Media Mentions

Sixteen Harvard faculty are among the 261 American Academy of Arts and Sciences newly elected members, the academy  announced Thursday. “We are celebrating a depth of achievements in a breadth of areas,” said David Oxtoby, president of the American Academy. “These individuals excel in ways that excite us and inspire us at a time when recognizing excellence, commending expertise, and working toward the common good is absolutely essential to realizing a better future.” The Harvard inductees include: ... Guy-Uriel E. Charles Charles Ogletree, Jr. Professor of Law; Faculty Director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute, Harvard Law School

“An institution entangled with American slavery and its legacies.” That was how a faculty committee described Harvard University in a landmark study documenting, in unflinching detail, the school’s extensive ties to slavery. The report detailed how enslaved people worked on the campus for more than 150 years, how the school benefited from deep financial connections to slavery and how its academics promoted racist theories. At a time when some are trying to whitewash U.S. history, this bracing honesty is most welcome. ... Harvard is not the first university to try to come to grips with its problematic past. Indeed, it has lagged behind others, such as Georgetown University and Brown University, and its efforts came under immediate criticism. Why did it take Harvard so long? Couldn’t $100 million be better spent directly helping the victims of bigotry and belittlement? The university expected this criticism. “We are not naive. This is an age of deep social divisions, and we know our efforts may be met with criticism and cynicism,” Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow and Tomiko Brown-Nagin, the scholar who led Harvard’s effort, wrote in The Post. The university can show its commitment to making amends by ensuring its money goes to causes that achieve maximum good for those still struggling under the country’s brutal legacy of slavery and racism.

President Joe Biden made waves last year when he tapped Gina McCarthy as his climate adviser, prompting concern among Republicans that she would lead an aggressive campaign to regulate emissions. Republican lawmakers who had waged war on past climate rules predicted the former Obama EPA administrator would seize the regulatory reins from Biden’s EPA chief, Michael Regan, and reinstate rules that were scrapped during the Trump administration or tied up in court. ... Jody Freeman, who founded the Harvard program, said McCarthy would know that the air office was “in very capable hands” when it comes to Clean Air Act regulation. Freeman worked with McCarthy as White House counselor on energy and climate issues under Obama, when McCarthy headed EPA. She said McCarthy would be aware of jurisdictional boundaries between the White House and EPA when it comes to regulation, and likely wouldn’t redraw those lines now that she’s on the other side of them. “I would expect they’d be working quite hand-in-glove and quite cooperatively, because they all know each other and they’re deeply experienced with these rules,” she said.

Just two days after he announced he would buy Twitter, Elon Musk sent out a deluge of tweets about his plans for the social media platform. One stood out for its broad appeal. "Twitter DMs should have end to end encryption like Signal, so no one can spy on or hack your messages," he wrote. ... Twitter's relatively smaller size — its global user base is a fraction of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — and the fact that it is not seen primarily as a messaging platform, may have allowed it to fly slightly under the radar, according to Bruce Schneier, a security technologist and fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. "Twitter is used less for that kind of direct conversation than Signal, SMS, WhatsApp and Telegram," he said. "It's more semi-public."

The Roundtable Panel: a daily open discussion of issues in the news and beyond. Today's panelists are WAMC’s Alan Chartock, research professor and Stuart Rice Honorary Chair at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) and Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University Fran Berman, Siena College Professor of Comparative Politics Vera Eccarius-Kelly, and Associate Professor of Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies; Co-Editor of the Journal of Equity & Excellence in Education; and Founding Co-director of Center of Racial Justice and Youth Engaged Research at University of Massachusetts Amherst College of Education Keisha Green.

Sunlight glowed through Tristan Banwell's thick brown beard as he trudged through half-melted snowdrifts towards a herd of small brown cows chowing down on a hay bale one mid-February morning near Lillooet, B.C. Thick fog that had cloaked the Fraser Canyon earlier that morning lifted, revealing snow-capped mountains towering on the horizon. Banwell was smiling. After weeks on the road delivering soup bones and steaks across southern B.C. and picking up a new bull stateside, he was delighted to be back on the farm. ... "When you're talking about regenerative agriculture, it's really important to define the term itself and then define a set of constituent practices," said Harvard Law School fellow Jan Dutkiewicz, a political economist who studies meat and climate change. "There's no single thing called regenerative agriculture."

President Joe Biden recently said that he's considering some level of broad-based student loan forgiveness in the coming weeks, and one Democrat who has repeatedly pushed for cancellation says that's major progress. "All we know is that the President has expressed an openness to to cancel some debt... that in its in and of itself, is a tremendous victory," Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) told Yahoo Finance in an exclusive interview (video above), later adding: "Any relief that we can provide people in the midst of unprecedented economic hardship as we begin to round the corner and head into a recovery from this pandemic induced recession would make a difference." ... The basic argument for broad cancellation, as detailed by the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School, is that the Education Secretary has the power “to cancel existing student loan debt under a distinct statutory authority — the authority to modify existing loans found in 20 U.S.C. § 1082(a)(4).” (Toby Merrill, who founded the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard Law School and co-authored the legal analysis, currently works for the Education Department.)

A new report urges Congress to make reducing food waste a priority in the 2023 farm bill in order to address climate change and hunger while benefiting the economy. The U.S. wastes more than one-third of the food it produces and imports, according to the report, published last week by the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, the Natural Resources Defense Council, ReFED and the World Wildlife Fund. ... The U.S. has set a goal of halving food loss and waste by 2030. The 2018 farm bill was the first to tackle food waste, by establishing new positions and programs at the USDA, updating food donation rules and funding community waste-reduction efforts. But much remains to be done, said Emily Broad Leib, faculty director of the Food Law and Policy Clinic and a lead author of the report.

Michelle Wu ’12 has been selected by the Harvard College Class of 2022 to address the graduating seniors as part of the annual Class Day celebration on May 25.

Australia has become the second country after the United Kingdom to legalize a fertility procedure that mixes genetic material from three people. The technique is meant to prevent couples from having children with certain debilitating disorders caused by faulty mitochondria, the energy-generating structures in our cells. But it’s controversial because it involves a genetic change that can be passed to future generations, so its rollout in Australia will be extremely cautious. ... “There was a lot of excitement when the UK first legalized this several years ago, so it's surprising that there haven't been reports of failures or successes one way or the other,” says I. Glenn Cohen, director of Harvard Law School's Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, who has been following the international landscape of mitochondrial donation closely.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: I feel bad for anyone not steeped in establishment clause jurisprudence who happened to listen to the Supreme Court’s oral arguments in the football coach prayer case, Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. On the surface, the question is simple: Can the public high school coach kneel and pray silently on the 50-yard line after games? But the doctrine the court has created over the years is so complicated and confused that you would be hard-pressed to make any sense of the debates without a law school course on the First Amendment under your belt.

In 2020, former federal public defender Caryn Strickland filed a complaint alleging sexual harassment from a supervisor while she was a public defender in the Western District of North Carolina. The lawsuit further alleged that the judiciary’s Employment Dispute Resolution system is unconstitutional. ... Jeannie Suk Gersen, attorney for Strickland, noted the impact of the decision: “Today’s decision is a major victory. In a unanimous decision, the court held that Strickland’s constitutional claims for equal protection and due process violations can proceed, and made clear that the federal judiciary as an employer is not immune from suits for sex discrimination.”

President Biden proposed a $30 billion aid package to Ukraine, “a vast increase in America’s commitment to defeating Russia in Ukraine.” Biden said, The cost of this fight is not cheap. But caving to aggression is going to be more costly if we allow it to happen. We either back the Ukrainian people as they defend their country, or we stand by as the Russians continue their atrocities and aggression in Ukraine. ... But as Professor [Laurence] Tribe noted in an NYTimes op-ed last week (“$100 Billion. Russia’s Treasure in the US Should Be Turned Against Putin), the US has seized and liquidated assets of sovereign nations on several prior occasions and has the authority to do so here. Professor Tribe tweeted in response to Biden’s proposal, saying Biden’s proposal to let US authorities liquidate assets of Russian oligarchs and donate the proceeds to Ukraine seeks broad new legal powers that ironically aren’t needed to liquidate even more US dollars from Russia’s sovereign accounts in the US.

An appeals court is giving a former federal public defender another chance to take her sexual harassment claims to court. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on Tuesday revived a portion of Caryn Strickland’s lawsuit against the judiciary. Certain claims can move forward against several officials, including Roslynn Mauskopf, the chair of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, and Roger Gregory, the Fourth Circuit’s chief judge. ... Strickland’s attorney, Harvard professor Jeannie Suk Gersen, called the decision a win for her client and others who may bring sex discrimination lawsuits against the courts. “Today’s decision is a major victory. In a unanimous decision, the court held that Strickland’s constitutional claims for equal protection and due process violations can proceed, and made clear that the federal judiciary as an employer is not immune from suits for sex discrimination,” Gersen said in a statement.

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that a former assistant federal public defender in North Carolina can sue court officials for constitutional violations stemming from an alleged faulty investigation of sexual harassment. ... Strickland was represented by Jeannie Suk Gersen, a professor at Harvard Law School, who called the decision “a major victory” in a statement published by Law.com and other publications. The unanimous decision “made clear that the federal judiciary as an employer is not immune from suits for sex discrimination,” Gersen said.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday revived a former public defender’s lawsuit challenging the federal judiciary’s handling of her sexual harassment and discrimination claims about a supervisor’s unwelcome attention at work. ... Strickland’s lawyer, Jeannie Suk Gersen, a Harvard Law School professor, characterized Tuesday’s decision as a landmark ruling because it makes “crystal clear” that the federal judiciary, as an employer, “can be held accountable based on its constitutional obligations” by judiciary employees who experience discrimination.

A designated Fourth Circuit panel on Tuesday reinstated some claims in a sexual harassment suit brought by a former North Carolina assistant federal public defender accusing federal judiciary officials of mishandling her complaints, but declined to rule that internal procedures designed to redress workplace misconduct claims are unconstitutional. The three-judge panel said former assistant federal public defender Caryn Devins Strickland can proceed with certain allegations that the Judicial Conference, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, the Fourth Circuit and its leaders violated her constitutional rights to equal protection and due process. A district judge dismissed the entire case in December 2020. ... Harvard Law School professor Jeannie Suk Gersen, who is representing Strickland, said the panel's decision "made clear that the federal judiciary as an employer is not immune from suits for sex discrimination."

An op-ed by Philippe Sands: President Biden’s accusation that Russia is committing genocide resonated with those appalled by the images of apparent slaughter in Bucha, Mariupol and other parts of Ukraine. “Your family budget, your ability to fill up your tank — none of it should hinge on whether a dictator declares war and commits genocide a half a world away,” Mr. Biden declared, although he later qualified his remarks, recognizing the need for more evidence. “We’ll let the lawyers decide internationally whether or not it qualifies, but it sure seems that way to me.”

The recent deluge of union elections at Starbucks Corp. stores is pushing the federal labor board to its limit, reflecting a broader influx in labor action as the pandemic winds down. Flat funding and a restless labor force have created a near perfect storm for the National Labor Relations Board, charged with overseeing every private-sector union election. Election petitions have already swelled by 57% in the first half of the 2021 fiscal year as unfair labor practice charges rose by 14%. At the same time, ballooning inflation and long-term staff declines have made the agency less equipped to fulfill its statutory mission of overseeing union elections, current and former officials say. “The board certainly has been in a funding crisis for awhile,” said Sharon Block, who served on it during the Obama administration and more recently as the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under President Joe Biden.

Harvard University leaders, faculty and staff enslaved more than 70 individuals during the 17th and 18th centuries when slavery was legal in Massachusetts, according to a report chronicling the university’s deep ties to wealth generated from slave labor in the South and Caribbean — and its significant role in the nation’s long history of racial discrimination. ... Laurence H. Tribe, emeritus professor of constitutional law at Harvard, wrote on social media that the report, “while over a century late, represents an important and valuable start.” In a phone interview, he said the country is engaged in a meaningful dialogue on this subject. But there are people who want to suppress such efforts at a national reckoning, and “have the view that the less we talk about race, the faster we’ll get over the problems of race,” as seen in recent voting-rights and affirmative-action cases. “There’s a different view that says that we can’t really get past where we are without coming more fully to terms with how we got here.”

Harvard University is publicly facing some brutally hard truths. A massive report, years in the making, was released this week detailing the institution’s ties to and enrichment from the enslavement of Black people. It’s full of gut-wrenching details, from the more than 70 human beings who were owned by faculty, staff, and even presidents of the university, to the remains of 15 Black people from the antebellum era found among the holdings of Harvard’s Peabody Museum, to the fact that a third of the university’s endowment from the first half of the 19th century came from donors whose fortunes were fueled by the slave trade. ... “It will bring us closer together as a community, and create deeper bonds among us,” [Tomiko Brown-Nagin] said. “I do know, obviously there are some very difficult things in the report.” But, she added, it’s also vital to note the immeasurable contributions Black and brown alumni have made to the university, Boston, and the world. “It’s important to me — I’m a civil rights historian — to have that be a theme of the report, because it’s a way of truth-telling as well, and ensuring that a broader array of graduates and individuals and communities represent Harvard,” Brown-Nagin said.