Jeffrey Flier
@jflier
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Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor and Higginson Professor of Physiology and Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Former Dean of HMS.
Boston, MA
Joined June 2009
I Led Harvard Medical School, And I Fear What's to Come. My oped in today's New York Times. https://t.co/tRI9CYTJAE via @NYTOpinion
nytimes.com
The task before higher education is immense.
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A Dishonorable Strike: Indulging all assumptions in favor of the administration’s boat strikes, killing helpless men is murder. https://t.co/t2ItMyS65g
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My thoughts in the Wall Street Journal on higher education and the rise of illiberal ideologies on both the right and left. Colleges and universities contributed to the problem but can--and must--now help to solve it. https://t.co/NMzF0IVssF
wsj.com
New programs emphasizing classical and civic education promote healthy dialogue in higher education.
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Astonishingly, factions of the US right have become nostalgic for medieval theocracy. @Marian_L_Tupy and I show why this is ignorant. Reason and well-being, not souls and scripture, are the basis for meaning, morality, and a decent life.
thefp.com
Are we really longing for kings, clerics, and the Middle Ages? Steven Pinker and Marian L. Tupy say the new anti-Enlightenment nostalgia has it completely backward. We’re not living in ruins—we’re...
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Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, and we need them all. –Arthur C. Clarke
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Pinker and Tupy vs. Kingsnorth: do we need a god in these troubled times? – Why Evolution Is True
whyevolutionistrue.com
For reasons I don’t really understand, Steve Pinker gets piled on when he claims, correctly, that humanity has made both material and moral progress in the last eight centuries or so. But th…
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One of the Harvard report’s most compelling findings is that students almost universally speak about grades in terms of how much effort they put in. If they spend a lot of time studying and do all of the work asked of them, they believe, they should get an A.
chronicle.com
A growing number of professors say A’s have lost their meaning. They’re divided on the right solution.
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Fundraising in academia and the Epstein problem. This piece I wrote in 2019 @STATnews seems worth revisiting today. I wouldn't change a word. https://t.co/xzTM0JhEdb via @statnews
statnews.com
Philanthropy can provide enormous benefits, and should be encouraged, but it can also create terrible reputational damage when a donor turns out to be toxic, especially if the response to it is...
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The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding -- Louis D. Brandeis
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Fundraising in academia and the Epstein problem. This piece I wrote in 2019 @STATnews seems worth revisiting today. I wouldn't change a word. https://t.co/xzTM0JhEdb via @statnews
statnews.com
Philanthropy can provide enormous benefits, and should be encouraged, but it can also create terrible reputational damage when a donor turns out to be toxic, especially if the response to it is...
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There is more and more evidence that putting computers and tablets on students' desks (1:1 devices) was a terrible mistake. I agree with @AdamMGrant that "it's time to remove laptops [and tablets] from classrooms."
It's time to remove laptops from classrooms. 24 experiments: Students learn more and get better grades after taking notes by hand than typing. It's not just because they're less distracted—writing enables deeper processing and more images. The pen is mightier than the keyboard.
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An amazing paper from the lab of @davidrliu describing a new prime editing strategy by which a single molecular entity could treat many distinct genetic diseases caused by premature stop codons. Tour de force! Look forward to clinical application!
Today in @Nature we report a new prime editing strategy that can rescue a common cause of many genetic diseases in a disease-agnostic manner. This approach converts a redundant endogenous tRNA into an optimized suppressor tRNA, enabling a single prime edit to rescue premature
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In two recent interviews @chronicle and @nytimes, eminent @Harvard historian Jill Lepore reflects on the prevailing culture at Harvard that suppressed open inquiry over the past decade, & her regrets & shame she didn’t resist it openly. Another indicator that change is coming.
Harvard Professor Jill Lepore says she almost left the academy during the height of wokeness and that she’s ashamed she didn’t speak up. She says it was “miserable,” and she’s not sure why she stayed.
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Trump defends MBS, dismissing the murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi by the prince's agents: "A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about, whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen." @katierogers @viviannereim
nytimes.com
Hosting Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, President Trump brushed off the murder of Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents, saying, “Things happen.” Fighter jets and investment deals were on the leaders’...
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Four powerful and much needed responses to a tremendously disturbing @thecrimson article that defended Harvard students shunning their Zionist friends.
thecrimson.com
To The Editor: On Ethical Friendship and Zionism | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson
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This OSU professor's dissertation asks: how is the Mars rover a "product of the long histories of US settler colonialism, imperialism, and global racial capitalism?" Its main contribution is coining the term "autonomous colonial laboratory." A truly wild ride.
At Ohio State, a faculty search committee noted that one job candidate’s key accomplishment was showing how NASA's Mars rovers "represent 'autonomous colonial laboratories.'" The university hired her.
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Coleman Hughes interviews Carole Hooven, my biologist colleague who was Exhibit A for Harvard's academic freedom problem (and a major reason we started the Council on Academic Freedom @cafh 2 1/2 years ago): Her life at Harvard was made untenable after saying there were two
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Anti-vaxxers assemble in Texas to be told that "God is an anti-vaxxer". Quite a cast of characters. Very sad to see.
nytimes.com
A weekend gathering in Texas drew activists, homeopaths, doctors, lawyers, parents and a Republican senator who asked, “Why isn’t Tony Fauci in prison?”
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On 60 Minutes tonight, 4 @Harvard faculty, including our @cafharvard colleague @sapinker discuss the impact of government actions on biomedical research.
cbsnews.com
Federal research funding to universities has fueled breakthroughs for years. The White House is pressuring universities to align with the president's political agenda, or risk losing their funding.
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