The Harvard Plan

Universities were not always so vulnerable to the whims of politics. The whole system of taxpayer-funded, university-led scientific research came about at the end of World War II, and was the brainchild of a man named Vannevar Bush. He felt the partnership of government and academics had to be equal in order to yield breakthroughs. Today, the Trump administration is proposing a new “compact” that...

Harvard president Alan Garber and National Institutes of Health director  Jay Bhattacharya are at the heart of the national fight over the future of academia. Alan Garber has been cast as the defender of academic freedom and democracy; Jay Bhattacharya is Donald Trump’s pick to lead the NIH, the agency withholding billions of dollars in research grants from Harvard. Oddly enough, the two men go wa...

What happened at Harvard after Donald Trump’s inauguration? Three main characters, all Harvard insiders, tell the story from their perspective: politics professor Ryan Enos, genetics professor and cancer researcher Kamila Naxerova, and Kit Parker, a colonel in the United States Army Reserve and professor of bioengineering and applied physics. Their personal perspectives interweave with the dramati...

Season One of The Harvard Plan anticipated what could happen to Harvard and academia once the new Trump administration came to power. Season Two picks up where the story left off. Host Ilya Marritz investigates the pressure Harvard's been under since January 2025, through the stories of some of the key players. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In part three of this collaboration with WNYC’s On The Media, the deep history of Harvard and the distinctly American idea of “diversity” is the hidden subtext for much of the recent strife. For most of the past half-century, the academy (and the business world) has embraced a concept of diversity as a social good. That concept, was developed at Harvard and endorsed by the Supreme Court, until the...

In part two of this collaboration with WNYC’s On The Media, Claudine Gay is accused of academic plagiarism, just days after giving testimony to Congress. The drip-drip of new allegations keeps the story in the headlines. It also reinforces critics’ allegation that Gay is a “diversity hire,” unworthy of the job. We hear from two of the writers who broke that news, and from a defender of Harvard’s d...

In part one of this collaboration with WNYC’s On The Media, Claudine Gay’s history-making inauguration as Harvard’s first Black president in September 2023 is seen by many as an inspirational moment for the university.  But by December 2023, that hope sours as her presidency becomes a proxy battleground for American culture wars  After war breaks out in the Middle East, Gay struggles to navigate ...

Universities have become a battlefield in the American culture wars in a way that’s dramatic and new. In the past year, Congress subpoenaed and investigated the inner workings of private colleges for the first time; four ivy league presidents quit their jobs amid mounting pressure and many institutions rolled back their commitments to be welcoming places for all. Meanwhile, President-elect Trump c...