HARVARD ELECTIONS: For Board of Overseers elections, we recommend: Salvo Arena, Nisha Kumar Behringer, Trey Grayson, Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena, and Philip Harrison. For Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) Elected Director elections, we recommend: Mia Esther Alpert, James P. “Jimmy” Biblarz, Allison Charney Epstein, Medha Gargeya, David Lefer, and Jakob Haesler.
In February, we explained that the mission statements of Harvard's schools should function as a clear north star — an organizing principle that helps leaders set priorities, explain them, and return to them when the path forward is unclear. Harvard Medical School’s (HMS) mission statement at the time, centered on nurturing HMS’s own community, made that harder to do.
On Thursday, HMS published a new mission statement alongside a revised set of Community Values. With its revisions, HMS has made its north star clearer.
Previous Mission Statement (adopted 2018)
To nurture a diverse, inclusive community dedicated to alleviating suffering and improving health and well-being for all through excellence in teaching and learning, discovery and scholarship, and service and leadership.
New Mission Statement (adopted 2026)
To improve health and well-being for all through excellence and leadership in teaching and learning, discovery and scholarship, and service and care.
The organizing principle has moved from nurturing HMS’s own community to improving health, pursued through excellence in the core functions of a medical school: education, discovery, and patient care. It’s a mission that puts the truth-seeking work of training and research — Veritas — at the center.
Community still matters, but its role is clearer. As we wrote in January, a serious medical school depends on an inclusive community — not as the mission’s endpoint, but as a condition for achieving it. Expanding HMS’s access to the best talent, and ensuring students can draw from a broad range of experiences and expertise, strengthens its intellectual capacity and makes it more likely that HMS can deliver on its purpose.
HMS now reflects that distinction by placing diversity and inclusion in its Community Values, its set of principles meant to shape the environment in which the mission is carried out. There, HMS describes community members’ “individual perspectives, talents, experiences, and contributions” as “the foundation and drivers of our mission,” alongside norms essential to a rigorous intellectual community: curiosity, critical thinking, and constructive dialogue. The result is a more coherent framework: academic work drives the mission, and community sustains it.
Of course, it's easier to adopt words once than to use them constantly. A mission statement — especially a new one — takes hold when leaders repeat it, and consistently and explicitly tie decisions back to it.
The mission should be front and center during milestones like admitted students weekend, orientation, the annual HMS State of the Union address, Match Day, and commencement. But those moments won’t be enough. The mission has to be called out every day, through constant reinforcement and reminders — whether in staff and faculty meetings, campus-wide emails, new policies, rule enforcement, social media, and more. The ordinary moments will be the most telling.
Like the 2018 HMS mission statement, this new version was developed by a working group with input from the broader HMS community. It’s an encouraging sign about the direction HMS believes it needs to go.
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Q: What do the Board of Overseers and Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) Elected Directors actually do?
The Board of Overseers’ overarching job is academic oversight. It runs Harvard’s “visitation” process, where visiting committees (largely made up of alumni) periodically review the University’s schools, departments, and programs, and report back to the Board on quality and alignment with Harvard’s mission.
HAA Elected Directors focus on alumni engagement. They help guide the HAA’s direction and support programs for alumni to connect with Harvard and each other. They also help nominate candidates for both the Board of Overseers and HAA Board of Directors, which then go to Harvard’s alumni community to vote on each year.
Vote now for our recommended candidates in Harvard’s 2026 Overseer & Harvard Alumni Association Director Elections.
Events
Virtual & New York, NY — April 13 at 7:30 pm ET: President Alan Garber (AB ’76, PhD ’82) will speak with Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker at the 92nd Street Y about the pressures reshaping research universities and their role in American democracy. Register here.
Washington, DC — April 15 from 5:30-8:00 pm ET: Meet HKS Dean Jeremy Weinstein (PhD ‘03) at this HKS on the Road series event. Register here.
New York, NY — April 30 from 7:00-9:00 pm ET: Meet HKS Dean Jeremy Weinstein at this HKS on the Road series event. Register here.
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FYIs
Harvard Graduate Student Union Sets April 21 Strike Deadline
Today, Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Auto Workers (HGSU-UAW) leaders told its members that they will begin a strike on April 21 unless Harvard meets the union’s demands, citing stalled bargaining on issues including wages and protections on non-citizen workers. Earlier this month, 96% of participating union members voted in favor of authorizing a strike if needed.
HGSU-UAW represents Harvard PhD student workers, who play a central role in undergraduate instruction, as they often serve as course teaching fellows (TFs) for at least one semester.
Harvard has previously said that if a strike takes place, it has “a responsibility to maintain continuity in teaching, learning, and research for our students, faculty, and other researchers,” and FAS Dean Hopi Hoekstra told departments to “begin actively planning for the practical implications of a potential work stoppage.”
FAS Faculty Delay Voting on College’s Grading Proposal Until May
The vote had been expected to take place after the meeting via email, but faculty comments ran long and FAS Dean Hopi Hoekstra said the vote will open after remaining comments at May’s meeting are shared (the last meeting of the academic year).
During the meeting, faculty approved a series of amendments to the proposal: all undergraduates enrolled in a course (not just those taking a course for a letter grade) count toward its number of awarded A’s; the proposal’s implementation will be delayed to Fall 2027; and faculty will vote separately on the proposal’s major components, rather than as one integrated package. The three components they will be considering separately for adoption are:
The 20% + 4 cap per course on flat A grades
The Average Percentile Rank system for internal awards
The satisfactory+ / satisfactory / unsatisfactory grading system for courses that opt out of the cap
Also this week, two members of the Subcommittee on Grading that authored the proposal — Joshua Greene (AB ‘97) and Alisha Holland (PhD ‘14) — along with professor Jason Furman (AB ‘92, PhD ‘04), rebut HBS professor Scott Kominers’s (AB ‘09, PhD ‘11) recent op-ed. They argue that Kominers overweights edge cases like Math 55 (and overlooks the proposal’s built-in flexibility for handling them) while underweighting the incentive-driven problem that exists for most students.
Hoekstra Targets Summer Rollout for FAS Administrative Overhaul
In the fall, the staff and faculty-led FAS Task Force on Workforce Planning recommended FAS adopt a “federated” administrative model to preserve area-specific knowledge and processes while improving FAS-wide coordination. Hoekstra accepted the recommendation.
Hoekstra said 10 design teams (80+ faculty and staff) have spent the winter translating that model into designs for core administrative functions. Now, administrative leaders for each FAS function will turn those designs into unit-level organizational proposals for her review. Hoekstra emphasized these will be “pressure-tested” and she’ll evaluate the proposals for how well they work together across FAS to avoid repeating the school’s siloed operations.
FAS has also hired McKinsey & Company to support its workforce planning and cost-cutting effort. The overhaul comes amid a $350+ million, longstanding structural deficit, the University’s $350+ million annual endowment tax (with FAS paying roughly $100 million per year), and continued uncertainty around federal research funding.
FAS, HSPH Weighing Changes to Academic Programs
Multiple Harvard schools have shared plans to explore adapting programs amid financial strain.
FAS is exploring a cross-registration partnership with Yale, Columbia, and Cornell to expand access to less commonly taught languages and help sustain small, high-cost offerings by pooling enrollment across campuses.
FAS’s Foreign Language Advisory Group has proposed a two-year pilot with Columbia beginning in fall 2026, and the proposal — several years in development — was approved unanimously by the FAS Faculty Council at its meeting this month.
At the School of Public Health (HSPH), faculty working groups are weighing changes to the school’s 16 master’s programs, including whether the current mix matches student demand and whether to add additional online or hybrid offerings.
HSPH is also considering whether to define a narrower set of research priorities to better align strategy and fundraising in a less dependable federal funding environment; the working groups are expected to deliver recommendations to Dean Andrea Baccarelli by May.
FAS has a longstanding, $350+ million structural budget deficit it is working to close, and HSPH is Harvard’s school most reliant on federal research funding. In Fiscal Year 2025, 56% of HSPH’s operating revenue came from sponsored support.
Harvard College To Eliminate Pre-Concentration Advisors, Moving To Group Advising Model
Harvard College is revamping its early academic advising for students who have not yet declared a concentration (which happens October of sophomore year). At the end of the academic year, the College will eliminate pre-concentration advisers (PCAs) and replace the one-on-one role with small-group sessions, online guidance, and required proctor-led entryway advising meetings, with Peer Advising Fellows (PAFs) helping facilitate.
The College also plans to pilot an AI chatbot this summer to help the incoming Class of 2030 navigate course planning and academic requirements.
The PCA system was rolled out in fall 2024. Under both this model and earlier advising systems, students have long described uneven one-on-one advising experiences, and many say they end up relying on peers and upperclassmen for practical guidance instead.
More News
More News at Harvard
The Crimson: “Deming Says He Hopes to ‘Push Harder’ on AI, Acknowledges Widespread Student Use”
The Crimson: “Harvard Business School Expands AI Integration Across MBA Curriculum”
Harvard Gazette: “Harvard leaders salute National Security Fellows”
The Crimson: “Judge Rules U.S. Unlawfully Canceled Harvard Medical School Researcher’s Visa”
The Crimson: “At Rebranded Diversity Forum, Garber Calls for More Disagreement to Bolster Harvard’s Academic Mission”
The Crimson: “Harvard Kennedy School Forms Internal Committee to Select Next IOP Director”
The Crimson: “HKS Students Still Want Public Service. They Just Don’t Want Washington Right Now”
The Crimson: “Harvard to Launch New ‘Energy, Climate, and Environment’ Concentration”
The Crimson: “Harvard Divinity School Dean Announces Hindu, Muslim Ministry Initiatives During Asia Trip”
Harvard Business School: “Real-time Lessons in Leadership: A New Methodology in the MBA Classroom”
The Crimson: “From San Francisco to Singapore, HKS Dean Jeremy Weinstein Meets Alumni Where They Are”
The Crimson: “Harvard Economist Ludwig Straub Wins 2026 John Bates Clark Medal”
Fifteen Minutes (The Crimson): “Decoding the Harvard Dropout”
The Crimson: “The Grade Cap Passes the Advanced Game Theory Exam” — Letter to the Editor by members of the Subcommittee on Grading of the Undergraduate Educational Policy Committee Joshua Greene (AB ‘97), and Alisha Holland (PhD ‘14), along with professor Jason Furman (AB ‘92, PhD ‘04), in response to an op-ed by HBS professor Scott Kominers (AB ‘09, PhD ‘11)
The Crimson: “Harvard Shouldn’t Fear Debate” — editorial by The Crimson Editorial Board
The Crimson: “Let the Houses Compete” — editorial by The Crimson Editorial Board
The Crimson: “Divestment Is Futile” — op-ed by Tejas Billa (AB ’28)
Environmental and Urban Economics: “A Critical Analysis of Harvard's New ‘Energy, Climate and Environment’ Major” — by Provost Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California Matthew Kahn
More News Beyond Harvard
Yale Daily News: “Professors face grading dilemma: too many A’s, little taste for limits”
Brown Daily Herald: “Brown Police Chief Rodney Chatman to leave University”
Brown Daily Herald: “Faculty vote to change language on ‘course bunching,’ establish graduate microcertificates”
Bloomberg: “Vanderbilt Acceptance Rate Drops to 2.9% for Regular Decision Hopefuls”
STAT News: “NIH restrictions on foreign research partnerships significantly impacted 1 in 4 U.S. scientists”
Daily Princetonian: “Fewer new classes, less global travel in Fall 2026 course offerings”
U.S. Department of Education: “Victories for American Taxpayers: Eliminating Fraud, Waste, and Abuse Across Federal Student Aid Programs”
National Bureau of Economic Research: “The Economics of Postdoctoral Researcher Positions”
Wall Street Journal: “Is Antisemitism on the Rise Among College Students?” — op-ed discussion by college students
Washington Monthly: “Frappuccino Socialists: A generation of college graduates landed in low-wage jobs. Their frustration is reshaping the labor movement—and dividing the working class.” — by former Obama administration official Kenneth Baer
Noema: “Why A Liberal Arts Education Will Soon Be More Valuable Than Ever” — by Nils Gilman, former associate chancellor at UC Berkeley
Real Clear Education: “The Real Crisis on Campus Isn’t Civility, It’s Meaning” — by Jed Atkins, Dean of the School of Civic Life and Leadership at UNC Chapel Hill
eJewishPhilanthropy: “To combat antisemitism, strengthen American identity” — by Progressive Policy Institute’s Richard Kahlenberg (AB ‘85, JD ‘89)
Note: In last week's newsletter, we described Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory (“SAT/UNS”) grading as a form of a “Pass/Fail” course. Harvard College uses both SAT/UNS and Pass/Fail. SAT/UNS is set for an entire course by the instructor; Pass/Fail is elected by an individual student (with faculty approval) before the 11th Monday of the term.