Updated December 17, 2025, at 3:08 p.m.
Twelve students protested in the hallway outside Harvard School of Public Health Dean Andrea A. Baccarelli’s office Tuesday morning, refusing to leave until administrators agreed to meet with them about the abrupt removal of Mary T. Bassett ’74 as director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights last week.
After hours of standoff — and repeated warnings from administrators that disciplinary action could follow — the students secured an hour-long meeting Tuesday afternoon. The meeting, two of the students in attendance said, produced little more than the same explanation the dean has offered publicly since Bassett’s dismissal last week.
During the meeting, Baccarelli insisted the removal was purely motivated by academic considerations and intended to refocus FXB on children’s health and development. He declined to explain why Bassett could not lead that transition or guarantee the future of the center’s existing work at the intersection of health and human rights, including programming on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
“They said, ‘Maybe this meeting is unsatisfying for you — maybe you’re not satisfied by this conversation, but this is all we can do,’” said HSPH student Spencer Robinson, who attended the meeting.
“But we got the sense that if someone is fired, there needs to be a reason,” he added.
The confrontation marked a sharp escalation from students, who say Bassett’s sudden removal — carried out with just hours’ notice — fits a broader pattern of opaque decision-making at Harvard, particularly involving centers engaged in work on Palestine and racial justice.
The protest began around 9:30 a.m., when the group of 12 students arrived at Baccarelli’s office to deliver a petition calling for Bassett’s reinstatement. The petition, circulated last week, has amassed more than 2,000 signatures, including over 600 from Harvard affiliates.
While some students remained outside the dean’s office, others handed out stickers and copies of the petition in the HSPH cafeteria.
“Our plan was to stay there and stage a sit-in until he agreed to meet with us,” HSPH Ph.D. candidate Evan R. Lemire said.
When Baccarelli emerged from his office to leave for another meeting, he thanked the students for the petition and said he would try to meet with them after winter break, according to two students.
The students rejected the offer, saying the issue was too urgent to delay.
“We said that’s not soon enough,” Lemire said. “And he just walked past us and left.”
Shortly after, HSPH Chief Campus Planning and Facilities Officer Felipe R. Schwarz told the students they were violating campus use rules by blocking an egress, Robinson and Lemire said. Schwarz warned that administrators could begin checking Harvard IDs and refer the matter for discipline if the group did not disperse.
After Schwarz threatened to collect IDs, four of the protestors chose to leave, but the others remained in the hallway. Students disputed that they were blocking access to the office, saying they stood to one side of a wide hallway and allowed people to pass freely.
“We were aware that it could be misinterpreted as a violation of the rules,” said Jasmine D. Graves, a researcher at FXB. “But it also could be very clearly seen as students just requesting a meeting with their dean.”
Harvard’s campus use rules — passed last year in response to the 20-day pro-Palestine encampment in Harvard Yard — state that protests “must not impede or block ingress or egress” or movement through campus buildings.
After further negotiations, Jorge E. Chavarro, the school’s dean for academic affairs, intervened and arranged a meeting later that afternoon between Baccarelli and six student representatives. The students then left the hallway.
At the 4:30 p.m. meeting, Baccarelli declined to offer further justification for Bassett’s removal, two students said. He reiterated that the center would be reoriented toward children’s health and said decisions about staff and programming would be left to a future director.
Baccarelli also refused to share details about the status of an internal review of FXB conducted earlier this year, which was expected to conclude by the spring.
“We know that the results were never made public. No one has seen the results,” said Robinson, a student at the meeting. “He said that the only product of the review was a verbal communication with Dr. Bassett about the content of the review.”
It is unclear if Baccarelli conveyed the report’s findings to Bassett prior to her departure.
A spokesperson for HSPH referred The Crimson to Baccarelli’s email last week announcing Bassett’s departure, which described the leadership change as part of a strategic shift in the center’s mission.
FXB has faced mounting scrutiny in recent months. In the spring, HSPH suspended the center’s partnership with Birzeit University in the West Bank after critics alleged that the school’s administration was linked to Hamas.
In April, the Trump administration demanded an external audit of FXB, naming it among programs that it claimed “fuel antisemitic harassment or reflect ideological capture.” After Harvard refused, the administration froze billions of dollars of federal funding — a move later deemed unconstitutional by a federal judge in September.
But Baccarelli told students on Tuesday that the decision to let go of Bassett was made by HSPH, and that it had “nothing to do with the Trump administration,” Robinson wrote in a text.
Faculty members pressed Baccarelli for answers at a monthly schoolwide meeting Tuesday afternoon, where he again would not get into specifics about Bassett’s dismissal, according to a faculty member in attendance.
During the meeting, multiple faculty raised concerns both about the merits of the decision and how hastily it was made, according to the faculty member. Baccarelli praised Bassett and reiterated that the leadership change was an academic choice, but did not shed light on the center’s future programming.
The faculty of HSPH’s Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, where Bassett remains a professor, also sent a sharply worded email to Baccarelli on Monday, criticizing the process behind her dismissal, according to a copy obtained by The Crimson.
“We have been given no coherent justification for the action taken,” the email, signed by 24 faculty members, read. “The process by which this termination was executed undermines dignity. We stand in support of Dr. Mary Bassett.”
Though Baccarelli told students he hoped racial justice and human rights would remain priorities at FXB, Robinson said the assurances rang hollow.
“We don’t know if the new leader of the center will also at some point be dismissed because they’re not leading the center in the direction that the dean wants it to go in,” he said.
—Staff writer Abigail S. Gerstein can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @abbysgerstein.
—Staff writer Elise A. Spenner can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @EliseSpenner.