On June 29, Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) named Betsy Fischer Martin, the longtime NBC News political producer and leader of American University’s Women & Politics Institute, as the next director of HKS’s Institute of Politics (IOP).
Past IOP directors have modeled different aspects of political life, reflecting the Institute’s priorities at a given moment.
In 1987, for example, the IOP made a conscious choice to appoint a director who had held elected office: former Republican governor of Pennsylvania Richard Thornburgh. With that “change of emphasis,” the IOP wanted to encourage students “to take a fly at elective office” too.
Like Thornburgh's appointment nearly four decades ago, Fischer Martin’s appears to reflect a particular educational priority: creating spaces where political figures from across the spectrum are expected to engage seriously with rigorous questioning and respectful debate.
Fischer Martin spent decades as the producer of NBC News’s Meet the Press, where Tim Russert’s exacting interviews made the program a major stop for presidential candidates of both parties seeking to show they could answer tough questions. HKS’s announcement emphasized her “rigor” and “demonstrated track record of fostering the most important political conversations across party lines.” The announcement also included quotes from both former House Speakers Nancy Pelosi and Paul Ryan praising her ability to convene across party lines.
For students, Fischer Martin models a different kind of political participation. Earlier directors came from elected office, government service, and political management; Fischer Martin’s career was built around creating forums where political platforms and arguments were scrutinized on their merits. At the IOP, that experience can help students see rigorous inquiry as central to politics, rather than secondary to partisan loyalty.
The need for that model is especially clear after a period of strain around the IOP’s role as a forum where a wide range of political views can be heard and debated. In 2024 alone, the IOP student president argued in The Crimson that the IOP could “no longer be nonpartisan,” and students tried to deplatform Senator Joe Manchin at an IOP event.
Since then, the IOP has shown momentum toward recommitting to that role. Following the student president’s op-ed, then-director Setti Warren reaffirmed the IOP’s nonpartisan purpose, and created mentorship opportunities for the conservative students the op-ed had tried to sideline. After Warren’s death, Beth Myers and Ned Price expanded Warren’s work through their interim co-directorship. Now, Fischer Martin’s appointment places that momentum in the hands of a permanent director whose background is especially suited to the task.
If Fischer Martin’s appointment does strengthen the IOP’s role as a forum where a wide range of political views can be heard and examined, the Institute will ultimately be judged by more than whether it attracts prominent speakers. Are its conversations rigorous enough that everyone, including the guest speaker, learns something? Do students leave better prepared to listen, debate, and engage with seriousness and respect — both within and across political difference? An institute built to inspire students toward politics and public service must also prepare them to think critically and ask what path best serves the public, not just view politics as something to win.
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That’s the issue with FAS’s structural deficit: the endowment already funds more than half of FAS’s budget each year, so drawing more from it wouldn’t solve the mismatch between recurring costs and recurring revenues. If that revenue base is proving insufficient, drawing more from the endowment just weakens the same revenue base FAS depends on going forward.
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Whistleblower Suit Against Harvard Catalyst Over NIH Grant Fraud Moves Forward
On June 23, Judge Myong Joun in the District of Massachusetts allowed two False Claims Act claims over National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant funding to proceed against Harvard and Harvard Medical School (HMS) professor Lee Nadler (MD ’73), rejecting their bid to dismiss them.
The ruling is part of a whistleblower suit brought by David Zielinski, former executive director of Harvard Catalyst (formerly the Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center). Zielinski alleges Harvard and Nadler, who is also the founder of Harvard Catalyst and the HMS dean for clinical and translational research, received more than $250 million in NIH funding based on false statements in grant applications and progress reports.
Zielinski alleges Harvard Catalyst repeatedly certified that it would perform specific grant-funded work, then abandoned or repurposed much of that work without approval. In one example, he alleged the center failed to complete 41 of 56 aims in its 2018-2023 grant application, including 21 aims for which no work was done.
Harvard argued the claims were implausible because NIH was substantially involved in overseeing the cooperative agreements and could have reviewed annual reports before renewing the grants. The judge rejected that argument at this stage, writing that “the very purpose of those fraudulent statements is to keep NIH in the dark,” even with NIH’s “substantial involvement in the administration of the grant.”
The judge didn’t rule on whether Zielinski’s allegations are true, only that Zielinski pleaded enough for the case to proceed. He allowed Zielinski’s false claims and false records counts to move forward, while dismissing a third count alleging Harvard and Nadler improperly avoided repaying NIH funds. He gave Harvard and Nadler 14 days to respond to the two surviving claims.
Claybaugh Urges Faculty To Prepare for New Cap on A Grades During Transition Year
In an email to Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) faculty, Harvard College Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh (PhD ’01) encouraged faculty to begin revising their grading practices this fall, ahead of the cap on A’s taking effect in academic year 2027-28.
In May, faculty voted to cap A grades in undergraduate courses at 20% of enrollment, plus four additional A’s per course. The cap is designed to restore meaning to FAS’s existing grading system, which says an A signals “extraordinary distinction” while an A-minus signals “mastery.”
Claybaugh acknowledged that without changes to grading practices, students’ concern that the cap could force “arbitrary distinctions” between students with nearly identical scores is “very reasonable,” explaining, “to guard against arbitrary distinctions, we’ll need to change the way we grade.” She also shared new guidance from the Bok Center for Teaching and Learning on best practices for achieving the grading cap’s distribution.
Claybaugh said several large introductory courses have already agreed to stay within the cap this year, including Computer Science 50, Life Sciences 1A, Economics 10a and 10b, Humanities 10, Psychology 1, Expository Writing courses, and introductory math courses.
Brendan Kelly, director of Introductory Math, said three of Harvard’s five largest introductory math courses had already achieved the cap’s distribution.
Harvard College Cost of Attendance To Exceed $91,000 Next Year, Outpacing Inflation
Harvard College’s total cost of attendance (COA) will rise more than 5% for the 2026-27 academic year (AY) to $91,634, continuing a recent pattern of increases that outpace inflation.
According to a Crimson analysis, if Harvard’s cost had tracked inflation from AY 2025-26 to 2026-27, next year’s price would be roughly $88,300 — about $3,300 below Harvard’s actual listed cost. Across Harvard College’s undergraduate enrollment, that gap amounts to roughly $22 million in additional listed costs before accounting for financial aid.
Among peer institutions, only Yale has shown a similarly steady acceleration in inflation-adjusted cost growth in recent years, though several Ivies, including Columbia, Brown, and Dartmouth, will list higher COAs than Harvard next year.
The increase comes as Harvard expands financial aid. More than half of undergraduates receive need-based aid, and beginning in AY 2025-26, Harvard became free for families earning less than $100,000 annually, while families earning less than $200,000 attend tuition-free.
Last year, the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Harvard for internal documents on tuition and financial aid as part of an investigation into alleged tuition-fixing by Ivy League schools; Harvard denied wrongdoing and called the subpoena “unwarranted, unfair, and unnecessary.”
Harvard Faculty, Staff, and Affiliates Publish Letter Supporting Jewish and Israeli Students
A group of 170 Harvard faculty, staff, and affiliates published an open letter affirming their support for Jewish and Israeli students and arguing that antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias remain problems on campus.
The letter responds to a March 2026 open letter from Jewish Harvard faculty and staff opposing the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Title VI lawsuit against Harvard. In that letter, the professors said the DOJ “cynically exploits concerns about antisemitism” and the “climate of ‘hostile antisemitism’” that the DOJ portrays is “a Harvard that we do not recognize.”
The new letter says that while “we understand why colleagues question the merits and motives of the Title VI lawsuit,” turning a “blind eye to the fact that many Jewish and Israeli students have suffered harassment and discrimination” is “misleading and hurtful.”
It points to examples documented by Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias, published in 2025, and adds new incidents from the past year of Jews and Israelis at Harvard hiding their identities — including by wearing baseball caps over kippot, tucking in Star of David necklaces, and removing Jewish-sounding names or activities from resumes.
Two letter signatories, Harvard Medical School (HMS) professor Mark Poznansky and Mass General-Brigham affiliate Jacqueline Hart (AB ’87), also published an op-ed arguing that antisemitism at Harvard has become less overt but more socially isolating. Among other incidents shared, they wrote that some Jewish and Israeli students have told peers they are from California rather than Israel, or said they studied abroad rather than mentioning time in Israel, to avoid ostracization or disinvitation from social groups and events.
ED Temporarily Broadens “Professional Degree” List for Higher Loan Caps After Court Order
The Department of Education (ED) issued interim guidance expanding which graduate programs will be treated as “professional degrees” for purposes of the new federal student loan caps that took effect July 1.
On June 24, a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia temporarily stayed part of ED’s final rule, finding that ED used too narrow a definition of “professional degree” to determine which programs qualify for the higher loan caps of $50,000 per year and $200,000 total. The court said that in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), Congress adopted an open-ended definition that listed examples of professional degrees; ED’s rule turned that definition into a closed list.
ED said that, while it continues to defend its rule in court, it will temporarily treat 29 program categories as professional degrees during the stay. The expanded list now includes several nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy, physician assistant, and psychology programs.
For Harvard, the update appears to leave the professional loan-qualifying programs unchanged from ED’s final rule. Harvard Law School’s JD, Harvard Medical School’s MD, Harvard School of Dental Medicine’s DMD, and Harvard Divinity School’s MDiv qualify for the professional-student cap; other graduate programs have a cap of $20,500 per year and $100,000 total.
More News
More News at Harvard
Harvard School of Dental Medicine: “Dental school leaders chart a path for the future of dental education”
The Crimson: “Former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas To Join IOP as Fall Fellow”
FAS Current: “Leading chemist Jeffrey Long to join FAS faculty”
WBUR: “Can a trivia platform help people break their partisan echo chambers?” — feat. Harvard psychology professor Joshua Greene (AB ‘97)
The Crimson: “Harvard Opens First Phase of Enterprise Research Campus in Allston, Touting Affordable Housing”
The Crimson: “HMC Subsidiary Sells Controversial California Vineyard Property”
The Crimson: “Harvard Security Guards Went Years Without Radios at Dozens of Campus Posts”
The Crimson: “Harvard to Launch Online Hub for Accessible Teaching Resources”
Data Colada: “Metadata Falsificada: The Cover-Up File in Gino v. Harvard” — analyzing Harvard's forensic expert's report in Gino v. Harvard, which was recently made public alongside Harvard’s motion to dismiss former HBS professor Francesca Gino's lawsuit against the University
Today: “Harvard’s ‘Taylor Swift Professor’ Shares What She Plans To Teach From Wedding” — feat. English professor Stephanie Burt (AB ‘94), who taught English 183ts: Taylor Swift and Her World
The Crimson: “Harvard To Add Cameras in Security Push Tied to Brown Shooting, Protest Enforcement”
More News Beyond Harvard
Bloomberg: “Brown University’s Rating Outlook Lowered to Negative by Moody’s”
Bloomberg: “ACT Exam to Be Sold to Company That Once Administered the SAT”
New York Times: “Columbia University Has a New President. Again. This One Plans to Stay.”
Forward: “Columbia pledged to revamp its Mideast offerings. The department Trump targeted remains unchanged, to students’ frustration”
Heterodox Out Loud (Heterodox Academy): “The Skill That Built America Has Vanished From Universities” — HxA president John Tomasi’s podcast feat. Harvard University professor Danielle Allen (PhD ‘02)
Wall Street Journal: “M.B.A. Pay Is Drifting Down—and So Is Demand for the Degree”
The Atlantic: “Higher Ed Is Very Sorry”
New York Times: “M.I.T. ‘Embarrassed’ by New Book on Campus Antisemitism, Professor Says”
Fortune: “‘Humanity has chosen to become idiots’: This Brown professor switched to take-home exams after a mass shooting and discovered mass cheating”
New York Times: “U.C. Berkeley Will Start Institute Named for Pelosi”
The Dartmouth: “Dartmouth Divest for Palestine submits second divestment proposal to ACIR”
The Dartmouth: “Pre-professional organizations must have non-selective membership, COSO says”
Higher Ed Dive: “Johns Hopkins lays off 110 employees in the wake of federal research cuts”
Higher Ed Dive: “Virginia and Ohio join effort to design 3-year bachelor's degrees”
Inside Higher Ed: “New ‘SOURCE’ Tracks Private Money to Higher Ed”
Wall Street Journal: “New Student Loan Rules Are Poised to Amp Up Pressure on Colleges”
Wall Street Journal: “The Graduate-School Dropout Toppling China’s Academic Stars”
Wall Street Journal: “Forget Wall Street. Elite Students Are Spending Their Summers on Startup Dreams.”
Bloomberg: “What's Left of the Education Department After Trump Dismantling”
Chronicle of Higher Ed: “The Faculty Workload Myth”
The Economist: “Students are doing worse than you think”
Free the Inquiry (Heterodox Academy): “The Humanities in Crisis? A Discussion on the ‘State of Scholarship in the Humanities’ Report” — feat. HxA president John Tomasi and Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences co-author, University of Hawai’i professor Ashley Rubin
The Boston Globe: “The disability accommodation trap on college campuses” — op-ed by Adam Omary, psychologist and research fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity
New York Times: “A Great University Undermines Its Mission” — editorial by the New York Times Editorial Board
Wall Street Journal Free Expression: “Majoring in Anti-Americanism at the Ivy League” — op-ed by Mary Julia Koch (AB ‘23)