Bob Harrington, Stanford Medicine Chair, was told by superiors not to silence department members, and yet, Jay Bhattacharya reports he did otherwise

Read verbatim quotes from Bob Harrington

In an interview on censoring misinformation, Robert Harrington, the former chair of medicine at Stanford and now dean at Cornell, admits the following. This is a verbatim quote from the transcript, you can find here.

As a simple matter of fact: vaccines, particularly repeated doses of the COVID vaccine, may not be helpful for children and young adults who have had COVID. The evidence is murky, and disputable. Yet Bob states that this position is untenable, and misinformation. Of course, there is some (non-zero) myocarditis with COVID19 (though this is mostly demand ischemia), but there is way more myocarditis (actual immunologically mediated myocarditis) if you are a 20 year old man and get 3 doses, then COVID, and 2 doses thereafter. Vaccine myocarditis can outweigh gains of repeated doses, in young men, especially dose 2 and beyond and in young men, and especially if you already had covid. That Bob Harrington bulldozes over these nuances is his prerogative, but preventing his own faculty from engaging with them is abdication of his duty as Chair, and contrary to principles of the academy.

Its’ fascinating to juxtapose Harrington’s interview with a recent one by Jay Bhattacharya, Stanford professor. Note that Eran Bendavid is a junior faculty at Stanford.

These events occurred early in the pandemic when school closure and lockdown was spreading across western democratic societies. In such a moment, we needed Jay and Eran to be more vocal, engage in more debates. Stanford should have held public forums to ask if taking down basketball rims, closing beaches, and keeping elementary students out of school was a good thing. Instead, Jay and Eran— who were critical of these policies— were asked to stay silent. Eran eventually ended up ceasing to participate in interviews, and I don’t blame him. Junior faculty are vulnerable. Stanford failed to hold debates.

Look at one more similarity between Jay’s account and Bob Harrington’s

Now, let’s return to Robert Harrington’s interview

The two narratives are similar. According to Jay, Bob Harrington could not consider that well meaning academics might actually be opposed to lockdown and school closure, and, in Bob’s own words, he assumed that some commenters just wanted to see their name in the limelight.

This is an extremely uncharitable position to take, and ultimately a close-minded one. Even lockdown supports should see that it would be natural that some faculty will disagree with unprecedented policy made on no evidence— with no ongoing attempts at remedy. Jay and Eran did not enjoy being ‘contrarians’— they felt a moral duty to oppose school closure which would end up destroying millions of children.

The most important role of leaders in academics is to foster debate on vital policy issues, and these paired interviews are concerning. Chairs and deans don’t decide scientific truth— they must support faculty with whom they disagree. I am deeply concerned about Bob Harrington’s views on academic freedom, and am glad I don’t work at Cornell. What do you think?