-functions-budget/.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 150

From the Harvard Crimson: Members of the Harvard faculty subcommittee that drafted a proposal to cap A grades said Yale’s recent recommendation of a 3.0 mean GPA would cut deeper into student transcripts than Harvard’s own plan — even as they welcomed Yale’s entry into a debate that has so far unfolded largely in Cambridge.

The Yale Committee on Trust in Higher Education, in a report released April 10, urged Yale College to adopt “a 3.0 mean, or some other college-wide standard” to address grade inflation, alongside a new percentile-rank metric on transcripts. A Harvard committee proposed a different instrument: a 20 percent cap on A grades per course, with four additional As permitted, and no mandated distribution across other grades.

Government professor Alisha C. Holland, a member of the Harvard subcommittee, said the two proposals would land in very different places on student transcripts. “I would expect — especially in the short term, as instructors make adjustments – that the median grade at Harvard will be an A-minus,” Holland said. “That is far off from the mean of a 3.0 that Yale is recommending.” ...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/23/yale-report-harvard-reacts/.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 149

From the Harvard Crimson: A Harvard Medical School working group on open inquiry found that students and faculty frequently self-censor on controversial topics and recommended a series of changes to strengthen classroom and laboratory discourse, according to a report released Tuesday. The 16-member group, chaired by former HMS Dean Jeffrey S. Flier, called on the school to host regular public forums modeling debate on controversial issues, expand a recently adopted non-attribution rule for classroom discussions, and develop explicit guidelines on the boundaries of student and faculty activism in clinical settings.

...The institution’s push to examine open inquiry followed sustained pressure from the White House last spring to curtail diversity, equity, and inclusion programming and what the administration called left-leaning political bias in higher education. But Flier said in an interview before the report’s release that the effort was driven by concerns internal to HMS, not federal pressure. “There was an obvious need for internal reform, unrelated to the Trump administration,” Flier said. “Some people will look at some of the things that are recommended and say, isn’t that something similar to what is being demanded? Maybe that’s true in a few instances, but that just is not a reason to deny the issues that we take up.”

...Anonymous feedback indicated that students struggled to “disagree respectfully and understand other perspectives” and often hesitated to share views on controversial topics. Faculty reported similar reluctance, citing fear of offending colleagues or facing backlash. Flier described the findings as “major issues” for the school. Self-censorship was especially pronounced in required courses on medical ethics, health care policy, and social medicine — topics the report described as “politically and socially charged.” Some students felt those courses presented contested topics without sufficient viewpoint diversity, while others felt there was too much.

...Recommendations include articulating informal “social compacts” to guide classroom and laboratory interactions and establishing awards recognizing affiliates who advance open inquiry. Some of the working group’s recommendations are already underway at HMS. The school updated application essay prompts for its M.D. and master’s programs in late 2025 to place greater emphasis on applicants’ ability to engage across difference, and it has partnered with the outside organizations to train faculty, staff, and student leaders...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/22/hms-open-inquiry-findings/.