The Harvard Crimson - Vol. CLII, No. 24

The Harvard Crimson

SHUTDOWN IN SIGHT? Researchers at an HMS lab are uncertain how they will keep supporting the Allen Ancient DNA Resource after its prima

Harvard Cuts Back Ph.D. Admissions

OFFLINE. Canvas, Harvard’s main platform for classes, was nonoperational for more than 12 hours on Monday due to a widespread web outage, leaving students and professors temporarily unable to access class materials.

Garber Met Oxford Leaders, Rhodes Scholars in Unannounced London Trip

with Washington.

A Harvard spokesperson declined to comment on the trip.

Harvard President Alan M. Garber

’76 traveled across the pond earlier this week for an unannounced trip to London, where he met with the University’s Rhodes Scholars and senior University of Oxford officials. Garber — accompanied by his wife Anne Yahanda, Harvard Alumni Association Executive Director Sarah Karmon, and Harvard Vice President for Public Affairs and Communications Paul Andrew — spent several days in the United Kingdom. During a reception at Oxford with Harvard Rhodes Scholars, Garber said Harvard’s fight with the Trump administration is ongoing, according to one attendee.

During the reception, which drew more than a dozen students and several Rhodes House officials, Garber also suggested that tensions over federal funding and restrictions on international students continue to loom over the University.

He then told the Rhodes Scholars that four international students admitted to Harvard College were ultimately unable to enroll, according to the person. He said three were blocked by the blanket travel bans imposed under the Trump administration, appearing to suggest that the fourth was affected by Harvard’s own disputes

The Trump administration has since May sought to bar Harvard from hosting international students — first by moving to revoke the University’s authorization to enroll them, and later by announcing a blanket suspension on student travel to the United States.

Both measures were blocked by a federal judge, though several international students reported experiencing visa delays and other obstacles over the summer.

Garber said that in the immediate aftermath of the Trump administration’s actions, officials from several universities — including Oxford — reached out to Harvard to offer support, though he did not say if Oxford had offered to host students if Harvard was unable to secure an injunction against the policy, the person said.

Multiple universities were in talks with Harvard over the summer to host international students if they were unable to return to Cambridge. The Harvard Kennedy School partnered with the University of Toronto to provide temporary placements — an option a small cohort of international students ultimately accepted.

Since April, the White House has hit Harvard with successive rounds of funding freezes totaling $2.7 billion — effectively halting nearly all federal grants and contracts awarded to the University. The

blocked funds were reinstated following a court ruling in September, and money has begun to flow back to Harvard gradually in the weeks since.

The hour-long event was largely informal. Garber spent most of the reception mingling with students, taking photos, and sharing light food before giving brief remarks for about five minutes. In smaller group conversations, he discussed his personal interest in economics and reminisced about his time as an undergraduate in Dunster House, the person said.

The visit comes a little more than one year after Garber last traveled to London, where he met with hundreds of alumni during a trip that included stops in the United Kingdom and Florida. In that trip, he spoke at an off-the-record event hosted by the Harvard Club of the United Kingdom, before meeting with officials and Harvard students at the University of Cambridge.

The unannounced London trip also marks Garber’s second reported international travel since assuming the top post in January 2024 — and his first of the year. He had planned to visit India over spring break but abruptly canceled the trip after Columbia University was hit with a $400 million federal funding cut, a move that some in Massachusetts Hall interpreted as a warning shot from Washington.

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The proportion of Black and Hispanic students enrolled in Harvard College’s freshman class dropped in the second year after the Supreme Court overturned race-conscious undergraduate admissions, according to data released by Harvard on Thursday. Hispanic enrollment in the Class of 2029 experienced the largest decline, falling from 16 percent of the Class of 2028 to 11 percent this year — a reversal from a slight rise in the year following the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision. Black enrollment fell 2.5 percentage points to 11.5 percent of the class, a smaller decrease than last year’s 4 percentage point drop. The enrollment of Asian American freshmen rose four percentage points, increasing from 37 percent to 41 percent, after staying roughly constant between the Classes of 2027 and 2028. Harvard did not state what proportion of its freshman class identified as white or reported multiple racial backgrounds, and eight percent of students chose not to report their race. Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which struck down 45 years of precedent, the racial composition of Harvard’s student body has been watched closely. The University has anticipated legal action from critics — possibly including SFFA and a presidential administration that has taken an aggressive stance against affirmative action — if its demographics do not exhibit changes, but backlash from its student body if underrepresented minority enrollment falls.

BY ANGELINA J. PARKER AND EMILY T. SCHWARTZ CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Normally a quiet patch of grass lodged between a synagogue, senior center, and the local library, Brighton Common comes alive each Wednesday afternoon as hundreds of locals flock to the park to buy produce and catch up with their neighbors at the Brighton Farmers Market.

There, life-long residents mix with more recent arrivals who speak a range of Mandarin, Spanish and Portuguese. Local farms sell produce next to progressive neighborhood organizations handing out food coupons and live bands hired by the Harvard Ed Portal. But in spite of the market’s popularity, attendance has been flagging under President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants.

Ever since ICE presence increased in the neighborhood after the announcement of Op-

eration Patriot late May, and then again with the launch of “Patriot 2.0” this fall, vendors said they have seen fewer Spanish and Portuguese-speaking customers.

The market has reported an average of 16 percent fewer customers per week compared to 2024, when roughly a thousand customers visited each Wednesday. It isn’t just the farmers market that has seen declining attendance — community service providers from the adult education program at the Jackson-Mann Community Center and the Charles River Community Health Center reported an uptick in no-shows for classes and appointments since Operation Patriot launched in May.

Service providers attribute the decrease in attendance of events at public centers, like the farmers market and the health center, to fear of unexpected encounters with immigration enforcement, which has struck Latino populations especially hard, and often in public spaces like outside school drop-off.

“We have families that have let us know that they are worried about coming to the market because of all of the anti-immigrant and deportation fears that are happening now,” Bianca Bowman, who coordinates the market, said. She said that even immigrants with legal status feel threatened — and have been wrongfully detained.

“There’s a lot of fear definitely going on in our neighborhood,” Bowman said.

‘Our Kids are Living Off of Fear’

As ICE presence increased first in May and then again in September, neighborhood organizations swiftly responded — like the Brazilian’s Women Group in Brighton, which created a support group for the families of detained immigrants, a new Portuguese hotline for immigration concerns, and assistance for those who want to self-deport.

Dana Bash Criticizes Pentagon Limits

UNIVERSITY QUIETLY CHANGES PROTEST AND DISCIPLINE RULES

YALE OUTSPENDS THE IVY LEAGUE IN THIRD-QUARTER FEDERAL LOBBYING

Yale University reported spending $370,000 lobbying the federal government during the third-quarter of 2025 according to public documents reviewed by the Yale Daily News. The University spent more this quarter than all other Ivy League schools whose federal disclosures were made available. Yale has increased spending on lobbying each quarter this year, spending $250,000 in the first quarter of 2025 and $320,000 in the second. Yale and Dartmouth are the only members of the Ivy League who have not faced direct cuts from the Trump administration.

YALE DAILY NEWS

DARTMOUTH REJECTS TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S COMPACT

In a campus-wide email sent Saturday, Dartmouth University President Sian Leah Beilock wrote that Dartmouth will not agree to the Trump administration’s higher education compact, according to the Dartmouth. Of the nine schools approached by the federal government, Dartmouth is the last of the Ivy Leagues in the group to reject the compact, joining Brown and the University of Pennsylvania “I do not believe that a compact — with any administration — is the right approach to achieve academic excellence,” Beilock wrote.

THE DARTMOUTH

University of Pennsylvania officials have warned that the One Big Beautiful Bill’s 4 percent

In Photos: Thousands Gather For Boston’s ‘No Kings’ Protest

BY MAE T. WEIR

ERIC ADAMS ENDORSES ANDREW CUOMO FOR MAYOR

Eric Adams, mayor of New York City, endorsed former New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo on Thursday, ending months of tension between the two Democrats. The move comes as an effort to curb the progress of opposing candidate Zohran K. Mamdani, a democratic socialist who leads Cuomo by double digits in the mayoral race. When Adams ended his re-election campaign, he had called Cuomo “a snake and a liar” for pressuring him to leave the race. However, Adams, who has faced low approval ratings after accusations of corruption during his term, said he plans to campaign with Cuomo in neighborhoods, particularly reaching Black and brown voters, according to the New York Times.

TRUMP CALLS OFF PLAN TO SEND FEDERAL AGENTS TO SAN FRANCISCO

President Trump called off plans to send federal immigration agents into San Francisco this weekend, announcing his reversal on Truth Social just as agents beginning to gather at a Coast Guard base in the Bay Area were met with hundreds of protestors. Trump said he stopped the deployment at the request of friends in the Bay Area who vouched for the city’s mayor, Democrat Daniel Lurie. Still, the administration continues to push for the deployment of US troops to other Democrat-led cities to address what it considers violent action against immigration enforcement. Several cities have sued the White House with varying levels of success, as the Supreme Court continues to consider Trump’s request to allow deployment.

MADAGASCAR’S NEW PRIME MINISTER NAMED AFTER MILITARY COUP

Madagascar military colonel and coup leader Michael Randrianirina appointed a new prime minister Monday, less than one week after he forcefully ousted former President Andry Rajoelina from his seat. Rajoelina fled Madagascar last weekend as the country erupted in nationwide protests led by the Gen Z Madagascar youth movement, with protestors initially citing frustrations with frequent water and power outages across the country. The protests snowballed — attracting thousands and morphing into wider demands for political change. Still, Randrianirina isn’t in the clear: leaders of Gen Z Madagascar say they disapprove of his pick for prime minister, stating that the appointment was made “without consultation” and lacked transparency.

U.S. SANCTIONS ON RUSSIAN OIL COMPANIES RAISE PRESSURE ON PUTIN OVER UKRAINE

President Trump imposed new sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies, aiming to push Russian President Vladimir Putin to a negotiation deal over Ukraine. On Wednesday, Trump said he canceled his planned second meeting with Putin, citing frustration over unproductive phone calls with him.

NEXT WEEK 3

What’s Next

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

Friday 10/24

24 HOURS IN THE LIFE OF “THE DAILY SHOW”

Institute of Politics Allison Dining Room, 11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.

Join The Daily Show’s Executive Producer Jennifer Flanz and Producer Max Browning as they pull back the curtain of Comedy Central’s celebrated news satire television show.

FAMILY WEEKEND SHOWING OF

MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG

The Loeb Drama Center, 2 p.m.-5 p.m. Watch the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club’s presentation of Merrily We Roll Along, as the cast interprets Stephen Sondheim’s portrayal of friendship, ambition, and the cost of success in show business.

CLOSING NIGHT OF THE ADDAMS FAMILY MUSICAL

The Aggasiz Theatre, 2 p.m.-4:30 p.m.

Following a free Family Weekend Saturday showing of their own, catch The Addams Family’s final show in the leadup to Halloweekend. The musical follows Wednesday Addams, the ultimate princess of darkness, as she navigates falling in love with a “normal” man — one that her parents have

Monday 10/27

JEN PSAKI AND DEE DEE MYERS AT THE INSTITUTE OF POLITICS

Institute of Politics, JFK Jr. Forum, 6 p.m.-7 p.m.

Former White House correspondents Jen Psaki and Dee Dee Myers discuss trust and discourse in political media in a discussion moderated by Chief White House Correspondent at the New York Times Peter Baker.

Tuesday 10/28

FINAL FARMERS’ MARKET OF 2025 Science Center Plaza, 11:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.

Wednesday 10/29

Thursday

Stop by the last weekly Farmers’ Market of the season for fresh local produce, food, and homemade goods, including roasted coffee beans, honey, and locally-caught fish. The Market will return to the Science Center Plaza in June. READY FOR FAMILIES

Friday 10/31

Web Outage Leaves Profs, Students Without Canvas Site

day morning, and access to Canvas was restored around 6:45 pm. Before the site was restored, many Harvard professors postponed assignments that were due on Monday and emailed students readings and pages for the week.

Canvas, Harvard’s main platform for classes, was nonoperational for more than 12 hours on Monday due to a widespread web outage, leaving students and professors unable to access class materials and submit assignments. The global outage stemmed from Amazon Web Services, the world’s largest cloud infrastructure platform that supports roughly 30 percent of all cloud-based websites on the internet. It affected social media sites like Facebook, Snapchat, and the anonymous student site Sidechat, the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, and Delta and United Airlines. According to Harvard University Information Technology, student-facing websites including Canvas, Adobe Creative Cloud, Panopto, Qualtrics, and Smartsheet were affected by the AWS crash.

AWS first reported the outage shortly after 3 a.m. on Mon-

Economics 10: “Principles of Economics,” a popular introductory course among freshmen, granted students a 24-hour extension on the problem set that was due on Monday night, professor Jason Furman ’92 told The Crimson.

“I would not expect any measurable or persistent effects on the global economy as a result of this outage,” Furman wrote. “Unfortunately some of the resilience of the incredibly complicated and interconnected systems we rely on can only be sustained through trial and error. Fortunately they work the vast majority of the time in the vast majority of cases.”

HUIT sent a separate email to faculty on Monday evening with instructions on how to change the due date of an assignment on Canvas, post an announcement, and excuse students from late submissions.

Math 21A: “Multivariable Calculus” preceptor Adolfo A. Martin also granted students an extended deadline on their homework due during section on Monday.

“Since Canvas went down sometime last night, some students were unable to complete it.

Fortunately, Gradescope is still functioning, so students should be able to meet the extended deadline tonight,” he said.

Thomas E. Nelligan ’27 said the outage mostly affected his ability to complete readings before classes.

“It’s been annoying, I’m not gonna lie,” Nelligan said. “I thought that I woke up from a nap and I figured it would be fixed, and it’s not. That’s kind of concerning. I think a lot of people have readings and stuff they usu-

ally do at night, like assignments due. And I think there’s obviously – it’s not Harvard’s fault, per se – but there’s obviously a lack of clarity.”

Nelligan added that the blackout revealed Harvard’s dependence on Canvas and other sites to facilitate academics.

“It does reveal an overreliance on online systems, which is really frustrating,” he said. “I think it does make you think, ‘How did they do this before we had Canvas?’ They just made you turn

things in in-person. It’s kind of goofy to say that, but it does feel like we’re over relying on technology for problems that we should have backups to.” Summer R. Sinsley ’29 said two professors emailed slides and problem sets for the day, but being restricted from Canvas allowed her to “go out and explore the town.” “I went to a grocery store and picked up some yummy snacks, and so it was kind of a blessing in disguise,” she said.

Emran Lakhlifi ’29, a student in Economics 10 and Math 21A, said that when he tried to access class materials on Canvas, all he could see was the site’s error screen.

“I was working on two math p-sets, and thank goodness I completed them before going to bed, because I woke up and hit that refresh button and I’m greeted by this broken spaceship,” he said.

Ancient DNA Database at HMS Faces Uncertain Future

BY RAMON MORENO JR. AND YAHIR RAMIREZ CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Beneath the volcanic ash of Pompeii, researchers from the Harvard Graduate School of Design are unearthing the hidden lives of ancient Romans at the Casa Della Regina Carolina – a once luxurious home buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE.

Their project — co-sponsored by the GSD, the University of Bologna, and Cornell University — is focused on applying a myriad of scientific techniques to the remains of the house and its expansive garden to reconstruct how the citizens of Pompeii lived and shaped their ecosystem.

To explore the site, the researchers drafted a multidisciplinary team of scientists from the fields of botany, architecture, and remote sensing. Lee Graña, an assistant field director from the University of Bologna, brought a unique focus on ichthyology — the study of fish and their remains — to better understand the diet of the home’s elite residents.

“We have to consider all the potential avenues of investigation,” Graña said. “I come in with ichthyology as well looking at fish bones. We have a zoo archeologist who’s looking at all the animal remains. We have specialists who are doing micromorphology

with the soil.”

Kaja Tally-Schumacher, an assistant professor at the GSD and co-director of the project, brought a specific focus on the lives of the non-elite landscape designers and gardeners who worked in the house. Tally-Schumacher said her work is driven by a desire to combat the traditional scholarly emphasis on elite Roman life.

“We really wanted to address that in this particular house; think about who were the gardeners, designers of the garden, who were the enslaved workers that would have made possible the life and activities in the rooms of the house,” Tally-Schumacher said. “We are very interested in the social and religious dynamics of the ancient inhabitants and users of the house.”

Tally-Schumacher and her colleagues began excavations in 2018, and have returned almost every summer since. But the researchers’ work has been halted in recent years by the growing effects of climate change.

“We’ve really been forced to reckon with climate change today because of the extreme heat that my team and I experience when we’re out in the field, working for 12 hours a day, as well as flash flooding that occurs on site,” Tally-Schumacher said.

“The past is literally vanishing in the soil, so that future archeologists potentially might not be able to recover these historic landscapes,” she added.

A major focus of the project has been the plants of the gardens. The researchers looked to pollen preserved and embedded in the fresco wall paintings of the house, to understand the ecology of both the gardens and the surrounding landscape.

“We’ve been able to reconstruct an ecological snapshot of the types of plants that grew in this really, really large urban garden, but also a regional snapshot, because tree pollen can trav-

el hundreds of kilometers,” Tally-Shumacher said.

The team’s biggest discoveries have come from the soil and the root cavities left behind after the eruption. These findings identify which plants were cultivated and consumed — and revealed the sophisticated gardening practices of Roman gardeners.

“The Romans clearly understood that this soil, which they were quarrying from somewhere else in the city or outside of the city, was helping the growth of their plants,” Graña said.

“We would use a fertilizer if we’re planting the tree. We want it to grow very well,” Graña explained. “But these Romans knew that this soil was special.”

Graña also found fish bones from dozens of species, suggesting that ancient Romans relied heavily on seafood — both for consumption and as compost.

“If you go to investigate this garden, you have two dozen, three dozen species, some of them quite large, deep, deep water species,” he said. “So these Romans are buying everything available in the market, and they’re showing off their money.”

In future summer visits, the team plans to shift focus from the garden to the house itself. Caitlín Barrett ’03, a Cornell professor and co-director of the project, said upcoming excavations will examine domestic features such as bathrooms and latrines.

“What we’d like to do is, for the next couple of seasons, learn more about the house, in addition to the garden and the history of that house and excavating latrines,” Barrett said.

“I never have been so excited about the prospect of other people’s poop, but you really can get a lot of information about diet and health and lifestyle and excavating the earlier phases of the house,” she added.

BY NARI SHIN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Researchers at a Harvard Medical School laboratory are uncertain how they will continue supporting a large public genetic database after its primary source of funding expired last month.

The Allen Ancient DNA Resource is a manually curated collection of genetic data from thousands of ancient and present-day individuals, covering more than 1.2 million positions in the genome. The project’s eight-year grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation ended in September, leaving its future unclear.

David E. Reich ’96, professor of genetics at HMS who leads the AADR, said the lab is still looking for a funding source and is at risk of shutting down the publicly accessible resource that has been downloaded more than 67,000 times by researchers across the world.

“There are no specific sources of funding that are currently supporting the database,” Reich wrote. “We cannot sustain this for more than a short term and would have to end the AADR without renewal of a funding source.”

The most recent version was published in September 2024. Reich’s lab anticipated an updated release for the spring of 2025, but it was postponed due to ongoing funding uncertainties.

His research team submitted a proposal to the National Institutes of Health to renew a grant that has sustained the Reich Lab’s research for fourteen years, with the specific intention to maintain the AADR.

Reich wrote that the proposal received an “excellent score” and would have been guaranteed funding under normal circumstances. But due to reductions in federal awards to Harvard, he expects that funding will not be continued.

The AADR originated from the Reich lab’s efforts to reconstruct human genetic history and make ancient DNA data broadly accessible. Reich said the lab initially used its own archaeological and genetic data but expanded to include data from other studies after a surge of ancient DNA research in 2010.

“We had an initiative within the laboratory to create a centralized data set that allowed us to access all this information in a very uniform way, in flat text files that were then linked to the actual genetic data,” Reich said.

The lab received support from the Allen Foundation in 2017 to curate global ancient DNA data through the AADR. The dataset also includes archaeological information, radiocarbon dates, and details such as individuals’ estimated age at death.

Originally accessible through the lab’s website, the data now sit in a “professional” repository that receives more than 200 downloads a day. The Reich lab’s bioinformatics director Shop Mallick said the project filled a major gap in the field by increasing accessibility to analysis of human ancient DNA datasets.

“This seems to be a very unique thing in the human ancient DNA community, to create a centralized repository that people can use to just analyze from without going through the mechanical work of bringing different data sets together.,” Mallick said.

“It’s a very unique resource that people are able to use just to leverage all the different studies that have been created simultaneously,” he added.

“The AADR is an opinionated data set,” Reich said. “It’s not a comprehensive version of all of the data that’s ever been produced in the literature.” Researchers worldwide rely on the database for large-scale genetic analysis. Harald Ringbauer, a population geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, said the AADR was essential to his work.

“It’s really an amazing database that David produced that he basically tries to keep up to date with almost all of the ancient DNA records for many labs around the world,” Ringbauer said. “It’9s very useful, because we have it all in one place.” Reich said he hopes other researchers will continue to use the wide variety of modalities in the dataset creatively.

“I would like people to use it in any way that their creativity allows to study population history, to study natural selection, to understand familial structure, to correlate with economic data, to correlate it with social data,” he said. “Hopefully the uniformity in the data set will be useful.” In the face of limited funding, Reich said the lab views the database as a shared resource for the broader scientific community and feels a responsibility to maintain and expand it.

“We recognize that these samples, which are so precious and so important for understanding our own history, can be queried in many other ways from other people with other expertise,” he said.

“Not only do we have a responsibility to continue sharing this, but we have responsibilities to try and share it in different ways that expand beyond the form it’s currently in,” he added.

According to Reich, each release adds newly published data — about 50 papers’ worth a year — while improving the quality and consistency of existing material. The current version includes about 1.24 genome million positions, and Reich said the lab plans to expand the next version to roughly 2 million, though that would still only represent a subsection of research studies in the field.

Union Rally Prompts Dispute Over Campus Use Rules

are still up in multiple locations.

Faculty of Arts and Sciences officials confronted members of Harvard’s campus unions over their use of a megaphone at a Thursday rally on the steps of Widener Library, citing a violation of Harvard’s campus use rules.

But midway through the rally, two FAS officials approached union organizers and asked them to stop using their megaphone to amplify their speeches, citing it as a violation of campus use rules. Harvard added a rule in August 2024 that banned amplified sounds at public demonstrations without prior approval — part of a policy revamp following the pro-Palestine spring encampment.

After the protest ended, one of the officials asked to see at least two organizers’ Harvard University IDs, again citing the violation of campus use rules. University officials regularly record Harvard IDs before issuing disciplinary warnings or Administrative Board summons. A University spokesperson de-

More than 100 demonstrators from multiple campus unions marched from Harvard’s Office of Labor and Employee Relations in Harvard Square to Harvard Yard, where they used megaphones to amplify calls for fair contracts to the supporters and parents visiting campus for Family Weekend.

clined to comment on whether the University would be disciplining organizers.

But Harvard Graduate Student Union-United Automobile Workers Vice President Sudipta Saha said that the workers’ use of megaphones was protected under the National Labor Relations Act, a federal labor law that he said would supersede Harvard’s campus rules.

The confrontation marks the second time in one week that campus unions have invoked federal labor law to circumvent campus use rules. During a postering campaign on Oct. 16, organizers argued that their Black Lives Matter posters — which were not approved by campus administrators in advance — could not be taken down because they pertained to labor conditions and were protected by the NLRA.

As of Thursday, the BLM posters

Four major campus unions — representing graduate students, undergraduates, non-tenure-track faculty, custodians, and security guards — are currently engaged in contract negotiations with the University, with two negotiating their first agreements.

The Thursday rally and confrontation with FAS officials — held directly after graduate students and custodians finished bargaining sessions with the University — heightened tensions as bargaining parties hash out policies on non-discrimination, international worker protections, and time caps.

On Thursday, workers carried signs urging Harvard not to settle with the Trump administration and calling for continued attention to union demands.

“Negotiate with your workers

not Trump,” one sign read. Though a judge ruled in September that the administration’s freeze of more than $2.6 billion in federal funding to Harvard was unconstitutional, Harvard has taken a series of austerity measures, laying off roughly 15 percent of staff in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences earlier this month and cutting FAS Ph.D. admissions by more than half.

University negotiators proposed keeping wages flat for the next fiscal year in an offer to its nontenure-track faculty union earlier this month, and a Harvard spokesperson explained that the offer was part of the larger effort to cut costs.

But while the University’s most recent financial report catalogued its first deficit since 2020, it also saw a nearly 12 percent return on its endowment — and workers have argued that its unrestricted funds should

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Summers, College Officials Clash During Removal of PSC Display

which he did not attend on Thursday.

sity rules,” she said.

The removal of a weeklong exhibit by the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee in the Science Center plaza led to a confrontation between former University President Lawrence H. Summers and College administrators on Thursday afternoon. The “Wall of Resistance,” built of six painted wooden panels designed and installed by PSC members, was the latest iteration of the organization’s annual exhibit condemning Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. This year’s wall featured artwork and text condemning Israel’s killing of young children and aid seekers in Gaza and calling for Harvard to divest from Israel.

The exhibit was erected on Sunday and scheduled for removal by PSC members on Thursday at noon. Less than two hours before the planned removal, Harvard Chabad announced an address by Summers criticizing the wall, which coincided with its scheduled takedown. The removal was planned in advance in accordance with University guidelines preventing the installation from remaining in place for longer than five days. According to Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, it was Summers who had suggested holding an event at the wall in a phone call to him earlier that day, expressing his upset at the installation. The timing also conflicted with a class co-taught by Summers, Econ 1420: “American Economic Policy,”

During the event, attended by more than 50 Harvard affiliates, Summers condemned the installation as “antisemitic” and “the moral equivalent of racism.”

“I do not believe that if the doctrines of the Ku Klux Klan were proposed for installation in the Science Center, that that would be permitted and that would be enabled by those who lead us in this community,” Summers said. He urged attendees to reach out directly to University President Alan M. Garber ’76 and College Dean David Deming to express their disapproval.

Several minutes after noon, Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh and Dean of Students Thomas G. Dunne briefly interrupted the event to ask Summers to move away from the wall so that the removal could continue safely.

Claybaugh told Summers the event could continue, but asked that he step away from the wall while it was being taken down.

Summers refused to move, saying “I am going to finish my remarks.”

Summers continued to speak for several minutes before ending his address.

Shortly after his speech, Summers and Claybaugh engaged in a heated exchange over her intervention in the event.

Claybaugh defended her decision to intervene, saying that she did not know how long the event would continue. She added that she was acting in line with content-neutral Harvard policy.

“I’m just defending the Univer-

follow through with peace.

“Today, Israel depends completely on one person, and this is not Netanyahu. This is the guy Israel works for — Donald Trump,” Olmert said.

But Summers contested the idea that Harvard had enforced the rules neutrally and expressed frustration with Claybaugh’s responses.

“Now I’m really angry,” he told Claybaugh. “I wasn’t angry before. Now I’m really angry.”

Harvard’s campus use rules were first adopted in summer 2024, shortly after the pro-Palestine Harvard Yard encampment. The rules limit several tactics favored by student protesters and require advance approval for certain activities, including putting up displays and holding gatherings on campus.

The campus use rules, which Harvard has used to remove a Black Lives Matter sign from two professors’ office windows and to cancel a pro-Palestine vigil at Harvard Medical School, have drawn criticism from some faculty and students who say the University has enforced them unevenly.

Use of the Science Center plaza is also governed by the Office of Common Spaces, whose website states that exhibits will only be approved for up to three days. It was unclear why the permit issued for the PSC’s wall, which included three full days and two partial days for setup and removal, appeared to exceed the limit.

In an email to a College official later Thursday, which was reviewed by The Crimson, Claybaugh wrote that she and Dunne were approached by a student in the PSC on Thursday morning near Memorial Hall. The student requested assistance because they were unsure how to dismantle the wall while a

group had gathered beside it. Claybaugh worried that someone could be hit by a falling panel if the address continued, so she asked the group to move, she wrote.

In previous years, the PSC has installed a similar wall in the spring semester as part of an annual “Israel Apartheid Week” protest. But they were unable to install the wall this spring after the College put the group on a semester-long probation due to their support of a Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine rally that Harvard said violated campus policies.

Eva C. Frazier ’26, a PSC organizer, said that the wall was installed to “make students reflect on what it means to attend a university that is actively, materially, and morally complicit in the ongoing genocide and occupation in Palestine.”

The PSC has long protested Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and unequal treatment of Palestinians, but the group’s high-

est-profile activism in recent years has centered on condemnation of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack, which killed more than 1,000 people in Israel. More than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, including more than 18,000 children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which is run by the Hamas administration controlling Gaza. An International Court of Justice inquiry into whether Israel has committed genocide in Gaza is expected to take years to issue a finding, though a United Nations inquiry concluded last month that Israel’s actions in the territory amounted to genocide.

Frazier said it was important that the PSC installed the exhibit to show that “occupation and genocide” were continuing despite Israel’s ceasefire deal with Hamas, reached earlier this month. The deal allowed for the ex-

change of detainees and hostages and restarted the flow of aid into Gaza. But violence has persisted in the weeks since the agreement was signed. Summers said in an interview shortly after his remarks that he believed Harvard had not adequately acted against antisemitism on campus. The University has not yet made enough of “an effort to distinguish between good and bad, legitimate and illegitimate ideas,” he said.

Asked for comment on Summers’ speech, PSC organizer Olivia G. Pasquerella ’26 said that “it is not antisemitic or racist to critique a state that is perpetrating a genocide that has killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Palestinians.” “That’s what the wall talks about,” Pasquerella added.

sebastian.connolly@thecrimson.com julia.karabolli@thecrimson.com

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Donald Trump — more than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or any other world leader — is the only person who can bring an end to the war in Gaza during an Institute of Politics forum on Thursday night.

Olmert, who has publicly criticized Netanyahu and declared that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza, said he was optimistic that peace could be secured in the region — but only if Trump has the patience and desire to force Hamas and Israel to

“I don’t know what he wants, but I can tell you what he can do: he can force Netanyahu to embark on this process that will change history,” he added. “The question is: Will he do it?”

Olmert’s comments were made during the latest installment of Harvard Kennedy School professor Tarek E. Masoud’s “Middle East Dialogues” series, which brings high-profile figures to campus to be pressed on their views about Israel and Palestine. The talk came just two weeks after Trump unveiled a 20-point

peace plan for Gaza, which involved an immediate ceasefire and the release of the remaining Israeli hostages still held by Hamas. Still, it remains unclear whether the plan will pan out. Israel launched air strikes on Gaza Sunday after accusing Hamas of killing Israeli Defense Forces soldiers — before the ceasefire was restored on Monday.

During the talk, Olmert praised the ceasefire, but said it should have come sooner. He also said the war should end with a two-state solution that guarantees Palestinian statehood — an issue Trump has said has yet to be determined by the peace deal. Olmert, who served as prime minister from 2006 to 2009, is a longtime supporter of Palestin-

ian self-determination. When he led Israel’s government, Olmert met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud “Abu Mazen” Abbas 36 times to discuss peace in the region. But ultimately, he failed to reach a lasting peace agreement on Palestine. When pressed by Masoud to explain why he failed, Olmert said that Abbas was at fault for not taking the deal — a move he characterized as a “historic failure” for Palestine.

“Had they said yes at that time, lives would have been different for us in Israel, for us in the Middle East, for all the Palestinians, and perhaps far more than just the Middle East,” Olmert said. Masoud opened the event by asking participants to not in-

terrupt Olmert or block the live broadcast television screens inside the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, where the event was hosted. At recent IOP events on Gaza, protesters have covered the screens with banners displaying pro-Palestine messages.

“If you are moved to object to something that the speaker or the moderator says, reserve that passion for the Q&A period, when you can channel it in the form of a very sharply worded but civil question,” Masoud said.

The event proceeded without any disruptions or banners. During the talk, Olmert also laid into Netanyahu for waging the more than two-year long war in Gaza, which has destroyed much of the region and

left 68,000 dead, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry is run by Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since 2007. Olmert added that if he were still prime minister after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, he would have “made a deal on the eighth of October” and avoided dividing Israeli society over the war.

“What happened in the last two years with regard to the hostages has polarized Israeli society, and the government of Israel was a prime factor that incited against different factions in Israeli society,” Olmert said. “We were never before as polarized and divided as we are.”

elise.spenner@thecrimson.com tanya.vidhun@thecrimson.com

FAS Cuts Ph.D. Seats By More Than Half in Next Two Cycles

The Faculty of Arts and Sci-

ences slashed the number of Ph.D. student admissions slots for the Science division by more than 75 percent and for the Arts & Humanities division by about 60 percent for the next two years. The scale of reductions in the Social Science division was not immediately clear, though several departments in the division experienced decreases over the coming two years ranging from 50 percent to 70 percent.

The reductions — detailed by five faculty members and in emails obtained by The Crimson — stipulate smaller Ph.D. admissions quotas across dozens of departments. Departments were allowed

LAYOFFS FROM PAGE 1

to choose how they would allocate their limited slots across the next two years.

The official deadline for departments to inform the FAS how they want to allocate their admissions spots is Friday, according to an FAS spokesperson. Final allocations could change over the next week, but some departments are already preparing for drastic decreases in their Ph.D. student numbers.

Departments that would only have one new Ph.D. seat after accounting for the percentage reductions will not be allowed to admit any students, according to a faculty member with knowledge of the matter, who added that there might be some narrow exceptions.

The German department is currently projected to lose all its Ph.D. student seats, according to a faculty member familiar with the matter. The History department will be admitting five students each year

for the next two years, down from 13 admitted students last year, according to two professors in the department.

The Sociology department has opted to enroll six new Ph.D. students for the 2026-27 academic year, but forfeit its slots for the following year, according to an email from the department’s chair.

The Organismic and Evolutionary Biology department will shrink its class size by roughly 75 percent to three new Ph.D. students, according to two professors. Molecular and Cellular Biology will reduce its figure to four new students, and Chemistry and Chemical Biology will go down to four or five admits, one of the professors added.

The reduction in admissions slots puts a figure to FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra’s announcement in late September that the school would be admitting Ph.D. students at “significantly reduced levels.”

Hoekstra cited uncertainty around research funding and an increase to the endowment tax — which could cost Harvard $300 million per year — as sources of financial pressure.

Hoekstra also wrote in her message that the FAS decided to continue admitting Ph.D. students only “after careful deliberation.” She noted that many peer institutions paused Ph.D. admissions altogether, suggesting the FAS may have considered a complete halt in line with its peers.

“To balance both our academic and fiscal responsibilities, cohort sizes will be significantly reduced over the next two years as we evaluate the future model for Ph.D. education in the FAS,” Hoekstra wrote.

The Ph.D. admissions slowdown began last spring as the Trump administration threw the status of Harvard’s federal funding into doubt. With on-and-off grant

Harvard Lays Off Advisers, Lecturers at SEAS

administrative staff and researchers. The SEAS layoffs appear to be the first University cost-cutting measures to directly affect undergraduate-facing positions.

A SEAS spokesperson declined to comment, citing a policy against discussing personnel matters.

The recent round of layoffs also included one other student adviser: Bryan Yoon, a lecturer in the Department of Environmental Science and Engineering.

Yoon’s and Lombardo’s roles entailed serving as the primary advisers to all students in their department for course selection, graduation requirements, and other academic matters. Their departments have historically been among the SEAS’ smallest concentrations.

Both also teach courses at the school. Yoon teaches an introductory course on ESE, while Lom-

bardo is the faculty advisor of Engineering Without Borders, a student organization focused on building clean water infrastructure projects for underserved communities abroad. As part of his role, Lombardo designed a course tied to the program that offers course credit for students. He wrote in his statement that the course was unlikely to continue after he left SEAS which would be a “major loss for Harvard.”

“This was one of the only courses across Harvard College in which students were gaining essential skills and immediately putting those skills into practice for the benefit of low-resource communities around the globe,” he wrote, adding that it would have a lasting impact on communities the group supported in Kenya and the Dominican Republic. Yoon declined to comment on

his termination. But in an email to ESE concentrators last week, which was obtained by The Crimson, he wrote that “this notification was a surprise to many.”

“I truly loved being your instructor, advisor, and mentor,” he wrote in the email. “I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect job, and it’s all thanks to you.”

Yoon added that his duties as a lecturer and adviser would be “picked up by ESE faculty and SEAS staff” in the email.

Yoon and Lombardo’s removal drew fire from students, who condemned SEAS’ decision to lay off their advisors with little prior notice.

Kimmy G.A. Thompson ’26, an ESE concentrator who said she found a “sounding board” in Yoon, said his and Lombardo’s termination would be a “huge loss” for SEAS students.

“I think it’s just kind of not fair for ESE students to no longer have that role accessible to them when so many other things in the College still have it,” she said.

In the email announcing the layoffs, SEAS Dean David C. Parkes cited a “budgetary gap” due to an increase in the endowment tax, a drop in the indirect research cost reimbursement rate from the federal government, and research funding allocation changes.

But at the time, he did not specify how many individuals were affected by the layoffs, or how the decisions to terminate had been made.

Emily Xing ’27, who took Lombardo’s course last fall, wrote in a statement that he “played a key role in the SEAS ecosystem.”

“Losing Lombardo makes me concerned that Harvard would lose a long-time instructor for one of the

City Council Condemns Grad Union Removals

is geared toward their degrees and their compensation is not tied to specific tasks.

ongoing legal battle with the federal government over federal funding and international student visas.

misunderstanding of who is in the unit,” the spokesperson wrote.

freezes and an endowment tax hike looming on the horizon, several Ph.D. programs slashed their planned admissions offers. The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences rejected all waitlisted Ph.D. student applicants last spring.

The FAS has instituted a hiring freeze for full-time staff, stated it would keep a flat budget for next fiscal year, and stopped work on all “non-essential capital projects and spending.”

Harvard’s financial outlook has significantly improved in the weeks since early September, when a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore billions of dollars in federal funding to the University. Though the White House vowed to appeal the decision, funds have been slowly but surely rolling into University affiliates’ coffers since.

But Harvard’s budget troubles are not over. The University report-

ed last week an operating loss of $113 million in its fiscal year 2025 financial report, which reflects the fiscal year through June. Harvard pointed to “political and economic disruption,” including the Trump administration’s freezes on

The Cambridge City Council adopted a resolution on Monday condemning Harvard’s removal of roughly 900 workers from its graduate student union, calling on the University to address the demands of its unions during ongoing contract negotiations.

Harvard removed more than 900 students on research-based stipends from Harvard Graduate Student Union-United Automobile Workers’ bargaining unit in July, soon after the union’s contract expired. HGSU-UAW filed a grievance over the removal a few weeks later, and asked to bring the issue to arbitration on Friday.

Cambridge’s resolution follows a similar resolution passed by the Somerville City Council in July, urging Harvard to “seriously engage” with the union’s demands.

But as the union ups the pressure on Harvard at the bargaining table and in public messaging, the University has been firm — arguing that the stipended students who were removed from the union are not employees because their work

In an August response to the union’s grievance, Harvard’s Director of Labor and Employment Relations Brian Magner also wrote that the workers’ removal would not be arbitrable because the University acted after the union’s contract expired on June 30. (Union officials have held that worker pay stubs already reflected the change on July 1, meaning that Harvard must have acted before the contract expired.)

During a lively public comment period before the Council’s vote, several workers from HGSU-UAW said that the reclassification financially hurt students who were already struggling with rising costs by cutting off access to union benefits.

Biophysics

Ph.D. student Ryan B. McMillan told the Council that HGSU-UAW administered nearly $3 million in benefit funds each year during his tenure as co-chair of the union’s finance and benefits committee — covering expenses including medical fees, childcare, and visa renewals. McMillan said the funds have been particularly important for workers as Harvard continues its

Harvard’s funding is currently restored after a federal judge ruled the Trump administration’s funding freeze unconstitutional, though the White House has vowed to appeal the decision.

“At a time when the Trump administration is waging an all-out assault on higher education, we should all be banding together to get through this assault together,” McMillan said.

Harvard spokesperson Sarah E. Kennedy O’Reilly declined to comment on the resolution, instead referring The Crimson to Director of Labor and Employment Relations

Paul R. Curran’s July message announcing the change to the union and a statement issued to The Crimson after the removal.

In the statement, a Harvard spokesperson affirmed that the University “never agreed that non-employees are in the unit.”

“There have been multiple recent decisions (MIT, Brown, etc.) that have reaffirmed and clarified the distinction between academic research and employment, and that has further supported our position and need to clarify any prior

Workers also held a “teach-in” outside the City Hall prior to the comment period, joined by two other UAW local unions representing Harvard Book Store workers and legal services workers, as well as the Massachusetts Teachers Association.

HGSU-UAW organizer Rachel Petherbridge, who spoke at the teach-in, said in an interview after the meeting that the removals, which affected many students at hospital-based or hospital-affiliated Harvard labs, hurt science workers already bearing the brunt of federal funding cuts.

Petherbridge said the union removals could discourage students from working in external labs where funding cuts are less of a concern since they would no longer have access to union representation.

“They’re disincentivizing students from doing exactly what they’re telling them to do to be safe from the funding cuts, right?” she said. “So damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

applied, uniquely

en classes,” she wrote.

BY ABIGAIL S. GERSTEIN AND ELLA F. NIEDERHELMAN CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Harvard Health Publishing, a division of Harvard Medical School that publishes consumer health resources, has agreed to allow Microsoft to use its content on specific diseases and health topics to train its artificial intelligence tool, Copilot. The new agreement is part of a larger push to expand Microsoft’s artificial intelligence offerings, according to the Wall Street Journal. The data will be part of the company’s initiative to improve responses to healthcare queries in its Copilot AI chatbot.

HMS Spokesperson Laura DeCoste confirmed the agreement and wrote in a statement that “this collaboration with Microsoft aligns with HHP’s goal to provide credible health information across a range of platforms.”

HHP publishes health-oriented articles directed at the public, on topics like sleep habits, healthy eating, and pain relief. All articles are reviewed by Harvard scientists and researchers. The publication had an earlier agreement with Microsoft dating back to 2022, though that separate agreement provided Microsoft with custom content.

DeCoste confirmed that Microsoft paid HHP to license its content.

Soroush Saghafian, the director and founder of the Public Impact Analytics Science Lab at Harvard, said the agreement provides a way for HHP to make their information more accessible and useful to the public.

Saghafian’s lab studies the use of AI in hospitals and medical organizations. He said training AI mod-

els on articles and studies vetted by HMS can help address accuracy issues in early AI healthcare applications.

“Right now, the AI tools are not good for providing medical advice. They have large amounts of error,” Saghafian said. “A lot of times this could be really dangerous.” HHP regularly licenses and provides custom content to companies. HHP is a “trusted partner” of Apple, Google Health, and Pfizer according to its website.

HMS, like many other schools at Harvard, has taken steps to adapt to and implement AI in its academic programs. Harvard received a grant last week to research an AI platform that helps medical students with issues of implicit bias and emotional connection with senior patients. Researchers from HMS have also published findings relating AI to a range of topics including drug efficacy and cancer treatment.

“My hope is just that, after these tools are developed, they are tested carefully,” Saghafian said, adding that AI chatbots should recommend users to ask medical providers directly when asked questions on which they are not trained. Health information in HHP articles that were once only directly accessible from their website or with a subscription to paywalled content can now be shared with Copilot and its 33 million users.

“With these types of agreements, they can make their information, their articles, more accessible and more essentially available to the public,” Saghafian said.

abigail.gerstein@thecrimson.com ella.niederhelman@thecrimson.com

Experts Cautious on Interpreting Race Data

Several experts said decreases in Black and Hispanic student enrollment to the Class of 2029 are not enough to indicate a trend in the College’s demographics following the data release Thursday morning.

Harvard released its much-awaited demographic data yesterday, which denoted significant changes to the number of enrolled students of color compared to previous classes.

Hispanic enrollment declined 5 percentage points from 16 to 11 percent following a slight increase last year, while Black enrollment fell slightly from 14 to 11.5 percent, remaining consistent with last year’s decrease. In contrast, Asian American enrollment rose to 41 percent after it had remained at 37 percent for the past two years.

quences for federally-funded institutions that use race-based decision making in a February Dear Colleague letter, and the White House has since made commitments to monitor compliance with the SFFA ruling in higher education.

sions, called on Harvard to provide more detail on racial breakdowns of their admitted classes in a statement to The Crimson.

drawing any immediate conclusions about the College’s demographic trends with just two years of comparable data.

“In order to prove their admission policies are not discriminatory, Harvard and all competitive colleges should release their incoming class data by race. This should include standardized test scores, GPAs, class ranking, legacy status and family income,” Blum wrote.

A Harvard spokesperson declined to comment for this piece.

“It definitely makes things confusing and difficult to compare from year to year,” Park said. Vinay Harpalani, a University of New Mexico law professor whose research focuses on race in admissions, said the fluctuation in this year’s data may not be indicative of a general trend for the College.

Changes in this year’s release generally coincided with predictions made as part of Students for Fair Admissions’ Supreme Court case against Harvard, where the Court banned consideration of race in admissions in 2023. Experts in the case indicated that a ban on affirmative action would decrease the Black and Hispanic student population while increasing the Asian population at the College.

Black and Hispanic

The latest numbers also reflect the first admissions cycle since President Donald Trump was elected for his second term and the first since Harvard reinstated its standardized test requirement, which had been waived for five years following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Application numbers substantially decreased, increasing the College’s acceptance rate on paper and suggesting that requiring test scores may have deterred thousands of prospective applicants.

Thursday’s long-awaited data came months after Harvard has typically released demographic information on its freshman class: the most recent admissions cycle marked the first time the University delayed the release until the fall, when it is required to report the data to the federal government.

Harvard also continued to use a method adopted last year to report race data, calculating the proportion of students who report each racial background out of the pool who chose to identify their race.

For the Class of 2027, Harvard instead reported the proportion of students who self-identified as a certain race out of the entire freshman class.

The new calculation method, as well as additional discrepancies which Harvard declined to explain last year, makes it difficult to know whether the reported shift in racial demographics between the Classes of 2027 and 2028 reflects the actual extent of changes to the com-

Harvard’s admissions practices have faced persistent scrutiny since the ban on affirmative action, with critics eager to determine Harvard’s compliance. The Trump administration threatened conse-

Tyler M. Ransom, a professor of economics at the University of Oklahoma who co-authored several papers on what the SFFA ruling revealed about racial preferences, said additional changes to Harvard’s admissions practices and data representation make it difficult to determine whether Harvard is compliant with the Court’s decision.

“They have these competing incentives, where they don’t want to get in trouble with the federal government, but then they also don’t want to get in trouble with their alumni base and other stakeholders,” Ransom said.

Edward J. Blum, a legal activist who leads Students for Fair Admis-

Harvard changed the way it represented its racial demographic data during last year’s admissions cycle, calculating proportions as the number of students who self-identified as a certain race over the number who reported their race, rather than the entire class.

Julie J. Park, a consulting expert for Harvard in the lawsuit and professor of higher education at the University of Maryland, found the decrease in Latino enrollment “interesting,” but cautioned against

“It’s really hard to make big inferences or come to many big conclusions based on just a year or two. You have to really look over the trends over time,” Harpalani said.

“If you go back, say, 10 years before SFFA,” Harpalani added, “you’ll see that there are variations in the percentages of different groups year to year, and it could vary by probably about as much as what you saw in the last two years.”

Enrollment Drops, Asian Enrollment Rises

position of the College’s student body. Students who self-identified with multiple racial backgrounds are reflected in the percentages for each race.

The moderate decline in Harvard’s enrollment of Black and Hispanic students comes after peer institutions — such as Yale and Princeton — also reported drops in underrepresented minority enrollment, with Princeton’s Black freshman enrollment hitting its lowest proportion since 1968. Harvard’s acceptance rate rose this year to 4.18 percent from 3.65 percent, the highest since the Class of 2024 was admitted in 2020. The change was driven largely by a decrease in the number of students applying to Harvard: Harvard received 47,893 applications this year, compared to 54,008 applications to the Class of 2028, when applicants could choose not to submit their standardized test scores.

This cycle marked Harvard’s smallest applicant pool since the Class of 2024 — but still represented a 10 percent increase in applicants compared to the Class of 2023, the last year Harvard required students to send SAT or ACT scores.

Of the 2,003 students admitted to the entering class, 1,675 students chose to enroll for this year — a yield rate of 83.6 percent, the fifth consecutive year that the College has had a yield rate greater than 83 percent. Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 acknowledged the changes in ad-

missions policies and lingering effects of the pandemic on the Class of 2029’s admissions process.

“Amidst several seismic shifts in higher education admissions over the past few years, as well as the effects of Covid, the Class of 2029 enters Harvard as worthy successors to the generations of students who’ve come before them,” Fitzsimmons wrote in a statement.

International students make up 15 percent of the enrolled class, a 3 percentage point decrease from last year’s freshman class but in line with previous years’ totals. The number is closely aligned with the proportion of international students — 15.8 percent — recorded in matriculation data from May, which was shared with a small group of students in August.

The College’s yield rate for international students was more than 90 percent, with eight individuals choosing to defer, according to a Harvard press release. The stable matriculation numbers came despite a summer of clashes between Harvard and the White House over international student enrollment.

The Trump administration revoked Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification in May, threatening to halt its ability to enroll international students until a judge imposed a series of temporary blocks on the revocation. The State Department also stepped up screening of international students arriving at Harvard, and Trump also tried to prevent in-

ternational students from entering the U.S. on Harvard-sponsored visas — another move that was swiftly halted in court.

At least one admitted Harvard freshman was unable to join her peers because of a separate entry ban imposed by the Trump administration on 12 countries.

Amid the uncertainty, Harvard took the unprecedented step of offering admitted international students the ability to accept a place at a non-American university along with their Harvard slot. Harvard also extended waitlist admissions past the traditional June 30 deadline, citing uncertainty over international students’ status.

In total, Harvard admitted 75 students off the waitlist, compared to 41 students last year and 27 the year before. Harvard College admissions director Joy St. John told some students in August that Harvard had admitted about 25 to 30 additional applicants off the waitlist.

When they submitted their applications, 12.1 percent of current first-years intended to study the humanities, 25.2 percent engineering, 26.7 percent natural sciences, 34.5 percent social sciences, and 0.4 percent a special concentration.

The Class of 2029 is also the first class admitted since Harvard expanded its financial aid offerings to provide free tuition to students from families making less than $200,000 per year. Forty-five percent of this year’s freshmen class

is attending Harvard tuition-free, with more than half of those students receiving full financial aid that also covers room and board.

Harvard did not report the overall percentage of students receiving financial aid from the University. Twenty percent of incoming freshmen are first-generation college students, and 21 percent are estimated to be eligible for federal Pell grants.

“Even amid shifting economic realities, our commitment to access and opportunity remains unwavering. That nearly half of this class will attend Harvard tuition-free fills me with immense pride and optimism for the future they will help shape,” Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra wrote in Thursday’s press release.

Cash Monitoring Hassles Harvard, but Financial Aid Risks Are Slim

BY CASSIDY

The Trump administration has turned toward federal financial aid as a new pressure point for Harvard — but recent threats have yet to present a significant risk to Harvard’s financial footing or College students’ access to aid. The Education Department slapped a new sanction on Harvard when it placed the University on heightened cash monitoring status on Sept. 19. The classification, often applied to struggling technical and for-profit colleges, is typically used to ensure the federal government isn’t sending aid to schools that are likely to collapse midyear.

“Harvard must now seek reimbursement after distributing federal student aid and post financial protection so that the Department can ensure taxpayer funds are not at risk,” Education Secretary Linda E. McMahon wrote in a press release announcing the decision. Under HCM1 status, the designation Harvard was placed in, there are no changes to the University’s payment method — unlike the more restrictive HCM2 status, which would require Harvard to use its own funds to cover aid for students eligible for federal grants,

rather than first drawing down federal funding through the Advance Payment Method.

But for Harvard, even that change would be unlikely to make much of a difference: Harvard has always first distributed aid to students and then requested federal reimbursement for financial aid awarded, according to a University spokesperson.

Robert J. Kelchen, a professor of higher education at the University of Tennessee, said that HCM status could subject Harvard to additional scrutiny and bureaucratic hurdles, but is unlikely to make a significant dent in the University’s budget.

“It may take a while for Harvard to get reimbursed for the federal aid money, but in the grand scheme of things, federal financial aid at Harvard is something like $100 million a year. It’s a relatively small part of Harvard’s budget relative to many other institutions,” Kelchen said.

The Trump administration has not taken cuts to Harvard’s federal aid dollars off the table.

The University “risks losing access to all federal student aid funding due its noncompliance with requests from the Department’s Office of Civil Rights,” the Education Department wrote in a press release announcing its decision to place Harvard under heightened

cash monitoring. Earlier cuts to Harvard’s federal grants and contracts — which topped $2 billion in multiyear commitments, before a judge restored the funding in September — targeted research, not financial aid. Since the judge’s order, the Trump administration has continued to threaten Harvard’s federal financial assistance, which could include everything from cancer research funding to Pell grants.

Losing access to federal financial aid could put up a new hurdle for Harvard, but it is unlikely to be as catastrophic to the University as losing research funds, which have clocked in at well over $600 million annually in recent years.

Harvard does not rely heavily on federal funds for its undergraduate financial aid awards, instead drawing on its own budget — which includes $275 million for Harvard College financial aid this academic year.

In the 2022-23 academic year, the last year for which complete data is available through the National Center for Education Statistics, Harvard undergraduates received more than $250 million in financial aid. Only about $8 million of that total came from the federal government in the form of Pell grants. The federal government also made roughly $3.6 million in

loans to Harvard students. (The NCES data includes funding for students at the College and in the Division of Continuing Education’s undergraduate programs.)

“Taking away federal financial aid is a relatively small thing for Harvard, relative to, say, taking away research funds or threatening the tax preferred status of a private nonprofit institution,” Kelchen said.

Threats to federal aid to graduate students, provided in the form of loans, could be more disruptive. Harvard graduate students have received close to $100 million in federal loans annually in recent years. Without access to federal aid, graduate students may have to pay more upfront, turn to private lenders, or forgo attending Harvard entirely.

But tax and spending legislation passed by Republicans in July has already shaken up the federal student loan system, particularly for grad students. Starting in July next year, Grad PLUS loans will no longer be offered to new borrowers, and graduate students will face new caps on unsubsidized direct loans. Parent PLUS loans will also be subject to new limits.

The Trump administration’s other threats to Harvard have already proven pricey, and the Education Department used Harvard’s austerity measures to justify its de-

cision to place the University under HCM status, saying they pointed to “growing concerns regarding the university’s financial position.”

A hike to the endowment tax, passed this summer, could cost the University $300 million per year — and Harvard officials have repeatedly said that the tax could threaten the flexible funds used for financial aid.

The new tax, combined with uncertain access to future federal research funding, has pushed Harvard to shore up its finances — including staff layoffs at multiple schools, a hiring freeze, and pauses on capital spending. The University also issued $1.2 billion in bonds last semester, citing federal funding threats from the Trump administration.

But higher education experts widely agreed that Harvard’s financial challenges would not ordinarily justify subjecting the University to HCM.

Ozan Jaquette, a professor of higher education at the University of California Los Angeles, said that Harvard didn’t meet the criteria that the government has historically used to decide whether a university needs extra financial oversight.

More than 500 schools were under HCM as of June 1. The majority are classified under HCM1 status, a lighter designation that does not affect how schools draw down funds from the Advance Payment Method. Only 26 schools — including 16 for-profit institutions — were under HCM2. Kelchen said that the typical HCM designee would have “somewhere around 500 students, they have no endowment, many of them are for-profit, and they are on the brink of closure.”

Dominique J. Baker, an education and public policy professor at the University of Delaware who has helped universities calculate the financial responsibility scores that the Education Department uses to decide HCM designations, said she thought the decision to tighten monitoring of Harvard was irregular. “From the data that I have access to, there is no reasonable reason to put Harvard on this list, unless you are interested in intimidating Harvard into capitulating to your demands,” Baker said.

“It’s completely illegitimate,” Jaquette said. “There are a set of financial composite measures that the Department of Education has used for decades to identify organizations that are potentially in trouble financially.”

Dunster Dean Fields Backlash About Posts

request for comment.

Dunster House resident

dean Gregory K. Davis

reaffirmed his commitment to maintaining a welcoming space for all students in an email sent to House affiliates on Wednesday after years-old comments he made on social media resurfaced, sparking calls for his resignation.

Yardreport, a right-wing aggregator that has posted about Harvard events since September, published screenshots two weeks ago of seven posts Davis made on Facebook and X between 2016 and 2021. Among them were two posts from 2020, at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, in which Davis called police officers “racist and evil” and

wrote that “rioting and looting are parts of democracy just like voting and marching.”

Yardreport also included a 2020 thread from X where Davis wrote that he did not blame people who wished ill on President Donald Trump and attached a meme that read “If he dies, he dies.” In the same thread, Davis, who is Black, wrote that he does not blame “(Black) people who steadfastly don’t wish death on anyone” and found himself in a “liminal space” between the views. Davis’s X profile — along with his tweets, which were made while he was a Harvard tutor but before he was appointed resident dean in 2024 — have since been deleted.

Yardreport accompanied the screenshots with text accusing Davis of being hostile “toward White people, police, Republicans, and President Trump.”

“These comments, and many others, made by Davis disqualify him from serving in his role at Harvard,” the text read. “They

reveal an ideology unbefitting of American society, let alone its most elite institution of higher education. The university must fire him immediately.”

The Yardreport post also included screenshots where Davis referred to whiteness as a “self-destructive ideology,” criticized Trump’s 2016 nomination as representing “the worst of Nixon and Hitler,” and suggested indifference to the death of conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh.

Davis’s resident dean role involves acting as an academic adviser and supporting student well-being in Dunster. He wrote in the Wednesday email that the posts “do not reflect my current thinking or beliefs.”

“I deeply appreciate the responsibility inherent in the Resident Dean role and I value the trust that individuals have placed in me,” he wrote. “I regret if my statements have any negative impact on the Dunster community.”

In an apparent nod to his previous comments regarding police

officers, Davis added that he has “enjoyed the opportunity to work collaboratively with members of HUPD and other colleagues across campus.”

“I respect the work they do to support our community,” he wrote.

Yardreport’s authors have remained anonymous since the site made its first post on Sept. 29. Most of the posts link to articles in other publications or pages on Harvard’s website, and only the post on Davis, described as an “EXCLUSIVE,” included original text.

Posts on Yardreport have frequently targeted individuals at Harvard — including a Pakistani transgender rights activist who spoke at a conference, a Harvard Kennedy School student government diversity officer, and a visiting professor from Tufts University who performs as a drag queen.

The Yardreport post on the Tufts professor swiftly went viral, drawing articles in the New York Post and Fox News, as well as an X post from Elon Musk that

mocked the professor using vulgar and misogynistic terms.

Because Davis is currently on parental leave, the Wednesday email including his note was sent to affiliates by Dunster House Faculty Deans Taeku and Shirley Lee.

“We are writing to share a letter with you from our Resident Dean Gregory Davis about some recent reporting from campus media,” they wrote. “We also wish to reaffirm that Dunster House is a community that welcomes all members. That continues to be our commitment to our students.”

The online fury over Davis’s posts comes at a moment when commentators, especially on the right, have been quick to call for punishment of speech they see as veering into advocacy of political violence. In the wake of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk this September, more than 100 people were fired for comments criticizing Kirk or making light of his death. Davis did not respond to a

College spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo declined to comment, and Harvard has not publicly addressed the matter since Yardreport first posted the screenshots. Harvard adopted a policy in May 2024 against commenting on controversial topics unless they directly affect its “core function,” following concerns that official stances by Harvard’s leaders could discourage open discussion.

The bounds of the policy, however, have remained porous. University President Alan M. Garber ’76, criticizing protesters who chanted anti-Zionist slogans outside Harvard Hillel, said Harvard should condemn hateful speech, and the University criticized the views of an honoree who supports an academic boycott of Israel. But Harvard College’s dean declined to address an article in a conservative student publication this fall that echoed a 1939 speech by Adolf Hitler.

BY ELISE A. SPENNER AND TANYA J. VIDHUN CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Senator John K. Fetterman (D-Penn.) said Democrats only support ceasefires in Gaza when it is politically advantageous at a talk co-hosted by the Institute of Politics and Harvard Chabad on Sunday afternoon.

Fetterman, who came to Harvard Kennedy School for the offthe-record discussion on the conflict, took specific issue with pro-Palestine protesters, who he said were unwilling to celebrate a ceasefire if it meant praising President Donald Trump, according to two attendees of the event.

The U.S. negotiated the ceasefire agreement reached earlier this month, which facilitated an exchange of detainees and hostages and increased the flow of aid into Gaza. But it’s unclear how long the fragile peace will hold — on Sunday, Israel accused Hamas of killing two IDF soldiers and responded with retaliatory air strikes and a temporary aid blockade.

Fetterman’s office declined to comment on his remarks or the latest violence in Gaza.

The divisive Pennsylvania senator, whose ardent support of Israel sets him apart in the Democratic Party, appeared at HKS at the invitation of Harvard Chabad, a campus Jewish center. In an interview before the event, Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi said a law student in Chabad had a prior relationship with Fetterman and facilitated his appearance. Zarchi then proposed a collaboration to the IOP, who Zarchi said were

“thrilled to participate.”

“What they said to us is that they were eager to have the senator now for well over a year, and for whatever reason, they were not successful in securing commitment,” Zarchi said. “So they were really pleased.”

A spokesperson for the IOP did not respond to a request for comment on their collaboration with Chabad.

Zarchi called the IOP a “natural partner” for Chabad and said the undergraduate group helped give the event “a proper, dignified platform.”

As for the IOP, Fetterman’s appearance was a chance to demonstrate a commitment to ideological diversity and rebut accusations of liberal bias, Zarchi said.

“They’re clearly considering a lot of the scrutiny that Harvard has, or the criticism that has been coming to Harvard broadly,” Zarchi said. “There’s clearly a concerted effort, certainly by the IOP, to ensure that there’s viewpoint diversity.”

Dressed in a button-down shirt and jeans — a step up from his typical hoodie and gym shorts — Fetterman delivered remarks to and fielded questions from an audience of around 80. Fetterman largely reiterated his public stances, defending Israel’s war in Gaza and leveling criticism against the Democratic Party, according to two attendees.

Fetterman, who graduated from the Kennedy School’s master’s in public policy program in 1999, publicly distanced himself from Harvard after it descended into chaos following its response to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

He told Semafor in January 2024 that he no longer recognized the University. And during a commencement address at Yeshiva University last year, Fetterman told graduates that he was “profoundly disappointed” in Harvard’s response to campus antisemitism, removing his ceremonial HKS graduate hood.

Fetterman has also echoed concerns raised by Trump and the Republican party about rampant antisemitism in higher education. He has repeatedly introduced legislation with Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.) that would make it easier for students to file civil rights complaints and increase reporting requirements for universities.

But Fetterman was not asked about and did not comment on Harvard’s ongoing feud with the president during the event, according to two attendees.

Attendees submitted questions in advance to allow for speak-to-text transcription. Fetterman, who suffered a near-fatal stroke in May 2022, often relies on assistive technology in public appearances.

Zarchi, the Chabad rabbi, said after the event that students were “really, really excited” about the opportunity to hear from Fetterman — a perspective they don’t get enough exposure to, he added.

“Students were very, very grateful for this opportunity,” Zarchi said after the event. “I came into the room, and I felt really good about the fact that we’re able to facilitate this opportunity.”

Harvard police were called to Canaday Hall on Saturday evening after a freshman allegedly threw a brick at another resident of the dorm, breaking the window on an interior door.

Police responded to a report of an assault with a dangerous weapon around 5:30 p.m. Saturday, according to public police logs. The student responsible for throwing the brick was transported to a medical facility after being interviewed by officers, according to the logs.

The student has not been arrested, per the logs. A HUPD spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the student’s condition or the incident.

Sydney G. Burns ’29, a freshman living on an upper floor of Canaday, said she first interacted with the student — a fellow Canaday resident — earlier Sat-

urday afternoon and believed he was acting erratically. Burns said the student was pacing in the Canaday stairwell while talking about artificial intelligence and demons, but he was not aggressive.

Later in the day, Braegan R. Davis ’29, Burns’ roommate, approached the student in the stairwell. Davis, who knew that the student lived in her building, said he knocked on her suite’s door before walking back down to the landing on the stairs below. He appeared disoriented but not aggressive, she said.

Davis said she initially treated the situation as a joke and walked toward where the student was standing on the stairs. She said the word “labubu,” referring to the brand of small monster-shaped dolls that became a global phenomenon this year.

Immediately after hearing the word, the student began to shout and ran toward Davis, she said.

Davis said she retreated back to her room, closing the two doors between the hallway and her dorm. The student continued yelling and began banging on the outer door, which led from the stairwell to a short hallway, according to Davis. When she opened the inner door, between the hallway and her room, the student saw her and threw a brick through the door window in her direction, missing her but shattering the glass, Davis said. She said the student then started punching the remaining glass in the window frame. Davis closed the door to her room and called the Harvard University Police Department. An officer took statements from other students present, according to Davis and Burns, who returned to the room later that night. The officers also interviewed the student who threw the brick, according to police logs. Burns and Davis, along with multiple other students present, submitted emailed statements to HUPD. They have not received further communication from the department as of Tuesday afternoon, according to Davis. Davis is waiting for further information from HUPD be -

If Cambridge Wants To Spend, It Must Build

BY BENJAMIN ISAAC

Every politician dreams of spending their campaign kissing babies and giving out free ponies. It’s harder when the bill arrives.

This winter, the Cambridge City Council passed a landmark upzoning bill allowing four stories of residential development citywide in a bid to relieve a historic housing shortage. The topic has become a flashpoint in the upcoming Council election, with a number of challengers opposing the effort to promote market housing development.

Curiously, some of these candidates are simultaneously advertising bold promises of shiny new spending programs to deliver for the city. This is a mistake. In order to deliver on these expensive promises, Cambridge desperately needs extra income, and building is the way to get it.

Take a few examples of candidate commitments.

Ayah Al-Zubi ’23 is running on a platform that calls

for a smattering of new spending programs, including free buses, affordable housing for artists, and universal afterschool programming. Stanislav Rivkin, another challenger, wants to subsidize nonprofit grocery stores, provide universal childcare, and renew cash assistance programs for low-income families.

Many of these proposals are worthy ambitions.

It’s less clear, however, how we’ll pay for them.

The city collects revenue primarily through property taxes and is at fiscal capacity. After years of unrestrained budget growth boosted by Covid-19 recovery funds, Cambridge has had to tighten its belt, raising taxes by 9 percent last year and projecting another 8 percent raise under conservative assumptions. As of this year, we dedicate almost 11 percent of spending, or $101,389,077, to debt service.

To the extent that there’s any fiscal “free lunch” left to squeeze out of the city, it’s in upzoning.

Property taxes collect revenue on the combined assessed value of a property’s land and the structure

on top of it. By allowing multifamily development, upzoning raises the value of the land in the city and promotes the construction of high-value buildings in the area. A four-story apartment building is a lot more valuable than an open-air parking lot, for example.

Furthermore, consider who’s moving into these new multifamily units, composed largely of small market-rate apartments. Disproportionately, it’s young adults who consume relatively few local public services, the most expensive of which is public education.

Thus, market development works to expand the city’s tax base, raising revenue to pay for more services for its residents.

Surely you’d think candidates eager to introduce bold new social programs to support Cambridge’s neediest would be supportive of efforts that grow the tax base while simultaneously making Cambridge more affordable? You’d be mistaken.

Al-Zubi told Crimson reporters last week that we shouldn’t rely on private development, which she blames for the affordability crisis, on getting us out of the problem. On her campaign website, Al-Zubi argues that we should redistribute from housing developers to local nonprofits. Rivkin’s campaign website explicitly condemns for-profit housing development as “lining the pockets of private equity investors,” saying what we need instead is a system of rent control and public housing.

So where’s the money going to come from? Al-Zubi and Rivkin say higher taxes. They seem to think Cambridge can afford it, with both noting that it’s a fairly wealthy city with relatively low tax rates. To be fair, both claims are true, although it’s worth noting Cambridge is already one of the highest-spending towns in the state. In my view, a platform built on restricting new housing and further raising taxes to fund new services is far less appealing than one that embraces growth and shares its gains with those who need them most. Still, if candidates are candid about the costs of their proposals, it’s theoretically a legitimate vision for voters to evaluate in November. But the city doesn’t have unlimited ability to raise taxes. State law limits how much towns can raise in property tax, their levy limit, to maximum increases of 2.5 percent annually, plus a boost for new development.

In fact, over half the increase in Cambridge’s levy limit — the city’s ability to raise revenue — year over year was due to new construction and growth. Recall that last year the city projected it would need to raise taxes by nine percent this year to meet current spending levels. If candidates are serious about their commitment to new spending programs, they need to build. Ironically, the tension between budget squeezes and development seems to be perfectly well understood by those comfortable with slowed budget growth. For example, the Cambridge Citizens Coalition, a local nonprofit with a related super PAC which has vigorously opposed attempts to increase housing construction in the city, recently hosted a forum in which endorsed candidates criticized how much money Cambridge spends. If you’re dedicated to shrinking the tax base, it’s perfectly rational to embrace fiscal conservatism.

To me, a vision of a city that is dynamic and growing, simultaneously welcoming new residents and providing more for existing residents in need, is much more attractive than one of a stagnating city that gradually shrinks its public commitments. For now, those seem to be the tradeoffs. Elections are a fruitful time for bold policy entrepreneurship — to experiment with new ideas and get citizens involved in local governance. But the city’s problems won’t be wished away by magical thinking.

–Benjamin Isaac ’27, a Crimson Editorial Editor, is a Government and Economics concentrator in Quincy House.

BY S. MAC HEALEY

The September issue of The Harvard Salient, a conservative student publication, sparked outrage after one article echoed language from a 1939 speech by Adolf Hitler. The backlash reignited Harvard’s perpetual debate about debate: What is permissible on campus? How should speech be exercised? How should the University police the boundaries of our fragile, unsatisfying free speech policies?

The problem with these recurring controversies — from rhetoric about immigrants and nationality in a publication, to pro-Palestine chants in the Yard – is that they are inevitably followed by a call for Harvard to do something, anything, to punish those we disagree with.

As students, we should resist the impulse to look for a nanny university to mettle, arbitrate,

or punish. Discourse at Harvard should first and foremost be a student responsibility.

College Dean David J. Deming’s dismissal of the Salient controversy was the right move. His decision not to “chase” violations of speech guidelines reflects a recognition that once administrators begin policing the content of speech, there is no principled place to stop. That is not a Pandora’s Box any of us should be comfortable opening.

Some have called Deming’s refusal to intervene an abdication of his responsibility to enforce basic respect in discourse. But equal application of “basic respect” as a test on speech is impossible in practice — students should not invoke it to their administrators. Every other flashpoint in campus discourse is proof of this fact.

Consider the pro-Palestinian protests on campus since October 7th. The release of an abhorrent statement blaming Israel for Hamas’s attack, followed by protest chants including “globalize the in-

tifada,” received national condemnation and calls for punishment. To some, many criticisms of Israel amount to an attack on Jewish identity and thus violate “basic respect.”

On the flip side, when University President Alan M. Garber ’76 punished participants in the encampment, some critics accused him of selective enforcement — a “Palestine exception.” Yet the punishment did, in fact, properly enforce protest guidelines prohibiting encampment. The argument about a Palestine exception is based on the idea that the guidelines were selectively enforced, not incorrect.

The heart of the issue, then, is that after inviting administrative action into students’ squabbles over permissible speech, the University’s arbitration will always be unsatisfying. Any discretion will be seen as either too lenient or too harsh, depending on one’s sympathies.

The Salient’s problem with print distribution

guidelines is another example. First, House faculty deans said that their print magazines left outside dorm doors were a fire and slip hazard. The Salient argued that those rules were merely a pretext for targeting conservative voices. The College’s eventual compromise to install mailboxes at each dorm room drew backlash from hundreds of students. This cycle of outrage, administrative response, and dissatisfaction define the story of speech on campus. Each episode sees renewed calls for Harvard to do more, and each response confirms that Harvard can never do enough. The result is a perpetual crisis of overreach and discontent.

Because the University’s discretion will always be insufficient to some, free speech cannot be sustained by regulation. Instead, it depends on students. As long as we continue to expect administrators to rescue us from offensive ideas, we forfeit our own capacity to respond to them.

The College wants to intervene on the student level, introducing the ambiguous Intellectual Vitality Initiative and its commitment to “cultural transformation.” But students looking to the Intellectual Vitality Initiative to solve speech culture are themselves reinforcing the same paternalistic relationship which has caused every other speech problem. Whether the content is offensive or the culture is lacking, we should not expect administrators to solve our problems.

Don’t get me wrong: The College has an important role to play in moderating the procedural rules around speech. It does not matter why you are encamping or causing a fire hazard in dorms, only that you have violated these procedural rules. But especially at a moment when the federal government is targeting speech it does not like, students should be skeptical of any authority that tries to police content. What we say should be up to us.

If a publication prints something offensive, the answer is speech, not sanction. If a chant

EDITORIAL

Ethicist, Should I Date My Comp Director?

relationship structures within Greek society, many of which we have fortunately abandoned. Still, our present-day understanding of desire is not too different. Our feelings of attraction often stem from qualities we find in others that we want to cultivate in ourselves.

BY ANDRÉS MUEDANO

I am a freshman active in two student organizations. There is a genius guy who is my superior in both of these organizations. Even though we have very little in common personality-wise, I am absolutely obsessed with him. I am constantly trying to impress him, and sometimes we’ll make eye contact for too long, which makes me think he likes me, too. I feel like something is forbidden about it because he’s my superior, and I’m also not totally sure I’d actually want to date him, to be honest. What should I do??? —Signed, Dubious Debbie.

Yours is a question of forbidden desire. Why do we desire? And what makes a desire forbidden?

The ancient Greeks saw desire as a kind of appetite. The hungry desired food; the thirsty desired water; the curious desired knowledge. The same was true for sexual desire: to long for another person was to desire them because they possessed something you lacked. This concept of desire gave shape to certain

There is something Greek about your obsession. You call your crush a “genius guy,” which makes me think that you see him as more knowledgeable and confident than yourself. You repeatedly try to impress him, and I wonder whether your efforts are a product of this perceived asymmetry. Maybe he embodies certain virtues you wish to attain, and it is this perception that makes you desire him.

The Greek model can also help us understand your uncertainty. You say that you don’t know if you would actually date him. Perhaps what you truly want is to be like your superior, even if you think that you want to have him instead.

Regardless of this uncertainty, it is still true that you are experiencing some form of desire, and there is nothing wrong with that. Because we often lack control over the things (or people) we desire, it would be unfair to blame you on the basis of those feelings.

Whether you should act upon those feelings is a separate matter.

Because he is your superior in not one but two student organizations, it is fair to say that your crush has power over you. Some will argue that

such a power asymmetry precludes the possibility of genuine consent. Suppose he is your comp director and asks you out for a date. Even if you do want to go on this date and agree, it might be difficult for you to discern whether your agreement to date him was motivated by attraction or a desire to succeed in the comp. That he has control over your future in both student organizations might pressure you to choose in one direction. That might hinder your ability to practice consent freely.

I believe that this line of thinking — what philosopher Amia Srinivasan critically refers to as the “power differential, no consent” rationale — can be sensibly applied to certain cases: An unpaid intern and their powerful boss; an ambitious graduate student and their dissertation advisor; a young actor and a successful Hollywood director. In other contexts, however, applying the principle is more complicated. Is any difference in power sufficient to eliminate the possibility of consent? Many oppressive systems structure our social reality. It seems implausible to decree that only individuals with the same amount of power (however we might define that) date each other. When is a power differential big enough to render dating forbidden?

While I do not have the answers to these questions, my advice for you is this: Don’t act on your desire unless you are willing to navigate a relationship with an embedded power asymmetry.

(You might even find pleasure in that asymmetry. Maybe you start dating him, comp is over, and suddenly you find yourself no longer desiring him — I won’t be the judge of that.) At the end of the day, though there is a clear power differential between you and your superior, only you can judge whether that difference will limit your capacity to consent — anything else would be a paternalistic infringement on the exercise of your freedom. Of course, this reasoning is all contingent on your superior liking you back. If he does, then he shouldn’t act on those feelings, especially in light of his pedagogical obligations, as Srinivasan reminds us. But to be perfectly honest, he probably doesn’t like you. I, too, spent my freshman year thinking that another man at this school liked me solely because of our periods of prolonged eye contact. Indeed, staring can be a way to express romantic interest, and many times I struggled to know whether he was looking at me with that intention. (He wasn’t, I later learned.) So don’t assume your superior likes you simply because of his gaze. It might be that he is playing power games with you, in which case you will hopefully desire him no longer. It is also possible that your crush is simply a socially awkward person. He is a Harvard student, after all.

–Andrés Muedano ’27, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Philosophy concentrator in Adams House. He can be reached at ethicist@thecrimson.com.

Council Votes To Increase Commercial Property Taxes by 22%

TAX RATES. Councilors said they were choosing between two unpopular alternatives: raise taxes or make budget cuts.

BY SHAWN A. BOEHMER AND MACKENZIE L. BOUCHER CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Tincrease on residential property taxes, leading to a smaller rate of total growth across residential and commercial property tax rates compared to the increase in fiscal year 25, according to a report by City Manager Yi-An Huang ’05. But this year’s commercial property tax growth is more than double the increase the Council passed for fiscal year 25, raising concern from business owners. Councilors defended the tax increase on Monday, saying tax increases are necessary to avoid budget cuts.

IMMIGRANTS FROM PAGE 1

Councilor Paul F. Toner said it is difficult to keep taxes low while also providing services many Cambridge residents depend on — like emergency response teams, universal pre-k, and new school facilities.

“If people are serious about say-

ing they don’t want to pay increases in taxes, then they need to understand that there’s going to come a day when we have to say we’re going to have to start making some cuts,” Toner said.

But Vice Mayor Marc C. McGovern said that it will be difficult to find places to trim the budget.

“I just want to point out the school budget is 30 percent of the city’s budget. So where are we talking about cutting? We’re talking about cutting this public schools budget,” McGovern said. “Public safety is a big part of our budget. Okay? Where do you want to cut in public safety?”

The budget has been a point of constant tension for the Council this year, as members struggled to fund new programs amid the slowest budget growth the city has seen in a decade.

Business owners criticized the Council over a lack of communi-

cation about the tax rate, especially with a large commercial tax increase that directly affects them.

Denise A. Jillson, the executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association, expressed “disappointment and frustration” on behalf of Cambridge business owners. She said many were blindsided by the commercial increase, only learning about it hours ahead of the Council’s first scheduled special meeting on the tax rate.

Jillson immediately raised concern about the proposed rate after learning about it, sending an urgent message to HSBA members informing them of the proposed increase and urging them to weigh in during public comment at the meeting.

“If approved, the commercial tax rate will see a 22% increase that will find its way to our retailers, restauranteurs, hotels, etc. and ultimately, the consumer,” Jillson

wrote. During Monday’s meeting, Jillson said she hopes to see more communication from the Council in future budget discussions.

“What we’re asking as we move forward into the development of the FY27 budget is that you have continued engagement and communication with the Council and that we meet frequently, particularly as the budget process unfolds,” Jillson said. “We could have done that, and probably should have done more of that last time around.

And I don’t think any one of us anticipated this kind of a burden.”

McGovern said he believes that the increased property taxes do not have to be felt by tenants.

“They’re concerned about passing these expenses on to their tenants, and they’re afraid that their tenants might leave and then they’ll have a vacancy. Well, don’t pass it on, right?” McGovern said.

shawn.boehmer@thecrimson.com mackenzie.boucher@thecrimson.com

Allston-Brighton Community Services Report Shrinking Use

Heloisa M. Galvão, who runs BWG, said that as ICE continues its deportation campaign — including in Allston-Brighton — more Brazilian residents have turned to her for support, and some have determined that returning to Brazil may be a safer option than remaining in Boston.

“They go back out of this fear. They are really in panic of being arrested, being separated from their kids, or because the husband has already been deported,” Galvão said. Her new help hotline receives more than 3,000 phone calls per month.

BWG serves the largest immigrant group in Allston-Brighton, where 28 percent of residents were born outside the U.S. The neighborhood has long been a landing pad for Brazilians coming to the States, with many forced to live in overcrowded apartments amid the regional housing crisis.

Lucimara Rodrigues, a worker at the Brazilian Women’s Group who runs a co-op for immigrant housekeepers, said in an interview conducted with an interpreter that immigrants in Allston-Brighton now believe they are in danger of

being taken by ICE in any public space.

“Here in the United States, there’s no place that’s safe right now. The schools are not safe. The hospitals are not safe. Even the children, the young children, know that there’s no place that’s safe,” she said in Portuguese.

“If you’re not an American here for more than one generation, you are not safe,” she added.

Although anti-immigrant rhetoric did not start in Trump’s second presidency, Rodrigues said, the scale of fear is far greater this time around.

Even children “go to school scared,” she said.

Jo-Ann Barbour, executive director of the Charlesview Residences, said that up to 25 percent fewer people have enrolled in adult education classes at the Jackson-Mann Community Center, which offers English classes.

The Jackson-Mann has seen fewer children sign up for its afterschool programming, too. Its administrative coordinator, Rosie C. Hanlon, said that ICE activity is “breeding a different type of kid right now,” with not only parents

who are afraid of enforcement officers, but their children, too.

“Many parents are afraid to let their children walk down the street, outside of their doors,” she said.

“We had a child who was coming to sign up for a soccer game, who was afraid to give his name. How sick is that? These are kids,” she added. “Our kids are living off of fear.”

Matthew “Matt” J. Mullaney ’92, the CEO of Charles River Community Health Center in Brighton, said that health center saw a 40 percent increase in no-show doctor’s appointments beginning in April.

“A typical month for us might be 5,000 completed visits, and our visits in May and June were around 4,500,” Mullaney said.

According to Mullaney, as many as half the Health Center’s patients are immigrants, and the increase in no-show appointments correlates closely with reported ICE presence in the neighborhood.

‘No Idea Who They Are’ Galvão and Rodrigues said ICE

agents operating in plainclothes sometimes driving unmarked cars have made it difficult to determine when Allston-Brighton residents are taken by immigration enforcement officers, according to Galvão and Rodrigues.

“You have to guess,” Galvão said. “You don’t know what happened.”

Rodrigues said that when a friend of hers was detained in June, she only found out when he called her from a New York facility.

“What he told us is that ICE got to his house, and asked if he was the person. He said he wasn’t, he presented his drivers license, but because of his immigration status, they took him,” she said.

Immigrants she has spoken to on the hotline have often reported agents wearing vests, but without clear “ICE” markings, she said.

That problem has become a frequent talking point at city council meetings, and even came up in a recent candidates’ forum for Allston-Brighton’s seat on the Boston City Council.

At the forum, which was held last Monday, current councilor Elizabeth “Liz” A. Breadon called

it “very distressing” that ICE agents have been seen wearing masks while working, and that residents have “no idea who they are.”

“It could be just copycats — people lifting people off the street,” Breadon added.

‘We Don’t Turn Our Backs’

Despite the stress of the moment, Rodrigues and Galvão remained determined to continue their work supporting the neighborhood’s vulnerable.

“I tell people, what protects us is to be informed about our rights — to know what to do if a situation arise, and to have a plan,” Galvão said.

“I have to have a friend who knows where my documents are, or have access to my banking account, or somebody who take care of my children,” Galvão added. Rodrigues said providing a sense of unity in a moment when many feel more isolated and trapped inside is key.

“I always try to tell them that they’re not alone, and that we’re all in the same boat. If you feel that you’re alone it’s even harder to deal

with your situation,” Rodrigues said.

According to Bowman, the market coordinator, some residents have stepped in to deliver groceries to immigrants scared to leave the house, while others have offered more support to food pantries. Still, strategies remain scattered, and aid organizations are always on the hunt for more funds and volunteers.

“People are hodge-podge putting things together, day by day, week by week,” Bowman said.

“I just wish people understand how grave the situation is and how much we need help from American-born citizens,” Galvão said. Hanlon, of the Jackson-Mann, said her organization remained resolute as well.

“We have to stay strong and continue with our support, let people know there is support out there. The Jackson-Mann Community Center is there to serve all people. We don’t turn our backs,” Hanlon said.

angelina.parker@thecrimson.com

emily.schwartz@thecrimson.com

CRA Approves Plan To Preserve Central Square Cultural Institutions

The Cambridge Redevelopment Authority voted unanimously Wednesday to move ahead with drafting a plan to reshape Cen-

tral Square into a cultural district, zeroing in on the historic Dance Complex as the first project.

At a board meeting, the CRA

moved to commission a “demonstration plan” that will identify key cultural organizations in Central Square and outline strategies to preserve them.

The move comes as Central Square faces increasing commercial pressure and rising costs in the wake of the pandemic. City officials have warned that without targeted support, longtime cultural and nonprofit spaces could struggle to stay in the neighborhood.

The first target of the project will be the Dance Complex, a nonprofit arts center that offers dance classes, workshops, and performances. The organization, a fixture in Cambridge for more than three decades, is currently working with the CRA on a “building stabilization strategy” to tackle longtime financial strain, according to a memo presented at the meeting.

During the meeting, Jon Williams, a senior project manager at the CRA, said the plan would translate years of research on how to support cultural nonprofits in Central Square into concrete action.

“We really see the demonstration plan for Central Square as a way that will help realize goals that have already been previously

identified by the community and a number of different planning studies,” he said.

The plan follows a 2021 directive from the Cambridge City Council tasking the CRA with identifying “cultural and human service” spaces in Central Square that advance the city’s development goals. Williams said the effort will focus on preserving cultural institutions, supporting small businesses, and expanding mixed-income housing to ensure residents can “patronize and staff” those spaces.

As part of the Wednesday plan, the CRA pledged to help secure capital for “mission-oriented organizations” and form partnerships with nonprofits and the City of Cambridge through a mix of leases, capital improvements, and potential site acquisitions.

“We really want to focus on supporting independent and small businesses, given how they’ve shaped the commercial character within Central Square,” he said.

In April, the group awarded nearly $500,000 to seven organizations, including the Dance Complex which received a fifth of the pool. The CRA also announced that the Forward Fund has allocated funding for two additional organizations: Buildingways, which develops shades over public spaces, and the Multicultural Arts Center. The group also promised continued support for the Neighborhood Storefronts Project, launched in 2023 to offer affordable rents for small businesses seeking storefronts in the Cambridge area.

“At the hearings about Central Square, the City Council said, ‘Don’t come to me with more planning. We need action,” Williams said. “And so this is the official way to get our toolbox as a Redevelopment Authority into the mix to help the city meet its goals.”

Williams said it would take roughly five months for staff at the CRA to complete a final draft of the plan, and that the group aims to secure approval from its board by February 2026. Support for organizations like the Dance Complex will come through both funding and technical assistance, the group wrote in the memo. The CRA currently supports a Forward Fund, which awards grants to infrastructure projects focused on serving city residents.

HOCR Boats Bring Bank for Harvard Square

The Head of the Charles regatta brought travelers and their cash to Harvard Square establishments.

The Head of the Charles Regatta brings hundreds of thousands of spectators and more than 11,000 athletes to the banks of the Charles River. But they don’t stay there — many venture into Harvard Square for food, shopping, and entertainment, bringing an annual explosion of consumer activity to local businesses.

Paul J. MacDonald, the owner of Leavitt & Peirce, said his specialty gifts and games shop saw a triplefold of transactions over the weekend.

“I think there’s just less places for people to go to now, so we were flooded, and people walk by the store that just they’re drawn into it just because of the uniqueness,” he said.

Denise A. Jillson, the executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association, wrote in a statement to The Crimson that the yearly competition is one of the biggest boosts for the local economy, alongside events like commencement, the Harvard-Yale football game, and Oktoberfest.

“The Head of the Charles Regatta is incredibly significant for the Square; its positive economic impact cannot be overstated,” Jillson wrote.

“We eventually got everyone into the bar,” he wrote. “It took til after midnight to wind down the line.”

Lee added that they prepared for the busy weekend by ordering supplies and scheduling as many workers as possible.

On Saturday night, a line spilled out of the Hong Kong Restaurant — a staple of the Square since 1954 — and extended all the way down the block. Paul Lee, the president of Hong Kong Restaurant, wrote in a statement to The Crimson that the long line is not uncommon during the regatta weekend.

“The best part was holding gold medals that Olympians have won and of course, finding where everyone is from and how they fared in the races,” he wrote.

Alejandro Valdez, the assistant manager for the Harvard Square location of J.P. Licks, said that the store had to almost double their workforce during the weekend.

“We always try to be prepared when it’s coming,” he added.

Other businesses had to adapt throughout the workday to accommodate the higher foot traffic.

“We weren’t really prepared staffing-wise at first, so we called in

“In a regular weekend, we try to keep maybe six or seven people on the floor,” Valdez said. “But for Friday and Saturday, and yesterday, we got around 10, 11 people working.”

jaya.karamcheti@thecrimson.com kevin.zhong@thecrimson.com

Unionized Blank Street Workers Push For Higher Pay, Better Conditions

BY JAYA

As tourists flooded into Harvard Square for the Head of the Charles Regatta, the line at Blank Street extended outside the store and around the block. Lines outside the door are not uncommon for the popular coffee spot — and are just one reason that unionized baristas are pushing for changes in the workplace. Workers at Blank Street’s Harvard Square location said that long lines, inadequate resources, and low paychecks led them and six other Boston-area locations to vote to unionize this past June. Now, the baristas are prepared to take up their demands for workplace changes as they begin their first contract negotiations with management, which started this past Thursday. Blank Street was founded in 2020 by two entrepreneurs in Brooklyn who rapidly expanded their business with the backing of venture capital and private equity firms. Their business model is based on efficiency — small storefronts, grab-and-go ordering, and automated machines

that prepare drinks. This model allows Blank Street to employ just two to three employees per shift, cutting down on labor and production costs.

Blank Street’s focus on efficiency, however, has been the galvanizing force for many baristas to call for unionization.

A worker at the Harvard Square location of Blank Street wrote in a statement to The Crimson that the high demand for their coffee, coupled with the minimal staff and product available, adds significant stress to the baristas’ lives.

The worker added that the intense working environment is not reflected in their compensation — especially since the Harvard Square location gets the fewest tips of any store, all while boasting high sales.

Blank Street management did not respond to a request for comment on these issues.

The roughly 70 employees across seven Boston-area Blank Street locations started the organizing process for forming a union this past May. A supermajority of them approved a letter to Blank Street management asking them to voluntarily recognize the union, which management did not recognize.

In a subsequent mail-in ballot election, employees voted in favor of unionization with the New England Joint Board union. The result was then certified in June by the regional office of the National Labor Relations Board.

Emma R. Delaney, a worker at the New England Joint Board, said that coffee shops often unionize to give workers a say in a highly demanding job.

“It’s something that is very tangible in that you, through unionizing, now have a say in what your workplace and your terms and conditions look like,” she said.

Delaney, who previously was also a barista at Boston-based Pavement Coffeehouse, said that Blank Street can draw inspiration from previous unionization efforts to find a model for their first contract. Employees at Pavement began organizing a union in 2021, and later reached a first contract in 2022.

“Blank Street is just looking to get a fair first contract that is in line with previous work that has been done, previous negotiations have happened,” she said.

Delaney added that some of the items that have successfully been in other coffeehouse contracts include control over

scheduling, increased wages, dental insurance, and a policy that allows workers to take time off to support both blood relatives and chosen family.

Though the first negotiation meeting has been completed, Delaney said that there is still a long path ahead for Blank Street

workers before they achieve a first contract agreement. She noted that Pavement negotiations took about 30 meetings before coming to a contract.

But Delaney is optimistic that Blank Street will be able to follow in the footsteps of earlier coffee house unionization efforts.

“You have to reinvent the wheel with the first time. But now there’s all these other coffee contracts that have been negotiated and renegotiated,” Delaney said.

Planning Board Suggests Height Limit Boost for Residential Buildings

the Cambridge Community Development Department has shifted its focus to revitalizing individual squares and corridors.

In the finalized petition for Mass. Ave, the allowed height of residential buildings, currently capped at six to seven stories, will increase to eight to 12 stories – with the exception of Porter Square, which will allow up to 18 stories with a special permit.

Cambridge Street will increase allowed heights from six to eight stories if the building incorporates spaces on the first floor that promote foot traffic, like community centers, retail spaces, and some offices. The rezoning will also allow increased heights of up to 15 stories in squares along Cambridge Street.

The new zoning regulations will increase housing options and promote foot traffic, according to the CDD.

Daniel Messplay, the city’s director of community planning and design, said the adoption of the petitions would allow for 3,260 more housing units citywide — an 18 percent increase from the current zoning predictions, without consideration of other factors that might affect development.

The petitions first came to fruition after CDD staff spent more

than a year workshopping the rezoning proposal with affordable housing providers and developers, small business owners, and neighborhood residents.

Despite the CDD’s extensive efforts to engage with residents, some still expressed concerns that they had not been properly consulted before the petitions were drafted.

“When people talked about hearing from the community, the most often mentioned members of the community were the city council and the various kinds of developers,” Cambridge resident Tom Rossen said.

“I don’t think you have the community engagement that you think that you have,” he added.

During the public comment section of the meeting, many residents spoke in opposition of the zoning proposal after the Cambridge Citizens Coalition sent out an email urging residents to push back against raising height limitations.

Residents expressed concerns that the petition would change the character of the neighborhood and

the new units would not be affordable.

“We keep selling these things as producing affordable housing,” said Cambridge resident Heather Hoffman. “At the same time as we have people giving us numbers that each of these apartments will cost a million dollars.”

Others said the change will lead to a lack of open space, parking shortages, and empty storefronts.

In response to resident concerns, members of the Planning Board said they agreed that there is some degree of uncertainty about whether the new units would be affordable.

Planning Board member Theodore “Ted” Cohen said that while he had “small comments” on some of the language used in the petition, none of them were “big issues.”

“I think this is an attempt to solve a big problem we have,” he said. “And if it doesn’t work well, then, you know, the city can amend it again.” To ease worries that the rezoning would change the character of the city, the CDD outlined a “neighborhood edge” transitional zone

with an eight-story limit to provide a gradual change in allowed height from Mass. Ave to neighborhood streets. The new zoning would also allow the construction of hotels, movie theaters, breweries, and some other retail spaces without having to obtain a special permit from the city.

“The intention behind all of these changes is to remove barriers to uses that fit well within the corridor and would contribute to a vibrant mixed-use environment,” Evan Spetrini said. The ordinance committee will discuss whether to recommend the proposal to the full city council over the course of the next two weeks.

“Everyone

THEATER

‘MACBETH’ REVIEW: SPARSE STAGING, MIXED TRIUMPH

BOSTON OPERA. BLO’s production of Verdi’s Shakespeare adaptation falters.

BY ERLISA DEMNERI CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

hoosing the right opener for a theatrical season is always a fraught gamble. An opening demands ambition and momentum, all while securing trust in the audience that what follows will reward them.

Boston Lyric Opera’s decision to begin its 49th season with Giuseppe Verdi’s “MACBETH” is bold. The operatic adaptation of Shakespeare is dense and psychologically charged, carrying the legacy of some of literature’s most compelling and recognizable characters.

Directed by Steve Maler and conducted by David Angus, BLO’s “MACBETH” ran for two nights at the Emerson Colonial Theatre, Oct. 10 and 12. In contrast to the story’s complex themes of moral corruption, the production’s most striking aspect was its sparse visual design. While the restrained staging invited intimacy and allowed the supporting cast’s arias to shine, the production often faltered under its own minimalism. A concept rich in promise, BLO’s “MACBETH” was undone by uneven execution and vague direction.

The story of “MACBETH” itself follows a familiar arc. General Macbeth (Norman Garrett) and his wife (Alexandra LoBianco), seduced by the witches’ prophecy, murder King Duncan (Léon Jerfita) and Macbeth’s friend and fellow general

Banquo (Zaikuan Song), to seize and secure the crown of Scotland. The power-hungry couple descend into murderous paranoia as Banquo’s ghost haunts their consciousness, while nobleman Macduff (David Junghoon Kim) seeks vengeance and justice. Designed by Amy Rubin, the visual world of BLO’s “MACBETH” was a rotting wasteland.

The abstracted, evocative set gestured towards a kingdom already hollowed out by corruption.

The stage was nearly bare, with multiple gray panels speckled with blood and mold circling the floor. The panels were static, except for some with cut-in doors that allowed the actors to enter the stage. There were no opulent thrones or ornate chambers, only wooden, rotting furniture piled at the corners. The Founding Artistic Director of Commonwealth Shake -

speare Company, Maler not only brought his Shakespeare expertise, but was influenced by the large-scale and warscarred landscapes of German artist Anselm Kiefer. The abstracted, evocative set gestured towards a kingdom already hollowed out by corruption.

The starkness of the stage cleared the space for the music and the human figure to dominate. It amplified the Colonial Theatre’s natural acoustics, fitting the melancholic tone of the arias and the softer textures of the orchestra. Verdi composed “MACBETH” using the “sotto voce” technique, a performance direction meaning “under the voice,” which emphasizes singing using quiet dynamics for emphasis. The BLO’s visual sparseness was especially effective at highlighting the hushed tones in Banquo’s only solo, “Come dal ciel precipita.”

As Banquo fears for his family’s future under Macbeth’s bloodlust, Song’s performance was both dark and thoughtful, serving as a chilling moral anchor.

This atmosphere of unrest was emphasized with subtle precision by lighting designer Eric Southern. Cool, angled beams carved silhouettes from the darkness. Cross-lights split the singers’ faces between guilt and action. Single spotlights isolated Macbeth and his wife, while the surrounding court dissolved into gloom.

Reinforcing the production’s muted palette, Amanda Gladu’s costume design was

dominated by off-whites, grays, and washed-out browns that visually merged the characters with the corroded, blank walls behind them. Lady Macbeth’s gown, though a pale and noble-looking garment, was weighed down by dirt and wear.

Though the lighting and costume design were striking and aesthetically cohesive, repetition blunted their power.

Scenes relied on the same palette of gray-blue shadows and stark white fabrics speckled with dirt, a limited vocabulary that made it difficult to distinguish the stakes of politics and class divides in the opera. This problem extended to set pieces as well. The same furniture was used for both the peasants and the monarchs. When climaxes arrived, the lack of scenic and dynamic contrast dulled their impact.

In this landscape of visual repetition, even when new, compelling ideas were introduced, they weren’t fully developed. Such a moment of tension happened at the beginning of Act 3, when Macbeth goes to talk to the chorus of witches for a second time. There, he receives the final piece of the prophecy that eventually leads to his demise. The chandelier used in previous acts to light up ballroom and royal scenes was brought down to serve as the witches’ cauldron.

A thought-provoking staging choice, the double use of the chandelier spoke to the shared psychological power of the royal court and the witches over Macbeth’s consciousness. Yet this visual language wasn’t further referenced in the opera, raising questions as to why it was used in the first place.

The larger choral and en -

‘Deadbeat’ Album Review: A Trippy, Tentative Return

realism — and the Western Australian rave scene at large, “Deadbeat” is comprised of 12 tracks which can be loosely categorised as “indie EDM.”

Few artists have carved out a sound as unmistakably their own as Tame Impala.

Conceived by singer, songwriter, and producer Kevin Parker, Tame Impala’s distinct psychedelic rock sound — an intoxicating blend of washed-out vocals, distorted guitars and lush synthesisers, underpinned by dynamic, rock-inspired drum grooves — has become one of the most influential and imitated sonic signatures of an oversaturated streaming era, with even Pink Floyd acknowledging its impact on their latest work. Whereas most pop songs on the charts rely on teams of cowriters and producers, Parker has maintained complete control over nearly every aspect of the process, from writing and arrangement to recording and production. Having transitioned from his psychedelic rock roots to an increasingly pop-centric sound in third and fourth studio albums — “Currents” and “The Slow Rush” — Parker returns with, even for his standards, a strangely disorienting album: “Deadbeat.” Heavily inspired by both Australia’s “bush doof” culture — an entrancing mix of psychedelic electronic beats and outback sur-

Yet despite the album’s influences, “Deadbeat” firmly exists in its own space, lacking the frenetic energy that typically underpins rave and EDM music.

Shifting away from the simplistic yet groovy drums and crunchy guitars that defined his earlier work, Parker’s off-kilter production on this record largely consists of fragmented percussion, pounding four-on-the-floor beats, and warm, lush analog synthesizers. From the outset, “Deadbeat,” as the title suggests, is an album defined by insecurity.

The opening track, “My Old Ways,” finds Parker lamenting that he is trapped in a cycle of “barely coping,” perpetually “back into his old ways again.”

This continual self-recrimination, coupled with an apparent lack of confidence, is one of the many lyrical elements that stand in stark contrast to the uplifting, anthemic, or overly sombre pop records which fill today’s charts. Sung over a lilting piano backing, thumping house-inspired beat and interrupted by a loosely-performed synth solo, “My Old Ways” immediately establishes the album’s overarching sense of uneasy

intimacy.

This tentative, reflective energy continues in the second track, “No Reply,” in which Parker claims that he just “want[s] to seem like a normal guy.” He then jokes that his partner is a “cinephile,” while he merely “watches Family Guy / On a Friday night, off a rogue website.”

The track balances irony with melancholy, keeping the listener simultaneously off-balance yet engaged. The next two tracks, “Dracula” and “Loser” are the wildcards of the record. “Dracula,” on one hand, is markedly playful and cinematic. Its “Thriller”-inspired details and funky synth bass line make for one of the most memorable moments of the album — albeit one that doesn’t seem to fit its overall vision and sound.

In contrast, “Loser,” while lyrically aligned with the rest of the tracks, pays homage to the rock-centric production of his earlier work with a repeated, hypnotic guitar riff and a loose yet steady drum groove.

Although “Oblivion” and “Not My World” return to the record’s eccentric sound, these tracks largely blur together on repeated listens, lacking any single defining feature to anchor them in the listener’s memory. However, one of the album’s highlights is “Ethereal Connection,” an eight-minute trance-like

track with no immediately discernible structure. Seamlessly shifting between jittery, crystalline synth lines and muffled vocal interjections, the track appears to be more of a stream of musical consciousness than a song. On “Afterthought” Parker continues to express his quiet self-doubt: “When we’re alone, it’s like I’m keeping you waiting.”

The album closes with its lead single, “End of Summer,” which carefully melds wistfulness with vulnerability: “I know I can seem uncaring in moments like this.”

Ending on a bittersweet note, Parker once again juxtaposes introspective writing with energetic, thumping grooves, engendering an uneasy sense of disjointed tension.

While this album is largely cohesive in its themes and production, it is still missing the same level of pure, entrancing energy that epitomized his earlier work. Although it feels unfair to compare Parker’s projects — each seems to live in its own distinct world — it is difficult to overlook the lack of any enduring moments from this album. It is a project that, although surprising and intriguing on first listen, isn’t one that begs to be replayed like “Currents” or “Lonerism.”

Minimalism is central to the album’s production, yet many beats — especially on “End of Summer” and “Not My World” — feel undevel-

semble scenes revealed the limits of Maler’s static concept. When the witches or soldiers crowded the stage, the direction lost precision. The chorus tended to move as a mass without internal logic, blurring the lines between the different political formations. Contrasting the ensembles, Kim’s solo performance as Macduff was the standout from the evening and provided much-needed depth. Kim commanded attention to the murder of his wife and children. His grief-laden aria “Ah, la paterna mano,” was the evening’s clearest moment of unguarded emotion. A lyric tenor of crystalline tone and focused phrasing, Kim transformed his single major aria into the evening’s moral and musical core. In a production preoccupied with silence, his resonant voice was refreshing. Minimalist and visually unified staging can be a powerful vehicle, especially for relaying the inner emotional perturbations of the characters. However, for “MACBETH,” quests of power and political gains are as important as the psychological turmoil of its main leads, as the former highlight the decline of Macbeth and his wife. While BLO’s “MACBETH” featured impressive standalone performances, the sparse setting and lack of visual storytelling didn’t allow for the bigger conflicts of the opera to come through.

“MACBETH” ran at the Emerson Colonial Theatre on Oct. 10 and Oct. 12.

erlisa.demneri@thecrimson.com

oped, often ending just as they become sonically interesting. These shortcomings in the record’s production, however, are not rectified by its writing; some of these songs only contain a few lines of vague lyrics about “something / That I never could describe.”

“Deadbeat” feels like more of a snapshot of Parker’s troubled psyche than a holistic representation of Tame Impala as an artist. While sonically unique and ambitious, the

3.5

alexander.chieng@thecrimson.com

‘The Magician of Tiger Castle’

ABSURD STORYTELL-

ING. “Holes” author Louis Sachar’s first adult novel is a fairytale with mature reflections.

BY MICAELA S. ARENAS CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Could you really survive on preserved peaches alone in the desert?

How can a building not have a 19th story but still have 30 stories in total?

Louis Sachar, author of “Holes” and “Sideways Stories from Wayside School,” writes children’s stories where the absurd becomes intuitive. This matter-of-fact approach to the uncanny continues in Sachar’s first book for adults, “The Magician of Tiger Castle,” a delightful novel featuring a world that feels both familiar and unexpected. Set in the fictional kingdom of Esquaveta, “The Magician of Tiger Castle” is told through a series of flashbacks experienced by court magician Anatole as he sits in a 21st-century cafe, recalling the lead-up to the “wedding of the century,” which is set to take place between Princess Tullia of Esquaveta and Prince Dalrympl of Oxatania. The princess’ relationship with Pito — a servant in the cas-

BY CHARLES E. KIRSCH CONTRIBUTING WRITER

There’s no question about it: Sam Kissajukian is at home on a stage. Sitting for an interview with The Crimson on the stage of Farkas Hall, where he is starring in his autobiographical one-man play “300 Paintings” through Oct. 25, Kissajukian exudes the same charm and charisma that he brings to Cambridge audiences eight times a week. Kissajukian’s play is currently partnering with the American Repertory Theater while on tour, having already performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the Vineyard Theatre in New York City.

“300 Paintings” tells a powerful story about Kissajukian’s struggle with bipolar disorder. During a manic episode in 2021, Kissajukian locked himself in an abandoned warehouse for six months and generated the titular 300 works of art, and in the play, he tells that story in a frank but hilarious manner. After all, before he donned a beret and committed himself to a career as a

tle — is exposed and condemned, and Anatole is tasked with creating a potion to dull the princess’ will and force her to cooperate with the arranged marriage.

With an attention to detail and tactful worldbuilding, Sachar weaves a plot that a reader cannot help but see through to the end. Early on, we become immersed in Anatole’s perspective, nodding along as he considers dried blueberry skins (a rare American product). Sachar makes it make sense, and soon enough, you don’t even blink an eye when characters deter a bear attack with a wheel of cheese.

Although the story is set in an almost fairy tale world of princesses and magic, Sachar grounds the reader with his complex characters and overt commentary on historiography. Anatole, as he drinks a cappuccino in the 21st century, reflects on the past with humorous quips that question how history is written. Sachar writes, “Just because scholars and historians have chosen to ignore it doesn’t diminish its importance. Rather, it reveals the biases and ignorance of these so-called experts!”

It’s made clear from the start that history and historians are not to be trusted. Even Anatole, whose personality shines through every line of narration,

visual artist, Kissajukian spent many years as a stand-up comedian. To him, performing this piece is a much-needed departure from the artificial stand-up form, which he is eager to leave behind.

“In [300 Paintings], the comedy serves the goals of the show. Talking about mental illness can be confronting for people. Comedy is a great way to create accessibility — if you can keep people laughing, it stops their defense mechanisms from going up. There are jokes that I could put in that I’ve stripped out because they don’t push the show forward,” Kissajukian said. Performing a one-person show is a Herculean task by any measure, and it is compounded by Kissajukian’s ongoing experience with mental illness. He lives a very “low-key life” in order to remain in a stable state for each performance — “The show doesn’t work if I’m manic,” he said. The medication he takes also causes struggles with memorization that ultimately led him to perform “300 Paintings” without any kind of formal script.

“

is an unreliable source. At several points throughout the story, Anatole admits that he is not telling us what happened word-for-word, but rather what he remembers and what would make most sense to English speakers. It makes the reader wonder: What else has been lost to time and translation? With this experimental structure, Sachar invites us to question what we are told, and consider the nuances of perspective.

beheading.

“I knew [helping Pito escape] was just a fantasy. For one thing, it would require courage and bold action on my part. It was just a way to take my mind off my own failures,” Anatole says. It is in spite of these fears that Anatole grows, right before the reader’s eyes, and when this growth is brought into question, the reader does a double-take.

Sachar grounds the reader with his complex characters and overt commentary on historiography.

Precisely because of his bias, Anatole begins to feel familiar to the reader very early on in the story. From his passion for tea to his chronic clumsiness, Anatole is a charming main character with a real set of flaws that set him apart from other protagonists. At many points in the story, he is ridden with fear and doubt even as he makes choices that should seem easy, like whether or not to help 17-year-old Pito escape his unjust

Rather than seeing this as an obstruction, however, Kissajukian invites audience reactions to shape the show, which can vary by about 12 minutes in length night to night. At the end of the piece, Kissajukian explicitly asks audience members to speak with him about their reactions, either in the theater lobby or via email. Whether people end up sending him their own artwork or letting him know which parts of the show they didn’t find clear, he believes that this post-show interaction is part and parcel of the emotional story he tells. Some of Kissajukian’s most important audience members have been his own friends and family, many of whom weren’t fully aware of what he went through in 2021. The only person mentioned by name in “300 Paintings” is a fellow standup comedian, Kyle Legacy. However, Kissajukian is quick to point out that everyone who comes up in the piece has seen it and approved their inclusion.

Audiences coming to “300 Paintings” get the chance to view a full art gallery on top of a

The ending is bittersweet — emphasis on the bitter — bringing the tale to a screeching halt in a way that emulates Anatole’s experience. The reader is left hanging without any real closure, abruptly thrust forward hundreds of years without the anchor of characters that have become so familiar. While disappointing, the ending is not senseless. It’s a reminder that sometimes things are never resolved, that growth is not

one-person show. At the end of the piece, the theater’s curtain rises to reveal an expansive exhibition of Kissajukian’s post-diagnosis work. Rather than art centered around a certain theme, Kissajukian has selected “exemplary” pieces that showcase the range of his varying emotional states for the audience to observe.

Farkas Hall, which at 250 seats is the largest venue the show has been performed in, allows this gallery to be presented onstage. It also enables the screen depicting images of Kissajukian’s work throughout the play to be placed fully behind him rather than next to him as it was at the Vineyard Theatre: an experience which, as he describes it, made the performance feel more like a two-person play.

Performing in Cambridge has brought a younger audience to “300 Paintings” than it found in its previous runs. While Kissajukian loves connecting with older audience members, who have “been through so many life cycles,” he appreciates a responsive younger crowd. He also finds that

COURTESY OF ACE BOOKS

linear and time keeps moving no matter how much things matter in the moment. It challenges the idea of a happy ending and invites the reader to accept it, the way Anatole did. It’s realistic and sad.

In truth, “The Magician of Tiger Castle” is not so different from Sachar’s other books. The only aspects of the novel that sets it apart from his children’s books are some references to mature themes like sex and the use of profanity. Neither of these, however, are central to the story. What is central is the immersive experience, the absurdity, and the careful braiding of structure and theme.

Sachar’s new novel seems to blur the line between storytelling forms designed for children and the more complex aspects of adult life. Anatole may be a magician tasked with turning sand into gold, but he’s also a middle-aged man haunted by regrets.

“The Magician of Tiger Castle” is a fairytale that asks the question: When do I change for the better, even if it goes against who I’ve always been?

4 STARS

micaela.arenas@thecrimson.com

the theater’s proximity to Harvard provides a “wonderful kind of environment” for frank discussions of mental health.

“During my manic episode, I went through an inventing phase, and I was making all these inventions, and I came up with an invention that essentially tracks the movement of mold growing and then vibrated the pattern of the movement of the mold back at the mold to see what it did. I emailed Harvard that night to say that they should really look into this because I didn’t have the time. Then when the A.R.T. picked me up for doing the show here, they sent me a message and just said, ‘bring the mold.’ It was really funny. So it’s like this is so uncanny that this is here and I’m here now,” Kissajukian said.

Ever the boundary-pushing creative, Kissajukian is already making plans to continue exploring the story of “300 Paintings.” At the end of the month, he will play a week of performances at the 1,100-seat McCarter Theatre at Princeton University. He is currently working on a TV adaptation of the show,

which he foresees taking up the next few years of his life. He is also inspired by Punchdrunk, the immersive theater company behind productions like “Sleep No More” and “Viola’s Room,” to try to create an interactive experience that “highlights the power of art” while maintaining a “strong comedic tone” and incorporating the story behind this prolific period. When asked for advice for future painters, Kissajukian said: “How I make art is not relevant to how other people make it, and I would never want to dictate that. There is no ‘should.’ We don’t need to make art. It’s just an image on the wall.” After seeing “300 Paintings,” audiences may find that with some hilarious context, art can be so much more. “300 Paintings” runs at Farkas Hall through Oct. 25.Perfect for a special occasion, this restaurant has the power to bring back childhood memories through a deep love for authentic culinary traditions and near-flawlessly executed craft.

FIFTEEN MINUTES 15

Mathias Risse is the Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights, Global Affairs and Philosophy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He directs the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights, but says he is not speaking in that capacity due to Harvard’s speech regulations. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

FM: You started in more traditional Western thought and philosophy, and now you’re engaging with more Indigenous literature. There is this very intense tension, if not conflict, between Western ideology and Indigenous thought. How do you engage those modes of thinking, and do they inform each other? Do they combat each other?

MR: There’s many centuries of pain. Many centuries of oppression, sidelining, and there’s concerns about appropriation, belittling. There’s always a concern that Western philosophers are only interested in Indigenous thought for instrumental purposes.

One chapter in my book is about this. Is it even ethical for somebody with my background to work on Indigenous thought? And if so, how? It’s not ever philosophical business as usual.

You always have to understand that you are dealing with a completely different intellectual tradition that has gone through thousands of years of history.

There were different standards of what it meant to be an intellectual in society.

And it was basically not taken seriously. They were enslaved, they were brutalized, they were killed. There were genocides. Most of them died of European diseases. Harvard College was founded by the Puritans with the ambition of maintaining as much of the purified European learning as possible.

So that’s why it’s never business as usual. Mindfulness means you engage. You take them seriously on their own grounds, but you always understand. You also learn about all the history, and you try to make respectful connections to the communities as much as you can.

FM: If someone wanted to know three main things that you think would be most important in Indigenous thought. What would you say?

MR: First, gain an appreciation that you are dealing with a completely different intellectual tradition. Second is see it as an opportunity to go back to themes in human intellectual history.

Humans are embedded in nature, and that thought is spelled out in very different ways and across Indigenous cultures. But it’s the key thought. Kinship relations, all our relations, that’s always the key thought. So these were three complicated things.

I’ve been doing this for a number for years, so many people know that I’m doing this. But when I started off, there was always a skepticism: what are you hoping to get out of that? Is it a back-to-nature movement?

Even if this were the intention, obviously, this is not a viable option. We cannot live this way. But this is to understand and shake us out of our cultural confines to say, look, there are ways of living together and living with nature that are dramatically different from how we do it. And how we do it has led to the ecological disaster.

So shouldn’t we see whether we can get some guidance from the fact that there are these dramatically different ways of doing things, and that we only exist as humans who could take over the planet because that thought of embeddedness in nature was actually the most cherished philosophical thought in the early stages of humanity?

FM: What do you think are the most pressing issues today?

Q&A:

MATHIAS RISSE ON INDIGENOUS THOUGHT, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND BEING POLITICAL

HUMAN RIGHTS CENTER DIRECTOR. The Kennedy School professor sat down with Fifteen Minutes to discuss AI, writing op-eds, and serendipity.

BY CLAIRE JIANG CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

The whole fall semester, culminating in Claudine Gay’s ill-fated testimony to Elise Stefanik’s committee on December 5 — all of that was just a frenzy of emotions and interpretations.

And then at the end of the last academic year, we got attacked by the Trump administration.

A lot of people were afraid. But there was also a strong sense of solidarity, especially after Alan Garber had decided that we just couldn’t go along with this. There was a high political awareness on campus. Right now, I see a strange lack of political awareness.

It’s like people do not want to see what is happening around them. And they somehow think if you put your head down and you focus on your career it’s going to go away, but it’s not going to go away.

MR: Protecting certain climate conditions is essential for protecting the future of human life on this planet.

That’s obviously hugely important.

If you’re looking around — where are human rights most substantially at risk right now? Obviously, a lot of places. It’s not a good time for human rights. But the most important place for human rights now is actually the United States.

Our democratic commitments, our commitments to human rights, are massively questioned in a way in which we have never questioned them before. So the most significant fight for the future of democracy and human rights is happening in the United States as we speak.

FM: You have around half a dozen op-eds in The Crimson. What’s the importance and significance of being a voice on a platform that is highly visible to the undergraduate population and the administration? Have you experienced the feeling in yourself and among others who are hesitant now to opine on a lot of the current affairs at Harvard?

MR: Harvard University is an incredibly important player in American civil society. It’s by far the most visible university in the United States. So what we do is hugely important and we obviously need to take that with humility and modesty.

It’s not like everything revolves around Harvard, but it’s a really important place for American civil society. What happens here really matters.

I started doing the op-eds really when it became clear that what Harvard was doing would matter during the election campaign last year.

I also happen to be the director of a human rights center at a time when that’s not that much fun to be, but it’s what I am now. And so that comes with certain obligations to defend and

to articulate human rights standards, to explain what the thinking behind them is. A lot of people are afraid to speak up about things. We noticed that quite a bit. But it will only get more difficult to speak up the longer we wait, right? So, do it now.

FM: In one of your op-eds after one year since the war in Gaza, you talked about the connection that you saw between your roots as a German and the Holocaust. There was a theme and idea about responsibility and acknowledging that.

How can we bring our own nationalities and experiences to empathize or create connections in places that we might not have ever been to?

MR: I’m an American citizen. Lots of things that I’m doing now I would probably not be doing if I were not a citizen.

But I’m originally a German citizen, and I have both passports, and I do think contemporary Germany has a strong obligation to the safety, security of Israel because of what the earlier version of my country has done to Jewish people.

I also think an obligation to the Jewish people automatically is also an obligation to the Palestinian people, because that is happening on the same territory.

There needs to be a good solution for Palestinians to have their own state. And I think this is as much a German obligation to think about that and to help advance that.

We are citizens of the world. We are connected in the world and to so many people. And that generates certain obligations.

There’s something amazing about being human, the human brain, the human personality, human possibilities are stunning. We should do what we

can within all these appropriate limits so that people who are human can be fully human, can live a life in dignity.

FM: In one of your pieces, you wrote that “these realities all need to be named and placed next to each other. They do not cancel each other out. The way forward is to acknowledge the full humanity of all people in this conflict and to see that they have claims to dignity and a flourishing life.”

Could you expand on the importance of pointing out and acknowledging these moments, these realities? I wasn’t on campus when Harvard was very tense, but there’s a sense of a return to normal.

How do you see both of these things?

MR: There’s this theme of moral complexity.

In situations like the Gaza conflict, you have to put a lot of bits of reality next to each other that need to be addressed together.

The opposite of moral complexity is people who always name one thing and then they come with a “but” sentence, and thereby basically obliterate the first point.

There’s a whole generation of children who have grown up in Gaza knowing nothing but bitterness. If something isn’t done now to bring them out of that, they will be the Hamas of the future. It’s highly likely, right? And so that’s the meaning of moral complexity.

These last several academic years were strangely different from each other.

The week after October 7, 2023 was insane. The escalation went so fast, and the weighing in of all these outside voices. By Wednesday, we had doxxing trucks on campus.

FM: You’ve worked with Ph.D. students, graduate students. You’ve taught at the Extension School, Kennedy School, you taught a freshman seminar. What’s different about working with these different kinds of students?

MR: Thank you for noticing that.

This is a very meaningful part of my work here. I do a lot of research, but I also see myself very much as a teacher, and I literally do everything from a freshman seminar to Ph.D. and executive education for very senior people.

This takes many years of acquired skill, right?

You need to learn over many years how to speak to different groups and have a kind of an understanding of how different the smart Harvard freshman is from the accomplished CEO who wants to go back to school at 55. They all are smart and talented, but they know different things. They have different attitudes towards things. They have very different levels of accomplishment.

That’s why I think it’s a great privilege for us as faculty to have these opportunities.

FM: Is there a word in German that you wish existed in English, or that you could use more frequently in English?

MR: Let me answer the question the other way around. I think one of the most beautiful English words that doesn’t really have a good German counterpart is the word serendipity. I think that is a beautiful word that I wish it had a German counterpart.

I think it captures a lot of insight about life.

A lot of things do happen by chance.

Serendipity only helps you, does anything for you if you are the person who is kind of ready to take it in. And you can explain all that, of course, in German, just as well as you can in English. But serendipity captures a lot about life.

FM: Some Harvard students will read this, and Harvard students will become alumni and be in great positions. What kind of advice would you give to them in terms of their obligations and duties to the world?

MR: I think people need to be political. People need to see themselves as political actors, need to be responsible for what’s happening in the world right now.

If you think about world history as a whole, and somebody asked you when would you like to be born? Roughly now is good.

The future of humanity is generally being sorted out. And really all the topics that we have discussed in that domain. You know, how is this country going to carry on? How are things going to go on with AI, right? How is global politics going to continue and right now, how is climate change going to continue right now? Everything good is still in the cards.

Right now, there’s a possibility and a necessity for agency in a way in which we just have barely ever had in history, if ever so. Be political, be engaged. Be glad you are alive right now.

Men’s Lightweights Take Wins at HOCR

The men’s lightweight eight and lightweight four teams emerged victorious at the Head of the Charles. The lightweight eight team continued its dominance of the event finishing first in 13:51.277 to claim the program’s fourth straight Head of the Charles victory. The team took the lead from the start and expanded its lead across every split, defeating Cornell by 15 seconds and finishing 30 seconds in front of Penn. Crewed by sophomore Lucas Pinsent, junior Henry Jones, sophomore Ian O’Riley, and freshman Maxton Kilroy, the “A” boat delivered another title in 15:40.880 to complete the Crimson’s Sunday sweep. Head coach Billy Boyce expressed pride in the team’s preparation and execution at the event.

“It’s really special to row past Newell boathouse, to have the race course here, and the flags flying, and just so many supporters

I know for the guys in the boat,” he said. “They’re tremendously proud when they go by, and they get a boost from the crowd support. In a lot of ways, this race is more fun than any other race. It’s a little less stressful, but also just the alumni presence and family members that are here, really make it extra special.”

The day began with a historic

win for the Crimson’s lightweight rowing team. Brahm Erdmann, who graduated last year, received the prestigious Oarsmen award title, making history as the first ever Crimson Lightweight rower to receive the award. Presented by the International Collegiate Rowing Association, the Oarsman is considered the “Heisman” of collegiate rowing.

“Recognition for all the people that have helped me, rode with me, and competed with me over the last ten years or so,” Erdmann said. The Crimson lightweights continued dominance shined Sunday, marking another year sweeping the Head of the Charles, building off its undefeated campaign in 2024, in which the team won the

IRA National Championship and Henley Royal Regatta.

As people crowded from all over the world, the Championship Eights then took on the regatta on Sunday, with three boats flying across the river. The A boat grabbed 3rd place, nabbing the title of second fastest collegiate boat, while the B boat placed 9th and the C boat 17th overall. The A boat produced solid results, beating out its Ivy League Rivals Dartmouth and Princeton. Notably, however, it was outpaced by Cambridge, a fast team consisting of Harvard rowing alumni, that claimed 1st place with IRCA 1st

The Harvard-Radcliffe lightweight crew delivered a dominant performance in the Women’s Lightweight 8+ race before a cheering home crowd on the docks of Weld Boathouse.

Starting from bow position three, behind both Boston University and Princeton, Harvard-Radcliffe’s lightweight varsity boat completed the course with a rapid winning time of 16:01.004.

The host’s ‘B’ boat ousted MIT and Sacred Heart University’s ‘A’ boats in the same race, but fell to Princeton, Georgetown, the University of Wisconsin, and Boston University. Prior to the 8+ race, Harvard-Radcliffe’s lightweight boat placed tenth in the 4+ with a finish of 19:23.740, falling behind the University of Wisconsin by a margin of about 20 seconds. The 8+ race looked as if it would be controlled by Princeton, who held the lead through the markers of Riverside, Weld

Boathouse, and the Cambridge Boat Club. However, the Black and White’s varsity boat excelled in the final stretch by completing the sprint towards the finish line in 2:48:839, nabbing first-place. As the boats flew past Riverside Boat Club, the close three-second difference between the Tigers’ 3:36.633 time and Harvard-Radcliffe’s 3:39.793 time immediately suggested that the race would be a battle between the two Ivy League foes. Princeton remained ahead as the boats cleared the congested near-ninety degree turn in front of Weeks Bridge. As the boats flew past Radcliffe’s Weld Boathouse, the Black and White’s fans erupted into loud cheers for its crew. The home team had narrowed the gap to just over two seconds.

Directed by sophomore coxswain Ella Sheth, the Harvard-Radcliffe crew outhustled Princeton in the stretch between Weld and the Cambridge Boat Club, which started to close its deficit.

The crew, captained by junior Rikke Nielsen in the bow seat, senior Sisira Holbrook in the third seat, and senior Kris-

tine Schwartz in the fourth seat, cranked through the finish line, dominating the Tigers by nine whole seconds in the final stretch.

Harvard-Radcliffe’s performance in the last leg of the race spurred the team to a successful six-second victory over Princeton and a win at the historic Head of the Charles Regatta.

During the race, Sheth also deftly managed to guide the team around Boston University’s boat. The team’s captains acknowledged that passing a boat has its challenges, but that the whole crew trusted Sheth to steer them to success.

“We had full confidence in Ella, our coxswain,” Holbrook said. “It just feels incredible to watch the boat come into view and then pass them one seat at a time and open up the margins on them.”

“You get so much energy from seeing the other boat and walking through them,” added Nielsen.

Through the difficult course, the Black and White still managed to navigate its way on the Charles to bring home a win.

“The wind was not always in our favor, but it was exciting to cross the finish line and know

that we had a chance,” Schwartz said as she described her teams’ post-race sentiments.

Since the race is not a headto-head contest, the Harvard-Radcliffe was forced to wait for the results in anticipation after powering through the finish line. Once awarded, the victory resonated all around, serving as notable achievement for the team and lots of promise for a strong spring season ahead.

“We had no idea where we all were, and we had no idea we were beating Princeton,” Nielsen said. “So when we heard the final result, we were very excited.”

“We just couldn’t ask for anything better,” said Schwartz.

“We’re really proud of our team, that’s the bottom line.” Holbrook added.

The Harvard-Radcliffe heavyweight crew showed substantial improvement this year after a disappointing 13th place finish in 2024. The Radcliffe ‘A’ boat finished in 7th place overall and improved on last year’s time by roughly 12 seconds. The ‘B’ boat moved up eight spots from its 2024 finish and claimed 13th.

“It was a great weekend across the board,” said third-

year head coach Claire Ochal. “I’m just super, over the moon proud.”

The ‘A’ boat came out fast and logged the fifth fastest split on the first mile. The split scored third amongst teams in the “College - Championship” subdivision of the race, trailing Brown and Princeton by less than 0.3 seconds.

Quick first mile splits usually lead to slow downs in the second mile, but the Radcliffe rowers proved that adage false. The ‘A’ boat blistered for the second fastest second split in the field and trailed only the US Training Center team that won both the race and each individual split. The ‘B’ boat took a more consistent approach to the race and carded steadier splits throughout the course.

Boat ‘A’ entered the final full mile in third place while boat ‘B’ entered in 13th. Energy exerted in the early parts of the race finally caught up with the ‘A’ boat as a slower split dropped the team to its finish at 7th while the ‘B’ boat clung to its 13th place finish.

The traditional rowing season is in the spring, so this standalone race provides an opportunity for teams to see where they

stand.

“It’s a chance to show early in the year, because our main season is in the spring, see where we’re at. See what level we’ve come back at after the summer,” said senior Jenna Kempster-Taylor. “We’re really happy with our results.”

Advertisement The results showcased promise for the heavyweight team. The ‘A’ boat finished third in the “College - Championship” subdivision that is composed of teams they will row against during the regular season. This is a major improvement from a seventh place finish in the division last year. The ‘B’ boat also made a subdivisional improvement, jumping from fifth to second in the “Junior Varsity” division. The team plans to use the information gained from this race to power its training for the remainder of fall and winter.

“Tuesday morning we go back to training,” said Kempster-Taylor. “Making use of every single day and every single session.”

When No. 14 Harvard travels to Princeton this Saturday, Andrew Aurich will coach at Powers Field for the first time in six years, though for the first time in his career, he will be fighting on the visitors’ sideline.

“I basically removed myself from the Princeton world,” said Aurich. “Whoever we’re playing, they are trying to take food out of my children’s mouths, and because of that, they are my enemy, regardless of any long-lasting relationship I have.”

Aurich — the second year head coach for the Crimson — was a part of the Tigers coaching staff for eight years across two separate stints after playing as an offensive lineman and graduating at Princeton in 2006. As he returns to the field where he grew both his playing and coaching careers, however, the mission remains the same: staying undefeated. Harvard (5-0, 2-0 Ivy) has positioned itself as the clear favor-

ite to win the Ivy League, garnering national attention with their climbing rankings in both the AFCA FCS Coaches Poll and the Stats Perform FCS Media Poll. The Crimson tops the league in total offense, offensive points per game, total defense, and defensive points allowed, separating itself as a powerhouse on both sides of the football halfway through the season. The Tigers (3-2, 2-0) pose a balanced attack, taking advantage of depth on both sides of the football as well as capitalizing on strong performances from some newcomers. Freshman receiver Josh Robinson has won three straight Ivy Rookie of the Week honors, totaling 18 catches for 224 yards and a score over his past three contests.

Princeton currently shares a three-way tie atop the Ivy League with both Harvard and Penn, and depending on how matchups play out this weekend, there could be a sole leader atop the conference by Saturday evening. Regardless of the ramifications of the results, the Crimson

will keep a steady stream of mind.

“The motivation is still to be 1-0,” said Aurich. “The mindset can’t change.”

While Aurich returning to his alma mater is one of the most apparent team connections to New Jersey, he isn’t the only person with history in the Garden State. Harvard’s star senior quarterback, Jaden Craig, hails from Montclair, NJ, about a 75-minute drive from Princeton. For him, this is not just an opportunity to go close to home, but also a chance to play in front of a plethora of friends, family, and fans.

“It’s definitely gonna be fun,” said Craig. “I’ve got so many people, family, friends and everything coming to the game, so I’m really excited for it.”

While his completion percentage has dropped slightly over the past two weeks thanks to some tight man defense from Cornell and Merrimack, Craig continues to shine in his final season, leading the league in passing yards (1315) and TD-INT ratio (11-2).

One factor in his strong season has been his recent connection

with sophomore receiver Brady Blackburn.

While the emerging wideout did not record a catch in the season opener, he recently has emerged as Craig’s top target, surpassing 100 receiving yards in three straight contests and lead-

ing the team in yards per game and total receiving scores.

“I think definitely we’re at a spot where we’re connecting the most we have since he’s been here,” said Craig. “I’m excited to see what the next five games have in store.”

Besides the Jersey connections, the game is an opportunity for the Crimson to capitalize on its highest ranking (14th in media poll) since 2015 as it battles

No. 4 Harvard Remains Only Undefeated Team

The No. 4 Harvard field hockey team continued its historic 2025 season after another dominant weekend of play. As it extended its impressive record to 13-0, the Crimson also secured a spot in the competitive Ivy League Tournament for the third consecutive season.

With its 3-1 win over No. 20

Brown (8-4, 3-2 Ivy League) and an assertive 5-1 victory over UMa-

ss Lowell (7-7, 2-1 America East) this past weekend, Harvard (13-0, 5-0 Ivy) now boasts the title of the only undefeated team in the entire NCAA Division 1 league. The Crimson, with 13 straight wins, has now matched the second-longest winning streak in Harvard field hockey history, falling just behind the 2018 team’s 14-game win streak that led to an NCAA Tournament quarterfinal appearance.

Harvard 3, Brown 1

The Crimson faced off against the Brown Bears under Friday night lights on Berylson Field, braving the chilly fall weather to deliver a 3-1 victory in order to guarantee itself a position in the Ivy League Tournament.

In the opening quarter, both teams traded defensive stops, locking the ball in the midfield and preventing either of the offenses from getting a shot off. After the scoreless first fifteen minutes, where consistent offensive action looked like it might be hard to come by, junior forward Sage Piekarski nabbed her ninth goal of the season a little over a minute into the second quarter.

The junior continued her scoring streak by exploding onto a rebound from senior defender Bron-

te-May Brough’s initial shot from the top of the circle. The opportunity came from a penalty corner, which was inserted expertly by sophomore Martha le Huray and corralled by captain Kitty Chapple. Brough then fired the ball onto goal, setting up the rebound chance for Piekarski.

Less than four minutes later, le Huray forced a turnover within the offensive zone. Catching Brown’s defenders off guard, the Teddington, UK, native sent a cross zipping to the front of the net. The Harvard team, clearly accustomed to fastpaced play, was ready to score. Junior Lara Beekhuis deftly tipped the shot home, extending the lead to two for the home team as she nabbed her seventh goal of the season.

The Bears, vying to upset the reigning Ivy League Tournament Champions, threatened to close the score deficit late in the second half. Brown’s offense earned a corner opportunity, but the Crimson’s defense stood strong under the pressure. The Bears were able to rip a blistering shot from the top of the circle, but Chapple fearlessly blocked the ball with her body, giving her fellow defenders time to properly position themselves. Although Brown was able to get another shot off, the ball was deflected by Harvard’s rookie goalkeeper, Linde Burger.

Entering the second half with a two-goal lead, the Crimson seemed to dominate the start of the third quarter. The home team relentlessly sent shots onto the Bears’ junior goalkeeper, Kylee Del Monte. Although none of the shots made it to the net, Harvard clearly had exhausted Brown’s defenders as they were tested from every possible angle. In the final quarter of play, le Hu-

ray scored a highlight-reel-worthy goal, sprinting down half the field and nimbly handling the ball around two of Brown’s defenders. With a rapid spin, she then deked out Del Monte in the net, sending the ball careening into the far right corner of the net. Notably, Harvard’s captain, Fiene Oerlemans, was perfectly positioned to tap the shot home had it been necessary.

Le Huray’s goal marked the final of the game for the Crimson, but the Bears were able to nab one point of their own in the final forty seconds of regulation play. Although Harvard did not defend the shutout, the contest was undoubtedly another dominant performance for the team. Notably, the Crimson has now beaten Brown eleven times in a row.

Harvard 5, UMass Lowell 1

On Sunday, the Harvard team made a quick interstate trip to Lowell, Mass., to take on the River Hawks in its second-to-last non-league game of the regular season. During the contest, the Crimson outshot the home team 25-7 and earned 12 penalty corners. Harvard’s offense had significant success, as five different players scored goals in the 5-1 win.

The game remained scoreless after the opening quarter; however, Harvard dominated possession of the ball. In fact, the Crimson outshot the River Hawks 4-0 in the first and earned an impressive three penalty corner chances.

In the second quarter, the Piekarski-le Huray duo struck early for Harvard. Piekarski forced a turnover in the circle, sliding across the astroturf to regain possession of the ball. Beekhuis, who helped in the defensive effort, carried the ball deeper into scoring territory before passing it back to Piekarski in open

space. Piekarski took the ball to the cage, dodging the River Hawk’s goalkeeper and crossing the ball to le Huray, who was poised on the opposite side to tap it in.

UMass Lowell had some brief scoring opportunities to round out the half, as Harvard suffered a few yellow card calls. However, staying true to its tendencies so far this season, the Crimson’s defensive unit prevented any shots from slipping past Burger in net.

After the halftime break, Harvard’s offense began to outhustle the River Hawks. Three minutes into the third quarter, Beekhuis carried the ball down the field and absolutely hammered a shot into the back of the net, landing just below the crossbar.

With a little less than three minutes remaining in the quarter, sophomore Tilly Butterworth earned her second penalty stroke of the game. Butterworth, following in Beekhuis’ footsteps, fired the shot home and stretched the lead to three.

A minute and a half into the final quarter, the Crimson earned another penalty corner. Senior Kate Oliver inserted the ball, which was handled at the top of the circle and then dished back to her just off the left goalpost. Oliver poked a shot onto the cage, which was blocked by UMass Lowell’s rookie goalkeeper Veerle Mous. However, Oliver was determined to score and corralled her own rebound before firing it into the net.

Piekarski then capped off the afternoon of scoring for the Crimson as she tapped in a rebound from another bullet of a shot from Beekhuis. Piekarski and le Huray each lead the team with ten goals, but Beekhuis is close behind with an impressive eight goals and four assists.

In a similar fashion to its contest

against Brown, the River Hawks were able to secure a goal of their own in the final few minutes of play, preventing Burger from tallying her sixth shutout of her freshman season. Regardless, the final score, which read 5-1 in favor of Harvard, exemplifies the grit and determination of this team as it extends through the final stretch of regular-season play.

The Crimson has now pushed its record to 13-0, the best start in program history, and has its sights set on continuing its success next weekend. On Friday, the team will take on Columbia (6-6, 1-4 Ivy) for its senior day celebration. Harvard will be celebrating its strong senior class, composed of Tessa Shahbo, Chapple, Oerlemans, Brough, Marie Schaefers, and Oliver. The two Ivy League teams will clash on

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The 60th Head of the Charles Regatta

BY CRIMSON MULTIMEDIA STAFF