Harvard Medical School Cancels Class Session With Gazan Patients, Calling It One-Sided

Harvard Medical School canceled a planned Jan. 21 lecture on wartime healthcare and a subsequent panel with patients from Gaza receiving care in Boston in response to objections that students would hear from Gazans impacted by the war and not also Israelis.

Course instructors and students were notified Tuesday morning that the events — scheduled for that evening — would not be held.

Medical School Dean George Q. Daley ’82 wrote in a Wednesday email sent to first-year students and obtained by The Crimson that his office began receiving complaints from students and faculty within days after the session was first publicized last week.

The guest lecture — by Tufts professor Barry S. Levy, who studies the public health effects of war — was an optional evening session of the Pathways 120: “Essentials of the Profession” course, a requirement for all first-year students at the Medical School and the Harvard School of Dental Medicine.

Students had organized the moderated discussion with patients and their families as a follow-up to Levy’s lecture, which was not focused specifically on Gaza.

In his email, Daley wrote that the Medical School supports research and teaching on the health effects of war on healthcare — but aims to avoid polarizing the school’s affiliates.

“We are committed to exploring the most educationally rigorous means to teach and learn about the impact of war on the delivery of healthcare and on the health of affected populations, and to do so in a way that does not divide members of our community who hold disparate views,” he wrote.

Daley wrote that Medical School’s Educational Policy and Curriculum Committee, which oversees its four-year M.D. curriculum, would be part of a “process” to develop programming that meets those goals.

Following the cancellation, HMS professor David S. Jones, who helped write the course’s curriculum, said he received 50 emails from students asking why the lecture and discussion had been canceled.

Harvard Medical School Spokesperson Ekaterina D. Pesheva declined to comment beyond Daley’s email to students.

HMS and HSDM Student Council President Anna R.P. Mulhern wrote in an emailed statement to The Crimson that she was “deeply disheartened” by the event’s cancellation.

“Respect for all patients and their stories is a fundamental tenet of the medical profession. This principle was not upheld yesterday,” she added.

Jones said that Arabic-speaking Medical School students who had served as interpreters for patients from Gaza in Boston asked course staff to arrange the session with Levy and patients’ families.

“Students often find that the presence of a patient who is interviewed and discusses their experiences is often far more engaging, powerful, and moving than hearing a professor carry on about the pathophysiology of disease,” Jones said.

The optional session was part of the course’s original spring semester curriculum and was approved by HMS administrators, according to Jones.

But the sudden Tuesday morning cancellation resulted in a swift back-and-forth over the fate of the panel, per an emailed timeline compiled by the event’s student organizers and obtained by The Crimson.

After the initial cancellation, the organizers briefly received conditional approval to host the event as a student group, separately from the Essentials course. Less than an hour later, at roughly 11:30 a.m., they were told they could not host the event at all.

Jones said he hopes that the lecture and clinic can be rescheduled for a future date.

—Staff writer Elyse C. Goncalves can be reached at elyse.goncalves@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @e1ysegoncalves.

—Staff writer Akshaya Ravi can be reached at akshaya.ravi@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @akshayaravi22.