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. Vote by May 19, 2026.
At Harvard, your understanding of the University’s disciplinary standards may depend on which senior leader you listen to.
In August 2024, when asked by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce whether repeated use of “a phrase unambiguously recognized as hate speech” would prompt discipline under Harvard policies, Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker said (p. 47): “I believe so.” When asked whether the contentious phrase “From the River to the Sea” fell under that standard, she responded: “I think it’s antisemitic, as I’ve said over and over again, so I would think it would.”
Last month, in a public talk at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, President Alan Garber — who became Harvard’s president in January 2024 — described the University’s approach differently. Reflecting on the December 2023 congressional hearing involving then-President Claudine Gay, Garber said, “it came across as a question about whether you would punish somebody for saying ‘From the River to the Sea’ . . . And in universities, we tend to follow First Amendment law, and that is not a violation of First Amendment law, no matter how reprehensible it may be.”
Their two accounts point in different directions. Pritzker’s congressional interview suggests Harvard’s rules would result in discipline; Garber’s remarks, by contrast, emphasize First Amendment principles and suggest a narrower basis for discipline. The divergence may reflect the passage of time, Pritzker’s preparation for Congress by her own attorneys, or an actual shift in Harvard’s internal understanding of its policies (although Garber didn’t frame his remarks that way).
Any of those explanations is plausible. What’s harder to resolve is the downstream effect on campus: members of the Harvard community who want most to understand the University’s actual standards don’t have a reliable answer from the people with the most authority to provide one.
That’s especially worth addressing given the problem Pritzker herself identified: she told Congress that Harvard had taken “great pains” to clarify its policies after October 7th after realizing they “were not very clear.” If that process was supposed to clarify where Harvard draws disciplinary lines, these statements by Harvard’s leaders since then may have had the opposite effect.
This ambiguity comes as Harvard students already report high levels of discomfort on the subject. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), the share of Harvard undergraduates who say the Israel-Palestinian conflict is difficult to discuss openly and honestly on campus increased to 73% in 2025 from 38% in 2022. No other topic, from the presidential election (32%) to racial inequality (27%), comes close.
When discomfort is already so high, the last thing Harvard needs is a moving target for how its standards are understood and applied. If its senior leaders are still working to parse out the University’s stance, that conversation should start at home on campus, in concert with the rest of the Harvard community, not only in New York and Washington, D.C.
Ask 1636
Send us your Harvard and higher education questions!
Q: Has Harvard College voted on its grading reform proposal yet?
That vote is currently under way. Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) is voting virtually on the grading proposal between May 12-19, with results expected May 20. Faculty are voting separately on each of the proposal’s three parts: an A cap (20% of enrollment + 4 students per course), replacing GPA with Average Percentile Rank (APR) for internal honors and prizes, and a SAT+ / SAT / UNSAT option for courses that opt out of the A-cap. Refresh on what’s in the proposal here.
Events
Virtual — May 18 at 4 p.m. ET: John Tomasi (President of Heterodox Academy), and Jeffrey Flier (board chair of Heterodox Academy and former Dean of Harvard Medical School) will discuss concerns about political advocacy and ideological signaling at graduation ceremonies and what commencement neutrality looks like in practice. The event will include a live audience Q&A. Register here.
Virtual — May 28 at 3 p.m. ET: Jeffrey Flier (former Dean of Harvard Medical School and chair of the HMS Working Group on Open Inquiry) and Nadine Strossen (former President of the ACLU and Senior Fellow at FIRE) will discuss the working group’s recent report and broader efforts to strengthen open dialogue and academic freedom at Harvard and across academia. The conversation will be moderated by John Evangelakos (President of Harvard Alumni for Free Speech). Register here.
San Francisco, CA — June 10 from 6:00-8:30 p.m. PT: Meet HKS Dean Jeremy Weinstein at this HKS on the Road series event. Register here.
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FYIs
HGSU Urges Faculty To Withhold Final Grades — Including for Seniors — As Graduation Nears
As the Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Auto Workers (HGSU-UAW) continued its strike, the union sent updated guidance to Harvard faculty on how it wants them to handle finals and grading as graduation approaches while the union members pause their teaching and research duties. HGSU urged instructors: “Do not grade any assignments or submit any grades … including grades for seniors,” adding that faculty “should not rely on pre-strike assignments to provide final grades or otherwise give students all A’s, temporary SATs, or other forms of passing grades.”
Addressing concerns about seniors’ ability to graduate, HGSU’s directive says: “We find it unlikely that the Harvard administration will . . . fail to find a way for seniors to be able to graduate — not doing so would create a significant crisis for Harvard leadership.”
In the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), the latest date final grades are technically due is May 18, with Commencement on May 28, 2026. HGSU’s next bargaining sessions are scheduled for May 29, June 9, and June 23. (Read our prior Weekly Briefing for more on the issues HGSU and Harvard are negotiating.)
Harvard Disclosures Reveal Increased Compensation for Gay, Garber, and Narvekar and Rising Legal Fees
Released Friday, Harvard’s Form 990 shows that former president Claudine Gay (PhD ‘98) earned more in calendar year 2024 than in 2023, despite serving as president for only one day before resigning on January 2. Her compensation totaled more than $1.5 million in 2024, up from more than $1.36 million in 2023, when she served six months as president. (Form 990 compensation figures include benefits and housing.)
President Alan Garber (AB ‘76, PhD ‘82) earned over $1.6 million in 2024, after taking over from Gay on January 2.
N.P. “Narv” Narvekar, CEO of Harvard Management Company (HMC), which manages Harvard’s endowment, was Harvard’s highest-paid employee at over $6.2 million. The University’s six highest-paid employees were all HMC officials. (See our prior Weekly Briefing for more on HMC and the new 8% federal endowment tax.)
The three highest-paid professors were all from Harvard Business School — Robin Ely, Nancy Koehn (MPP ‘83, PhD ‘90), and Kathleen McGinn — each earning around $1.9 million, largely due to one-time payouts through a voluntary retirement incentive plan.
The filing also revealed a 58% increase in legal fees, which rose to more than $126 million in fiscal year 2025 (July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025), up from approximately $80 million in FY2024. Even the FY24 figure marks a sharp increase from Harvard’s modern historical norm of around $20 million annually.
Five Faculty Members Named Harvard College Professors for Excellence in Teaching
Last week, Harvard named five faculty members Harvard College Professors, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ highest honor for excellence in undergraduate teaching, advising, and mentoring. The title is awarded for five years.
This year’s honorees were:
Daniel Carpenter, Freed Professor of Government and chair of the Government Department.
Jeff Lichtman, Knowles Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology. Lichtman is also the former FAS dean of science, a role he stepped down from in January.
Hannah Marcus, Professor of the History of Science.
Samantha Matherne, Professor of Philosophy. Matherne is also on the faculty Subcommittee on Grading, which drafted Harvard College’s new grading reform proposal.
Ariel Procaccia, Lin Professor of Computer Science.
Harvard Expands Multi-School Healthcare Research Alliance With Northpond Labs
Harvard has expanded its research alliance with Northpond Labs, the research and development-focused affiliate of Northpond Ventures, to fund translational healthcare research across its Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard Medical School (HMS), the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS).
The partnership builds on a 2020 alliance between Northpond Labs and the Wyss Institute, where funding for the Controlled Enzymatic RNA Synthesis project led to the founding of a scalable RNA synthesis platform startup, EnPlusOne Biosciences.
An undisclosed but “significant” portion of the new funding will go to the Wyss Institute’s Lab for Bioengineering Research and Innovation and to its scientists who work across Wyss, FAS, and HMS. HMS will also receive direct funding to “help de-risk promising therapeutic drug candidates” and move them closer to clinical use.
More News
More News at Harvard
Harvard Radcliffe Institute: “Intellectual Diversity and the Mission of Higher Education”
Harvard Magazine: “Harvard Holds a Symposium on Antisemitism and Universities”
The Crimson: “How Undergraduate Course Assistants Weigh Joining the Picket Line”
The Crimson: “Grad Students Rally Outside Garber’s Home as Strike Enters Third Week”
Boston Globe: “Harvard and MIT sold edX for $800m five years ago. How are they spending the money?”
Harvard Graduate School of Design: “Jamie Blosser Named Curator of the Loeb Fellowship”
Boston Globe: “Harvard’s faculty will vote on limiting the number of A grades for students”
RealClearPolitics: “Harvey C. Mansfield’s Honorable Quest To Educate Harvard” — by former Harvard professor Peter Berkowitz feat. Government professor Harvey Mansfield (AB ’53, PhD ’61)
Fifteen Minutes (The Crimson): “Looking at the World Through a Different Lens”
Harvard Gazette: “Building useful quantum computers ‘in our direct line of sight’” — feat. University Professor Mihkail Lukin
FAS Current: “Where the humanities prove their power” — feat. English professor of the practice James Wood
Harvard Salient: “Harvard's Engineered Ideology” — op-ed by Jason Morganbesser (AB ‘27)
More News Beyond Harvard
Washington Post: “DOJ says Yale medical school discriminated against Asian, White applicants”
Daily Princetonian: “Princeton faculty mandate proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 years of precedent
Wall Street Journal: “‘A’ Grades Are Suddenly Everywhere Since the Arrival of ChatGPT: AI is accelerating grade inflation, research indicates, and making it harder for employers to size up graduates”
Bloomberg: “Nvidia Billionaire Mark Stevens Gifts $175 Million for New Bay Area Medical School” — feat. Mark Stevens (MBA ‘89)
Wall Street Journal: “There Is a Fire Sale on M.B.A.s”
New York Times: “Flag With Swastikas and Star of David Flown at N.Y.U., Police Say”
Columbia Spectator: “Columbia credit outlook downgraded to ‘negative’ as University prepares to sell $485 million in bonds”
New York Times: “U.C.L.A. Considers New Tactics to Combat Antisemitism”
Cornell University: “Statement from Ad Hoc Special Committee of the Board of Trustees”
Dartmouth College: “Nina Pavcnik Named Inaugural Dean of Arts and Sciences”
Mission To Margin: “A+ diagnosis, C+ prescription: Evaluating Yale’s Higher Ed Trust report”
The New Yorker: “Why the Future of College Could Look Like OnlyFans”
Hyde Park Herald: “University of Chicago eyes further deficit cuts, staff raises”
Wall Street Journal: “The Riskiest Gig in Public Speaking Is a College Graduation”
Higher Ed Dive: “FAFSA completion rate for class of 2026 highest on record”
Wall Street Journal: “The Only Thing Harder Than Getting Into College Is Getting Off the Wait List”
Bloomberg: “It’s Harder to Hide From a Bad Job Market in Grad School”
Marginal Revolution: “Will AI kill the research paper?”
Jerusalem Post: “Jewish groups protest removal of Jewish DA from Stanford protest case”
Chronicle of Higher Education: “The Fight Over Antisemitism Studies”
Higher Ed Dive: “Why NYU and SUNY are teaming up to measure higher ed reforms”
Boston Globe: “Tenure is not what it used to be, as these Tufts professors found out”
Washington Post: “No conservatives at commencement? The message was unmistakable.” — op-ed by Princeton professor Robert George (JD ’81, MTS ’81)
Expression (FIRE Substack): “Campus deplatforming attempts surpass 100 for the year and it’s only May 7” — by Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s (FIRE) Chief Research Advisor Sean Stevens
Heterodox Academy: “What Will It Take to Restore Universities to Their Core Purpose?” — by Vanderbilt University chancellor Daniel Diermeier
Wall Street Journal: “The ‘Civic Life’ Success at UNC” — editorial by the Wall Street Journal editorial board
Wall Street Journal: “More Colleges Are Closing. It’s About Time” — op-ed by Harvard economics professor Roland Fryer