STAT+: After years of close mentorship, Harvard’s president and Jay Bhattacharya enter dramatic new territory

In early May, Harvard president Dr. Alan Garber received a letter from the National Institutes of Health notifying him that hundreds of scientific grants had been rescinded, as the next step in the escalating battle between Harvard and the Trump administration. In an instant, the years-long collective efforts of countless researchers to cure illness, protect against disease, and improve human knowledge were thrown into disarray.

Still, the letter did offer Garber one ray of hope: He could appeal the decision to the director of the NIH, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. It was a name Garber knew exceptionally well. For more than three decades, Garber had nurtured Bhattacharya’s career, first as his undergraduate honors thesis adviser, and later as a colleague and peer. Now their relationship had entered dramatically new territory. As the letter made clear, Garber could go to his former student as a supplicant and plead with him to reconsider.

The May 6 letter is but one document in a fast-growing body of hostile communications from Washington. Yet it points to something significant: Two of the frontline adversaries are bound by deep social ties and a shared academic interest in the money side of medicine. Garber and Bhattacharya have co-authored nearly a dozen academic papers and chapters and have together attended countless meetings, academic conferences, and informal family gatherings.

Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…