On the Termination of the Director of the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights
Press Release - For Immediate Release
December 11 2025
Contact: contact@aaup-hfc.org
On the Termination of the Director of the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights
The Executive Committee of AAUP-Harvard Faculty Chapter is alarmed by the abrupt termination of Professor Mary T. Bassett as Director of the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health. According to reporting in the Harvard Crimson, Dr. Bassett was “forced out” two hours before a public notice about the termination was issued by HSPH dean Andrea Baccarelli. While the justification for this action remains unclear, recent events offer reason to question the legitimacy of the university’s decision.
Dr. Bassett, a distinguished public health physician who was recruited to Harvard specifically to direct the FXB Center and who did so for 7 years, will remain as Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights. But this summary dismissal from her leadership position as center director continues a pattern at Harvard with grave implications for academic freedom: the systematic firings of leaders at centers and units hosting scholarly programming related to Palestine. These circumstances echo the University’s decisions to terminate the faculty leadership of the Center for Middle East Studies in March 2025, to suspend a partnership with Birzeit University in the West Bank, and to dismantle the program in Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School in May 2025 – all changes demanded by outside critics.
In no instance has the Harvard administration provided any justification for these highly irregular actions, which have threatened the reputations of well-regarded and principled colleagues. The unexplained terminations have also seriously disrupted longstanding academic enterprises that were appropriately placed under the direction of scholars with subject matter expertise. The University’s lack of forthrightness about the basis for these actions, as well as its disrespectful treatment of the affected faculty and staff, directly undermines the culture of “intellectual vitality” and “viewpoint diversity” Harvard says it seeks to promote – and worsens an already existing climate of mistrust, fear, and chilled speech on our campus.
Especially in this moment of concentrated external attacks on our university’s fundamental values, our university’s scholars should be defended by Harvard’s leaders, not treated as collateral damage or sacrificial offerings. Our community and our colleagues deserve far better. The integrity of the university demands it.