Dear Members of the HMS Community:
Earlier today, Harvard President Alan Garber shared the final reports from the Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias and the Presidential Task Force on Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias. I commend the work of both task forces and am committed to addressing the concerns raised and considering how to best implement their recommendations. I also want to thank those of you who participated in and added your voices to the task forces’ listening sessions and survey.
In response to preliminary recommendations released by both Task Forces last summer, and following our own self-reflection and internal reviews, HMS has been implementing policies and practices over the last year to engage our community in efforts to increase our understanding, tolerance, and respect for one another. These include hosting and sponsoring educational programs and training in conflict resolution and navigating difficult conversations; updating our orientation programming for incoming students; establishing a Working Group on Open Inquiry; instituting supplemental Campus Use Rules to ensure shared and consistent policies for use of HMS/HSDM common spaces; enforcing respectful and non-discriminatory language on materials distributed on our campus; and ensuring that polarizing and biased content is not included in our educational programming. Our efforts will continue and will be updated to incorporate the final recommendations of the Task Force reports released today.
The Israel-Hamas conflict continues to inflame passions and provoke divisions in our community. An academic community must welcome critical analysis and dialogue about current affairs, especially in the context of our mission and roles as researchers, educators, and healers. However, we must not allow debate and disagreement to polarize and divide our community, distract us from our core mission, or prevent us from providing a constructive, welcoming educational environment for students of all backgrounds and beliefs.
Harvard Medical School is committed to ensuring that every member of our community can learn, teach, work, conduct research, access opportunities, and participate fully in our academic ecosystem. Harvard stands strongly for reasoned dissent and the free exchange of ideas, beliefs, and opinions. These guarantees of free speech and academic freedom are articulated in the University-Wide Statement on Rights and Responsibilities and in our HMS Statement of Mutual Respect and Public Discourse. Harvard will also stand strong against and condemn hate speech that violates our community values of tolerance and respect.
Harassment or discrimination against any member of the Harvard community is unacceptable. I encourage you to familiarize yourself with Harvard’s Non-Discrimination and Anti-Bullying Policies and these related FAQs from the Harvard Office for Community Conduct. Harvard has an anonymous reporting hotline, and each school has local designated resources for receiving reports and complaints, directing community members to resources, and providing information on supportive measures. Please know that concerns raised are taken seriously and reviewed and addressed in accordance with School and University policies and procedures.
We must all read the concrete episodes of disparagement, shunning, and silencing described in the Task Force reports and feel empathy for the painful emotions experienced by our colleagues and friends. History records too many examples where individual groups are discriminated against, scapegoated, and condemned as the other or the enemy. Over the course of the last year, I have held numerous listening sessions with faculty, staff, trainees, and students. I have heard both gut-wrenching grievances as well as a deep and abiding faith in the overall goodness and integrity of our community. Now, more than ever, it is time for us to come together in solidarity to uphold our values and redouble our efforts to achieve common understanding, fairness, and harmony.
In closing, let me share with you an excerpt of the remarks I gave to our incoming class of medical and dental students at their White Coat Day last August:
Everyone is someone, and we leave our politics at the door when we come to the bedside of a patient. So it follows that our mission at HMS is to alleviate suffering, not just for a select few but for all. No matter who the patient is before you, no matter their country of origin, their race, their political ideology, or their gender identity, your solemn duty as a doctor is to safeguard that person’s health and well-being. We make a pact with society to treat all patients to the very best of our ability because everyone is someone.
Thank you for being someone, for bringing your whole self to HMS, and for doing your part to make our School and University community, our country, and our world a better place.
Sincerely,
George Q. Daley
Dean of the Faculty of Medicine
Harvard University