Authored by Jonathan Turley via JonathanTurley.org,
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 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."
The suggestion that weight loss is an imperialist militaristic plot 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."
Source link
