Get up, stand up. A day to be proud at Harvard.
Our leadership did the brave thing. I am thrilled they did.
Three relatively brief items today, while I work on some larger projects in the background. Thanks for reading and sharing Inside Medicine.
Inside Medicine is made possible entirely by reader upgrades. Support this work by upgrading to Premium. (For anyone needing a free upgrade due to financial considerations, just email me and it’s all good—no questions asked!)
A proud day for the Harvard community.
On Friday, the Trump administration sent Harvard University leadership an ultimatum: bend to its will or lose billions of dollars in government funding. Yesterday, Harvard University President Dr. Alan Garber announced that here at Harvard, we will not acquiesce to any unlawful demands. Dr. Garber also shared the Trump administration’s outrageous, anti-constitutional letter—replete with absurd and hypocritical demands—which was also published by The New York Times in its coverage of the story. I’ve been waiting for a major university to take a stand like this. I am thrilled that mine did.
In my years as a member of the Harvard faculty, I’ve received exactly one personal email from Dr. Garber, which is more than most can say. He sent me a brief but moving note in 2021 after I was asked to compose a piece of music for that year’s Commencement Exercises, the first to take place after Covid-19 vaccines began to make life more normal again. Last night, I found that old email in my inbox and I hit the reply button. I’m not sure if Dr. Garber will read my note, but here’s what I wrote:
Dear Alan,
I have never been more proud to be a member of the Harvard community than I am today. Thank you for your leadership, which is especially essential now.
Best,
Jeremy
Nearly ten years ago, I faced a choice. Stay in New York City, where emergency medicine was chaotic and exciting, and where some of the most respected elders and up-and-comers were practicing, or accept a job at Harvard Medical School. From the outsider perspective, this may seem like it was an easy call. But emergency medicine in New York in the 2010’s was truly special, a golden age for medical education and exciting progress. Obviously Harvard emergency medicine was and remains excellent, but it simply did not hold a candle to what was happening in New York City at that time, because no place on the planet did.
Choosing to join this faculty, then, was about something else. It was about surrounding myself with the best and brightest in virtually every other field, be it medicine, law, economics, government, literature, or the other sciences. It was about being around today’s best minds. I didn’t know exactly why that mattered to me, but I knew that it did.
Over the years, I have had many occasions to stand by that decision, be it through collaborations with my colleagues, or the opportunity to mentor brilliant students and trainees. However, Alan’s letter to the Harvard community yesterday definitively ratified my choice. Faced with a difficult decision, my colleagues have chosen the braver road. The road of standing up to autocratic pressure. The road of following the actual law, including ones we may not always necessarily agree with—a point Alan emphasized in a separate letter to the Harvard community. (For what it’s worth, my hospital system, Mass General Brigham, both supported the University's statement and said it doesn’t think the Trump administration’s attack on actually applies to grants housed primarily at the hospitals themselves, but that’s another story.)
At stake are billions of dollars in government funding, and the stability of this historic institution that has long stood at the nucleus of American innovation and progress. That’s a mighty risk to take. But I agree with Alan entirely in the implication behind standing against government overreach in violation of our constitutional rights. Without independence and academic freedom from a government seeking to exploit important goals (like the fight to defeat antisemitism, something that affects me personally, I will add) in order to advance—and let's call it what it is—tyranny, there’s simply no point.
So, Alan is betting the corporation on this. He’s got good collateral, though. The Constitution of the United States of America.
While this all does not affect my work (my research has never been funded by the federal government, and has mostly been volunteer, in fact), I’m nonetheless proud to stand with those on the right side of history on this one. I am also elated to see that other institutions are already following our lead. Yesterday was a bright day for our nation.
The cuts at the CDC are getting real.
Since the Trump administration made massive cuts to CDC staffing and its programs, it’s been hard to keep up with what we’ve lost. The journalists at MedPage Today have been documenting this very well, including following some leads that I have not had the time or the expertise to cover. I’m grateful for our continued collaboration, and I’d like to share half a dozen recent stories by our dedicated, stalwart team of healthcare journalists. Please read these and then and share. We have to document what is happening, and work like this is how we can do that:
Nearly Half of CDC Birth Defects and Disabilities Staff Cut. Programs in blood disorders, Special Olympics affected.
by Cheryl Clark.
CDC's Office of Smoking and Health Eliminated. Move will "put American lives at risk," former CDC director says.
by Kristina Fiore.
CDC's Population Health Office Is Gone. Only one critical, long-standing national survey was spared.
by Kristina Fiore.
Team Behind Critical CDC Maternal and Infant Health Dataset Axed. It comes at a time when the U.S. has some of the highest maternal mortality in the world.
by Rachael Robertson.
CDC's STD Lab Shuttered by Trump Layoffs.Implications of lab slashing "makes me sick to my stomach," former employee said.
by Kristina Fiore.
HHS Scraps Advisory Committee on Newborn Screening. Cut comes as new conditions could have been added to a national screening panel.
by Jennifer Henderson.
Again, these reporters have been doing stellar work, and I’m proud to be associated with them.
Join me in the Doctor’s Lounge today!
Lastly, just a quick reminder to join me and my friend Dr. Céline Gounder in the Doctor’s Lounge on Substack Live, today at 1 p.m. ET. We’ll be discussing everything going on in public health—from the cuts at HHS to the President’s test results from his physical at Walter Reed last week.
Here’s the link to follow at 1 p.m, ET today. And for those who can’t attend, I’ll post the conversation here later—free for everyone, thanks to some recent upgrades that are keeping Inside Medicine sustainable. See you soon!
If you have information about any of the unfolding stories we are following, please email me or find me on Signal at InsideMedicine.88.
Thanks for reading, sharing, speaking out, and supporting Inside Medicine. Please ask your questions in the comments.
My oldest is a senior at Harvard College and reported the undergraduate student body responded with tremendous support of Harvard’s decision. Sets a precedent! These incredible students are our future, pulled from every state in the nation, along with numerous international students. Agree with you, best and brightest in virtually every field, be it medicine, law, economics, government, literature, or the other sciences.
My hope is that more organizations and companies will do the same. It was frightening to hear him say that he may put homegrown people in a foreign jail.