2 weeks Ago
It did not take long for Harvard's leadership to realize that the university would have to stand up to the Trump Administration. On March 31st, the White House announced that the status of nine billion dollars in multiyear federal funding to the university and its affiliated hospitals was in question, pending review of alleged antisemitism on campus. A week and a half later, the Administration delivered an ultimatum that dispensed with that pretense: it issued no findings on the university's antisemitism response but instead issued far more extensive demands.
The Lede Reporting and commentary on what you need to know today. In order to "maintain Harvard's financial relationship with the federal government," the letter stated, it must agree to, among other things: share with the government all hiring and admissions data through 2028, including on rejected student applicants; submit to the government an external audit of the views of all faculty, staff, and students, to show that every department and unit has established "viewpoint diversity"; reduce the power held by selected faculty members based on their "activism"; and audit numerous departments, including in the medical school, the school of public health, the divinity school, and the school of education, for alleged antisemitism. I have spent nearly all of my career at Harvard and one of its affiliated hospitals, Brigham and Women's Hospital, in academic surgery and public health.
For the past three years, I took a leave to lead the Global Health Bureau at the U.S. Agency for International Development, under the Biden Administration.
There I saw firsthand the consequences—in diminished lifespans and economies—of governments with rulers controlling "viewpoint diversity" in civil institutions. At the end of President Biden's term, I returned to my surgery department, only to watch in dismay, soon after, as the agency was demolished in a matter of weeks. Now the Trump Administration was seeking to do to the.
.. Atul Gawande.
