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.”
Take a stroll through any grocery market or through a Costco and you will find 70% pre packaged food and much of it is not good for the body.
There is something to the status of our industrial food complex.
The constant bombardment by every form of media does give people a false impression of what a person should look like.
Add to that a sedentary lifestyle and you have a disaster. Being overweight is not a matter of image as it is a medical threat.
The ideal way to fix the problem is to stop the instant of our current toxic world. But, the way food is packaged and consumed strikes at the heart of survival mechanisms in our brains and makes it difficult to “eat just one.”
GLP-1 meds are almost miraculous in bypassing the craving to over eating. They have helped many a diabetic gain control over the impact of diabetes (retinopathy, kidney disease, neuropathy, cardiac health, etc.) and hypertension (to name a few.
Imperialism? No. A hot mess? Yes.,
Yeah, demonizing anti-obesity drugs sounds rather stupid. But the anti-vaccine moved is even stupider!
Has Turley ever written a column saying how stupid the anti-vaxers are?
Yep! He’s bashed every school promoting vaccines are the gateway to an imperialistic state.
My dear sir: Covid vaccines were developed in a year with NO double blind studies while Zepbound and others had been under development for 30 first as diabetes drugs with weight loss as a side effect. Moderna’s mRNA drug development had been unsuccessful with their CV19 showing up with little effect. Check MSNow 😆
James Somers is ESTOVIR.
It is impossible to predict from day to day what the left ill rise in opposition too.
But once some left wing nut group has opposed something – that nearly always becomes left wing nut dogma.
I am not a big fan of GLP-1’s. That does not change the FACT that it is not my business to tell others what to do.
I thought left dogma was “my body my choice”
Did not seem to be for Covid.
Does not seem to be now from GLP-1s’
Regardless of my personal skepticism about GLP-1’s, in a decade I will either be prove right or wrong,
or something in the middle. My skepticism does not control the future. But imposing my will on others by FORCE does – badly if I am wrong.
Liberty – requires letting people make their own choices, and some WILL choose wrong
Sometimes we can predict ahead of time which choices will be good and which will be bad – but not always, and not for everyone.
What’s more concerning in medicine are the monopolies formed by the first HMO transitioning innumerable small businesses into huge monopolies run by insurance companies, corporations. Whose brainchild was that?
GLP is a choice. Every person in a tribe, community, state and nation has a responsibility, a duty to be healthy. It goes back to JFK and physical fitness including females and Title IX. Let’s make it possible.
Students can walk out if they choose.
Fabulous article on such a lovely day.
There is no duty to be healthy that government can enforce – there are no positive duties that government shoud be able to enforce.
Further we often do NOT know which choices actually lead to good health.
Sometimes it is those who adopt the great new thing – that are screwed, sometimes it is those who do not.
Most of the time it is both, neither and varies by individual, another reasons government should not be involved.
However, we do know behaviors that cause bad health. Smoking, drug use, use of tobacco products, drinking to excess, and obesity. These are a few of the lifestyle choices that are not healthy.
The term ‘monopoly’ does not mean what you think it means.
A medical school needs an artist-in-residence? What a racket.
It’s another indicator that the federal and state regulatory architecture governing higher education and the modes of financing it should change.
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A. Credentials permissible to offer in inter-state transactions would be (1) occupational certificates or degrees which incorporate between 27 and 60 credit-hours of study and for which every course is devoted to mastering the occupation; (2) preparatory certificates for admission to such programs which only by special dispensation can exceed 30 credits and must be composed of courses in academics perhaps supplemented by business and technology; (3) first professional degrees in law, medicine, peri-medical occupations, veterinary medicine, clinical psychology, and music which may run between 50 and 170 credits; (4) preparatory certificates for such degrees which may be as long as 75 credits worth of academic study, business, and technology; (5) 30 credit degrees in a discrete academic subject, (6) 60 credit degrees in an academic subject (provided one offers the 30 credit degree as well), (7) 90 credit degrees in an academic subject (provided the 30 credit, and 60 credit options are available), (8) research degrees in academic subjects (incorporating perhaps 50 credits of classroom study and a dissertation); (9) research degrees in engineering, medical and clinical laboratory sciences, law, agriculture, the study of business, and the study of public policy. (NB, Harvard recruits about 90% of its undergraduates from out of state; they would have to completely revamp their degree programs).
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B. Faculty contracts on offer to out-of-state prospects would be those limited to a given number of semesters, with a 12 semester maximum and including a proviso that in the event of a failure to renew the contract or a dismissal by the institution at a time when the prospect was (a) not eligible for full Social Security, or (b) not eligible for Medicare, or (c) had not yet contributed to TIAA-CREF for 35 years (pro-rated), a severance settlement was due in the form of a lump sum equal to the discounted present value of x years of his total compensation package. In such a case, ‘x’ would be equal to 27% of his years of service (FTE) or to the number of years he had to go before reaching the three retirement milestones, whichever was lesser.
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C. The foregoing could be supplemented by state law restricting offers or prospective grants of continuous tenure to institutions therein and state law mandating a faculty member who had reached the three retirement milestones be compelled to retire.
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D. State law requiring boards of trustees be of manageable number (5-19) and that they be elected for quadrennial terms via a postal ballot among alumni validly registered to vote in the state in the state which the primary campus is located. Such elections would be conducted by state and county boards of elections. Trustees would face a rotation-in-office requirement and compelled to stand down if, in the course of a prospective term, they would reach a point where they had occupied the office for > 14 of the previous 16 years).
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E. State law mandating that no faculty member on a renewable contract could receive a renewal absent the assent of the majority of the trustees; likewise a provision that no faculty member could be removed ‘ere his contract expired absent the assent of a majority of the trustees; and a provision that no faculty member could be coercively suspended for a period longer than one semester absent the assent of a majority of the trustees.
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G. Federal law limiting the authority of federal institutions to lend or guarantee loans to the activities of the central bank.
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H. State law debarring the state government and any locality therein from engaging in lending or guarantee loans.
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I. Federal law requiring that mandated charges assessed on students recruited from out of state be tuition and room-and-board, requiring that institutions charge one standard rate on mandatory charges for all out-of-state recruits, and requiring certain disclosures (audited) that schools recruiting out-of-state must make (under penalty of civil judgments assessed against the institution and particular officials and criminal prosecution of the institution and particular officials). The disclosures would include (1) mean annual expenditures on ancillary charges by students in general, (2) the % of out-of-state students granted discounts on tuition and the % granted discounts on room-and-board, (3) the mean discount offered on tuition and on room-and-board among all out-of-state students.
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J. Co-ordinate state law imposing the foregoing obligations in re in-state students.
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K. Federal law requiring the publication of a glossary of permissible degree and certificate programs to offer out-of-state students with descriptions of each along with enabling legislation to provide for program audits and the imposition of sanctions.
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L. Co-ordinate state law to impose the same on offerings to in-state students.
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M. Federal and state law limiting the flow of public funds to non-profits of all types to the following: (1) compensation consequent to non-profits under contracts awarded consequent to the submission of sealed bids: (2) relief offered to corporations injured in natural disasters &c.; (3) grants to agencies with boots on the ground during relief operations where the government does not have the manpower present (limited to agencies not previously blacklisted to money laundering); (4) indemnities paid to employers of faculty and researchers on leave hired by agencies with fellowship programs; (5) re-imbursements paid to service providers for work covered by government insurance programs (e.g. Medicare), (6) re-imbursements paid for agencies providing services covered by government-issued vouchers (e.g. schools).
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N. State law limiting the flow of public funds to state institutions to the foregoing circumstances, to special bond issues approved by referenda, and to tuition and room-and-board vouchers issued by the state treasury to be re-imbursed by dedicated state funds. The vouchers would be vended to the student (discounted to varying degrees) and presented to the institution which act would clear the student’s obligation to the institution. The school would then submit them to the dedicated funds for re-imbursement at face value. The dedicated funds would be financed by a personal income tax whose take was limited to a fixed % of the state’s personal income flow and the recipient’s fees to the treasury financed by family resources, third party grants, grants from the institutions themselves, and loans from banks, credit unions, and finance companies.
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O. Federal law requiring (under penalty of civil liability and criminal prosecution) all institutions recruiting out of state publish stock and flow data about demographic segments of their faculty and about their student body. This would include the median board and achievement test scores of the segments of the student body and the median GRE, LSAT, MCAT, and GMAT scores of segments of the faculty.
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P. State law closing the admissions offices of state institutions and having prospects submit a single application to a central state office. The applicant would include an identifier and demographic sheet, a card on which the applicant rank-orders his choices among the state institutions, board scores, achievement test scores and a high school transcript. The office composes a composite score from the board scores, achievement test scores, and transcript. That and the applicants’ preference rankings regulate the composition of freshman classes and the like at each institution.
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Q. An amendment to federal bankruptcy law reducing or eliminating the enhanced protection for creditors applying to student loans.
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R. A requirement in federal that schools wishing to recruit students or visiting faculty from abroad (and provide permission for dependents to accompany them) purchase a visa in a multiple-price auction or purchase time in a secondary exchange. The government would offer such visas twice a year with the ration offered a function of the population of temporary residents in the country and of the time available on the secondary exchange. A school would be permitted one purchase per subject, renewals debarred. The primary market would trade in seven year visas. If a visa holder goes home early, his unused time is transferred to the secondary exchange, which will have blocs of time of various dimensions. The smallest blocs of time in the exchange will be consolidated into one-semester blocs. Columbia wants to be ‘the international university’, they have to pay for it. (NB, regular faculty would have to be hired from among the domestic population; no dispensations for any sort of employer).
Does anyone read a comment this long?
Nope. It’s not a comment, its some poseur thinking he/she is intelligent. However if said poseur were truly intelligent, he/she would realize no one would read such long nonsense, aka B_S.
B R E V I T Y.
What’s amusing is that you may be one of the better horses in Media Matters’ stable.
Name any peice of legislation that is shorter ?
it’s been a while since Purple X has commented on here. he’s an intelligent man, one of the brighter ones on here IMO, and has an enviable command of the English language. However, he is unaware that Peter Hill (the sockpuppet name present day Svelaz / yellow X / Gigi et al) routinely posts enormously long comments that were copy/pasta and never provided the source. IOW, useless crap. Then again everything Svelaz posts is diarrhea of the keyboard. So Purple X’s comment, though intriguing, was unhelpful since he didn’t provide a link/source. I’m not opposed to reading long comments as long as I know the source/context. Legislation is neither here nor there. It might be good legislation one decade but obsolete another decade.
If you say so. I don’t see in yellow X Peter Hill’s particular idiom.
If the subject doesn’t interest you, no you don’t. This is my subject of interest.