令人鼓舞！哈佛院长夫妇新冠病毒感染后康复，专访谈心得！

核心提示：哈佛院长拉里·巴科（Larry Bacow）和他的妻子阿黛尔·弗利特·巴科（Adele Fleet Bacow）因暴露于冠状病毒，并且都开始出现COVID-19的症状，3月24日开始在家隔离，日前，他们向外界宣布：他们康复了！并上分享了他们的经验。

（以下内容是记者与校长的访谈对话节选，由灸灸健康编辑整理）

记者：您和阿黛尔感觉如何？

BACOW：我们感觉好多了。我们非常幸运。我们从未经历过任何导致很多人去医院的呼吸问题。对我们来说，这很像流感。至少在我们看来，这并不有趣，但肯定不会危及生命。

记者：你的症状是什么？

BACOW：我们俩都从咳嗽开始，然后发展为发烧和发冷。我也有全身肌肉酸痛，一切都疼，我觉得自己快120岁，然后是嗜睡-就是感冒后的感受。

记者：当您得知自己的两个测试都呈阳性时，您的想法是什么？

BACOW：好吧，我们一直非常非常谨慎，事实上，我有点惊讶，因为在我们开始出现症状之前的十天里，我和阿黛尔除了一个人以外都没见过其他人。我们被完全隔离在房子里。我们采取此类预防措施的原因之一是因为我患有自身免疫性疾病，使我非常容易受到任何类型的感染。实际上，有人质疑我为什么要接受测试。这是因为我受到了免疫抑制。所以我处于危险之中。当我们测试阳性时，我想：“这将很有趣。”

我也担心能够履行职责。当我在塔夫茨大学时，我在2004年首次被诊断出自身免疫性疾病时病倒了，不得不休假一个月。我意识到自己需要照顾自己的健康。如果我不健康，这对任何人都不好。当我测试为阳性时，我尝试通过成为一名好患者并按照我的预期去做，以建立自己希望在他人身上看到的行为。幸运的是，我拥有一支出色的团队。他们没有错过任何一个节拍并支持我，在我不在时让一切向前发展…………

记者：现在您感觉好多了，您在家工作的典型日子如何？

BACOW：由于我刚刚康复，所以我不确定我是否有真正的常规。我还没有开始锻炼身体，但是我希望在下周可以做。我仍在努力使事情变得轻松，因为我恢复了体力。因此，对于典型的一天，我要做的第一件事是查看通宵发送的电子邮件。然后，通常我会像其他所有人一样进行一系列的电话会议和Zoom会议……

记者：往后看，大学何时开始监测冠状病毒？

BACOW：  1月初，哈佛大学卫生服务部开始关注中国的情况。我们有来自中国的学生，我们有大量的教职员工为了获得自己的奖学金而前往中国，因此我们开始监控那里的情况。我们还开始向从中国返回校园的社区成员发布咨询意见，以确保他们保持健康应采取的步骤。然后，我们开始发布劝阻旅行的咨询意见，先是前往中国，然后将其扩大到遍及全球的其他热点。

我们非常非常注意发生的事情。我们还与我们自己的教职员工保持着密切联系，其中一些人是传染病，病毒学，流行病学和公共卫生领域的全球顶尖专家。他们本人也与中国和世界其他地区的同事保持联系，并开始就我们面临的风险向我们提供建议。我们很快开始召集危机管理团队来跟踪这些事件并开始进行一些初步计划。凯蒂·拉普（Katie Lapp）召集了这个团队，该团队与整个大学的行政院长，副校长以及环境卫生与安全部门的其他人员进行了接触，开始计划并考虑如果在波士顿地区（尤其是在波士顿地区）看到这种病毒，我们应该怎么做……

哈佛大学卫生服务部主任也迅速成立了一个科学咨询小组。我们也很幸运，有医生兼经济学家艾伦·加伯（Alan Garber）作为教务长。艾伦发表了有关大流行病管理的学术论文。因此，我们在尝试为这种病毒做准备并在此过程中做出一些明智的决策时，吸取了大量专业知识。

记者：哈佛大学是最早取消校园密集化并过渡到在线学习的机构之一，最初存在一些挫折。您能谈谈决策过程吗？

BACOW：我们的想法几乎完全是由一些考虑因素驱动的。其中一个研究对象是冠状病毒在中国的传播，然后是意大利和西班牙，并试图从这些国家的经验中吸取教训。。第二，它是由模型驱动的，我们和其他人都这样做了，这意味着，如果这种病毒像我们想象的那样具有传染性，像它看起来那样危险，我们在未来可能会面临一场非常真实的危机。当时，我们认为年轻人比老年人或有先天疾病的人风险更小。最近的数据表明，至少在美国，年轻人患重病的几率比其他一些国家要高。所以我们在看这个。我们观察了日本附近几艘游轮的情况，这些游轮起到了培养皿的作用，想象着如果我们的宿舍里有感染，而学生们住在彼此很近的地方，会发生什么。

随着春季假期的到来，我们担心，如果我们不迅速采取行动，我们的学生将会分散，并有可能与世界各地的其他年轻人紧密接触；当他们返回校园时，我们可能会面临全面爆发。因此，我们认为在学生春假之前采取行动很重要，因此我们很快地动员了资源。我们在Anne Margulies [副校长兼大学首席信息官]领导下的哈佛大学IT部门迅速做好准备，能够让每个人都熟悉Zoom，并确保我们拥有IT基础架构来维持教学大量会议并在Zoom上开会。同样，我们在学习方面的副教务长巴拉特·阿南德（Bharat Anand）和他的同事开始收集资源，以快速地教育教师进行在线教学。每位院长都与他们的教职员工不懈地合作，为他们做准备。他们是这一过程的真正英雄。然后，我们向学生发出了通知，要求所有可能搬出去的人这样做，并且休息后不回校园，而且我们将把所有的教学转移到网上。

我知道某些人可能会过早地批评我们。但是在这个过程中，有一点我们可以看到马萨诸塞州在四天的时间内发病率从13上升到28到42上升到91，这显然是指数级增长，尽管基数很小。在每个其他国家，这种增长率几乎以相同的方式重复出现，比我们领先一两个星期。因此，有闪烁的红灯。我很快意识到犯错的代价是不对称的。我的意思是，如果我们按照某些人的想法过早采取行动，将会给许多人带来不便，并且很可能会浪费很多资源。但是，如果我们等待太久才做出回应，那么这代价很可能将在人类生活中进行衡量。因此，决定实际上并不那么困难。实施它。但是，决定让学生离开而不回去并过渡到在线学习的决定似乎很明确。我们还认识到，通过迅速采取行动，我们可能会使面临类似决策但又无法获得我们拥有的专业知识的其他机构也能够迅速采取行动。

记者：您觉得大学在过渡期间如何支持学生和其他人？

BACOW：显然，我们是在要求很多学生和社区中的其他人迅速行动，整个大学的人们都在积极帮助。个人志愿协助学生迁出校园，这标志着我们社区的力量。我们还尝试提供财务支持，以帮助学生支付旅行，存储和其他费用。实际上，学院的员工日夜工作，以执行此决定并解决出现的问题。他们有成千上万的问题要回答，要解决的问题。我们大约有6,000名大学生在五天左右的时间内搬了出去。

我们必须迅速过渡到在线教学，这也是每个人在家中远程工作的过渡，除了少数例外。我们非常感谢那些照顾仍在留学生的社区成员。我们非常感谢不断确保我们的建筑物安全可靠的员工。每个人都被这场危机感动了。

记者：根据塔夫茨社长的经验，有什么可以与之相比的？

BACOW：我度过了2008年的金融危机，这场危机与那场危机之间当然有一些相似之处，但也有一些重要的区别。最大的相似之处是每个人所在的经济环境都受到影响。而且，在每种情况下，我们的捐赠额都在下降。在每种情况下，我们都认为短期内慈善事业可能会下降，而公司和基金会的支持会下降。

我们还将看到学生对经济援助的需求增加。我们也看到了员工，教职员工和员工之间的极大焦虑。在每种情况下，我们还看到社区的确做出了积极的回应，人们正在努力帮助其他不幸的人。真令人振奋。

这场危机比2008年困难得多，因为它影响了我们履行核心使命的能力。我们是一所研究型大学，现在基本上我们不能有学生居住。由于目前我们不得不关闭图书馆和档案馆以及实际上支持我们学术工作的大多数实验室和设施，因此我们执行研究任务的能力正在受到损害。我们在2008年从未遇到过。

“我意识到我不会把一切都做好，但我认为，能够采取行动并果断地采取行动很重要，而不是试图把每件事都做得完美，被不确定性麻痹。”

记者：大流行对高等教育有何影响？希望在哪里？

BACOW：即使是最黑暗的云层也会有银色的光。我们已经看到了许多精彩的工作，代表着来自大学的许多人，试图帮助其他不幸的人。这些努力并不令我惊讶，但还是很高兴看到。我们也看到教师和学生都在尝试新的教学方法，我怀疑这会给我们带来长期的后果。我怀疑我们中的许多人已经意识到，我们不需要像以前那样去参加会议。许多这样的会议现在可以通过技术来举行，这将有助于我们降低成本，并减少我们的碳足迹。我也认为我们已经意识到人们是非常灵活的。虽然我们都怀念在一起和一起工作的社会环境，但人们仍然在寻找在家里非常高效的方式。在我们展望未来的时候，我希望我们能在哈佛的工作方式上建立更多的灵活性。当我们思考如何组织工作时，这将有长期的好处，不仅仅是在大学内部，而是在整个社会。

我还认为，目前正在合作应对冠状病毒挑战的机构之间建立的一些关系也将证明是持久的。我只是看看我们现在和中国的一些同事是如何合作的，不仅仅是在广州呼吸健康研究所，还有其他中国大学。我想我们今后会建立起这种关系。所以我认为会有很多积极的好处。也就是说，我不希望我最坏的敌人这样。

记者：您是否想向哈佛社区传达这样一个信息：认识到危机的全面影响尚未显现？

BACOW：首先，我要感谢人们的耐心和灵活性，以适应我们从未经历过的环境。我也会要求人们给予每个人怀疑的好处。现在大学里有这么多人在努力工作，不停地努力解决一系列令人眼花缭乱的问题和不确定因素，我们知道我们不可能把一切都做好是不可避免的。我们今天没有把一切都做好。但是人们已经非常非常努力地适应，并且在面对新的信息时快速地适应。我希望人们相信他们的同事，相信这个机构会尽其所能做到最好。我希望他们知道，当我们犯错误时，我们会尽快纠正错误。然后我们将尝试接受另一组新的挑战，因为挑战不会消失。他们会和我们在一起一段时间。

（说明：本文节选自哈佛学报，由灸灸健康编辑整理，由于时间和翻译水平所限，翻译可能存在不够准确，见谅。现附原文全文如下）

Q&A

Larry Bacow

GAZETTE: How are you and Adele feeling?

BACOW: We are feeling much better. We were very fortunate. We never experienced any of the respiratory problems that sent so many people to the hospital. For us, this felt a lot like the flu. Not fun, but certainly not life-threatening, at least in our case.

GAZETTE: What were your symptoms?

BACOW: We both started off with a cough and then that progressed to having a fever and chills. I also had whole-body muscle aches. Everything hurt. I felt like I was 120 years old almost overnight. And then lethargy — just how you feel when you have the flu.

GAZETTE: What was going through your mind when you learned you had both tested positive?

BACOW: Well, we’d been very, very careful, and I was a little bit surprised, in truth, because Adele and I had not seen anyone except each other for close to 10 days before we started experiencing symptoms. We were completely isolated in the house. One reason we had taken such precautions is because I live with an autoimmune condition that makes me very susceptible to any kind of infection. In fact, some people questioned why I actually got tested. It’s because I’m immunosuppressed. So I was at risk. And when we tested positive I thought, “This is going to be interesting.”

I was also worried about being able to discharge my responsibilities. When I was at Tufts, I had gotten quite ill in 2004 when my autoimmune condition was first diagnosed, and I had had to take a month off of work. I realized that I needed to look after my own health. I wasn’t good to anybody if I wasn’t healthy. But beyond that, I realized I also had to give others permission to take the time they needed to recover if they got sick. So when I tested positive, I tried to model the behavior I would hope to see in others by being a good patient and doing what I was supposed to do. And I’m fortunately blessed with a great team. They didn’t miss a beat and filled in behind me and just kept everything moving forward in my absence.

GAZETTE:  Were you able to do any work at all, or were you off the grid entirely?

BACOW: As president, you are never completely off the grid. I was looking at email, although not terribly responsive to it. I would have one call a day with Patti Bellinger, my chief of staff, and with Bill Lee, senior fellow of the Corporation. And I would receive daily reports from both Katie Lapp, [executive vice president and chief administrative officer] and [Provost] Alan Garber. And if I needed to, I would talk to them by phone as well.

GAZETTE: What kind of response did you get when you let the Harvard community know in an email that you and Adele were sick? 

BACOW: We must have received a thousand responses, from students, faculty, staff, and alumni, in some cases from all over the world. We were both quite touched by the response.

What was a little strange was lying in bed sick watching CNN, if I recall correctly, and having them report on me being sick. That was a bit of an out-of-body experience. Once it made the national news, we started hearing from old friends and family from around the country and around the world.

GAZETTE: What are you doing to keep yourself occupied during this social isolation? Have you been binge-watching anything or reading anything in particular?

BACOW: It’s a struggle just to keep up on email. I haven’t really had a chance to read anything for pleasure. In the irony department, our son and daughter-in-law and two granddaughters called us up a few weeks ago. They live in New York City. They were working remotely and wanted to know how we would feel if they came up and lived with us during this experience. We said, “Of course, we’d love to see you.” Well, they literally drove up here the day the two of us came down with our first symptoms. They have been in the house and we’ve been FaceTiming them and engaging in social distancing. The big distraction is having our 2½-year-old granddaughter and our now 8-week-old granddaughter with us. We hope as we emerge from the other side of this in a few days that we’ll actually be able to play with them. That will be our distraction.

GAZETTE: Now that you are feeling better, what is a typical day like for you working from home?

BACOW: Since I’m just recently recovered, I’m not sure I have a real routine yet. I have not started exercising again, but that is something I hope to do in the next week. I’m still trying to take it easy because I’m getting my strength back. So, for a typical day, the first thing I do is look at email that came in overnight. And then usually I have a series of phone calls and Zoom meetings, like everybody else. Sometimes those are calls with my direct reports. I’m checking in with the deans and the various vice presidents. I’m also talking to public officials. I’ve had phone calls with the governor, and officials in Cambridge, Boston, and in Washington, D.C.

I’ve also been talking to my presidential peers. The Ivy League presidents have been in close touch largely via email, and I have also spoken to a number of them by phone. I make a point of speaking to MIT President Rafael Reif regularly, and I have spoken to a number of other presidential colleagues in the area. I’ve also been in touch with [former Harvard presidents] Drew [Faust] and Larry Summers. So, I try to reach out to people who either have previously dealt with situations like what we’re dealing with now, or because they’re dealing with them in real time.

I’ve been on calls with the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts, and the American Council on Education. Last weekend we had the governing boards meeting on Zoom. We had a full meeting of the Board of Overseers and a meeting of the Corporation.

“With spring break coming up we were concerned that if we did not act quickly our students would disperse and likely come into close proximity with other young people in various parts of the world, and that when they returned to campus we could face a full-blown outbreak here.”

GAZETTE: Looking backward, when did the University start monitoring the coronavirus?

BACOW: In early January, Harvard University Health Services started paying attention to what was going on in China. We have students from China, and we have a fair number of faculty and staff who travel to China for their own scholarship, so we started monitoring what was going on there. We also started issuing advisories to members of our community who were returning to campus from China on the steps they should take to ensure that they remained healthy. Then we started issuing advisories discouraging travel, first to China and then broadening that to other hotspots throughout the world as they became apparent.

We were very, very attentive to what was going on. We were also in close contact with the members of our own faculty and staff, some of whom are among the world’s foremost experts in infectious disease, virology, epidemiology, public health. And they themselves were in contact with their colleagues in China and in other parts of the world, and started advising us on the risks we were facing going forward. We very quickly started convening a crisis-management team to follow these events and to start doing some preliminary planning. Katie Lapp convened that team, which engaged the administrative deans, the vice presidents, and others from environmental health and safety throughout the University to start planning and thinking about what we might do if we saw this virus, both in the Boston area and especially if we saw it on our campus. Giang Nguyen, the director of Harvard University Health Services, also quickly put together a scientific advisory group. We have also been blessed to have Alan Garber, a physician as well as an economist, as our provost. Alan has published scholarly papers on the management of pandemics. So we drew upon a tremendous amount of expertise in trying to prepare for this virus and to make some intelligent decisions along the way.

GAZETTE: Harvard was one of the first institutions to de-densify its campus and transition to online learning, and there was some pushback at first. Can you talk about that decision-making process?

BACOW: Our thinking was driven almost entirely by a handful of considerations. One was just looking at the spread of the coronavirus, both in China and then in Italy and Spain, and trying to learn from the experiences of those countries. Second, it was driven by modeling, which we and others did, which suggested that, if this virus was as infectious as we thought it was and as dangerous as it appeared to be, we could face a very real crisis going forward. At that time, we believed that young people were less at risk than the elderly or those with pre-existing conditions. More recent data suggests, at least in the United States, that you’ve got a higher incidence of severe illness in young people than in some other countries. So we were looking at that. We were observing what was going on with a few cruise ships near Japan which function effectively as petri dishes and imagining what would happen if we got an infection in our dormitories where students live in close proximity to each other.

With spring break coming up, we were concerned that if we did not act quickly our students would disperse and likely come into close proximity with other young people in various parts of the world, and that when they returned to campus we could face a full-blown outbreak here. So we thought it was important to act before students went on spring break and we mobilized resources very quickly. Our Harvard University IT department under Anne Margulies [vice president and University chief information officer] quickly geared up to be able to get everybody on Zoom, to start educating faculty on Zoom, and to make sure that we had the IT infrastructure to sustain teaching in large numbers and having meetings on Zoom. Similarly, our vice provost for advances in learning, Bharat Anand, and his colleagues started to assemble resources to quickly educate faculty in online teaching. Each of the deans worked tirelessly with their faculty and staff to prepare. They are the real heroes of this process. And then we issued a notice to students that we were going to ask those who could move out to do so and not to return to campus after break, and that we were going to move all teaching online.

I knew that we would be criticized by some for possibly acting prematurely. But there was a point in this process where we watched the incidence of cases in Massachusetts over a four-day period go from, I believe, 13 to 28 to 42 to 91, which is clearly an exponential growth rate, albeit from a small base. It was a growth rate that had been repeated in almost precisely the same pattern in every other country that was a week or two ahead of us. So there were flashing red lights. And I quickly realized that the cost of being wrong was asymmetrical. What I mean by that is that if we acted prematurely, as some thought we were, then we would inconvenience many, and we would probably squander a lot of resources. But if we waited too long to respond, that cost was likely going to be measured in human life. And so the decision actually wasn’t that difficult. Implementing it was. But the decision to tell students to leave and to not return and to transition to online learning seemed pretty clear. We also recognized that by acting quickly we might make it easier for other institutions that were faced with similar decisions, but without access to the same expertise that we were blessed with, to act quickly as well.

GAZETTE: How do you feel the University went about supporting students and others in the transition?

BACOW: Obviously, we were asking a lot of students and others in our community to move so quickly, and people across the entire University pitched in to help. It was a mark of the strength of our community that individuals volunteered to assist students as they moved out. We also tried to provide financial support to help students with travel, storage, and other expenses. Staff in the College worked day and night, literally, to implement this decision and to address issues as they arose. They had thousands of questions to answer and problems to solve. Around 6,000 of our undergraduates moved out in five days or so.

We have had to quickly make a transition to online teaching and learning, and it’s also a transition for everybody working remotely from home, with very few exceptions. We’re so grateful for those members of our community who are looking after the students still in residence. We are really grateful to our employees who are continuing to make sure that our buildings are safe and secure. Everybody has been touched by this crisis. I’ve been really encouraged by the willingness of both our faculty as well as our students and all the people who are supporting them to, almost on a dime, master the technology necessary to teach online. There’s been so much goodwill on the part of people willing to learn new ways of teaching and learning.

GAZETTE: In your experience as Tufts president, is there anything you can compare this to?

BACOW: I lived through the 2008 financial crisis, and there are certainly some similarities between this crisis and that one, but also some important differences. The big similarity is that each one affected the economic environment in which we operate. And, in each case, we saw a decline in our endowments. In each case we are seeing a likely decline in philanthropy in the short-term and a decline in corporate and foundation support.

We will also see an increase in the demand for financial aid for our students. We’ve seen great anxiety among our employees, faculty, and staff, as well. And in each case we’ve also seen the community really respond positively, with people working hard to help out others less fortunate. That’s been very heartening.

This crisis is much harder than 2008 because it affects our ability to deliver on our core mission. We are a residential research University, and right now we basically cannot have students in residence. And the capacity of our faculty to deliver on our research mission is at the moment compromised because we’ve had to shut down our libraries and archives, and most of our laboratories and facilities that actually support our scholarly work, so there are challenges here that we never faced in 2008.

“I recognize that I’m not going to get everything right. But rather than try to do everything perfectly and be paralyzed by uncertainty, I think it’s important to be able to act, and act decisively.”

GAZETTE: Even amid those challenges, there are efforts happening across the University to address the pandemic. Can you speak to some of the collaborations and work happening with Harvard scholars and experts from around the world to try to tackle the coronavirus?

BACOW: One of the very first things we did, well before it was clear that the coronavirus was going to be this extraordinary crisis for our nation, was to develop a collaboration with our colleagues at the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Health. This is a major scholarly collaboration based at Harvard Medical School and run by Dean George Daley that engages all of our teaching hospitals, along with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, faculty in other parts of the University, and our colleagues at MIT, BU, the Broad, and the Ragon Institute. It also engages people in the life sciences industry here in Massachusetts. Harvard is at the center of this activity, focusing on developing rapid diagnostic tests, which are critical for how we manage this crisis going forward, and new vaccines and therapies. I’m incredibly proud of the way that our faculty, our graduate students, our research staff, our colleagues in industry and in the hospitals have all come together so quickly to focus all of the resources that Harvard and its neighbors can muster to try to address the challenges created by COVID-19.

GAZETTE: What has Harvard’s engagement with Cambridge, Boston, and the state been like through this process?

BACOW: We’ve been working with the city of Cambridge, the city of Boston, and the state to try to be helpful in a variety of ways. A number of our individual Schools, for example, tried to make resources available to assist in homeschooling. I can’t say enough good things about what our Graduate School of Education has done in this area. We also made the Harvard Square Hotel available to first responders and health care workers who may not be able to travel easily back and forth to their homes, in part because they fear infecting their own families. And we have made additional facilities available in Boston and Cambridge for the same purpose. We’ve collected personal protective equipment from our laboratories and made it available to area hospitals for health care workers who are still trying to take care of sick people in an environment in which personal protective equipment has proven scarce.

There was a recent article in the Harvard Gazette that details the variety of other ways that we have been trying to work with the state and our local communities.

Our alumni around the world have also been terrific in offering their assistance. We’ve had a number of them help to arrange shipments of personal protective equipment from different countries that’s now being distributed and made available through the governor’s good efforts to ensure that the supplies go to where they’re needed most.

GAZETTE: With the economy in such disarray, how are you thinking about the endowment and future payouts?

BACOW: We are looking at literally every expenditure within the University. The deans and the vice presidents are all working with us at the moment to limit spending and to ensure that that we are coming into alignment with what we know are going to be diminished sources of revenue. We’ve already spent a lot of money that we would not have otherwise in helping students go home. We are rebating room and board for students throughout the University. We have seen a decline in continuing and executive education revenues — a precipitous drop. So the immediate effects are significant already. And then we’ll see what the market delivers to us in endowment returns going forward.

The good news is that we anticipated that at some point we would face a recession. We were cognizant of the fact that we were already in the longest peacetime economic expansion in history. Several years ago, we began planning for the next recession. We didn’t know when it would come, but we knew that it would arrive at some point, and so we created a recession playbook, produced by our financial planning staff under (chief financial officer and Vice President of Finance) Tom Hollister’s guidance, with the participation of all of Harvard’s deans and vice presidents. We also tried to make sure that we understood the lessons of 2008 so that we could be better prepared the next time around. We took measures to ensure that we had more liquidity than we had going into 2008. We built reserves. All these things will help cushion the impact, but the impact will still be felt. The city of Cambridge and the city of Boston have already put restrictions on construction projects right now, so construction on the campus is on hold at the moment. Lots of things are going to be delayed, and there will be belt-tightening across the board.

GAZETTE: Challenging times demand tough decisions. What is it like, as the leader of Harvard, to have to make such difficult calls? Are there examples from history that you draw on?

BACOW: This is a time when I actually think it’s helpful to have been through some things like this before. At one point during my 10 years at Tufts, I made up a list of about a dozen crises of different sorts that I had to deal with, ranging from 9/11, which occurred 10 days into my presidency, to a major power failure in Medford that forced us to operate the university for eight days without any electricity, to the financial crisis of 2008, to getting sick myself in 2004 and being hospitalized multiple times in a six-month period.

I think having been through all that gives me some perspective. I sometimes say that one of the challenging things about being a university president is that all the easy decisions get decided before they get to you. That means that almost every decision I get to make is a 51/49 decision — if I’m lucky. Sometimes it’s 50.0001 versus 49.9999. The no-brainers have all been decided previously. So I’m used to having to make tough calls.

It helps to have been through challenging circumstances in the past. I’m also blessed with fabulous colleagues who help me understand the consequences of different choices. And then, like any other person, I just try to do the best that I can do. I recognize that I’m not going to get everything right. But rather than try to do everything perfectly and be paralyzed by uncertainty, I think it’s important to be able to act, and act decisively. And when you need to engage in error correction, to do that quickly as well.

GAZETTE: What are the implications for higher education as a result of the pandemic? Are there any silver linings?

BACOW: Even the darkest clouds have their silver linings. We’ve seen a lot of wonderful work on behalf of so many people from across the University trying to help others less fortunate. These efforts don’t surprise me, but it’s still wonderful to see. We’ve also seen both faculty and students experiment with new ways of teaching and learning, which I suspect will have long-term consequences for us. I suspect many of us have realized that we don’t need to travel nearly as much as we once did to attend meetings. Many of those meetings can now be held using technology — that will help us reduce costs and also reduce our carbon footprint. I also think we have realized people are immensely flexible. And while we all miss the social environment of being together and working together, people are still finding ways to be very, very productive from home. As we look forward, I hope we can build more flexibility into how people work at Harvard. That’s going to have long-term benefits as we think about how we organize work, not just within the University, but throughout society.

I also think some of the relationships that have been forged between institutions that are collaborating now to address the challenges posed by the coronavirus will prove durable as well. I just look at how we’re working with some of our colleagues in China right now, not just at Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Health, but at other Chinese universities. I suspect we’ll build off those relationships going forward. So I think that there are going to be many positive benefits. That said, I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.

GAZETTE: Is there a message you’d like to convey to the Harvard community, recognizing that the full impact of the crisis is yet to be felt?

BACOW: First of all, I would thank people for their patience and for their flexibility in adapting to circumstances that none of us have ever lived through. I would also ask people to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. So many people are working so hard right now across the University, working nonstop trying to address a dizzying array of questions, of uncertainties, and we know it’s inevitable that we’re not going to get everything right. We haven’t gotten everything right today. But people have worked really, really hard to adapt and to adapt quickly in the face of new information. I would hope that people would trust their colleagues and trust that the institution is going to do the best it can possibly do. And I would hope they know that when we make mistakes, we’re going to try to correct them as quickly as possible. And then we’re going to try to take on yet another new set of challenges, because the challenges are not going to go away. They’re going to be with us for some time to come.

The Daily Gazette

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