My Personal Experience of How Harvard University's Abject Obedience to Big $ Makes It Intellectually Corrupt

Big $ wants Harvard to be pro-Zionist and pro-Big Pharma, and so it is

I was employed by Harvard University from 1992 to 2012 as a research scientist at the Harvard (now T.H. Chan) School of Public Health. During that time I encountered Harvard’s intellectual corruption due to its control by Big $.

Here’s one example.

In 2004 I sent emails to the following Harvard entities asking that they hold a symposium on "The ethnic state and human rights in Israel/Palestine." This would be a symposium focused on the question of whether it was a good or a bad idea for there to be a Jewish state in Palestine. The question was (and still is today) extremely topical because a Jewish state by definition means one in which non-Jews do not enjoy the same rights and benefits as Jews under the law (read about this here and here and here). The question was (and is) even more particularly topical because the existence of Israel as a Jewish state in Palestine is the source of enormous and violent conflict.

I sent these emails to the following people (click on each email recipient below to read the email exchange that ensued):

#1. Director of the Harvard School of Public Health Center for Health and Human Rights   

#2. Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health (preceded by exchanges with the Dean for Academic Affairs) [These emails show how the attempt to prevent distribution of the leaflet below was overcome.]

#3. Director of the Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies

#4. Executive Director of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government Carr Center for Human Rights Policy

#5. Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government

$6. Dean of the Harvard Law School

$7. Dean of the Harvard School of Divinity

Not a single one of these email recipients agreed to host a symposium on what was (and is) arguably one of the most, if not the most, important questions concerning international affairs, about which Harvard purports to be extremely concerned and engaged.

I invite you to follow the above links to read whatever email exchanges you wish. But I will illustrate the typical response by providing some excerpts from the exchange #1 I had with the Director of the Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Professor Stephen Marks.

After first noting that my proposal for a symposium was different from my earlier proposal that he write an opinion piece about Israel for the Boston Globe (which he declined to do), Professor Marks then wrote:

This proposal for a symposium is a different matter. We have sponsored two public events on Palestinian rights in the last few months and have several research projects in the pipeline on Palestinian rights and health. All of these activities involved the links between health and human rights, and therefore correspond to the mission of our Center. The topic of John's symposium seems to be more a topic for an exchange among historians and specialists in Jewish studies or Middle East studies. It does not appear to be an issue of health and human rights.

I replied as follows:

Dear Professor Marks,

I fail to see the logic in your explanation for why the Center will not sponsor a symposium on an ethnic state and human rights in Israel/Palestine.

You say that the Center has sponsored two public events on Palestinian rights in the last few months. But, you say, the question of an ethnic state and human rights "seems to be more a topic for an exchange among historians and specialists in Jewish studies or Middle East studies." Why in the world it seems to be a topic for historians and specialists in Jewish studies you don't say.

In fact, the topic of an ethnic state and human rights is about the current situation, not some academic historical event. You acknowledge that the denial of human rights to Palestinians is a topic that falls within the scope of your Center (since you sponsor events about this topic) but then you assert that critical evaluation of the government which is responsible for the violation of these rights, in particular evaluation of this government's rationale for denying these human rights (that it is required to protect the status of Israel as a Jewish state), is not within the scope of the Center, that it is a topic for an exchange among historians and Jewish studies specialists.

If the Center were in existence during the days of the Apartheid South African government, and if you had been its director then, would you similarly have argued that the Center should discuss human rights of non-white people in South Africa but it should avoid, as of historical interest only (or of interest only to "specialists in White studies or southern African affairs"), the topic of whether there should be an Apartheid government in South Africa?

When I look at the mission of the Center on the web, I see that it includes the following:

"* develop domestic and international policy focusing on the relationship between health and human rights in a global perspective;

* engage scholars, public health and human rights practitioners, public officials, donors, and activists in the health and human rights movement."

What does "policy" mean in the first bullet? Doesn't the Center wish to develop an "international policy" in Israel/Palestine that reflects the Center's commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? If it does, the Center would then of necessity sharply differ from Israel's policy of denying human rights in order to protect Israel's status as a Jewish state. Surely the Center would not avoid discussing international policy when, to do so, would entail speaking out against the rationale for human rights violations employed by the top ally of the United States government, would it?

What does "health and human rights movement" mean in the second bullet? I would think it would mean an effort by people to protect human rights or redress their wrongful denial around the world. But how can such a movement succeed if it does not question the rationales that governments use to justify their denial of human rights? The mission of the Center is to engage scholars and others in this human rights movement. Engage them for what purpose? To help their movement succeed? If so, then the Center's mission clearly includes helping them become clear about why the rationale used by a state such as Israel to deny health and human rights to a people like the Palestinians is wrong.

Dismissing the topic of Israel's very current status as a Jewish state, and its denial of human rights in order to protect that status, as a topic outside the scope of the Center for Health and Human Rights, and a topic of interest only to historians and specialists in Jewish studies, seems to me to be an entirely specious argument for wiping the Center's hands clean of this controversial topic.

Sincerely,

John Spritzler

I never received a reply to this from Professor Marks.

The same kind of story played out with all of the other recipients of my request for them to hold this symposium; read them all at your pleasure. A university that purports to be a world class intellectual leader, a university that trains the world’s leaders, but which refuses to hold a seminar about whether there should be a Jewish state in Palestine, is corrupt beyond words!

The smell of intellectual corruption hung thickly over this whole affair!

And the stench of intellectual corruption got even more noticeable to me shortly after the affair of the never-held symposium.

The Harvard Dean Who Banned an Anti-Zionism Leaflet, and Then—to Protect His Ass—Paid for it to be Printed!

I invite you to follow the #2 link, on my email to the Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health. This includes the email exchanges I had with the Dean for Academic Affairs (Dean Jim Ware) at the School of Public Health, when I asked for his permission to distribute a leaflet (click here to read it) explaining why the Israeli government was acting immorally in committing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

As you can read about in gory detail (here’s the link again), Dean Ware refused me permission to distribute the leaflet on Harvard property. When I then informed him that I and some friends would therefore distribute the leaflet while standing on public property to people entering the School of Public Health AND that the leaflet would contain a paragraph at the end informing its readers that Dean Ware had banned the leaflet from distribution anywhere on Harvard property, THEN Dean Ware did a 180 and said, OK, you can distribute the leaflet. Then I explained to the dean that the leaflets had already been printed (1800 copies) with the paragraph at the end about how he had banned it. I said I would be happy to re-print the leaflets without that paragraph but only if the School of Public Health paid for this re-printing. To my great amusement, Dean Ware immediately said he would pay for the re-printing, and indeed I received a check from him that covered that cost.

Bowing to Big Pharma After Declaring Proudly It Did Not

I was a graduate student at the Harvard School of Public Health from 1988 to 1992. During that time, the chair of the department I was in—the department of biostatistics—was Marvin Zelen, a leader in the field who was later made a member of the very prestigious National Academy of Sciences. Professor Zelen was a good man. When I was a graduate student I recall him telling us with pride that the department of biostatistics was completely independent (financially and otherwise) of the pharmaceutical industry. If we determined that a new drug didn’t work or was unsafe, we said it didn’t work or was unsafe no matter how much pressure we got from the pharmaceutical company that produced it to say otherwise. Great! The smell at this time seemed good to me.

Fast forward five or so years and I, along with all other members of the department of biostatistics, received an email from Professor Zelen telling us that we needed to attend a talk being given by a guy from the pharmaceutical company, Schering-Plough, whether we were interested in the talk’s topic or not, because Schering-Plough was now giving the department of biostatistics a lot of money that it needed to operate, and in exchange the department of biostatistics had entered into an agreement with that company to host annual seminars on topics desired by the pharmaceutical company. Now the stench wafted in what I had thought was an Ivory Tower.

Here is some text about this from a draft report (PDF) written by Professor Zellen and a subsequent chair of the department of biostatistics:

In 1991, the Department was approached by statisticians at Schering-Plough to form a new type of Academic-Industry Partnership. Its goal was to create an interactive relationship between HSPH and Schering-Plough biostatisticians for the promotion of methodological research and its application to the scientific challenges facing the pharmaceutical industry. The Partnership sponsors an annual joint scientific workshop at HSPH, with an average attendance of 150-200 attendees from academia, government and industry. A sampling of workshop themes includes: Global Clinical Trials, Vaccines and Control of Disease, Individualized Medical Treatments, Strategies in Drug Safety and Monitoring, Emerging Strategies in the Design and Monitoring of Clinical Trials, Interim Analysis, Adaptive Design and Bayesian Methods in Clinical Trials. Due to the success of the Schering-Plough partnership, the Department soon developed similar relationships with Pfizer, Wyeth, and the Genetics Institute. In 2003, the American Statistical Association awarded the Harvard-Schering Plough Partnership the Statistical Partnerships in Academe, Industry and Governments Prize, “For an outstanding statistical partnership representing a collaboration between academia and industry of eleven years, which has resulted in the annual Harvard/Schering-Plough Workshop, a unique forum for discussing emerging topics in drug development; interdisciplinary visits between the two institutions to exchange and generate research ideas; a summer intern program at Schering-Plough; and the funding of student training and faculty research at Harvard university. This award is recognition of excellence within the SPAIG concept.” When Merck and Schering Plough merged in 2010, the tradition continued with a re-named Harvard-Merck Partnership

Interestingly, at the time I received the email from Professor Zellen about how I needed to attend the talk by the Schering-Plough guy, my son, who was in the 4th grade in a Boston public school, informed me that he (and the other students) had been required to attend a talk by a person from Reebok about how wonderful Reebok was for supporting (supposedly) human rights. I went to the school to complain about this to the principle, a very nice woman who actually agreed with me that it was wrong to make the students attend such a talk. But, she informed me, Reebok (instead of City taxes as was formerly the case) was now paying for all of the school’s gym/athletic equipment and in exchange she was required to make the students attend the Reebok talks.

So the stench doesn’t only come from Harvard. It comes from the fact that we live in a dictatorship of the rich, in which a billionaire ruling class uses its obscene wealth to control us.

The Rest of the University

Obviously, it is no accident that nowhere at Harvard University is the curriculum about the need for, and the possibility of, removing the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor. Where at Harvard does a student learn the fact that most people want this egalitarian revolutionary goal? Read here how I learned this fact; rest assured it was not from any Harvard professor. Harvard University serves the billionaire class. That’s what produces the stench!

Harvard trains students in all sorts of fields, some of which may seem entirely free of the stench that Big $ produces. But the manner in which students earn their Ph.D.s, regardless of the particular field it is in—technical, fine arts, humanities, etc.—is one that trains them to apply their skill/knowledge to the solving of problems that they are told—by their employer—to solve, not problems that they are personally motivated to solve, such as how to make a better world for ordinary people. And the employer’s aim is generally not that of the have-nots, but of the haves. There is an excellent book about this shown below. When I read this book it seemed as if its discussion of how doctoral programs work was describing my exact situation, even though the author was not writing about Harvard specifically.

Harvard, of course, is not unique in being controlled by Big $. Virtually all our schools and other institutions as well are controlled by Big $. Hence the big stench everywhere!

How Can We Get Rid of the Stench?

I have some suggestions for what YOU can do in this regard here.