Harvard University is facing another controversy after its medical school held an event on “the Pathology of Unruly Bodies.” The most surprising part is that it was not a reference to the Harvard faculty itself. Rather, a panel composed of non-medical experts was railing against anti-obesity drugs as part of “indoctrination” to support the ills of “empire and imperialism.” Welcome to the state of higher education in America.
The panel was devoid of actual medical experts. It was dressed up in medical terms with the use of the word “pathology.” It could have easily been billed as “GLP-1 Anti-Body.” The panel included such experts as Da’Shaun L Harrison, who recently drew notoriety for claiming at the Socialism 2026 conference in Chicago that GLP-1 medications such as Ozempic and Zepbound constitute “genocide” against fat people.
Another headliner was Roxane Gay, the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University–New Brunswick and the artist-in-residence at Harvard Medical School. Professor Gay (the cousin of former Harvard University President Claudine Gay) had called for the release of Luigi Mangione, who murdered Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, two years ago.
Despite her extremism and penchant for murderers like Mangione, Gay writes for the New York Times and apparently likes to flip off people in public. Harvard decided she was exactly what they needed to help shape their medical students. She is part of the radical chic of higher education, where no views are too far left (while departments purge conservatives and libertarians).
Harrison quickly picked up where she left off at the Socialist Convention with bizarre claims. Rather than claiming that drug companies were engaging in the genocide of fat people with weight-loss drugs, she explained that the companies were really militarizing an imperialist state: “This practice of forcing people into manipulating and changing or shifting how they look is oftentimes about making bodies militarisable. Building up a military to defend an imperialist state.”
She further claimed:
“A lot of doctors, medical professionals and folks who collaborate with them — be it through the government or media — are advocating for atrocities that are directly impacting our citizens, but also citizens around the globe.
It then becomes about creating this ideal body that you are always being pushed and pulled towards, as a way to represent this patriotism that is intended to indoctrinate one into the military, into the defense of the country.”
So the country is now Zepbound for tyranny. The suggestion that weight loss drugs serve imperialist, militaristic goals is obviously bonkers. It is the kind of raving you would expect on a subway from someone wearing a handmade cardboard sign and a tin foil hat.
However, Harvard Medical School views that person as a serious expert on the pathologies of weight loss.
Notably, not a single Harvard faculty member expressed unease over the programming. Medical students are facing an array of tough technological and economic conditions. Yet, the administration wants them to sit through far-left indoctrinations from the likes of Gay and Harrison.
Harvard is not alone. Various medical schools have incorporated radical social agendas into their curricula or events. We recently discussed how UCLA Medical School held a panel on which psychiatrists defended self-immolation in protesting Israel. In an earlier post, we discussed a mandatory lecture at UCLA of one of the university’s “activists-in-residence” replete with anti-Semitic postings and racist rhetoric.
The hiring of figures like Gay and the radical programs at these schools show that faculty have little intention to change the ideological echo chamber in higher education. It is truly a pathology of unruly bodies.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Statistically, the US FDA approved the expanded use of added artificially cultured “free” (can cross the blood-brain barrier) monosodium glutamate (MSG) in 1980 and the US obesity presented by 1990 (CDC data). After some 20,000 (website counter in the day) others before me about MSG, I first wrote the FDA of my early lay findings of connections between food allergies, added MSG, chronic diseases and “obesity” in October of 2005 (obviously, now, in-vain), at age 61. Since then I’ve written similarly to thousands of professional others of various disciplines (including several researchers at Harvard Medical School), updating as possible, with mostly similar results; in-vain. The real problem with GLP-1 drugs and other medical procedures is that while adding some side effects they don’t address the underlying causes. Common sense and a quick look at Army recruiting should make it clear to any reasonably prudent adult that obesity is contrary to having more powerful military. Apparently, looking ‘left’ and ‘right’ detracts from seeing straight ahead where the real answer lies; multiple epidemics of chronic diseases and obesity are highly profitable; extremist capitalist Christian profiteering at its finest. CGS
I don’t eat msg because of its side effects, Ultra salt. Consequently I’m stuck cooking everything I consume. It’s time consuming.
Rage on
CGS – what happened to freedom ?
What is the difference between running to the FDA to demand MSG be removed from the market and demanding that GLP-1s be removed ?
BTW you seem to be educated enough to KNOW that EVERYTHING is toxic at some dose.
The problem is always too much of something.
Regardless, whether the FDA or harvard or just someone posting on the web,
you are free to make your arguments to others.
You are not free to use FORCE – government.
You flipantly remark about extreme capitalist christian profiteering – yet no one has forced anyone to take GLP-1s or to consume MSG or pretty much anything else.
We DO have issues – but all of those involve Government and frequently via rent seeking which is the natural consequence of giving a power to government.
You rant about profiteering – but seem to forget that businesses make money selling people what those people want.
If they do not want MSG or GLP-1s or Gas, or ….. businesses will sell something else.
BP could sitch to building nuclear plants of windmills or solar pannels in a heat beat if that is actually what people wanted.
Musk bet heavily that he could make an electric car that people would want and no Tesla is one of the largest car companies in the world.
John Say, October 23, 2026 at 10:45 PM – thanks, a very stimulating reply. What ever happened to ‘government of the people, by the people and FOR THE PEOPLE?’
I graduated high school knowing enough about the Constitution to swear to ‘support and defend it from enemies foreign and domestic’ in 1964 at age 20 in a US military enlistment oath. Unlike most politicians on both sides of an unconstitutional aisle, I still honor and obey it (mostly, I’m not perfect either). All of my working years I paid the federal government to ‘protect and to serve’ me (along with everyone else), with income tax records to prove it. Like probably 100% of working-class Americans, I never paid the federal government to approve pseudo-food manufacturers to poison me with unannounced toxic additives; no choice/freedom there. I became mysteriously, seriously ill in early 1981 and didn’t even learn of the true toxicity of added MSG until the summer of 2000, from another adult male victim of the early 1980s, not any government agency or doctor. Where’s the affordable electric car for one who retired early on disability after being denied rightful workers compensation at the state level?
True, to the best of my knowledge, no one ever forced GLP-1 drugs or bariatric surgery on any obese or morbidly obese victim of added MSG (minimally) FDA approved food poisoning. Were they ever given a choice and/or warned to avoid added MSG because, long-term, it alters the human metabolism in multiple ways? Check with “Carpe diem says: October 23, 2026 at 2:25 PM” above, is it even possible to avoid added MSG in commercially prepared pseudo-food products in 2026? And, MSG is not the only FDA approved food poisoning that’s wreaking havoc these days. I estimate, another 5,000 to 6,000 unsuspecting Americans will die prematurely again today of FDA approved food poisoning, with mainstream medicine and several pseudo-food companies as accomplices. Where is the “choice” for them? Anecdotally, I would have sued the FDA more than a decade ago if I’d have found a national law firm willing to take the case.
The only boundary conditions most institutions of higher education have are contra conventional interests and sentiments. It’s one reason, among many others, that they should not be assigned the task of sorting the labor market.
I guarantee that very few medical students attended this lecture. The first years are deep into gross anatomy, the second years are studying physiology and pathology. The thirds and fourths are doing clinical rotations and hoping their USMLE scores are or will be good enough to get them into their residency of choice. There will be some nods and smiles but this tripe will be immediately dismissed.
@Anonymous
At one time that was certainly true. I’m not entirely convinced it is anymore (curricula and programs notwithstanding), and all of us need to disavow ourselves of any notion that anything in that regard was ever somehow set in stone and untouchable. Two of my in-laws completed their residencies about 5 or 6 years ago, and they were seeing this then. They were not overly fond of their cohort, didn’t really have solidarity with them, and they have been continually disappointed working the field since.
Things have changed. That the likes of Harvard are the most pathetic of all is telling.
@Anonymous
Oh, and PS: my wife is a CUNY grad from many years ago, now. She DID have solidarity with her cohort, they are still in touch today, and her professors were excellent. She no longer recognizes it and has pretty much just written her Alma Mater off at this point. We sure as heck do not give them money.
It isn’t just in medicine, but it’s as bad there as anywhere else; just costs more and takes more time.
When my physician is treating me for heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, I would prefer that they spend more time on those diseases than the cr-p the left wants taught.
In the left-wing glossary, there are words that don’t mean anything more than “I kinda don’t like it and I need a cause to rally behind because I’m a bored loser.” Some of those words are: militaristic, imperialistic, colonialism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. They’re thrown about without any thought to whether the word itself makes any sense.
Harley Brown would have been a better president than Donald Trump.
How is what the folks said at this forum at Harvard any different than what RFKjr has said about vaccines as Director of HHS? Both are completely outlandish and objectively false – and yet only the Harvard crew draws the ire of Trumpy Turley.
Hey, busybody Turley. It’s their school. Let them freely associate and talk about whatever they want. It is their indispensable right, after all.
Freedom of speech only applies when it’s speech Turley approves of.
This is the kind of comment we get from low-IQ trolls every time Professor Turley criticizes anything. The professor never said they should not have freedom of speech, or that they should be criminally prosecuted for their speech. He criticized the conference. That’s his freedom of speech. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from criticism.
It’s like being concerned about what your neighbors do sexually in the bedroom.
OldManFromKS,
Well said.
When the good professor points out more of higher education embracing things that would of been once considered stupid and crazy, the lower elevator level IQ annony has to make the false claim PT is some how censoring them or suppressing their freedom of speech.
PT is not. He is pointing out stupid and crazy that has taken over the so-called elite higher education universities.
Ironic the ignorance of this guy, considering he never graduated from HS. HS? yes HS! Only a complete idiot could mange that.
The good news: days will get shorter after everyone loses a lot of weight taking GLP1s. The earth will spin faster because there’s ‘less’ weighing it down. Shorter days means less frequency these Dumas’ can speak.
So, ever the champion of free speech, Professor Turley is still big mad because some people spoke about weird things he didn’t like. Gotcha.
Point to anything he said that suggested he doesn’t think they should have freedom of speech. You seem to think that, if a person believes in freedom of speech, they are never allowed to think critically about what others say and answer them.
I appreciate knowing that newly trained doctors are completely incompetent! I stay away from everything “medical” because I haven’t trusted doctors since we saw all of them capitulate during covid. “Higher” education is on the same level as preschool these days!
When in higher education did “5” become an acceptable answer to the question, what is 2 + 2 ?
“The suggestion that weight loss drugs serve imperialist, militaristic goals is obviously bonkers. It is the kind of raving you would expect on a subway from someone wearing a handmade cardboard sign and a tin foil hat.”
That sums it up quite nicely professor.
Just when I did not think these “elite” universities could not become more absurd, they prove me wrong.
No credibility.
*see also everything RFKjr has said about vaccines.
I wonder. Ever go to college yourself? What degree?
Prove you wrong? That’s assuming you made an assertion, you have not. Do you know how to write?
Being an obese victim is Gay’s calling card. That will not be quietly relinquished.
The GLP-1s need careful evaluation (of course, this is long after the market has been flooded with them). The death of desire that accompanies the drugs does much more than promote weight loss. Perhaps discussion should be had before it is too late, although that is not how things are done in the United States.
I saw a seldom seen friend this week who has been on GLP-1 and lost a lot of weight. She looks so much more healthy. She has been stressed with thyroid issues. Things are so good for her now. How dumb can “educated” people be?
Agree entirely. GLP-1s are showing enormous benefit – and in some areas which were not anticipated – like oncology. But the exact could be same of individuals like Rand Paul and RFKjr (educated both) who, like these folks at Harvard, have made absurd, objectively false claims about vaccines that have had some serious ramifications. Fortunately, the folks participating in this Harvard forum have no power to make decisions for the country. Not so for Senator Paul and HHS director Kennedy.
As much as I think that the current push to get overweight people on GLP-1 drugs, rather than advocating a healthier life-style for them, is nothing but the latest marketing propaganda campaign from a Big Pharma industry that has no consideration for any ethic beyond its immediate profit, and that holds the entire medical industry in its clutches, I find this conspiracy mongering by Harvard and others to be bizarre and totally ludicrous.
It turns out that there are a large number of large people for whom the “I’m full” signal isn’t working. In addition, the US food industry uses the less sweet, but higher caloric content corn syrup as a sweetener, which boosts calories without giving people the sweetness signal that they expect.
Much blame should be given to the automobile industry for their influence on building neighborhoods that put so much separation between housing, jobs, and retail that it is impractical to walk or even bicycle. These activities are common in Europe which, there, tends to lower obesity rates.
Before the food industry swittched to HFCS, sucrose was the bad guy. Per William Duffy’s Sugar Blues, sucrose is more addictive than heroin, and about as harmful.
Harvard. Big Pharma. Senator Elizabeth “Chief” Warren (D-MA) . It all makes sense,
Don’t forget Professor Turley’s son. He’s in law school at Harvard. 🙂
HLS is a lawyer factory. It has three times Yale’s enrollment.
As anonymous says at 9:52am, there are many factors into why obesity has become a major health hazard to so many people, especially in America. GLP-1s can be the starting point for many people to push away from the table sooner (and more often) – a first-step to taking control back from Big Food, Big Pharma, and in this case maybe, Big Education. The next step is far more critical after losing the weight: maintaining the loss through eating not just less but choosing healthier foods and adding low to moderate levels of exercise into daily routines. Big Pharma and Big Food will suffer noticeable financial losses afterwards. And with some luck, students attending these idiotic ‘places of higher learning’ will take their dollars elsewhere, too.
It isn’t one or the other. My physician has prescribed a GLP for me AND has stressed the importance of a better diet and regular exercise. I can choose to take the drug AND I can choose to follow the advice. it’s up to me.
This is just part of the Left’s campaign to reconstruct Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a world of make-believe truths and other impossibilities. Fat-shaming for the Left is akin to Jim Crow racism (that they invented and fought for many years to preserve). Fat people know they are fat; they do not need to be reminded or ridiculed, and most people, fat or non-fat, respect this tradition. Rather than attack obesity as a severe health risk for all sorts of life-threatening illnesses, the Left wants us to think of it as “normal.” To get to this notion, Alice must be told that fat is fine and being against fat is imperialistic, misogynistic, militaristic, and, of course, the good old standby, racist. It’s none of these, but to convince Alice, the Mad Hatter tells her that “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” The Left needs to give us five more before Alice’s tea gets cold; I mean, hot.
There was a time, not so long ago, that this sort of thing would have been unimaginable for any university, let alone Harvard. Where are the adults? Where are the students mocking it to no end? Stay healthy, folks, medical schools are not what they used to be.
“Where are the adults?” They’re the 1960’s burn-outs running the place, sadly.
They should be aging out soon.
No. The median vintage of the tenured faculty would be somewhere around the 1975 birth cohort.
but chopping off kids’ sex organs with chemicals is good?
Well at least today’s topic has given us all a good laugh, well maybe not all of us? Maybe next time they’ll invite Ferdinand von Zeppelin as a guest speaker?