At Harvard Chan, We Need To Talk About Hard Things

Two weeks ago, The Atlantic ran a story with a terminal diagnosis about my school: Harvard’s School of Public Health is broken. The reporting focused on the most recent fissure in the school’s foundation — Harvard School of Public Health Dean Andrea A. Baccarelli’s leadership.

When the news broke about the dean’s contributions to research linking Tylenol to autism, I witnessed a swift and unequivocally condemnatory response at Harvard Chan. But there were two issues present in the student body’s response to this crisis of leadership. First, we didn’t engage enough with the assumptions, constraints and tradeoffs underlying the criticism. Second, more pressingly, we simply didn’t have any space at the school for nuanced discussions.

The anger itself seemed legitimate. To recap this season’s horrors, the federal funding freeze shut down research projects and led to staff layoffs. As we scraped by with austerity measures, we found out that the dean spoke with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Jay Bhattacharya about his research linking Tylenol to autism — research that was controversial and of questionable quality. To many, it looked like their dean had become an ally of the very administration starving them of funding. This felt like a personal betrayal, piled on top of material losses.

But legitimate grievance doesn't justify a short-circuited response.

What I watched unfold in group chats, Instagram stories and in-person conversations was both genuine confusion and consternation. While many clamored to get more information, some questions were declarative rather than investigative. They were concerned primarily with speculative conclusions drawn from the situation rather than questioning the situation itself. Some students speculated about his motives and his sincerity — why he seemed to be more visible in the halls of Kresge than usual, his regular emails about the state of the school, and his rumored aspirations within the current political administration. Such comments didn’t feel like an analysis of leadership or decision-making. These were questions about his character.

But these responses are to be expected in the existing vacuum. There were very few structured spaces — in classrooms, clubs, or school forums — where we could have engaged in hard conversations about institutional choices or leadership tradeoffs. Apart from a handful of faculty leading informal conversations, there was little room to slow down and think collectively.

I don’t think such a lack of space for dialogue is because of fear. My colleagues are brave and have always stood up for things they believe in. Instead, the absence of such forums is indicative of atrophy. When dialogue disappears, certainty rushes in to fill its place.

Rigorous critique would narrow its scope and identify questions that demand careful discussions: Should the dean have asked for time before talking to federal officials? Maybe. Should he have thought harder about how his affiliation would be weaponized, given this administration’s tendency toward hyperbole? Fair. Was the science of poor quality? Perhaps. But the hardest part — the part that actually matters for institutional function — is holding these critiques while believing he’s capable of thinking carefully and acting in good faith.

Without clarifying the exact nature of the critique we’re making, we muddy institutional accountability. These decisions were made under real constraints: negotiations with a federal administration willing to weaponize research, fears of policy escalation, and budget allocations made under great uncertainty. It is worth asking: what should we reasonably expect a dean to do in this situation, and why?

This distinction matters because it determines how we determine accountability. There’s a marked difference between a poor judgment call versus fundamental untrustworthiness as a leader. These are different claims requiring different standards for evidence. Right now we’re treating them the same.

You may disagree with me because of a difference in values. Frustrating as it may be, it is essential to build a culture of trust and openness at HSPH. As Harvard Graduate School of Education lecturer Houman D. Harouni, argued, students need spaces where they can stay in discomfort — where disagreement and uncertainty are not pathologies to fix but conditions to think through. At Harvard Chan, we have few such spaces.

It’s also worth acknowledging that real problems extend beyond this single incident. The school has failed to be transparent about layoffs, termination notices, and future plans, especially as federal research funding has supposedly been restored. HSPH is also implicated in labor suppression across Harvard. These are genuine concerns of leadership and institutional stewardship. That context shouldn’t be ignored. But context should only complicate our judgment, not simplify it into a clean narrative. We should be angry about these failures, but not certain in judgment. Certainty forecloses the possibility of dialogue that we need for actual accountability. Staying engaged with the complexity is crucial for any progress.

This moment could be used differently. It’s a live case that belongs everywhere at the school: in epidemiology lectures and policy analysis seminars, in classes on research ethics, political economy, leadership, and negotiation. We should be using it to rebuild our collective muscle for full-bodied critique, to make the most of such a diverse student population. And if you disagree with me, I hope we can talk about it.

Akshay G. Narayanan is a second-year MPH candidate in Social and Behavioral Sciences Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.