Cambridge 02138

Harvard, For and Against

Harvard Magazine previously published a selection of letters received immediately after President Alan M. Garber refused to accept the Trump administration’s demands. Read those letters here. Further letters on that subject received after the online publication of those alumni voices, and letters regarding the magazine’s other contents, are excerpted below.

I graduated from Harvard in 1968 and until today, I never bought one piece of Harvard memorabilia—no Harvard chairs, no Harvard sweatshirts. That all ended when Harvard had the balls to stand up to Trump. I just ordered a Harvard t-shirt. It’s the least I can do to say that I’m proud of my alma mater.

Frank E. Perron III ’68
Bradenton, Fla.

Never have I been prouder!

Norton F. Tennille Jr., A.M. ’63, J.D. ’68
Cape Town, South Africa

I was so happy and proud to hear President Garber’s decision to stand firm on the principles embodied in Harvard and all other private schools. Even if it means a contraction in the overall scope of Harvard’s reach, it is better to be smaller and have integrity.

Billy Adams, M.B.A .’74
Heathsville, Va.

Despite your long list of supporters, I have never been more disappointed with Harvard. I know I am not the only voice of dissent.

James Gerard Ryan Jr. ’82
Pawleys Island, S.C.

In his letter to Harvard’s president after receiving word that he had received an honorary degree from the College in 1852, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote: “It was within [your] walls that the first and greatest propositions of civil and political liberty were supported, close to a century ago.” Today, Tocqueville would be proud that President Garber and Harvard’s current leaders have chosen to uphold its 250-year tradition of support for our democratic rights and freedoms by standing up to the Trump administration’s outrageous demands.

Robert T. Gannett Jr. ’72
Chicago, Ill.

As an alumnus and a father of an alumna, I have been disgusted by Harvard’s long history of overt racism and antisemitism. In the 1920s, Harvard adopted admissions policies intended to restrict the percentage of Jewish students at Harvard. The United States Supreme Court has held that Harvard’s admission program involved “racial stereotyping.” More recently, Harvard settled lawsuits by two groups alleging that Harvard violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by not sufficiently protecting its Jewish and Israeli students. As a non-Jew, I was appalled at Harvard’s failure to address antisemitism following the horrific events of October 7, 2023. At the time, my concerns were condescendingly dismissed by members of the Harvard faculty.

Rather than do the right thing and adopt meaningful reforms, Harvard has now decided to portray itself as a champion of academic freedom. However, no private institution has a right to demand that taxpayers continue to fund discrimination, exclusion, and intolerance. It would be far better for Harvard if the administration focused on how to address the institutional racism and antisemitism on its campus that it has long promoted and tolerated.

Keith Paul Bishop ’78
Carson City, Nev.

As a Jewish undergraduate who experienced occasional antisemitic words and attitudes in the 1950s, a close observer of student demonstrations against the war in Gaza, and a psychiatrist who has for 20 years led programs of population-wide trauma healing in both Israel and Gaza, I am sensitive to and deeply troubled by—actually, pissed off by—pro-Palestinian demonstrators whose critique of Israeli policy degenerated into hateful attacks on Jews and Judaism. And I know that the Harvard administration, though perhaps plodding in its response, parsing with difficulty the distinctions between protecting free speech and permitting threats of violence, also deplores these verbal and political attacks.

I am also pretty sure, as is just about every American Jew I know, that the Trump crusade against antisemitism is a façade erected by a president and advisors who find common cause with antisemitic white nationalists.

I never felt it necessary to provide support for an institution with a $50 billion endowment. Now, that’s changed. I’m going to give Harvard ten times more than I ever have. I urge the hundreds and thousands who have ever benefited from a Harvard education to do the same.

James S. Gordon ’62, M.D. ’66
Washington, D.C.

I see no problem with the recent federal cutbacks in University funding. With a large endowment and helpful legacies, institutions like Harvard should survive on their own. Invite a study of painless cost-cuttings by DOGE. When I was an undergrad, I worked in the College kitchens to earn my meals and served as a receptionist in the Boylston Library while I studied German history and literature. Still received a magna plus toward summa on my honors thesis! And had a great experience!

Walter S. Rowland ’61
Wilmington, Del.

The term “antisemitism” has been weaponized to an extreme for political purposes to silence discussion, thoughts, and action about life and death matters beyond Jewish life. The term itself without clear definition, in context with all other harmful antipathy towards other national, ethnic, religious, and gender groups, is still a weapon that will be used against Harvard, other universities, and people throughout democratic societies.

Considering that Jewish members of Harvard’s community have supported positions, activities, and speech that another portion of Harvard’s Jewish community feels threatened by suggests that “antisemitism” isn’t the best term to describe what is occurring. I personally would hold a meeting with a broad spectrum of Jewish members of the Harvard community to discuss how to apply the term “antisemitism” while equally protecting all Harvard community members from attacks based on their identities, which include their ideas.

David A. Souers, M.Arch. ’82
Friendship, Me.

President Trump’s clumsy and destructive so-called “efforts to address antisemitism” seemed designed both to divide and conquer, and even to incite antisemitism. For many of us concerned about rising antisemitism, this bullying and authoritarian behavior is infuriating and demands the firm resistance Harvard has shown.

On the other hand, it does concern me that some alumni seem to express the view that there is not dangerous antisemitism within the University, as well as the country. Antisemitism is not disagreeing about policy. It is about negative attitudes and actions directed against a group of people based on their religious identity. Claiming that antisemitism was not in evidence because Jewish members of the Harvard community differ over policy is akin to saying there is no racism because Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and other black leaders differ about the need for DEI.

I would suggest that anyone wondering about the level of antisemitism could simply have walked through the Yard during the protests, as I did, wearing a Star of David. The verbal attacks, and even threatening behavior, was as startling to experience on campus as it was worrisome about the influences permeating the University student body. This is a problem that must be addressed. However, it is a problem that should be addressed within and by the University alone.

Janice Zarro Brodman, Ph.D. ’83
Arlington, Mass.

As an Israeli-born immigrant to the United States and a Jewish American, I want to congratulate Harvard on its firm response to the Trump administration.

A year and a half ago, after the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, I was profoundly disappointed to watch how Harvard handled the protests on its campus, protests that clearly went beyond legitimate First Amendment expressions and threatened the constitutional rights of Jewish students and faculty and the right to be educated without harassment. Since then, I have been watching the Harvard community grapple, through a laudable, systemic, and democratic process, with a whole range of First Amendment and racism issues affecting not just Jewish students, but also Muslims, Asians, and other minorities.

In my 79 years, I still recall how many Wall Street law firms would not hire ANY member of a minority group. For decades, Harvard has been a civil rights champion in addressing these issues, on behalf of all of us. We urge you to continue the good fight for justice for a better world. We stand ready to contribute our financial resources to help you.

Joshua Bar-Lev, J.D. ’70
Portland, Ore.

Major human rights organizations, as well as Jewish organizations like Jewish Voices for Peace and If Not Now, have decried the killing of more than 50,000 Palestinians, including mostly women and children and many human rights workers, calling it “genocide.” Many of us Jewish alumni and students, inspired by Judaism’s long and admirable history of support for social justice for all, have stood with the Palestinian people in their desire for peace and a homeland. It is deeply disturbing to see pro-Palestinian protests deemed “antisemitic,” with students penalized, kicked out, and now even deported by ICE.

Of course if any pro-Palestinian activism devolves into physical or verbal attacks on Jewish students or faculty, it should be condemned. But it seems that such attacks are quite rare. Being critical of Israel, or even being anti-Zionist, as many Jews have historically been, including the ultra-Orthodox, is not antisemitism.

Susan (Schwartz) Jhirad ’64, Ph.D. ’72
Peabody, Mass.

The May-June issue of Harvard Magazine informed the Harvard community that editor John S. Rosenberg is retiring. His service and commitment to excellence have been important to all who welcome fine writing, fairness, and objectivity. I believe John’s work has been crucial to one of the premier college publications in our nation. I and surely [the entire] Harvard community wish John and his family well.

John is also departing with a final flair, his brilliant essay, “Playing Offense” (page 4). It is my hope that all of us within the Harvard community read and support John’s words. We all need to ask ourselves what can, what should be done to address the assault on universities, their values, standards, and processes that President Trump and his staff and supporters have unleashed upon higher education in general and Harvard in particular. For me, the answer is action and support. Each of us should double our contributions to Harvard, whether that means an additional $100 or many, many thousands of dollars.

I support the actions of President Alan M. Garber and all those within Harvard who also realize that this battle must be fought, without reluctance or hesitancy. Harvard has and will continue to change, to alter policies and practices that require attention. However, first and foremost, we must preserve our institution, our democratic system of government, our values, and the practices that have made our universities the jewel in the universe of higher education. Improvements, of course, but not under the threat of outrageous demands, loss of research funds, or the unbelievable suggestion of eliminating the tax-exempt status of universities.

Many of us have few occasions to do the right thing, at least a right thing of significance. Now is the time to take advantage of the opportunity before us. We can prevail and we will feel good about doing our best to do what is right. Act and persist.

Don Bergmann, J.D. ’66
Westport, Conn.

Gender Gaps

I read and re-read your excellent article “The New Gender Gaps”—subtitled “Boys and men are falling behind in education, employment, and health. What can help?”—but found no clear recognition of parents’ role in guiding and encouraging their sons in all three spheres that you mention.

When educators and other professionals fail to recognize our key role—and support us in fulfilling it effectively—is it any wonder that we and our young people find ourselves adrift? Parenting education, especially parent peer support, has to play a much larger role in schools, workforce development, and public health. As things are now, both the provision of parenting programs and participation in them are severely limited by stigma resulting from the common misconception that they are for parents with problems or those whose children have problems.

Can we make parenting education universal? If we do not, parents and professionals both will continue to see our boys and young men fail to achieve the success that they deserve and the lives we all want for them.

Eve Sullivan, M.A.T. ’66
Cambridge, Mass.

An interesting and timely snapshot of research in this area. However, I think it sidesteps three important issues.

First: The opening paragraph invokes the same tropes about boys’ supposedly more “somatic” nature that the manosphere traffics in. What of boys who don’t fit that model, who like to read, who can sit still and focus, etc.? You literally do not mention such boys even once in this article. Any “fix” which claims them as collateral damage is worse than no fix at all. When presented with success cases, it pays to study them.

Second: “The [American Institute for Boys and Men] has an unofficial motto: ‘Keep it boring.’ Reeves explains, ‘Too much of the discussion about gender just gets caught up in the froth of the culture war.’” OK, avoid the froth, but culture may be the single biggest factor in keeping men stuck. This article largely ignores culture until the last few paragraphs, where it seems an afterthought.

In many cultures, but especially in America, boys are still valued more for brawn than brains. Gentle or studious boys are often ostracized as ‘nerds.’ Such cultural conditioning makes all the other pathologies addressed in this article almost inevitable.

Third: Regarding employment or employability, any discussion has to acknowledge the 800-pound gorilla in the room: robotics and AI. Both men and women are going to find whole categories of work disappearing in front of them. We do not seem to be preparing for this inevitability, and I fear that boys are, again, less prepared than girls. This could lead to dangerous levels of instability and violence.

Charles Hsu ’79
San Francisco, Cali.

A great read on a too-long neglected subject. Why have boys and men fallen behind?

Some reasons are clear to anyone who has been paying attention over the last 50 years. A decline in the number of functioning dads in homes; decades of inattention to, and reduced opportunities for, boys in favor of girls and women; decades of hearing how oppressive, chauvinist, and toxic their masculinity is, and how the feminine is the ideal; an era of disdain toward the working class by educated elites that continues to this day; the fanatical pursuit of everything coed that ignored Piaget’s classic theory of the latency period in child development—a time from ages six to 11 when boys and girls naturally retreated into same-sex friend groups that nurtured them and prepared them to reemerge, fortified, at adolescence.

Kudos to Social Finance CEO Tracy Palandjian ’93 for her brilliant work with trades training and employment. And never underestimate the magic that can happen when adults in a community simply come to a classroom or a youth organization, a church or a street corner and talk about their work—and the path(s) it takes to get there. How else are boys and girls to know what is possible for them?

Susan Smart ’71
Belmont, Mass.

Many researchers seem to have just discovered the employment problems and despair of low-income men. Over 25 years ago, I was investigating the dire economic conditions of midlife men and finding the data needed to make the case. Through the lens of ageism, I was able to see clearly that job discrimination was “backing down the life course” to target younger men in their work lives. In the 1990s it was already obvious that age discrimination was hitting men in their forties and fifties (through well-known factors like outsourcing and deindustrialization). Their employment rate had been dropping.

Their sons were watching this, and every male generation was doing worse, as unionization weakened and politicians even in the Democratic party did nothing to prevent the losses.

Women were doing better than their mothers, but men were not. Neoliberalism was raising women’s wages in comparison to men’s by lowering men’s wages.

Alarmed by the problems and disturbed by the academic silence, I continued to publish on these topics in books and articles on ageism.

This painful history is not told to blow my own horn. On the contrary. It’s the right time to figure out why I failed. My research, keywords, and advice arose out of a humanistic approach to ageism when it was the social sciences that held the epistemic keys. My politics came out of left field when the center-right refused to notice. Now I write out of the deep discouragement of a Cassandra who could not find the right audience for a vast, tragic American story.

Margaret Morganroth Gullette ’62, Ph.D. ’75, Bunting Fellow ’87
Newton, Mass.

The article on “The New Gender Gaps” was enlightening and also worrisome. However, I was surprised at the lack of inclusion of statistics on psychiatric medications prescribed for boys and young men. As the article states, boys tend to learn differently and have been struggling with the confines of traditional teaching methods as well as a host of other social changes. Hence, they are drugged more often to “fit in.” Side effects of these popular drugs (Abilify, Lexapro, Zoloft, Paxil, Wellbutrin, Celexa, Seroquel, Xanax, etc.) include mental/mood changes, suicidal/homicidal ideation, insomnia, irregular heartbeat, anxiety, and the list goes on. These are drugs that are administered to almost one out of every 10 boys in this country.

We are bringing up a generation of children who are not able to learn the life skills of problem-solving, overcoming barriers, and weathering the normal storms of loss, failure, grief, and depression that require perseverance, work, and support to overcome. They cannot learn these skills because they think a doctor or a nurse practitioner or a physician assistant or a counselor or a psychiatrist or a psychologist or a parent or a medication should fix it for them.

The game of life is a rocket ride of ups and downs. Professionally (which includes working at Harvard University Health Services) and personally, I have seen that chemically trying to subtract the “downs” also subtracts the “ups.” Let’s stop drugging our children and help them learn how to live.

Elizabeth Bartlett
Stoneham, Mass.

I was disheartened to see, as the cover story in the May-June issue of Harvard Magazine, “Falling Behind: Boys, men, and the new gender gaps.” There was a cover story in Business Week by journalist Michelle Conlin, whose title was almost exactly the same: “The New Gender Gap.” The subtitle was, “From kindergarten to grad school, boys are becoming the second sex.”

The date of that story was May 2003.

I first noticed the lack of national attention to boys’ and men’s issues in 1994, when the college at which I taught first participated in the one-year-old Ms. Foundation project, “Take Our Daughters to Work Day.” I had already seen data showing how boys were falling behind girls and committing suicides at a much higher rate, and yet in this program, boys were ignored. My letter to the members of the committee that was sponsoring this day at my college pointed out not only this data but the fact that girls were already doing much better in school than boys, and that the boys needed attention, too. My letter was ignored.

This story from more than 30 years ago captures how boys’ and men’s needs have been systematically ignored on the left and why it has taken Harvard and other liberal institutions all this time to notice the problem. Only with Trump’s election in 2024 has there been a flurry of articles and political speeches from those on the left addressing the needs of boys and men.

I was upset, but not at all surprised, by Trump’s win and how the vote of young men helped contribute to it. Two words that are never spoken by liberals when this is discussed—they do not appear at all in the Harvard Magazine article—are “feminist” and “feminism.” The Democrats’ near-total embrace of third-wave feminism since Trump’s election in 2016, and continuing through President Joe Biden’s term, has meant ignoring males. Now, after their historic losses in 2024, many Democrats are finally talking about the needs of boys and men. But is it “too little, too late”?

Mark Sherman, Ph.D. ’69
New Paltz, N.Y.

Thanks to Thomas Kane for his diligent work in the cause of education reform, and thanks to Nina Pasquini for telling his story. In a time when research and reason are under attack, one is buoyed by the knowledge that, in Cambridge, such scholarship is still quite in fashion. One might, however, wonder why it should take a $60 million grant engaging 3,000 teachers in six districts to “confirm the hypothesis that teacher effectiveness was an important variable is student success.” Didn’t we all know that by the end of grammar school? The teacher is the lesson. Magister est lectio.

Until the middle of the last century, America’s sprawling system of free local public schools was the envy of the world. There was no “nation at risk” because of low test scores.

Then, in the 1962 case of Engel v. Vitale, the Supreme Court banned any sort of prayer in public schools. That was followed by the 1963 Abington School District v. Schempp case, which banned the reading of the Bible. Whatever one’s personal views, it must be admitted that these rulings resulted in the swift and surgical secularism of public education in the Unted States. According to the U.S. Department of Education, “Student scores on standardized tests have steadily declined since 1965.” Might there be a cause-effect relationship here, or is this merely coincidental?

In 1901 and 1902, Harvard psychologist William James delivered Gifford Lectures on natural theology at the University of Edinburgh—later published as The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. In that groundbreaking work, James argued, “In critically judging of the value of religious phenomena, it is very important to insist on the distinction between religion as an individual personal function, and religion as an institutional, corporate, or tribal product.” 
 

The New York State Regent’s Prayer, found to violate the First Amendment of Constitution, consisted of only twenty-two words: 
 

Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee,
and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country. Amen. 
 

Did that prayer establish an institutional religion, or did it merely encourage individual religious life? Perhaps Harvard’s school of education could conduct a $60 million experiment to confirm another widely held hypothesis—that “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.”

T. Robinson Ahlstrom, T.H.M. ’93
Chicago, Ill.

Freedom of Speech

My grandfather, Zechariah Chafee, gave 40 years of his life teaching at the Law School. During the Sedition Act cases and in the postwar period of the late 1940s and early 1950s, he became renowned for his advocacy of freedom of speech that yields open discussion. He believed, with Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., that the only speech that could be barred was speech that represented a clear and present danger. Political agitation, even if it incites violation of the law but [poses] no immediate danger, can never be punished, whether in peace or wartime. “[W]hile national welfare doubtless demands that [a] just war be pushed to victory, it also demands that an unjust war be stopped. The only way to find out whether a war is unjust is to let people say so,” my grandfather wrote in 1918. He would applaud open discussion of the current Middle Eastern wars in the public square and in universities, and especially at Harvard.

Claire Chafee-Bahamon, S.M. ’76
Medford, Mass.

On Farewell

Dear Mr. Rosenberg,

Congratulations on your tenure as editor of Harvard Magazine. Your coverage of the University’s finances was outstanding. You showed tremendous courage and tact year after year. Thank you very much for that and for your service to the magazine and the University.

John Kirsch ’60
Cambridge, Mass.

I’ve not personally met John Rosenberg, who bid us a “Fond Farewell” in the May-June issue (page 2) announcing his retirement as Harvard Magazine’s editor. However, as a faithful reader for the 30 years of his stewardship, I feel I’ve come to know John and, therefore, write to let him and fellow readers know that his contributions to the Harvard community have been extraordinary.

For most of us, Harvard Magazine is our ultimate and consistent “connector” to all things we need to know about Harvard—past, present, and future—alum and faculty bios, notes, obits, current events, and future plans.

John has recruited and mentored an outstanding professional staff that makes the informative bimonthly magazine and online versions possible.

Connecting with and keeping a community as broad and diverse as Harvard’s informed from an independent perspective is an important and challenging responsibility that John has fulfilled with fidelity, integrity, and distinction.

“Through change and through storm,” John’s written observations of complex and controversial issues have been presented with balance and sensitivity through six Harvard presidential terms and transitions. See, for example, his well-reasoned and candid essay “Playing Offense” (May-June, page 4) in which he outlines a bold, values-based game plan at a time when higher education and Harvard in particular are under attack.

A pragmatic visionary and strategist, John’s thought leadership, voice, and pen will surely be missed and remembered with applause and gratitude.

Paul G. Kirk, Jr. ’60, LL.B. ’64
Marstons Mills, Mass.

On Viewpoint Diversity

Much is made of Harvard’s efforts to promote diversity. How about some effort to achieve at least a modicum of diversity when it comes to political perspective and thought?

The latest Crimson survey of the faculty found about three percent admitting they were politically conservative. How can you expect real dialogue and exchange of thought on political philosophy under those circumstances?

Thomas J. Reitze ’69
St. Petersburg, Fla.

The Hippocampus

Regarding the great article “Why Taxi Drivers Don’t Die of Alzheimer’s”: Most of us won’t become London taxi drivers. But we all can play duplicate bridge and gain similar defenses against dementia—learning the bidding conventions, the play of the hand, and the need in every hand to have a strategy and the ability to continually adjust that strategy based on bids or play by one’s partner or the competing team. And it’s another way to avoid social isolation and the impact it can have on many age-related health problems.

Jim Sorensen, M.B.A. ’64
Allentown, Penn.

Alice Hamilton

I enjoyed Daniel Stone’s recent article about Alice Hamilton, the first woman admitted to the Harvard faculty (as an assistant professor in the department of industrial medicine). She was an indefatigable crusader against TEL (tetraethyl lead), an anti-knock gasoline additive commercialized by the Ohio industrialist Charles Kettering.

I was interested in this article for three reasons:

1) I am a graduate of both HMS and HSPH and had heard her name but was unfamiliar with her specific work;

2) my first scientific paper, “Effect of tetraethyl lead on learning and memory in the rat,” was published in the Archives of Environmental Health in 1966; and

3) before retiring to Massachusetts, I lived in Kettering, Ohio, a stone’s throw from Ridgeleigh Terrace, Kettering’s home—the first house in the United States with electric air conditioning using the powerful ozone-depleter Freon [a trademark name for a class of halocarbon products used as refrigerants].

In a May 1925 government conference in Washington, D.C., Hamilton publicly “accused Midgley [TEL’s inventor] and Kettering [his boss] of negligence” and referred to them as “willful murderers.” Hamilton retired from Harvard in 1935. In 1936, Harvard conferred an honorary Doctor of Science degree upon Kettering.

John D. Bullock, M.D. ’68, M.P.H. ’03
Bedford, Mass.

Harvard Wireless Club

It was a pleasure to read Max J. Krupnick’s article “Small Talk, From Afar” in this month’s issue (May-June, page 57). I wish Leo Koerner every success with his plans to rejuvenate the Harvard Wireless Club. My roommate Monty Shultes ’61 and I derived great enjoyment from the historic station W1AF throughout our undergraduate years.

I should note that our ham station also offered the opportunity to communicate in Morse code, a passion that I cultivated. This method of radio transmission is far less susceptible to interference from other signals and offers the opportunity to communicate over greater distances under favorable atmospheric conditions while occupying narrower bandwidth.

Thomas B. Merritt ’61, LL.B. ’66
Littleton, N.H.

An Original Magna Carta

I have two cavils regarding the web story “An Original Magna Carta, Hidden in Plain Sight” (see harvardmag.com/magna-carta). First, the article states, “A group of rebellious barons forced King John to sign it, establishing fundamental rights such as due process and habeas corpus, a legal concept that guarantees freedom from illegal imprisonment.” In fact, King John did not actually sign the charter; the charter was authenticated by affixing the royal seal. Second, the article uses the definite article “the” when referring to the charter. The charter was written in Latin, which does not employ articles, definite or indefinite. Therefore, the charter is simply “Magna Carta.”

Keith Paul Bishop ’78
Carson City, Nev.

On Word Choice

I understand that Mr. Rosenberg has retired, but I hope that this letter will be forwarded to him and that it will influence the new editor’s choice of words when referring to Israelis and members of other nationalities who were murdered in Hamas captivity.

In his article, “In the Crosshairs,” Mr. Rosenberg wrote: “After an employee tore down posters depicting a deceased Israeli infant, one of Hamas’s hostages, the University confirmed that the person was ‘no longer affiliated’ with Harvard” (May-June, page 19).

Why the word “deceased” instead of “died” or, what really should have been written, “murdered”?

As the video of the kidnapping of Kfir Bibas, his mother Shiri, and his four-year-old brother Ariel clearly shows, all three were healthy when they were kidnapped.

Why could Mr. Rosenberg not bring himself to write: “...tore down posters depicting Kfir Bibas, an infant abducted with his mother and four-year-old brother, all three murdered by Hamas”?

Elisabeth Bruss Saunders, Ed.D. ’79
Toronto, Canada

The Fate of Lab Monkeys

Editor’s note: In the wake of federal funding cuts, the fate of primates used in tuberculosis research conducted at Harvard and elsewhere received renewed attention. Harvard closed its primate research facility in May 2015.

No monkey has ever emerged from Harvard’s laboratories alive. Donors who pledge to “support the monkeys” or keep them “safe” are unwittingly sentencing them to continue to live in fear and anguish in tiny metal boxes and die in painful ways.

As a former government inspector, I’ve seen firsthand how our fellow primates suffer in laboratories. I’ve seen them strapped into restraint chairs, injured and aching, intentionally deprived of water so that they’ll do whatever is demanded of them in exchange for a few drops of juice. I’ve watched them reach with broken and missing fingers through their cage bars toward friends who were being harmed in a futile attempt to stop the assault. What goes on in laboratories would deeply upset and enrage any kind person.

Supporting the monkeys and keeping them safe means allowing them to retire to sanctuaries—which PETA will arrange—and preventing more from being snatched from their forest homes and families or bred by supply companies in this country by embracing readily available, advanced, sophisticated, animal-free testing methods.

Ingrid Newkirk
President, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)
Washington, D.C.

On Homelessness

Homelessness is a major crisis in our country that many people overlook because it does not affect them personally. I was impressed by the article, “The Homelessness Public Health Crisis” by Lydialyle Gibson (May-June 2024). Sharing the story of Shawn Pleasants was touching and eye-opening because it shows that even someone who worked on Wall Street and graduated from Yale can end up homeless. Oftentimes, individuals in our country have a “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” mentality, creating biases and stereotypes that those who are homeless are homeless at the fault of their own. Roughly one in 500 Americans sleep somewhere public, which further emphasizes the crisis we are facing.

I watched one of my parents become homeless and sleep in a warehouse. Nobody ever thinks they will experience it until they do. In reality, over half of Americans are just a paycheck away from being homeless themselves. There need to be more policies in place protecting and helping those who are homeless. In the meantime, communities can begin to volunteer and shed light on the homeless population in their city.

Mikayla Ramey

Harvard Votes

I just received the 2025 Harvard Overseer and Alumni Associations ballots, and note the voting procedure is a straight forward “At-Large" election. Which has the virtue of simplicity, but is easily manipulated, and should be replaced with a fairer system.

In an at-large election, imagine there are six open seats and ten candidates You can vote for up to six, and the top six vote recipients win. Fair enough. But now imagine 60% of a district are “orange” and they only run six orange candidates. Now the orange bloc can win every seat in an at-large election, and permanently disenfranchise a minority population. For this reason, at-large elections are almost universally banned (sadly there are still egregious cases here in Massachusetts, like in Everett).

Proportional methods such as cumulative voting break this tyranny of the majority. Here, voters can bundle all or some of their allocated six votes towards a single candidate, and thus a minority group can obtain a seat at the table.

In the greater scheme of things, and given the barbarians are at the door, voting methods are probably not the university’s highest priority. But it’s also easy to fix. I’m not claiming there have been huge injustices in the recent past, but we should adopt best practices.

Greg Blonder, Ph.D. ’79
Brookline, Mass.