Harvard Requires Students to Be Vaccinated for Fall

President Bacow releases directive to the community.

Harvard University shield

The University announced today that Harvard, like at least a couple of hundred other institutions of higher education (see The Chronicle of Higher Education’s list here), will require students to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to return to campus this fall.

President Lawrence S. Bacow, Provost Alan M. Garber, Executive Vice President Katie Lapp, and Giang T. Nguyen, executive director of Harvard University Health Services, wrote, “We hope to be able to offer a less restricted, robust on-campus experience for all our students this fall,” assuming rates of infection can be kept low. That will require continued regular coronavirus testing, with details on the regimen forthcoming.

Given the availability of vaccines, and accumulating evidence of their efficacy and safety, they wrote, “To reach the high levels of vaccination needed to protect our community, Harvard will require COVID vaccination for all students who will be on campus this fall. As with existing student requirements for other vaccines, exceptions will be provided only for medical or religious reasons. Students should plan to be fully vaccinated before returning to campus for the fall semester.” International students who cannot arrange for vaccination before the fall semester begins will be offered vaccination on arrival, but may be subjected to additional requirements, such as additional testing. Faculty and staff members, and researchers working on campus, are also expected to be vaccinated.

Read more articles by: John S. Rosenberg

You might also like

Reparations as Public Health

A Harvard forum on the racial health gap

Unionizing Harvard Academic Workers

Pay, child care, workplace protections at issue 

Should AI Be Scaled Down?

The case for maximizing AI models’ efficiency—not size

Most popular

AWOL from Academics

Behind students' increasing pull toward extracurriculars

Why Americans Love to Hate Harvard

The president emeritus on elite universities’ academic accomplishments—and a rising tide of antagonism

The Broken Social Contract

Danielle Allen on America’s broken social contract

More to explore

Darker Days

The current disquiets compared to Harvard’s Vietnam-era traumas

Making Space

The natural history of Junko Yamamoto’s art and architecture

Spellbound on Stage

Actor and young adult novelist Aislinn Brophy