{"id":166119,"date":"2015-03-04T17:32:19","date_gmt":"2015-03-04T22:32:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webadmin.news-harvard.go-vip.net\/gazette\/gazette\/?p=166119"},"modified":"2019-03-07T17:51:49","modified_gmt":"2019-03-07T22:51:49","slug":"after-ferguson-the-ripples-across-harvard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2015\/03\/after-ferguson-the-ripples-across-harvard\/","title":{"rendered":"After Ferguson, the ripples across Harvard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t
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The death of two unarmed black men by white officers in Missouri and New York raised questions in every corner of Harvard University. A shift from protests to calls for discussion prompted events across campus. A Harvard Law School symposium, \u201cLaw School or Justice School: Connecting the Dots Between Harvard and Ferguson,\u201d was held in February. Dean Martha Minow (left, photo 1) and Kimberl\u00e9 Crenshaw, Distinguished Professor of Law UCLA, addressed a capacity crowd at the event (photo 2). A fall panel at Harvard Kennedy School, convened by Professor Charles Ogletree (left, photo 3), reflected on the broad social, legal, and political issues raised by the protests in Ferguson, Mo.<\/p>

Photos (1, 2) by Kris Snibbe; (3) by Rose Lincoln\/Harvard Staff Photographers<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\t

\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tNation & World\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\n\t\t

\n\t\tAfter Ferguson, the ripples across Harvard\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t
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\n\t\tChristina Pazzanese\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t

\n\t\t\tHarvard Staff Writer\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/address>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t

\n\t\t\tNational concerns over racial justice lead to campus introspection, discussion, research, and action\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\n<\/header>\n\n\n\n
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They are short, stark sentences, seared into the public consciousness in recent months: Hands up, don\u2019t shoot. I can\u2019t breathe. Black lives matter.<\/p>\n

The killings of unarmed black men by white police officers last summer \u2014 the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the chokehold death of Eric Garner, captured on video, in Staten Island, N.Y. \u2014 and the grand jury decisions against indictments in those cases sparked shock and outrage that led to massive protests across the country, including here at Harvard.<\/p>\n

Students, faculty, and staff from across the University took to the streets to march, held rallies and vigils, and staged \u201cdie-ins\u201d in solidarity with Brown\u2019s and Garner\u2019s families, and \u00a0to protest the use of military-level force by U.S. law enforcement against citizens and its disproportionate deployment in communities of color. The protests decried centuries of unpunished violence against African-Americans, as part of the growing social movement Black Lives Matter.<\/p>\n

Brown\u2019s and Garner\u2019s deaths also have prompted widespread soul-searching, raising questions in every corner of the University about how Harvard can lead the way forward, using tools like the law, government and policymaking, public health, education, and religion to root out the systemic inequities that have fueled and thrived on racism and racial injustice in America.<\/p>\n

At Harvard Law School<\/a> (HLS), that question has been felt acutely, prompting an array of personal and public efforts, including panels<\/a>, talks, conferences, seminars, in-class discussions, and faculty opinion pieces in recent months. In December, Dean Martha Minow<\/a> convened a School-wide meeting for students, faculty, and staff to discuss the grand jury decisions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe nation has witnessed\u00a0lethal violence against unarmed individuals who are members of visible minorities, and there is a widespread perception that procedures meant to secure legal accountability aren\u2019t working,\u201d Minow told the Gazette in a statement last month about why these incidents have resonated so deeply at HLS. \u201cThe ideal of equal justice under law animates our law school and informs our daily work.\u00a0Many of us here feel a special responsibility to push for change.\u201d<\/p>\n

For some in the law school community, that change includes a re-evaluation of what students should be learning.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I\u2019m about to graduate, I can say with total certainty that as a student at Harvard Law School, it\u2019s incredibly easy to avoid ever having to think about racial injustice; it\u2019s incredibly easy to avoid ever having to talk about, in your classroom, issues of social injustice or broader power inequality,\u201d said Jacob Reisberg, a third-year student, during a Feb. 13 symposium, \u201cLaw School or Justice School: Connecting the Dots Between Harvard and Ferguson,\u201d which featured Minow and a panel of distinguished scholars on race and the law. \u201cWhat can we do as an institution to make these discussions part of the mandatory curriculum?\u201d<\/p>\n

Panelist Jon Hanson<\/a>, the Alfred Smart Professor of Law at HLS, called this a \u201chistoric moment\u201d for legal education.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really need to reinvent our burdens of proof, reinvent what our presumptions are. Legal education ought to be in part about interrogating those and in part about educating our students in what those are. But also how they\u2019re reacting to those and how their own psychology\u201d contributes to inequities that pervade the criminal justice system, said Hanson, who teaches the \u201cSystemic Justice<\/a>\u201d course and leads the Justice Lab project, a new effort to get students to start working through intractable societal ills using the law. \u201cIf we\u2019re going to do it with any administration, at any moment, this is the one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Noting that such major changes require broad consensus, Minow recommended students consider working in one of 26 HLS-affiliated legal clinics to gain vital, real-world skills while making a difference in the lives of people who need help. She also acknowledged that students have a right to demand more.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe heart of a law school is about preparing people for a system that exists and critiquing that system,\u201d Minow said of the \u201claw school paradox\u201d: needing to teach students how to succeed within a flawed structure, yet wanting to make sure students understand and critique those flaws, and perhaps one day fix them. \u201cIf we do not prepare you for the existing system, we are not helping you do what you want to do. If we prepare you only for the existing system, we\u2019re not doing what is our obligation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those involved say that the dialogue among HLS students, faculty, and administrators is clearing the air for those who felt that their concerns about racial justice were not being heard or taken seriously enough last semester.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think in that silence, it motivated students to be even more active, to have more protests, to have more die-ins. Since then, it\u2019s been received, and we\u2019ve begun to have more events and discussions where faculty members and the administration are participating,\u201d said Lakeisha Williams, a second-year HLS student who oversees publicity for the Harvard Black Law Students Association\u2019s<\/a> annual spring conference, held Feb. 27 and 28. The conference focused on how \u201cBlack Lives Matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJust in talking with my peers, a lot of them have applauded our administration and our faculty members in really engaging us in dialogue and giving us concrete guidance for things that we can do at our level,\u201d Williams said. \u201cAnd then I have other peers who feel as if it\u2019s just a conversation and that we need more.\u201d<\/p>\n\r\n\t\n\n\t

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\u201cEven before, but especially since, the decisions in Ferguson and New York galvanized the nation\u2019s attention, faculty and students at each of Harvard\u2019s Schools have been engaging deeply in scholarship and teaching related to issues of race, ethnicity and injustice that are at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement. In these ways, and through the raising of all our voices, universities like Harvard can make a powerful contribution toward advancing the critical principles of fundamental justice and equality before the law,\u201d said President Drew Faust. Faust attended the Institute of Politics' Ferguson panel at the Harvard Kennedy School in the fall. File photo by Rose Lincoln\/Harvard Staff Photographer\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\t\n\t\r\n\n

Racism harms health<\/strong><\/p>\n

Like HLS, students at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health<\/a> felt the sting of the Brown and Garner cases, and have urged the School to play a larger role not only in engaging in public discourse about racial violence, but in instigating change on and off campus.<\/p>\n

School officials held a widely attended \u201ctown hall\u201d for the Harvard Chan School community in December, while Dean Julio Frenk<\/a> issued a statement acknowledging the controversy and recommitting to scholarly research that identifies and reduces disparities that lead to health inequities. Frenk will host another town hall in March to update students and provide feedback.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn public health, there\u2019s a strong orientation toward social justice. And, of course, violence and health are intimately connected,\u201d said Meredith Rosenthal<\/a>, Ph.D. \u201998, a professor of health economics and policy and associate dean for diversity. \u201cThere were two major streams of work that the students asked us to commit to. One was to position the School \u2014 and they are really looking for the University to position itself this way \u2014 in a way to support social change \u2026 by organizing intellectual, scientific contributions that can really support evidence-based change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last\u00a0month, the School held a forum, \u201cRace, Criminal Justice, and Health,\u201d<\/a> featuring faculty from Harvard Chan School, HLS, and Harvard Medical School<\/a> (HMS), to examine how disparate treatment under the law and in the criminal justice system can affect health and the role race plays in a host of environmental factors that lead to poor health.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been documented that racism itself harms health. If you are an individual in a racial minority, the effect of racism on a whole lot of health outcomes directly has been documented. Our faculty, including David Williams, Nancy Krieger, and Laura Kubzansky, have done work in this area,\u201d said Rosenthal.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut racism has much broader and deeper effects \u2026 on income, on educational opportunities, other opportunities, and all of those socioeconomic consequences are extremely important for health. Your ability to thrive depends a lot on your socioeconomic context,\u201d she said. \u201cIn public health, we know that these social determinants of health contribute so much more to health than medical care and health insurance, the things that we often think about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Internally, Rosenthal said students have asked the administration to examine its policies and outcomes regarding student, staff, and faculty diversity and to explain what it\u2019s doing to improve the climate for and recruitment of under-represented minorities. As a first step, the Harvard Chan School just published a 35-page report that documents those efforts as a starting point to suggest ways to increase awareness and a sense of inclusion for students from minority backgrounds who may feel marginalized.<\/p>\n

The School, in the midst of curriculum reform, is considering future training for students, staff, and faculty around issues of privilege so that people work more effectively in diverse contexts, and will add \u201ccultural competence\u201d to its requirements for a master\u2019s degree in public health. The details of that process are expected in a report next fall. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to define what that will mean and how students will get it,\u201d said Rosenthal.<\/p>\n

Students\u2019 intensity, unity<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lisa M. Coleman, the University\u2019s chief diversity officer, works closely with student groups and administrators year-round, but since the protests began she and her team, as well as other diversity officers across campus, have been busy serving as facilitators and gathering information about events and student-led initiatives taking place across Harvard.<\/p>\n

Coleman, who took the post in 2010, said she has never seen Harvard students respond to news events with such sustained intensity and broad unity, and was not expecting the protests to encompass such a far-reaching slate of issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe, meaning administrators, did not understand\u201d initially the broad ripple effects the Ferguson and Staten Island cases would spawn, she said, although further dialogue helped clarify the students\u2019 concerns. \u201cThe other thing that became very clear to us was that this was a conversation about learning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coleman said students are \u201cconcerned because what it sparked in them is the issue about \u2018what matters,\u2019 and what matters to them right now is: Are they getting \u2026 [the] education to be able to deal with difference and, thus, help to work on global issues?\u201d One other development, she added, is that \u201cIt\u2019s not only disenfranchised students who are leading the efforts. This is a collective effort engaging students from all backgrounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coleman said students across Harvard have expressed concerns about race and ethnicity, as well as gender and LGBTQ issues, with particular attention paid to the recruitment and retention of students, the diversity of faculty and staff \u2014 including those within the senior administration at each School\u2015 the importance of instruction and training, and the ways in which the University educates the community about difference so the burden of managing diversity issues doesn\u2019t fall on students alone.<\/p>\n

So far, there has been a robust, open discussion between students and administrators over short- and long-term priorities, Coleman said. \u201cIt will be important to continue the momentum, and it remains crucial to communicate all that we are doing across our many Schools,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Justice and healing<\/strong><\/p>\n

Students and faculty at Harvard Divinity School<\/a> (HDS) were energized early on by the Ferguson protests. Led by the Rev. Jonathan Walton, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister, about a dozen students, including Melissa Bartholomew, M.Div. \u201916, drove to Missouri in August to lend their support and their voices to the outcry.<\/p>\n

Bartholomew and Rachel Foran, M.T.S. \u201916, are co-founders of a new student group, HDS Racial Justice and Healing Initiative, which is drafting a proposal to submit to the School\u2019s administration later this semester outlining ways to ensure that strategies to confront and resolve racial and social injustice have a lasting home at the HDS, \u201cto really make sure our work lives on beyond the students that are here today,\u201d said Bartholomew.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe blessing and beauty of our work at HDS is that we\u2019re not fighting against our administration. We\u2019re not fighting to get them to hear what we\u2019re trying to say or to realize that these are important issues. They\u2019ve been very clear, through their presence and through their words, that, \u2018We get it, and these are important issues and let\u2019s figure out how we can address them as a community\u2019 … which is really, really great,\u201d said Bartholomew.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we\u2019ve been really thinking about our capacity as ministers, as scholars, practitioners, [and] intellectuals, and the unique way that we can contribute to this work so that the work we do is sustainable and leads to transformation, because we\u2019re all committed to doing this in a different way and getting different results,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The issues also have given Bartholomew a fresh sense of purpose.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m an African-American woman. If I didn\u2019t have this as an outlet, if I didn\u2019t have these tangible things to be working on in the midst of these very difficult situations, I\u2019d get depressed, I\u2019d be discouraged,\u201d she said. \u201cBut these experiences \u2014 working with Rachel and working with all of our students \u2014 really invigorates me and gives me hope. And I think other students probably feel the same way and definitely feel great about \u2026 while we\u2019re in school, applying what we know and thinking through real-life problems and not waiting until after school to join some organization to try and get things done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Critical work to be done<\/strong><\/p>\n

With policy-making, good government, and leadership as core domains of Harvard Kennedy School<\/a> (HKS), the Ferguson case provoked immediate and strong reactions on campus, which continued in the months following Brown\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

Jayme Johnson, a mid-career M.P.A. and class representative to the HKS student government, said there was some tension at the School largely because neither the student body nor the administration \u201cknew quite what to do\u201d in their initial responses.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast semester was very emotional, [there was] lots of frustration, and what we\u2019ve decided is that we are a policy School and we should be working toward a tangible, constructive response to this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Dean David Ellwood and Karen Jackson-Weaver, senior associate dean for degree programs and student affairs, have been very supportive, he said. \u201cIt\u2019s very much a partnership.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is critical work to be done in the areas of racial equality, violence prevention, economic inequity, and in our justice system, and I am confident the members of this community have the knowledge, creativity, and drive to help move our nation forward,\u201d said Ellwood in a Jan. 29 letter to the School. \u201cIt is our responsibility and our privilege as part of the HKS community to take on tough issues and to help find solutions for difficult public problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

In early February, Ellwood moderated a JFK Jr. Forum event, \u201cChallenges to Democracy: The Future of Policing,\u201d featuring Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, Houston Mayor Annise Parker, and Phillip Goff, a visiting scholar on race and criminal justice.<\/p>\n

Several new courses are underway that address topics like leadership and diversity, narrowing the racial achievement gap, and the U.S. criminal justice system. There is also a series of faculty-led discussions on policing. Jackson-Weaver lead a communications workshop, \u201cRace and Difficult Conversations,\u201d on Feb. 23, while the Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics, and Public Policy is holding a periodic study group with Michele Norris, a National Public Radio host and a spring fellow, on \u201cHow Shifts in Race and Cultural Identity Influence Politics, Policy, and Pop Culture,\u201d that also began Feb. 23.<\/p>\n

Much of the group energy at HKS is directed outward this semester. About 100 students in HKS student government and those interested in criminal justice careers held brainstorming sessions, assisted by HKS faculty, activists, and attorneys from Black Lives Matters, clergy, and experts from other universities, to draft policy ideas that they submitted to the President\u2019s Task Force on 21st-Century Policing in late February. President Obama formed the task force in December to examine how best to reduce crime while building trust and collaboration between law enforcement and citizens. Its first report is expected later this month.<\/p>\n

Johnson, an inspector with London\u2019s Metropolitan Police, said the group will offer suggestions across a range of issues and best practices, such as: whether police should be guardians or warriors; whether the right people are being recruited; whether police should investigate themselves; an evaluation of stop-and-frisk tactics; the scarcity of data about police-related deaths; and whether police ought to use nonlethal force more frequently. The group hopes to play a role in formulating the task force\u2019s final report, expected this summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnlike many movements, there\u2019s often no tangible end,\u201d said Johnson. \u201cBut with this, we feel we\u2019ve got a way forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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New York raised questions in every corner of Harvard University. A shift from protests to calls for discussion prompted events across campus. A Harvard Law School symposium, \u201cLaw School or Justice School: Connecting the Dots Between Harvard and Ferguson,\u201d was held in February. Dean Martha Minow (left, photo 1) and Kimberl\u00e9 Crenshaw, Distinguished Professor of Law UCLA, addressed a capacity crowd at the event (photo 2). A fall panel at Harvard Kennedy School, convened by Professor Charles Ogletree (left, photo 3), reflected on the broad social, legal, and political issues raised by the protests in Ferguson, Mo.","mediaId":166121,"mediaSize":"full","mediaType":"image","mediaUrl":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/021315_black_012_605_2.jpg","poster":"","title":"After Ferguson, the ripples across Harvard","subheading":"National concerns over racial justice lead to campus introspection, discussion, research, and action","centeredImage":true,"className":"is-style-full-width-text-below","mediaHeight":403,"mediaWidth":605,"backgroundFixed":false,"backgroundTone":"light","coloredBackground":false,"displayOverlay":true,"fadeInText":false,"isAmbient":false,"mediaLength":"","mediaPosition":"","posterText":"","titleAbove":false,"useUncroppedImage":false,"lock":[],"metadata":[]},"innerBlocks":[],"innerHTML":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"403\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/021315_black_012_605_2.jpg\" width=\"605\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><p class=\"wp-element-caption--caption\">The death of two unarmed black men by white officers in Missouri and New York raised questions in every corner of Harvard University. A shift from protests to calls for discussion prompted events across campus. A Harvard Law School symposium, \u201cLaw School or Justice School: Connecting the Dots Between Harvard and Ferguson,\u201d was held in February. Dean Martha Minow (left, photo 1) and Kimberl\u00e9 Crenshaw, Distinguished Professor of Law UCLA, addressed a capacity crowd at the event (photo 2). A fall panel at Harvard Kennedy School, convened by Professor Charles Ogletree (left, photo 3), reflected on the broad social, legal, and political issues raised by the protests in Ferguson, Mo.<\/p><p class=\"wp-element-caption--credit\">Photos (1, 2) by Kris Snibbe; (3) by Rose Lincoln\/Harvard Staff Photographers<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","innerContent":["<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"403\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/021315_black_012_605_2.jpg\" width=\"605\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><p class=\"wp-element-caption--caption\">The death of two unarmed black men by white officers in Missouri and New York raised questions in every corner of Harvard University. A shift from protests to calls for discussion prompted events across campus. A Harvard Law School symposium, \u201cLaw School or Justice School: Connecting the Dots Between Harvard and Ferguson,\u201d was held in February. Dean Martha Minow (left, photo 1) and Kimberl\u00e9 Crenshaw, Distinguished Professor of Law UCLA, addressed a capacity crowd at the event (photo 2). A fall panel at Harvard Kennedy School, convened by Professor Charles Ogletree (left, photo 3), reflected on the broad social, legal, and political issues raised by the protests in Ferguson, Mo.<\/p><p class=\"wp-element-caption--credit\">Photos (1, 2) by Kris Snibbe; (3) by Rose Lincoln\/Harvard Staff Photographers<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n"],"rendered":"<header\n\tclass=\"wp-block-harvard-gazette-article-header alignfull article-header is-style-full-width-text-below centered-image\"\n\tstyle=\" \"\n>\n\t<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"403\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/021315_black_012_605_2.jpg\" width=\"605\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><p class=\"wp-element-caption--caption\">The death of two unarmed black men by white officers in Missouri and New York raised questions in every corner of Harvard University. A shift from protests to calls for discussion prompted events across campus. A Harvard Law School symposium, \u201cLaw School or Justice School: Connecting the Dots Between Harvard and Ferguson,\u201d was held in February. Dean Martha Minow (left, photo 1) and Kimberl\u00e9 Crenshaw, Distinguished Professor of Law UCLA, addressed a capacity crowd at the event (photo 2). A fall panel at Harvard Kennedy School, convened by Professor Charles Ogletree (left, photo 3), reflected on the broad social, legal, and political issues raised by the protests in Ferguson, Mo.<\/p><p class=\"wp-element-caption--credit\">Photos (1, 2) by Kris Snibbe; (3) by Rose Lincoln\/Harvard Staff Photographers<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\t<div class=\"article-header__content\">\n\t\t\t<a\n\t\t\tclass=\"article-header__category\"\n\t\t\thref=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/nation-world\/\"\n\t\t>\n\t\t\tNation & World\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\n\t\t<h1 class=\"article-header__title wp-block-heading \">\n\t\tAfter Ferguson, the ripples across Harvard\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t<div class=\"article-header__meta\">\n\t\t<div class=\"wp-block-post-author\">\n\t\t\t<address class=\"wp-block-post-author__content\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<p class=\"author wp-block-post-author__name\">\n\t\tChristina Pazzanese\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t<p class=\"wp-block-post-author__byline\">\n\t\t\tHarvard Staff Writer\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/address>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t<time class=\"article-header__date\" datetime=\"2015-03-04\">\n\t\t\tMarch 4, 2015\t\t<\/time>\n\n\t\t<span class=\"article-header__reading-time\">\n\t\t\tlong read\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<h2 class=\"article-header__subheading wp-block-heading\">\n\t\t\tNational concerns over racial justice lead to campus introspection, discussion, research, and action\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\n<\/header>\n"},"2":{"blockName":"core\/group","attrs":{"templateLock":false,"metadata":{"name":"Article content"},"align":"wide","layout":{"type":"constrained","justifyContent":"center"},"tagName":"div","lock":[],"className":"","style":[],"backgroundColor":"","textColor":"","gradient":"","fontSize":"","fontFamily":"","borderColor":"","ariaLabel":"","anchor":""},"innerBlocks":[{"blockName":"core\/freeform","attrs":{"content":"","lock":[],"metadata":[]},"innerBlocks":[],"innerHTML":"\n\t\t<p>They are short, stark sentences, seared into the public consciousness in recent months: Hands up, don\u2019t shoot. I can\u2019t breathe. Black lives matter.<\/p>\n<p>The killings of unarmed black men by white police officers last summer \u2014 the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the chokehold death of Eric Garner, captured on video, in Staten Island, N.Y. \u2014 and the grand jury decisions against indictments in those cases sparked shock and outrage that led to massive protests across the country, including here at Harvard.<\/p>\n<p>Students, faculty, and staff from across the University took to the streets to march, held rallies and vigils, and staged \u201cdie-ins\u201d in solidarity with Brown\u2019s and Garner\u2019s families, and \u00a0to protest the use of military-level force by U.S. law enforcement against citizens and its disproportionate deployment in communities of color. The protests decried centuries of unpunished violence against African-Americans, as part of the growing social movement Black Lives Matter.<\/p>\n<p>Brown\u2019s and Garner\u2019s deaths also have prompted widespread soul-searching, raising questions in every corner of the University about how Harvard can lead the way forward, using tools like the law, government and policymaking, public health, education, and religion to root out the systemic inequities that have fueled and thrived on racism and racial injustice in America.<\/p>\n<p>At <a href=\"http:\/\/www.law.harvard.edu\/\">Harvard Law School<\/a> (HLS), that question has been felt acutely, prompting an array of personal and public efforts, including <a href=\"http:\/\/today.law.harvard.edu\/criminal-justice-policing-events-ferguson-staten-island-cleveland-elsewhere-video\/\">panels<\/a>, talks, conferences, seminars, in-class discussions, and faculty opinion pieces in recent months. In December, <a href=\"http:\/\/hls.harvard.edu\/faculty\/directory\/10589\/Minow\">Dean Martha Minow<\/a> convened a School-wide meeting for students, faculty, and staff to discuss the grand jury decisions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe nation has witnessed\u00a0lethal violence against unarmed individuals who are members of visible minorities, and there is a widespread perception that procedures meant to secure legal accountability aren\u2019t working,\u201d Minow told the Gazette in a statement last month about why these incidents have resonated so deeply at HLS. \u201cThe ideal of equal justice under law animates our law school and informs our daily work.\u00a0Many of us here feel a special responsibility to push for change.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For some in the law school community, that change includes a re-evaluation of what students should be learning.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs I\u2019m about to graduate, I can say with total certainty that as a student at Harvard Law School, it\u2019s incredibly easy to avoid ever having to think about racial injustice; it\u2019s incredibly easy to avoid ever having to talk about, in your classroom, issues of social injustice or broader power inequality,\u201d said Jacob Reisberg, a third-year student, during a Feb. 13 symposium, \u201cLaw School or Justice School: Connecting the Dots Between Harvard and Ferguson,\u201d which featured Minow and a panel of distinguished scholars on race and the law. \u201cWhat can we do as an institution to make these discussions part of the mandatory curriculum?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Panelist <a href=\"http:\/\/hls.harvard.edu\/faculty\/directory\/10361\/Hanson\/\">Jon Hanson<\/a>, the Alfred Smart Professor of Law at HLS, called this a \u201chistoric moment\u201d for legal education.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe really need to reinvent our burdens of proof, reinvent what our presumptions are. Legal education ought to be in part about interrogating those and in part about educating our students in what those are. But also how they\u2019re reacting to those and how their own psychology\u201d contributes to inequities that pervade the criminal justice system, said Hanson, who teaches the \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/ideas\/2015\/02\/06\/new-harvard-law-school-program-aims-for-systemic-justice\/PeGBqIenWhqqCuJ37Y20kJ\/story.html\">Systemic Justice<\/a>\u201d course and leads the Justice Lab project, a new effort to get students to start working through intractable societal ills using the law. \u201cIf we\u2019re going to do it with any administration, at any moment, this is the one.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Noting that such major changes require broad consensus, Minow recommended students consider working in one of 26 HLS-affiliated legal clinics to gain vital, real-world skills while making a difference in the lives of people who need help. She also acknowledged that students have a right to demand more.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe heart of a law school is about preparing people for a system that exists and critiquing that system,\u201d Minow said of the \u201claw school paradox\u201d: needing to teach students how to succeed within a flawed structure, yet wanting to make sure students understand and critique those flaws, and perhaps one day fix them. \u201cIf we do not prepare you for the existing system, we are not helping you do what you want to do. If we prepare you only for the existing system, we\u2019re not doing what is our obligation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Those involved say that the dialogue among HLS students, faculty, and administrators is clearing the air for those who felt that their concerns about racial justice were not being heard or taken seriously enough last semester.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think in that silence, it motivated students to be even more active, to have more protests, to have more die-ins. Since then, it\u2019s been received, and we\u2019ve begun to have more events and discussions where faculty members and the administration are participating,\u201d said Lakeisha Williams, a second-year HLS student who oversees publicity for the <a href=\"https:\/\/orgs.law.harvard.edu\/blsa\/springconference\/\">Harvard Black Law Students Association\u2019s<\/a> annual spring conference, held Feb. 27 and 28. The conference focused on how \u201cBlack Lives Matter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust in talking with my peers, a lot of them have applauded our administration and our faculty members in really engaging us in dialogue and giving us concrete guidance for things that we can do at our level,\u201d Williams said. \u201cAnd then I have other peers who feel as if it\u2019s just a conversation and that we need more.\u201d<\/p>\n","innerContent":["\n\t\t<p>They are short, stark sentences, seared into the public consciousness in recent months: Hands up, don\u2019t shoot. I can\u2019t breathe. Black lives matter.<\/p>\n<p>The killings of unarmed black men by white police officers last summer \u2014 the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the chokehold death of Eric Garner, captured on video, in Staten Island, N.Y. \u2014 and the grand jury decisions against indictments in those cases sparked shock and outrage that led to massive protests across the country, including here at Harvard.<\/p>\n<p>Students, faculty, and staff from across the University took to the streets to march, held rallies and vigils, and staged \u201cdie-ins\u201d in solidarity with Brown\u2019s and Garner\u2019s families, and \u00a0to protest the use of military-level force by U.S. law enforcement against citizens and its disproportionate deployment in communities of color. The protests decried centuries of unpunished violence against African-Americans, as part of the growing social movement Black Lives Matter.<\/p>\n<p>Brown\u2019s and Garner\u2019s deaths also have prompted widespread soul-searching, raising questions in every corner of the University about how Harvard can lead the way forward, using tools like the law, government and policymaking, public health, education, and religion to root out the systemic inequities that have fueled and thrived on racism and racial injustice in America.<\/p>\n<p>At <a href=\"http:\/\/www.law.harvard.edu\/\">Harvard Law School<\/a> (HLS), that question has been felt acutely, prompting an array of personal and public efforts, including <a href=\"http:\/\/today.law.harvard.edu\/criminal-justice-policing-events-ferguson-staten-island-cleveland-elsewhere-video\/\">panels<\/a>, talks, conferences, seminars, in-class discussions, and faculty opinion pieces in recent months. In December, <a href=\"http:\/\/hls.harvard.edu\/faculty\/directory\/10589\/Minow\">Dean Martha Minow<\/a> convened a School-wide meeting for students, faculty, and staff to discuss the grand jury decisions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe nation has witnessed\u00a0lethal violence against unarmed individuals who are members of visible minorities, and there is a widespread perception that procedures meant to secure legal accountability aren\u2019t working,\u201d Minow told the Gazette in a statement last month about why these incidents have resonated so deeply at HLS. \u201cThe ideal of equal justice under law animates our law school and informs our daily work.\u00a0Many of us here feel a special responsibility to push for change.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For some in the law school community, that change includes a re-evaluation of what students should be learning.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs I\u2019m about to graduate, I can say with total certainty that as a student at Harvard Law School, it\u2019s incredibly easy to avoid ever having to think about racial injustice; it\u2019s incredibly easy to avoid ever having to talk about, in your classroom, issues of social injustice or broader power inequality,\u201d said Jacob Reisberg, a third-year student, during a Feb. 13 symposium, \u201cLaw School or Justice School: Connecting the Dots Between Harvard and Ferguson,\u201d which featured Minow and a panel of distinguished scholars on race and the law. \u201cWhat can we do as an institution to make these discussions part of the mandatory curriculum?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Panelist <a href=\"http:\/\/hls.harvard.edu\/faculty\/directory\/10361\/Hanson\/\">Jon Hanson<\/a>, the Alfred Smart Professor of Law at HLS, called this a \u201chistoric moment\u201d for legal education.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe really need to reinvent our burdens of proof, reinvent what our presumptions are. Legal education ought to be in part about interrogating those and in part about educating our students in what those are. But also how they\u2019re reacting to those and how their own psychology\u201d contributes to inequities that pervade the criminal justice system, said Hanson, who teaches the \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/ideas\/2015\/02\/06\/new-harvard-law-school-program-aims-for-systemic-justice\/PeGBqIenWhqqCuJ37Y20kJ\/story.html\">Systemic Justice<\/a>\u201d course and leads the Justice Lab project, a new effort to get students to start working through intractable societal ills using the law. \u201cIf we\u2019re going to do it with any administration, at any moment, this is the one.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Noting that such major changes require broad consensus, Minow recommended students consider working in one of 26 HLS-affiliated legal clinics to gain vital, real-world skills while making a difference in the lives of people who need help. She also acknowledged that students have a right to demand more.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe heart of a law school is about preparing people for a system that exists and critiquing that system,\u201d Minow said of the \u201claw school paradox\u201d: needing to teach students how to succeed within a flawed structure, yet wanting to make sure students understand and critique those flaws, and perhaps one day fix them. \u201cIf we do not prepare you for the existing system, we are not helping you do what you want to do. If we prepare you only for the existing system, we\u2019re not doing what is our obligation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Those involved say that the dialogue among HLS students, faculty, and administrators is clearing the air for those who felt that their concerns about racial justice were not being heard or taken seriously enough last semester.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think in that silence, it motivated students to be even more active, to have more protests, to have more die-ins. Since then, it\u2019s been received, and we\u2019ve begun to have more events and discussions where faculty members and the administration are participating,\u201d said Lakeisha Williams, a second-year HLS student who oversees publicity for the <a href=\"https:\/\/orgs.law.harvard.edu\/blsa\/springconference\/\">Harvard Black Law Students Association\u2019s<\/a> annual spring conference, held Feb. 27 and 28. The conference focused on how \u201cBlack Lives Matter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust in talking with my peers, a lot of them have applauded our administration and our faculty members in really engaging us in dialogue and giving us concrete guidance for things that we can do at our level,\u201d Williams said. \u201cAnd then I have other peers who feel as if it\u2019s just a conversation and that we need more.\u201d<\/p>\n"],"rendered":"\n\t\t<p>They are short, stark sentences, seared into the public consciousness in recent months: Hands up, don\u2019t shoot. I can\u2019t breathe. Black lives matter.<\/p>\n<p>The killings of unarmed black men by white police officers last summer \u2014 the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the chokehold death of Eric Garner, captured on video, in Staten Island, N.Y. \u2014 and the grand jury decisions against indictments in those cases sparked shock and outrage that led to massive protests across the country, including here at Harvard.<\/p>\n<p>Students, faculty, and staff from across the University took to the streets to march, held rallies and vigils, and staged \u201cdie-ins\u201d in solidarity with Brown\u2019s and Garner\u2019s families, and \u00a0to protest the use of military-level force by U.S. law enforcement against citizens and its disproportionate deployment in communities of color. The protests decried centuries of unpunished violence against African-Americans, as part of the growing social movement Black Lives Matter.<\/p>\n<p>Brown\u2019s and Garner\u2019s deaths also have prompted widespread soul-searching, raising questions in every corner of the University about how Harvard can lead the way forward, using tools like the law, government and policymaking, public health, education, and religion to root out the systemic inequities that have fueled and thrived on racism and racial injustice in America.<\/p>\n<p>At <a href=\"http:\/\/www.law.harvard.edu\/\">Harvard Law School<\/a> (HLS), that question has been felt acutely, prompting an array of personal and public efforts, including <a href=\"http:\/\/today.law.harvard.edu\/criminal-justice-policing-events-ferguson-staten-island-cleveland-elsewhere-video\/\">panels<\/a>, talks, conferences, seminars, in-class discussions, and faculty opinion pieces in recent months. In December, <a href=\"http:\/\/hls.harvard.edu\/faculty\/directory\/10589\/Minow\">Dean Martha Minow<\/a> convened a School-wide meeting for students, faculty, and staff to discuss the grand jury decisions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe nation has witnessed\u00a0lethal violence against unarmed individuals who are members of visible minorities, and there is a widespread perception that procedures meant to secure legal accountability aren\u2019t working,\u201d Minow told the Gazette in a statement last month about why these incidents have resonated so deeply at HLS. \u201cThe ideal of equal justice under law animates our law school and informs our daily work.\u00a0Many of us here feel a special responsibility to push for change.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For some in the law school community, that change includes a re-evaluation of what students should be learning.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs I\u2019m about to graduate, I can say with total certainty that as a student at Harvard Law School, it\u2019s incredibly easy to avoid ever having to think about racial injustice; it\u2019s incredibly easy to avoid ever having to talk about, in your classroom, issues of social injustice or broader power inequality,\u201d said Jacob Reisberg, a third-year student, during a Feb. 13 symposium, \u201cLaw School or Justice School: Connecting the Dots Between Harvard and Ferguson,\u201d which featured Minow and a panel of distinguished scholars on race and the law. \u201cWhat can we do as an institution to make these discussions part of the mandatory curriculum?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Panelist <a href=\"http:\/\/hls.harvard.edu\/faculty\/directory\/10361\/Hanson\/\">Jon Hanson<\/a>, the Alfred Smart Professor of Law at HLS, called this a \u201chistoric moment\u201d for legal education.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe really need to reinvent our burdens of proof, reinvent what our presumptions are. Legal education ought to be in part about interrogating those and in part about educating our students in what those are. But also how they\u2019re reacting to those and how their own psychology\u201d contributes to inequities that pervade the criminal justice system, said Hanson, who teaches the \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/ideas\/2015\/02\/06\/new-harvard-law-school-program-aims-for-systemic-justice\/PeGBqIenWhqqCuJ37Y20kJ\/story.html\">Systemic Justice<\/a>\u201d course and leads the Justice Lab project, a new effort to get students to start working through intractable societal ills using the law. \u201cIf we\u2019re going to do it with any administration, at any moment, this is the one.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Noting that such major changes require broad consensus, Minow recommended students consider working in one of 26 HLS-affiliated legal clinics to gain vital, real-world skills while making a difference in the lives of people who need help. She also acknowledged that students have a right to demand more.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe heart of a law school is about preparing people for a system that exists and critiquing that system,\u201d Minow said of the \u201claw school paradox\u201d: needing to teach students how to succeed within a flawed structure, yet wanting to make sure students understand and critique those flaws, and perhaps one day fix them. \u201cIf we do not prepare you for the existing system, we are not helping you do what you want to do. If we prepare you only for the existing system, we\u2019re not doing what is our obligation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Those involved say that the dialogue among HLS students, faculty, and administrators is clearing the air for those who felt that their concerns about racial justice were not being heard or taken seriously enough last semester.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think in that silence, it motivated students to be even more active, to have more protests, to have more die-ins. Since then, it\u2019s been received, and we\u2019ve begun to have more events and discussions where faculty members and the administration are participating,\u201d said Lakeisha Williams, a second-year HLS student who oversees publicity for the <a href=\"https:\/\/orgs.law.harvard.edu\/blsa\/springconference\/\">Harvard Black Law Students Association\u2019s<\/a> annual spring conference, held Feb. 27 and 28. The conference focused on how \u201cBlack Lives Matter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust in talking with my peers, a lot of them have applauded our administration and our faculty members in really engaging us in dialogue and giving us concrete guidance for things that we can do at our level,\u201d Williams said. \u201cAnd then I have other peers who feel as if it\u2019s just a conversation and that we need more.\u201d<\/p>\n"},{"blockName":"core\/image","attrs":{"sizeSlug":"full","align":"none","id":166124,"caption":"\u201cEven before, but especially since, the decisions in Ferguson and New York galvanized the nation\u2019s attention, faculty and students at each of Harvard\u2019s Schools have been engaging deeply in scholarship and teaching related to issues of race, ethnicity and injustice that are at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement. In these ways, and through the raising of all our voices, universities like Harvard can make a powerful contribution toward advancing the critical principles of fundamental justice and equality before the law,\u201d said President Drew Faust. Faust attended the Institute of Politics' Ferguson panel at the Harvard Kennedy School in the fall. File photo by Rose Lincoln\/Harvard Staff Photographer","blob":"","url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/091714_ferguson_1867_570.jpg","alt":"","lightbox":[],"title":"","href":"","rel":"","linkClass":"","width":"","height":"","aspectRatio":"","scale":"","linkDestination":"","linkTarget":"","lock":[],"metadata":[],"className":"","style":[],"borderColor":"","anchor":""},"innerBlocks":[],"innerHTML":"\n\n\t<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignnone size-full is-resized\"><img src=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/091714_ferguson_1867_570.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-166124\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">\u201cEven before, but especially since, the decisions in Ferguson and New York galvanized the nation\u2019s attention, faculty and students at each of Harvard\u2019s Schools have been engaging deeply in scholarship and teaching related to issues of race, ethnicity and injustice that are at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement. In these ways, and through the raising of all our voices, universities like Harvard can make a powerful contribution toward advancing the critical principles of fundamental justice and equality before the law,\u201d said President Drew Faust. Faust attended the Institute of Politics' Ferguson panel at the Harvard Kennedy School in the fall. File photo by Rose Lincoln\/Harvard Staff Photographer\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\t","innerContent":["\n\n\t<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignnone size-full is-resized\"><img src=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/091714_ferguson_1867_570.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-166124\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">\u201cEven before, but especially since, the decisions in Ferguson and New York galvanized the nation\u2019s attention, faculty and students at each of Harvard\u2019s Schools have been engaging deeply in scholarship and teaching related to issues of race, ethnicity and injustice that are at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement. In these ways, and through the raising of all our voices, universities like Harvard can make a powerful contribution toward advancing the critical principles of fundamental justice and equality before the law,\u201d said President Drew Faust. Faust attended the Institute of Politics' Ferguson panel at the Harvard Kennedy School in the fall. File photo by Rose Lincoln\/Harvard Staff Photographer\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\t"],"rendered":"\n\n\t<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignnone size-full is-resized\"><img src=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/091714_ferguson_1867_570.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-166124\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">\u201cEven before, but especially since, the decisions in Ferguson and New York galvanized the nation\u2019s attention, faculty and students at each of Harvard\u2019s Schools have been engaging deeply in scholarship and teaching related to issues of race, ethnicity and injustice that are at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement. In these ways, and through the raising of all our voices, universities like Harvard can make a powerful contribution toward advancing the critical principles of fundamental justice and equality before the law,\u201d said President Drew Faust. Faust attended the Institute of Politics' Ferguson panel at the Harvard Kennedy School in the fall. File photo by Rose Lincoln\/Harvard Staff Photographer\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\t"},{"blockName":"core\/freeform","attrs":{"content":"","lock":[],"metadata":[]},"innerBlocks":[],"innerHTML":"\n<p><strong>Racism harms health<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Like HLS, students at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hsph.harvard.edu\/\">Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health<\/a> felt the sting of the Brown and Garner cases, and have urged the School to play a larger role not only in engaging in public discourse about racial violence, but in instigating change on and off campus.<\/p>\n<p>School officials held a widely attended \u201ctown hall\u201d for the Harvard Chan School community in December, while <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hsph.harvard.edu\/deans-office\/\">Dean Julio Frenk<\/a> issued a statement acknowledging the controversy and recommitting to scholarly research that identifies and reduces disparities that lead to health inequities. Frenk will host another town hall in March to update students and provide feedback.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn public health, there\u2019s a strong orientation toward social justice. And, of course, violence and health are intimately connected,\u201d said <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hsph.harvard.edu\/meredith-rosenthal\/\">Meredith Rosenthal<\/a>, Ph.D. \u201998, a professor of health economics and policy and associate dean for diversity. \u201cThere were two major streams of work that the students asked us to commit to. One was to position the School \u2014 and they are really looking for the University to position itself this way \u2014 in a way to support social change \u2026 by organizing intellectual, scientific contributions that can really support evidence-based change.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Last\u00a0month, the School held a forum, <a href=\"http:\/\/theforum.sph.harvard.edu\/events\/race-criminal-justice-and-health\/\">\u201cRace, Criminal Justice, and Health,\u201d<\/a> featuring faculty from Harvard Chan School, HLS, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hms.harvard.edu\">Harvard Medical School<\/a> (HMS), to examine how disparate treatment under the law and in the criminal justice system can affect health and the role race plays in a host of environmental factors that lead to poor health.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s been documented that racism itself harms health. If you are an individual in a racial minority, the effect of racism on a whole lot of health outcomes directly has been documented. Our faculty, including David Williams, Nancy Krieger, and Laura Kubzansky, have done work in this area,\u201d said Rosenthal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut racism has much broader and deeper effects \u2026 on income, on educational opportunities, other opportunities, and all of those socioeconomic consequences are extremely important for health. Your ability to thrive depends a lot on your socioeconomic context,\u201d she said. \u201cIn public health, we know that these social determinants of health contribute so much more to health than medical care and health insurance, the things that we often think about.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Internally, Rosenthal said students have asked the administration to examine its policies and outcomes regarding student, staff, and faculty diversity and to explain what it\u2019s doing to improve the climate for and recruitment of under-represented minorities. As a first step, the Harvard Chan School just published a 35-page report that documents those efforts as a starting point to suggest ways to increase awareness and a sense of inclusion for students from minority backgrounds who may feel marginalized.<\/p>\n<p>The School, in the midst of curriculum reform, is considering future training for students, staff, and faculty around issues of privilege so that people work more effectively in diverse contexts, and will add \u201ccultural competence\u201d to its requirements for a master\u2019s degree in public health. The details of that process are expected in a report next fall. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to define what that will mean and how students will get it,\u201d said Rosenthal.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Students\u2019 intensity, unity<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Lisa M. Coleman, the University\u2019s chief diversity officer, works closely with student groups and administrators year-round, but since the protests began she and her team, as well as other diversity officers across campus, have been busy serving as facilitators and gathering information about events and student-led initiatives taking place across Harvard.<\/p>\n<p>Coleman, who took the post in 2010, said she has never seen Harvard students respond to news events with such sustained intensity and broad unity, and was not expecting the protests to encompass such a far-reaching slate of issues.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe, meaning administrators, did not understand\u201d initially the broad ripple effects the Ferguson and Staten Island cases would spawn, she said, although further dialogue helped clarify the students\u2019 concerns. \u201cThe other thing that became very clear to us was that this was a conversation about learning.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Coleman said students are \u201cconcerned because what it sparked in them is the issue about \u2018what matters,\u2019 and what matters to them right now is: Are they getting \u2026 [the] education to be able to deal with difference and, thus, help to work on global issues?\u201d One other development, she added, is that \u201cIt\u2019s not only disenfranchised students who are leading the efforts. This is a collective effort engaging students from all backgrounds.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Coleman said students across Harvard have expressed concerns about race and ethnicity, as well as gender and LGBTQ issues, with particular attention paid to the recruitment and retention of students, the diversity of faculty and staff \u2014 including those within the senior administration at each School\u2015 the importance of instruction and training, and the ways in which the University educates the community about difference so the burden of managing diversity issues doesn\u2019t fall on students alone.<\/p>\n<p>So far, there has been a robust, open discussion between students and administrators over short- and long-term priorities, Coleman said. \u201cIt will be important to continue the momentum, and it remains crucial to communicate all that we are doing across our many Schools,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Justice and healing<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Students and faculty at <a href=\"http:\/\/hds.harvard.edu\/\">Harvard Divinity School<\/a> (HDS) were energized early on by the Ferguson protests. Led by the Rev. Jonathan Walton, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister, about a dozen students, including Melissa Bartholomew, M.Div. \u201916, drove to Missouri in August to lend their support and their voices to the outcry.<\/p>\n<p>Bartholomew and Rachel Foran, M.T.S. \u201916, are co-founders of a new student group, HDS Racial Justice and Healing Initiative, which is drafting a proposal to submit to the School\u2019s administration later this semester outlining ways to ensure that strategies to confront and resolve racial and social injustice have a lasting home at the HDS, \u201cto really make sure our work lives on beyond the students that are here today,\u201d said Bartholomew.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe blessing and beauty of our work at HDS is that we\u2019re not fighting against our administration. We\u2019re not fighting to get them to hear what we\u2019re trying to say or to realize that these are important issues. They\u2019ve been very clear, through their presence and through their words, that, \u2018We get it, and these are important issues and let\u2019s figure out how we can address them as a community\u2019 ... which is really, really great,\u201d said Bartholomew.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo we\u2019ve been really thinking about our capacity as ministers, as scholars, practitioners, [and] intellectuals, and the unique way that we can contribute to this work so that the work we do is sustainable and leads to transformation, because we\u2019re all committed to doing this in a different way and getting different results,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>The issues also have given Bartholomew a fresh sense of purpose.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m an African-American woman. If I didn\u2019t have this as an outlet, if I didn\u2019t have these tangible things to be working on in the midst of these very difficult situations, I\u2019d get depressed, I\u2019d be discouraged,\u201d she said. \u201cBut these experiences \u2014 working with Rachel and working with all of our students \u2014 really invigorates me and gives me hope. And I think other students probably feel the same way and definitely feel great about \u2026 while we\u2019re in school, applying what we know and thinking through real-life problems and not waiting until after school to join some organization to try and get things done.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Critical work to be done<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>With policy-making, good government, and leadership as core domains of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hks.harvard.edu\/\">Harvard Kennedy School<\/a> (HKS), the Ferguson case provoked immediate and strong reactions on campus, which continued in the months following Brown\u2019s death.<\/p>\n<p>Jayme Johnson, a mid-career M.P.A. and class representative to the HKS student government, said there was some tension at the School largely because neither the student body nor the administration \u201cknew quite what to do\u201d in their initial responses.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLast semester was very emotional, [there was] lots of frustration, and what we\u2019ve decided is that we are a policy School and we should be working toward a tangible, constructive response to this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Dean David Ellwood and Karen Jackson-Weaver, senior associate dean for degree programs and student affairs, have been very supportive, he said. \u201cIt\u2019s very much a partnership.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is critical work to be done in the areas of racial equality, violence prevention, economic inequity, and in our justice system, and I am confident the members of this community have the knowledge, creativity, and drive to help move our nation forward,\u201d said Ellwood in a Jan. 29 letter to the School. \u201cIt is our responsibility and our privilege as part of the HKS community to take on tough issues and to help find solutions for difficult public problems.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In early February, Ellwood moderated a JFK Jr. Forum event, \u201cChallenges to Democracy: The Future of Policing,\u201d featuring Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, Houston Mayor Annise Parker, and Phillip Goff, a visiting scholar on race and criminal justice.<\/p>\n<p>Several new courses are underway that address topics like leadership and diversity, narrowing the racial achievement gap, and the U.S. criminal justice system. There is also a series of faculty-led discussions on policing. Jackson-Weaver lead a communications workshop, \u201cRace and Difficult Conversations,\u201d on Feb. 23, while the Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics, and Public Policy is holding a periodic study group with Michele Norris, a National Public Radio host and a spring fellow, on \u201cHow Shifts in Race and Cultural Identity Influence Politics, Policy, and Pop Culture,\u201d that also began Feb. 23.<\/p>\n<p>Much of the group energy at HKS is directed outward this semester. About 100 students in HKS student government and those interested in criminal justice careers held brainstorming sessions, assisted by HKS faculty, activists, and attorneys from Black Lives Matters, clergy, and experts from other universities, to draft policy ideas that they submitted to the President\u2019s Task Force on 21st-Century Policing in late February. President Obama formed the task force in December to examine how best to reduce crime while building trust and collaboration between law enforcement and citizens. Its first report is expected later this month.<\/p>\n<p>Johnson, an inspector with London\u2019s Metropolitan Police, said the group will offer suggestions across a range of issues and best practices, such as: whether police should be guardians or warriors; whether the right people are being recruited; whether police should investigate themselves; an evaluation of stop-and-frisk tactics; the scarcity of data about police-related deaths; and whether police ought to use nonlethal force more frequently. The group hopes to play a role in formulating the task force\u2019s final report, expected this summer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnlike many movements, there\u2019s often no tangible end,\u201d said Johnson. \u201cBut with this, we feel we\u2019ve got a way forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\n","innerContent":["\n<p><strong>Racism harms health<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Like HLS, students at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hsph.harvard.edu\/\">Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health<\/a> felt the sting of the Brown and Garner cases, and have urged the School to play a larger role not only in engaging in public discourse about racial violence, but in instigating change on and off campus.<\/p>\n<p>School officials held a widely attended \u201ctown hall\u201d for the Harvard Chan School community in December, while <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hsph.harvard.edu\/deans-office\/\">Dean Julio Frenk<\/a> issued a statement acknowledging the controversy and recommitting to scholarly research that identifies and reduces disparities that lead to health inequities. Frenk will host another town hall in March to update students and provide feedback.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn public health, there\u2019s a strong orientation toward social justice. And, of course, violence and health are intimately connected,\u201d said <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hsph.harvard.edu\/meredith-rosenthal\/\">Meredith Rosenthal<\/a>, Ph.D. \u201998, a professor of health economics and policy and associate dean for diversity. \u201cThere were two major streams of work that the students asked us to commit to. One was to position the School \u2014 and they are really looking for the University to position itself this way \u2014 in a way to support social change \u2026 by organizing intellectual, scientific contributions that can really support evidence-based change.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Last\u00a0month, the School held a forum, <a href=\"http:\/\/theforum.sph.harvard.edu\/events\/race-criminal-justice-and-health\/\">\u201cRace, Criminal Justice, and Health,\u201d<\/a> featuring faculty from Harvard Chan School, HLS, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hms.harvard.edu\">Harvard Medical School<\/a> (HMS), to examine how disparate treatment under the law and in the criminal justice system can affect health and the role race plays in a host of environmental factors that lead to poor health.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s been documented that racism itself harms health. If you are an individual in a racial minority, the effect of racism on a whole lot of health outcomes directly has been documented. Our faculty, including David Williams, Nancy Krieger, and Laura Kubzansky, have done work in this area,\u201d said Rosenthal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut racism has much broader and deeper effects \u2026 on income, on educational opportunities, other opportunities, and all of those socioeconomic consequences are extremely important for health. Your ability to thrive depends a lot on your socioeconomic context,\u201d she said. \u201cIn public health, we know that these social determinants of health contribute so much more to health than medical care and health insurance, the things that we often think about.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Internally, Rosenthal said students have asked the administration to examine its policies and outcomes regarding student, staff, and faculty diversity and to explain what it\u2019s doing to improve the climate for and recruitment of under-represented minorities. As a first step, the Harvard Chan School just published a 35-page report that documents those efforts as a starting point to suggest ways to increase awareness and a sense of inclusion for students from minority backgrounds who may feel marginalized.<\/p>\n<p>The School, in the midst of curriculum reform, is considering future training for students, staff, and faculty around issues of privilege so that people work more effectively in diverse contexts, and will add \u201ccultural competence\u201d to its requirements for a master\u2019s degree in public health. The details of that process are expected in a report next fall. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to define what that will mean and how students will get it,\u201d said Rosenthal.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Students\u2019 intensity, unity<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Lisa M. Coleman, the University\u2019s chief diversity officer, works closely with student groups and administrators year-round, but since the protests began she and her team, as well as other diversity officers across campus, have been busy serving as facilitators and gathering information about events and student-led initiatives taking place across Harvard.<\/p>\n<p>Coleman, who took the post in 2010, said she has never seen Harvard students respond to news events with such sustained intensity and broad unity, and was not expecting the protests to encompass such a far-reaching slate of issues.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe, meaning administrators, did not understand\u201d initially the broad ripple effects the Ferguson and Staten Island cases would spawn, she said, although further dialogue helped clarify the students\u2019 concerns. \u201cThe other thing that became very clear to us was that this was a conversation about learning.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Coleman said students are \u201cconcerned because what it sparked in them is the issue about \u2018what matters,\u2019 and what matters to them right now is: Are they getting \u2026 [the] education to be able to deal with difference and, thus, help to work on global issues?\u201d One other development, she added, is that \u201cIt\u2019s not only disenfranchised students who are leading the efforts. This is a collective effort engaging students from all backgrounds.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Coleman said students across Harvard have expressed concerns about race and ethnicity, as well as gender and LGBTQ issues, with particular attention paid to the recruitment and retention of students, the diversity of faculty and staff \u2014 including those within the senior administration at each School\u2015 the importance of instruction and training, and the ways in which the University educates the community about difference so the burden of managing diversity issues doesn\u2019t fall on students alone.<\/p>\n<p>So far, there has been a robust, open discussion between students and administrators over short- and long-term priorities, Coleman said. \u201cIt will be important to continue the momentum, and it remains crucial to communicate all that we are doing across our many Schools,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Justice and healing<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Students and faculty at <a href=\"http:\/\/hds.harvard.edu\/\">Harvard Divinity School<\/a> (HDS) were energized early on by the Ferguson protests. Led by the Rev. Jonathan Walton, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister, about a dozen students, including Melissa Bartholomew, M.Div. \u201916, drove to Missouri in August to lend their support and their voices to the outcry.<\/p>\n<p>Bartholomew and Rachel Foran, M.T.S. \u201916, are co-founders of a new student group, HDS Racial Justice and Healing Initiative, which is drafting a proposal to submit to the School\u2019s administration later this semester outlining ways to ensure that strategies to confront and resolve racial and social injustice have a lasting home at the HDS, \u201cto really make sure our work lives on beyond the students that are here today,\u201d said Bartholomew.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe blessing and beauty of our work at HDS is that we\u2019re not fighting against our administration. We\u2019re not fighting to get them to hear what we\u2019re trying to say or to realize that these are important issues. They\u2019ve been very clear, through their presence and through their words, that, \u2018We get it, and these are important issues and let\u2019s figure out how we can address them as a community\u2019 ... which is really, really great,\u201d said Bartholomew.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo we\u2019ve been really thinking about our capacity as ministers, as scholars, practitioners, [and] intellectuals, and the unique way that we can contribute to this work so that the work we do is sustainable and leads to transformation, because we\u2019re all committed to doing this in a different way and getting different results,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>The issues also have given Bartholomew a fresh sense of purpose.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m an African-American woman. If I didn\u2019t have this as an outlet, if I didn\u2019t have these tangible things to be working on in the midst of these very difficult situations, I\u2019d get depressed, I\u2019d be discouraged,\u201d she said. \u201cBut these experiences \u2014 working with Rachel and working with all of our students \u2014 really invigorates me and gives me hope. And I think other students probably feel the same way and definitely feel great about \u2026 while we\u2019re in school, applying what we know and thinking through real-life problems and not waiting until after school to join some organization to try and get things done.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Critical work to be done<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>With policy-making, good government, and leadership as core domains of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hks.harvard.edu\/\">Harvard Kennedy School<\/a> (HKS), the Ferguson case provoked immediate and strong reactions on campus, which continued in the months following Brown\u2019s death.<\/p>\n<p>Jayme Johnson, a mid-career M.P.A. and class representative to the HKS student government, said there was some tension at the School largely because neither the student body nor the administration \u201cknew quite what to do\u201d in their initial responses.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLast semester was very emotional, [there was] lots of frustration, and what we\u2019ve decided is that we are a policy School and we should be working toward a tangible, constructive response to this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Dean David Ellwood and Karen Jackson-Weaver, senior associate dean for degree programs and student affairs, have been very supportive, he said. \u201cIt\u2019s very much a partnership.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is critical work to be done in the areas of racial equality, violence prevention, economic inequity, and in our justice system, and I am confident the members of this community have the knowledge, creativity, and drive to help move our nation forward,\u201d said Ellwood in a Jan. 29 letter to the School. \u201cIt is our responsibility and our privilege as part of the HKS community to take on tough issues and to help find solutions for difficult public problems.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In early February, Ellwood moderated a JFK Jr. Forum event, \u201cChallenges to Democracy: The Future of Policing,\u201d featuring Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, Houston Mayor Annise Parker, and Phillip Goff, a visiting scholar on race and criminal justice.<\/p>\n<p>Several new courses are underway that address topics like leadership and diversity, narrowing the racial achievement gap, and the U.S. criminal justice system. There is also a series of faculty-led discussions on policing. Jackson-Weaver lead a communications workshop, \u201cRace and Difficult Conversations,\u201d on Feb. 23, while the Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics, and Public Policy is holding a periodic study group with Michele Norris, a National Public Radio host and a spring fellow, on \u201cHow Shifts in Race and Cultural Identity Influence Politics, Policy, and Pop Culture,\u201d that also began Feb. 23.<\/p>\n<p>Much of the group energy at HKS is directed outward this semester. About 100 students in HKS student government and those interested in criminal justice careers held brainstorming sessions, assisted by HKS faculty, activists, and attorneys from Black Lives Matters, clergy, and experts from other universities, to draft policy ideas that they submitted to the President\u2019s Task Force on 21st-Century Policing in late February. President Obama formed the task force in December to examine how best to reduce crime while building trust and collaboration between law enforcement and citizens. Its first report is expected later this month.<\/p>\n<p>Johnson, an inspector with London\u2019s Metropolitan Police, said the group will offer suggestions across a range of issues and best practices, such as: whether police should be guardians or warriors; whether the right people are being recruited; whether police should investigate themselves; an evaluation of stop-and-frisk tactics; the scarcity of data about police-related deaths; and whether police ought to use nonlethal force more frequently. The group hopes to play a role in formulating the task force\u2019s final report, expected this summer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnlike many movements, there\u2019s often no tangible end,\u201d said Johnson. \u201cBut with this, we feel we\u2019ve got a way forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\n"],"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Racism harms health<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Like HLS, students at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hsph.harvard.edu\/\">Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health<\/a> felt the sting of the Brown and Garner cases, and have urged the School to play a larger role not only in engaging in public discourse about racial violence, but in instigating change on and off campus.<\/p>\n<p>School officials held a widely attended \u201ctown hall\u201d for the Harvard Chan School community in December, while <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hsph.harvard.edu\/deans-office\/\">Dean Julio Frenk<\/a> issued a statement acknowledging the controversy and recommitting to scholarly research that identifies and reduces disparities that lead to health inequities. Frenk will host another town hall in March to update students and provide feedback.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn public health, there\u2019s a strong orientation toward social justice. And, of course, violence and health are intimately connected,\u201d said <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hsph.harvard.edu\/meredith-rosenthal\/\">Meredith Rosenthal<\/a>, Ph.D. \u201998, a professor of health economics and policy and associate dean for diversity. \u201cThere were two major streams of work that the students asked us to commit to. One was to position the School \u2014 and they are really looking for the University to position itself this way \u2014 in a way to support social change \u2026 by organizing intellectual, scientific contributions that can really support evidence-based change.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Last\u00a0month, the School held a forum, <a href=\"http:\/\/theforum.sph.harvard.edu\/events\/race-criminal-justice-and-health\/\">\u201cRace, Criminal Justice, and Health,\u201d<\/a> featuring faculty from Harvard Chan School, HLS, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hms.harvard.edu\">Harvard Medical School<\/a> (HMS), to examine how disparate treatment under the law and in the criminal justice system can affect health and the role race plays in a host of environmental factors that lead to poor health.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s been documented that racism itself harms health. If you are an individual in a racial minority, the effect of racism on a whole lot of health outcomes directly has been documented. Our faculty, including David Williams, Nancy Krieger, and Laura Kubzansky, have done work in this area,\u201d said Rosenthal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut racism has much broader and deeper effects \u2026 on income, on educational opportunities, other opportunities, and all of those socioeconomic consequences are extremely important for health. Your ability to thrive depends a lot on your socioeconomic context,\u201d she said. \u201cIn public health, we know that these social determinants of health contribute so much more to health than medical care and health insurance, the things that we often think about.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Internally, Rosenthal said students have asked the administration to examine its policies and outcomes regarding student, staff, and faculty diversity and to explain what it\u2019s doing to improve the climate for and recruitment of under-represented minorities. As a first step, the Harvard Chan School just published a 35-page report that documents those efforts as a starting point to suggest ways to increase awareness and a sense of inclusion for students from minority backgrounds who may feel marginalized.<\/p>\n<p>The School, in the midst of curriculum reform, is considering future training for students, staff, and faculty around issues of privilege so that people work more effectively in diverse contexts, and will add \u201ccultural competence\u201d to its requirements for a master\u2019s degree in public health. The details of that process are expected in a report next fall. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to define what that will mean and how students will get it,\u201d said Rosenthal.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Students\u2019 intensity, unity<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Lisa M. Coleman, the University\u2019s chief diversity officer, works closely with student groups and administrators year-round, but since the protests began she and her team, as well as other diversity officers across campus, have been busy serving as facilitators and gathering information about events and student-led initiatives taking place across Harvard.<\/p>\n<p>Coleman, who took the post in 2010, said she has never seen Harvard students respond to news events with such sustained intensity and broad unity, and was not expecting the protests to encompass such a far-reaching slate of issues.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe, meaning administrators, did not understand\u201d initially the broad ripple effects the Ferguson and Staten Island cases would spawn, she said, although further dialogue helped clarify the students\u2019 concerns. \u201cThe other thing that became very clear to us was that this was a conversation about learning.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Coleman said students are \u201cconcerned because what it sparked in them is the issue about \u2018what matters,\u2019 and what matters to them right now is: Are they getting \u2026 [the] education to be able to deal with difference and, thus, help to work on global issues?\u201d One other development, she added, is that \u201cIt\u2019s not only disenfranchised students who are leading the efforts. This is a collective effort engaging students from all backgrounds.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Coleman said students across Harvard have expressed concerns about race and ethnicity, as well as gender and LGBTQ issues, with particular attention paid to the recruitment and retention of students, the diversity of faculty and staff \u2014 including those within the senior administration at each School\u2015 the importance of instruction and training, and the ways in which the University educates the community about difference so the burden of managing diversity issues doesn\u2019t fall on students alone.<\/p>\n<p>So far, there has been a robust, open discussion between students and administrators over short- and long-term priorities, Coleman said. \u201cIt will be important to continue the momentum, and it remains crucial to communicate all that we are doing across our many Schools,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Justice and healing<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Students and faculty at <a href=\"http:\/\/hds.harvard.edu\/\">Harvard Divinity School<\/a> (HDS) were energized early on by the Ferguson protests. Led by the Rev. Jonathan Walton, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister, about a dozen students, including Melissa Bartholomew, M.Div. \u201916, drove to Missouri in August to lend their support and their voices to the outcry.<\/p>\n<p>Bartholomew and Rachel Foran, M.T.S. \u201916, are co-founders of a new student group, HDS Racial Justice and Healing Initiative, which is drafting a proposal to submit to the School\u2019s administration later this semester outlining ways to ensure that strategies to confront and resolve racial and social injustice have a lasting home at the HDS, \u201cto really make sure our work lives on beyond the students that are here today,\u201d said Bartholomew.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe blessing and beauty of our work at HDS is that we\u2019re not fighting against our administration. We\u2019re not fighting to get them to hear what we\u2019re trying to say or to realize that these are important issues. They\u2019ve been very clear, through their presence and through their words, that, \u2018We get it, and these are important issues and let\u2019s figure out how we can address them as a community\u2019 ... which is really, really great,\u201d said Bartholomew.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo we\u2019ve been really thinking about our capacity as ministers, as scholars, practitioners, [and] intellectuals, and the unique way that we can contribute to this work so that the work we do is sustainable and leads to transformation, because we\u2019re all committed to doing this in a different way and getting different results,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>The issues also have given Bartholomew a fresh sense of purpose.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m an African-American woman. If I didn\u2019t have this as an outlet, if I didn\u2019t have these tangible things to be working on in the midst of these very difficult situations, I\u2019d get depressed, I\u2019d be discouraged,\u201d she said. \u201cBut these experiences \u2014 working with Rachel and working with all of our students \u2014 really invigorates me and gives me hope. And I think other students probably feel the same way and definitely feel great about \u2026 while we\u2019re in school, applying what we know and thinking through real-life problems and not waiting until after school to join some organization to try and get things done.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Critical work to be done<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>With policy-making, good government, and leadership as core domains of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hks.harvard.edu\/\">Harvard Kennedy School<\/a> (HKS), the Ferguson case provoked immediate and strong reactions on campus, which continued in the months following Brown\u2019s death.<\/p>\n<p>Jayme Johnson, a mid-career M.P.A. and class representative to the HKS student government, said there was some tension at the School largely because neither the student body nor the administration \u201cknew quite what to do\u201d in their initial responses.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLast semester was very emotional, [there was] lots of frustration, and what we\u2019ve decided is that we are a policy School and we should be working toward a tangible, constructive response to this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Dean David Ellwood and Karen Jackson-Weaver, senior associate dean for degree programs and student affairs, have been very supportive, he said. \u201cIt\u2019s very much a partnership.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is critical work to be done in the areas of racial equality, violence prevention, economic inequity, and in our justice system, and I am confident the members of this community have the knowledge, creativity, and drive to help move our nation forward,\u201d said Ellwood in a Jan. 29 letter to the School. \u201cIt is our responsibility and our privilege as part of the HKS community to take on tough issues and to help find solutions for difficult public problems.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In early February, Ellwood moderated a JFK Jr. Forum event, \u201cChallenges to Democracy: The Future of Policing,\u201d featuring Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, Houston Mayor Annise Parker, and Phillip Goff, a visiting scholar on race and criminal justice.<\/p>\n<p>Several new courses are underway that address topics like leadership and diversity, narrowing the racial achievement gap, and the U.S. criminal justice system. There is also a series of faculty-led discussions on policing. Jackson-Weaver lead a communications workshop, \u201cRace and Difficult Conversations,\u201d on Feb. 23, while the Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics, and Public Policy is holding a periodic study group with Michele Norris, a National Public Radio host and a spring fellow, on \u201cHow Shifts in Race and Cultural Identity Influence Politics, Policy, and Pop Culture,\u201d that also began Feb. 23.<\/p>\n<p>Much of the group energy at HKS is directed outward this semester. About 100 students in HKS student government and those interested in criminal justice careers held brainstorming sessions, assisted by HKS faculty, activists, and attorneys from Black Lives Matters, clergy, and experts from other universities, to draft policy ideas that they submitted to the President\u2019s Task Force on 21st-Century Policing in late February. President Obama formed the task force in December to examine how best to reduce crime while building trust and collaboration between law enforcement and citizens. Its first report is expected later this month.<\/p>\n<p>Johnson, an inspector with London\u2019s Metropolitan Police, said the group will offer suggestions across a range of issues and best practices, such as: whether police should be guardians or warriors; whether the right people are being recruited; whether police should investigate themselves; an evaluation of stop-and-frisk tactics; the scarcity of data about police-related deaths; and whether police ought to use nonlethal force more frequently. The group hopes to play a role in formulating the task force\u2019s final report, expected this summer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnlike many movements, there\u2019s often no tangible end,\u201d said Johnson. \u201cBut with this, we feel we\u2019ve got a way forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\n"}],"innerHTML":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-group alignwide\">\n\n\r\n\t\n\t\r\n\n\n<\/div>\n","innerContent":["\n<div class=\"wp-block-group alignwide\">\n\n","\r\n\t","\n\t\r\n","\n\n<\/div>\n"],"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-group alignwide has-global-padding is-content-justification-center is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n\n\n\t\t<p>They are short, stark sentences, seared into the public consciousness in recent months: Hands up, don\u2019t shoot. I can\u2019t breathe. Black lives matter.<\/p>\n<p>The killings of unarmed black men by white police officers last summer \u2014 the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the chokehold death of Eric Garner, captured on video, in Staten Island, N.Y. \u2014 and the grand jury decisions against indictments in those cases sparked shock and outrage that led to massive protests across the country, including here at Harvard.<\/p>\n<p>Students, faculty, and staff from across the University took to the streets to march, held rallies and vigils, and staged \u201cdie-ins\u201d in solidarity with Brown\u2019s and Garner\u2019s families, and \u00a0to protest the use of military-level force by U.S. law enforcement against citizens and its disproportionate deployment in communities of color. The protests decried centuries of unpunished violence against African-Americans, as part of the growing social movement Black Lives Matter.<\/p>\n<p>Brown\u2019s and Garner\u2019s deaths also have prompted widespread soul-searching, raising questions in every corner of the University about how Harvard can lead the way forward, using tools like the law, government and policymaking, public health, education, and religion to root out the systemic inequities that have fueled and thrived on racism and racial injustice in America.<\/p>\n<p>At <a href=\"http:\/\/www.law.harvard.edu\/\">Harvard Law School<\/a> (HLS), that question has been felt acutely, prompting an array of personal and public efforts, including <a href=\"http:\/\/today.law.harvard.edu\/criminal-justice-policing-events-ferguson-staten-island-cleveland-elsewhere-video\/\">panels<\/a>, talks, conferences, seminars, in-class discussions, and faculty opinion pieces in recent months. In December, <a href=\"http:\/\/hls.harvard.edu\/faculty\/directory\/10589\/Minow\">Dean Martha Minow<\/a> convened a School-wide meeting for students, faculty, and staff to discuss the grand jury decisions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe nation has witnessed\u00a0lethal violence against unarmed individuals who are members of visible minorities, and there is a widespread perception that procedures meant to secure legal accountability aren\u2019t working,\u201d Minow told the Gazette in a statement last month about why these incidents have resonated so deeply at HLS. \u201cThe ideal of equal justice under law animates our law school and informs our daily work.\u00a0Many of us here feel a special responsibility to push for change.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For some in the law school community, that change includes a re-evaluation of what students should be learning.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs I\u2019m about to graduate, I can say with total certainty that as a student at Harvard Law School, it\u2019s incredibly easy to avoid ever having to think about racial injustice; it\u2019s incredibly easy to avoid ever having to talk about, in your classroom, issues of social injustice or broader power inequality,\u201d said Jacob Reisberg, a third-year student, during a Feb. 13 symposium, \u201cLaw School or Justice School: Connecting the Dots Between Harvard and Ferguson,\u201d which featured Minow and a panel of distinguished scholars on race and the law. \u201cWhat can we do as an institution to make these discussions part of the mandatory curriculum?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Panelist <a href=\"http:\/\/hls.harvard.edu\/faculty\/directory\/10361\/Hanson\/\">Jon Hanson<\/a>, the Alfred Smart Professor of Law at HLS, called this a \u201chistoric moment\u201d for legal education.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe really need to reinvent our burdens of proof, reinvent what our presumptions are. Legal education ought to be in part about interrogating those and in part about educating our students in what those are. But also how they\u2019re reacting to those and how their own psychology\u201d contributes to inequities that pervade the criminal justice system, said Hanson, who teaches the \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/ideas\/2015\/02\/06\/new-harvard-law-school-program-aims-for-systemic-justice\/PeGBqIenWhqqCuJ37Y20kJ\/story.html\">Systemic Justice<\/a>\u201d course and leads the Justice Lab project, a new effort to get students to start working through intractable societal ills using the law. \u201cIf we\u2019re going to do it with any administration, at any moment, this is the one.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Noting that such major changes require broad consensus, Minow recommended students consider working in one of 26 HLS-affiliated legal clinics to gain vital, real-world skills while making a difference in the lives of people who need help. She also acknowledged that students have a right to demand more.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe heart of a law school is about preparing people for a system that exists and critiquing that system,\u201d Minow said of the \u201claw school paradox\u201d: needing to teach students how to succeed within a flawed structure, yet wanting to make sure students understand and critique those flaws, and perhaps one day fix them. \u201cIf we do not prepare you for the existing system, we are not helping you do what you want to do. If we prepare you only for the existing system, we\u2019re not doing what is our obligation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Those involved say that the dialogue among HLS students, faculty, and administrators is clearing the air for those who felt that their concerns about racial justice were not being heard or taken seriously enough last semester.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think in that silence, it motivated students to be even more active, to have more protests, to have more die-ins. Since then, it\u2019s been received, and we\u2019ve begun to have more events and discussions where faculty members and the administration are participating,\u201d said Lakeisha Williams, a second-year HLS student who oversees publicity for the <a href=\"https:\/\/orgs.law.harvard.edu\/blsa\/springconference\/\">Harvard Black Law Students Association\u2019s<\/a> annual spring conference, held Feb. 27 and 28. The conference focused on how \u201cBlack Lives Matter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust in talking with my peers, a lot of them have applauded our administration and our faculty members in really engaging us in dialogue and giving us concrete guidance for things that we can do at our level,\u201d Williams said. \u201cAnd then I have other peers who feel as if it\u2019s just a conversation and that we need more.\u201d<\/p>\n\r\n\t\n\n\t<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignnone size-full is-resized\"><img src=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/091714_ferguson_1867_570.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-166124\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">\u201cEven before, but especially since, the decisions in Ferguson and New York galvanized the nation\u2019s attention, faculty and students at each of Harvard\u2019s Schools have been engaging deeply in scholarship and teaching related to issues of race, ethnicity and injustice that are at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement. In these ways, and through the raising of all our voices, universities like Harvard can make a powerful contribution toward advancing the critical principles of fundamental justice and equality before the law,\u201d said President Drew Faust. Faust attended the Institute of Politics' Ferguson panel at the Harvard Kennedy School in the fall. File photo by Rose Lincoln\/Harvard Staff Photographer\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\t\n\t\r\n\n<p><strong>Racism harms health<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Like HLS, students at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hsph.harvard.edu\/\">Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health<\/a> felt the sting of the Brown and Garner cases, and have urged the School to play a larger role not only in engaging in public discourse about racial violence, but in instigating change on and off campus.<\/p>\n<p>School officials held a widely attended \u201ctown hall\u201d for the Harvard Chan School community in December, while <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hsph.harvard.edu\/deans-office\/\">Dean Julio Frenk<\/a> issued a statement acknowledging the controversy and recommitting to scholarly research that identifies and reduces disparities that lead to health inequities. Frenk will host another town hall in March to update students and provide feedback.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn public health, there\u2019s a strong orientation toward social justice. And, of course, violence and health are intimately connected,\u201d said <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hsph.harvard.edu\/meredith-rosenthal\/\">Meredith Rosenthal<\/a>, Ph.D. \u201998, a professor of health economics and policy and associate dean for diversity. \u201cThere were two major streams of work that the students asked us to commit to. One was to position the School \u2014 and they are really looking for the University to position itself this way \u2014 in a way to support social change \u2026 by organizing intellectual, scientific contributions that can really support evidence-based change.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Last\u00a0month, the School held a forum, <a href=\"http:\/\/theforum.sph.harvard.edu\/events\/race-criminal-justice-and-health\/\">\u201cRace, Criminal Justice, and Health,\u201d<\/a> featuring faculty from Harvard Chan School, HLS, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hms.harvard.edu\">Harvard Medical School<\/a> (HMS), to examine how disparate treatment under the law and in the criminal justice system can affect health and the role race plays in a host of environmental factors that lead to poor health.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s been documented that racism itself harms health. If you are an individual in a racial minority, the effect of racism on a whole lot of health outcomes directly has been documented. Our faculty, including David Williams, Nancy Krieger, and Laura Kubzansky, have done work in this area,\u201d said Rosenthal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut racism has much broader and deeper effects \u2026 on income, on educational opportunities, other opportunities, and all of those socioeconomic consequences are extremely important for health. Your ability to thrive depends a lot on your socioeconomic context,\u201d she said. \u201cIn public health, we know that these social determinants of health contribute so much more to health than medical care and health insurance, the things that we often think about.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Internally, Rosenthal said students have asked the administration to examine its policies and outcomes regarding student, staff, and faculty diversity and to explain what it\u2019s doing to improve the climate for and recruitment of under-represented minorities. As a first step, the Harvard Chan School just published a 35-page report that documents those efforts as a starting point to suggest ways to increase awareness and a sense of inclusion for students from minority backgrounds who may feel marginalized.<\/p>\n<p>The School, in the midst of curriculum reform, is considering future training for students, staff, and faculty around issues of privilege so that people work more effectively in diverse contexts, and will add \u201ccultural competence\u201d to its requirements for a master\u2019s degree in public health. The details of that process are expected in a report next fall. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to define what that will mean and how students will get it,\u201d said Rosenthal.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Students\u2019 intensity, unity<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Lisa M. Coleman, the University\u2019s chief diversity officer, works closely with student groups and administrators year-round, but since the protests began she and her team, as well as other diversity officers across campus, have been busy serving as facilitators and gathering information about events and student-led initiatives taking place across Harvard.<\/p>\n<p>Coleman, who took the post in 2010, said she has never seen Harvard students respond to news events with such sustained intensity and broad unity, and was not expecting the protests to encompass such a far-reaching slate of issues.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe, meaning administrators, did not understand\u201d initially the broad ripple effects the Ferguson and Staten Island cases would spawn, she said, although further dialogue helped clarify the students\u2019 concerns. \u201cThe other thing that became very clear to us was that this was a conversation about learning.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Coleman said students are \u201cconcerned because what it sparked in them is the issue about \u2018what matters,\u2019 and what matters to them right now is: Are they getting \u2026 [the] education to be able to deal with difference and, thus, help to work on global issues?\u201d One other development, she added, is that \u201cIt\u2019s not only disenfranchised students who are leading the efforts. This is a collective effort engaging students from all backgrounds.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Coleman said students across Harvard have expressed concerns about race and ethnicity, as well as gender and LGBTQ issues, with particular attention paid to the recruitment and retention of students, the diversity of faculty and staff \u2014 including those within the senior administration at each School\u2015 the importance of instruction and training, and the ways in which the University educates the community about difference so the burden of managing diversity issues doesn\u2019t fall on students alone.<\/p>\n<p>So far, there has been a robust, open discussion between students and administrators over short- and long-term priorities, Coleman said. \u201cIt will be important to continue the momentum, and it remains crucial to communicate all that we are doing across our many Schools,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Justice and healing<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Students and faculty at <a href=\"http:\/\/hds.harvard.edu\/\">Harvard Divinity School<\/a> (HDS) were energized early on by the Ferguson protests. Led by the Rev. Jonathan Walton, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister, about a dozen students, including Melissa Bartholomew, M.Div. \u201916, drove to Missouri in August to lend their support and their voices to the outcry.<\/p>\n<p>Bartholomew and Rachel Foran, M.T.S. \u201916, are co-founders of a new student group, HDS Racial Justice and Healing Initiative, which is drafting a proposal to submit to the School\u2019s administration later this semester outlining ways to ensure that strategies to confront and resolve racial and social injustice have a lasting home at the HDS, \u201cto really make sure our work lives on beyond the students that are here today,\u201d said Bartholomew.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe blessing and beauty of our work at HDS is that we\u2019re not fighting against our administration. We\u2019re not fighting to get them to hear what we\u2019re trying to say or to realize that these are important issues. They\u2019ve been very clear, through their presence and through their words, that, \u2018We get it, and these are important issues and let\u2019s figure out how we can address them as a community\u2019 ... which is really, really great,\u201d said Bartholomew.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo we\u2019ve been really thinking about our capacity as ministers, as scholars, practitioners, [and] intellectuals, and the unique way that we can contribute to this work so that the work we do is sustainable and leads to transformation, because we\u2019re all committed to doing this in a different way and getting different results,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>The issues also have given Bartholomew a fresh sense of purpose.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m an African-American woman. If I didn\u2019t have this as an outlet, if I didn\u2019t have these tangible things to be working on in the midst of these very difficult situations, I\u2019d get depressed, I\u2019d be discouraged,\u201d she said. \u201cBut these experiences \u2014 working with Rachel and working with all of our students \u2014 really invigorates me and gives me hope. And I think other students probably feel the same way and definitely feel great about \u2026 while we\u2019re in school, applying what we know and thinking through real-life problems and not waiting until after school to join some organization to try and get things done.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Critical work to be done<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>With policy-making, good government, and leadership as core domains of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hks.harvard.edu\/\">Harvard Kennedy School<\/a> (HKS), the Ferguson case provoked immediate and strong reactions on campus, which continued in the months following Brown\u2019s death.<\/p>\n<p>Jayme Johnson, a mid-career M.P.A. and class representative to the HKS student government, said there was some tension at the School largely because neither the student body nor the administration \u201cknew quite what to do\u201d in their initial responses.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLast semester was very emotional, [there was] lots of frustration, and what we\u2019ve decided is that we are a policy School and we should be working toward a tangible, constructive response to this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Dean David Ellwood and Karen Jackson-Weaver, senior associate dean for degree programs and student affairs, have been very supportive, he said. \u201cIt\u2019s very much a partnership.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is critical work to be done in the areas of racial equality, violence prevention, economic inequity, and in our justice system, and I am confident the members of this community have the knowledge, creativity, and drive to help move our nation forward,\u201d said Ellwood in a Jan. 29 letter to the School. \u201cIt is our responsibility and our privilege as part of the HKS community to take on tough issues and to help find solutions for difficult public problems.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In early February, Ellwood moderated a JFK Jr. Forum event, \u201cChallenges to Democracy: The Future of Policing,\u201d featuring Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, Houston Mayor Annise Parker, and Phillip Goff, a visiting scholar on race and criminal justice.<\/p>\n<p>Several new courses are underway that address topics like leadership and diversity, narrowing the racial achievement gap, and the U.S. criminal justice system. There is also a series of faculty-led discussions on policing. Jackson-Weaver lead a communications workshop, \u201cRace and Difficult Conversations,\u201d on Feb. 23, while the Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics, and Public Policy is holding a periodic study group with Michele Norris, a National Public Radio host and a spring fellow, on \u201cHow Shifts in Race and Cultural Identity Influence Politics, Policy, and Pop Culture,\u201d that also began Feb. 23.<\/p>\n<p>Much of the group energy at HKS is directed outward this semester. About 100 students in HKS student government and those interested in criminal justice careers held brainstorming sessions, assisted by HKS faculty, activists, and attorneys from Black Lives Matters, clergy, and experts from other universities, to draft policy ideas that they submitted to the President\u2019s Task Force on 21st-Century Policing in late February. President Obama formed the task force in December to examine how best to reduce crime while building trust and collaboration between law enforcement and citizens. Its first report is expected later this month.<\/p>\n<p>Johnson, an inspector with London\u2019s Metropolitan Police, said the group will offer suggestions across a range of issues and best practices, such as: whether police should be guardians or warriors; whether the right people are being recruited; whether police should investigate themselves; an evaluation of stop-and-frisk tactics; the scarcity of data about police-related deaths; and whether police ought to use nonlethal force more frequently. The group hopes to play a role in formulating the task force\u2019s final report, expected this summer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnlike many movements, there\u2019s often no tangible end,\u201d said Johnson. \u201cBut with this, we feel we\u2019ve got a way forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n"}},"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":163945,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2014\/11\/ferguson-through-a-global-lens\/","url_meta":{"origin":166119,"position":0},"title":"Ferguson: Through a global lens","author":"harvardgazette","date":"November 25, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The events unfolding in Ferguson, Mo., are being watched around the world. The way the grand jury\u2019s decision and its aftermath are being perceived abroad may be categorically different than how they are understood at home, according to Harvard Kennedy School historian and Associate Professor Moshik Temkin on this week\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Nation & World"","block_context":{"text":"Nation & World","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/nation-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/temkin-moshik_policycast605.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/temkin-moshik_policycast605.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/temkin-moshik_policycast605.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":183869,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2016\/05\/haa-recognizes-outstanding-alums\/","url_meta":{"origin":166119,"position":1},"title":"HAA recognizes outstanding alums","author":"harvardgazette","date":"May 24, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"The Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) announced that Thomas G. Everett, Roger W. Ferguson Jr. \u201973, A.M. \u201978, J.D. \u201979, Ph.D. \u201981, John H. McArthur, M.B.A. \u201959, D.B.A. \u201963, and Betsey Bradley Urschel, Ed.M. \u201963, will receive the 2016 Harvard Medal on May 26, during the Afternoon Program at Commencement.","rel":"","context":"In "Campus & Community"","block_context":{"text":"Campus & Community","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/campus-community\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/new_haa_4tych_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/new_haa_4tych_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/new_haa_4tych_605.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":164466,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2014\/12\/in-racial-protests-a-continuing-ripple-effect\/","url_meta":{"origin":166119,"position":2},"title":"In racial protests, a continuing ripple effect","author":"harvardgazette","date":"December 15, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"As protests around the nation continued in the wake of decisions by grand juries in Missouri and New York not to indict police officers in the deaths of two unarmed black men, hundreds of Harvard community members expressed their own anger, frustration, and desire for changes in the criminal justice\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campus & Community"","block_context":{"text":"Campus & Community","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/campus-community\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/hms_di_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/hms_di_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/hms_di_605.jpg?resize=525%2C300 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World","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/nation-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/111015_black_lives_1480_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/111015_black_lives_1480_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/111015_black_lives_1480_605.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":110261,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2012\/05\/voice-of-public-service-at-harvard\/","url_meta":{"origin":166119,"position":5},"title":"‘Voice of public service at Harvard’","author":"harvardgazette","date":"May 17, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Calling the Kennedy School \"the voice of public service at Harvard,\" University President Drew Faust welcomed alumni from across seven decades Friday to a special 75th anniversary conference.","rel":"","context":"In "Campus & Community"","block_context":{"text":"Campus & Community","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/campus-community\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/051112_hks_75_188.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/051112_hks_75_188.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/051112_hks_75_188.jpg?resize=525%2C300 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