Dear Harvard College Students,
 
I write to share Dean Gay’s important letter to the faculty and staff from earlier today.
 
While I was inspired by the words and performances during yesterday’s inauguration, especially those written by our own Amanda Gorman ’20, I was also painfully aware, as I’m sure you were, that it was occurring against the backdrop of the horrific events of January 6th. And it was difficult to face the fact that the lights illuminated around the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool marked the enormous loss of 400,000 lives to the pandemic in this country. 
 
This is both a time of renewal and a time of heartache, and we all have a part to play in what happens next. Even though we are not yet able to come together in person, I know that we will continue to come together to share ideas, to understand each other, and to engage in free inquiry and spirited debate as we champion the ideals that are essential both to our democracy and this institution. Despite the hardships that we have faced, and the work we have ahead of us, I know that our commitment to our community and care for each other will carry us through the next chapter.
 
Semper veritas,

Rakesh Khurana
Danoff Dean of Harvard College

Dear colleagues,
 
Yesterday, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris participated in one of the foundational rituals of our democracy. In moments of war and peace, prosperity and hardship, the inauguration of a new administration has served, for more than two hundred years, not only as a demonstration of the continuity of leadership, but as a profound act of national renewal. However, yesterday’s speeches and oaths were witnessed not by cheering crowds, but by thousands of National Guard troops, a chilling reminder of just how much has changed in four years. While the Constitution has prevailed, the lies and rage that converged on the Capitol on January 6th persist as threats. As a new administration begins its term in the midst of a global pandemic and at a time of deep political division, we must take on the urgent work of repairing the beliefs, institutions, and commitments that underpin our democracy.
 
Harvard has a stake in this. Our community as we know it today, with its commitment to academic freedom and wide-ranging inquiry, could only exist in a democratic society. Knowledge can advance only when facts can be pursued outside of the framework of ideology. In a world where truth is only subjective, and fact is a matter of convenience, our mission of Veritas is imperiled. The health of our democracy matters for the work we do at Harvard, and so too does our work contribute directly and tangibly to the strength of our nation. In the pursuit of our teaching and research mission, we embrace and cultivate in our students the habits and norms essential to democratic citizenship, and we prepare future leaders with an understanding that they have a responsibility to make the world a better place. We are both stakeholder and steward, beneficiary and agent of the open society our democracy makes possible.  
 
Strengthening the practices and commitments that serve as the fundamental conditions for a thriving democracy must be the focus of our teaching and research mission at this moment, recognizing that democracy is an active, collaborative process, with a role for individuals and for institutions. Through our teaching and research, we must reassert the importance of facts and evidence, the value of expertise, and the lived belief that comprehensive understanding can only be achieved through the engagement of a broad range of perspectives. We cannot be complacent or indifferent in the face of a destructive logic of partisan vengeance because we know it has consequences far beyond election outcomes. It erodes the consensus on democratic norms that enables academic excellence, as well as self-government.
 
We must recommit, in a deeper and more urgent way, to our role as agent and steward of the democratic way of life on which our mission relies. If we shrink from that role, we abandon our mission and risk consigning Harvard to irrelevance for the first time since our nation's founding.
 
As the former National Youth Poet Laureate and Harvard College graduate Amanda Gorman ‘20 brought into sharp focus in the moving poem she delivered at the inauguration:
 
“We've seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it,
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
And this effort very nearly succeeded.
But while democracy can be periodically delayed,
It can never be permanently defeated.
In this truth, in this faith we trust.
For while we have our eyes on the future,
History has its eyes on us.”
 
Sincerely,
Claudine 
__________________
Claudine Gay
Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences