Washington Free Beacon

“‘Fatphobia and ‘cisheterosexism’ perpetuate ‘violence.’ ‘Using the wrong pronouns’ constitutes ‘abuse.’ And ‘any words used to lower a person’s self-worth’ are ‘Verbal Abuse.’ Those are just a handful of the things the school told all undergraduate students in a mandatory Title IX training session, according to materials reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.”

Crimson

Jacob Miller ‘25 opines on the free speech problem and offers some solutions. “I see it all around me — friends confide in me that they feel like voicing their true opinions in this very newspaper could dash their dreams of admission to medical school. Others feel punished and ostracized for expressing their actual views…”

Various Outlets

Former Harvard Medical School Professor and co-author of The Great Barrington Declaration, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, is part of a group suing government agencies and Big Tech over censorship.

Crimson

In the wake of the Dobbs decision and a Crimson editorial decrying its logic, legal interpretation and morality, Gazianis warns, “There is virtue in humility and in seeking to understand other people’s motives.”

Federalist Radio Hour

Harvard alum Carine Hajjar (AB ‘21) and Joseph Rago, Fellow at The Wall Street Journal through The Fund for American Studies, joins Federalist Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss college campuses' ongoing hostility toward freedom of speech and what happens when universities such as Harvard let progressive students and staff control the discourse. 

In President Bacow’s final convocation, he urged the Class of 2026 students to seek truth by engaging with different perspectives. The advice comes at a time when universities, including Harvard, are coming under fire for cultivating campus climates inhospitable to free speech, open inquiry and academic freedom.

Larry Summers

In an 8/28/22 tweet about Quillette article The Fall of Nature: A once-respected journal has announced that it will be subordinating science to ideology, Summers writes: “I hope that university presidents will defend academic freedom by echoing these sentiments. Leading journals like @Nature gatekeep tenure for young scholars and publications in them can determine career paths for older scholars…This kind of politicization is very dangerous.”

Wall Street Journal

Barton Swaim visits Harvard professor James Hankins, who proposes the need for a moral revolution. Swaim sees repeated failures among our intellectual and political leaders. “Hankins, a historian of the Italian Renaissance, blames a lack of virtue.”

Honestly podcast

FAIR Advisor Bari Weiss talks to former Harvard president Larry Summers about the economy, politics, the future of higher education, and what Summers calls ‘the new McCarthyism.’

Washington Post

“Harvard is a fourth-tier institution. In fact, it ranks 847th out of 1,320 bachelor’s degree-granting institutions across the United States” according to Third Way, a think tank which defines “the value of a college based on the proportion of lower-income students it enrolls and the economic benefit it provides them.”

Quillette

HLS Professor Kennedy and Harvard Alum Silverglate team up to write an essay about intolerance at Milton Academy after Silverglate, an invited guest speaker at Milton Academy, articulated the title of Kennedy’s book.

Washington Free Beacon

“Students and professors at Harvard Law School are demanding the university punish a 77-year-old anthropology professor over allegations of sexual misconduct that Harvard’s own Title IX office has dismissed, according to a July 26 petition from Harvard’s Graduate Student Union.”

Uncommon Knowledge | Roland Fryer, Rafael Mangual

Harvard Professor Roland Fryer and Manhattan Institute fellow Rafael Mangual discuss the complexities of policing (i.e. do not comport with some accepted narratives). “Together, Mangual and Fryer take a close look at what is and is not working in policing and law enforcement, in some cases citing statistics and research they have personally conducted. They also make the case that most people, regardless of race or economic status, want safe neighborhoods and cities and explain why the defund movement is not popular among them.”

Twitter | Brad Wilcox

UVA Professor Brad Wilcox and AIE Sr. Fellow Scott Winship reveal a glaring omission in summaries of Harvard’s Raj Chetty study on Reducing Poverty. According to Wilcox, “Judging by Chetty’s et al’s own figure, it looks like family structure is one of and perhaps the *strongest* univariate predictors of upward mobility…”

The Intercept

Fang outlines how “Harvard and other elite universities are lobbying Congress for a tax cut on endowment investment returns.” Providing details of Bacow’s views, Fang reports that, “In conversation with…the billionaire co-founder of the Carlyle Group… [Bacow] complained bitterly about the unfairness of the tax. ‘I think this is bad public policy. We’re a charitable institution,’ said Bacow… The tax, he [Bacow] also argued, was designed by Republicans to punish Democratic-leaning institutions.”

Boston Globe

FIRE co-founder, criminal defense and civil liberties lawyer, and HLS alum Harvey Silverglate argues, “It should be made clear by presidential search committees that an important — indeed, essential — qualification for the position is a vigorous and public support for academic freedom in the form of free speech on campus. It should be specified that any applicant who disagrees with this central principle need not bother to apply. It is time for academic freedom to be more than merely decoration.”

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby argues that “Harvard’s 82-to-1 faculty ratio of liberals to conservatives makes a mockery of the university’s avowed commitment to diversity.” As Jacoby notes, “everyone knows that Harvard has no desire to uphold ‘diversity in all forms’… The clash of ideas? A robust competition among worldviews? The exposure of students to compelling arguments that challenge liberal and progressive shibboleths? That’s not what Harvard is interested in. It hasn’t been for decades.”

Crimson

In a recent survey of Harvard faculty, more than 80% identified as politically “liberal” or "very liberal” while only 1% identified as “conservative,” 0% as “very conservative” and 16% as “moderate.” “When asked whether they would support increasing ideological diversity…by hiring more conservative-leaning professors, only a quarter of respondents were in support…31% opposed hiring conservative professors to increase ideological diversity, while 44%…neither supported or opposed.”

Crimson

In a rare move, the Coalition for a Diverse Harvard, an advocacy group, took the lead in announcing the third professor hired to join Harvard in the FAS’ Ethnic Studies cluster hire. According to the Crimson, the announcement was made by the Coalition via a Tweet, with the FAS spokesperson declining to comment. The Coalition has made the establishment of a new Ethnic Studies Department central to its focus and demands of the University along with preserving racial preferences in Harvard admissions.

Various Sources

Chaired by the Harvard Corporation’s senior fellow Penny Pritzker (‘81), the presidential search committee has been announced and the process is underway. On behalf of the search committee, Pritzker sent a letter asking for members of the Harvard community to provide their input, explaining that responses “will be an essential means for the search committee to develop an increasingly robust and nuanced picture of Harvard, its current trajectory, and its future aspirations—and a fully informed view of the leadership that can best serve the University in the years to come.”