Heterodox Academy (HxA) congratulates Harvard Medical School on the release of the Report of the HMS Open Inquiry Working Group, a substantive document that reflects the kind of institutional self-examination higher education urgently needs. The group was charged by George Q. Daley, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard University, to examine the state of open inquiry at HMS and recommend ways to foster respectful dialogue, scholarly debate, and engagement across differences.

The committee met seventeen times, conducted listening sessions with students, faculty, and department chairs, and produced eleven concrete recommendations. While rooted in the specific challenges of biomedical education, clinical training, and the research laboratory, the report's animating commitments track closely with the four-point agenda HxA set out in Open Inquiry U.

Open inquiry as foundational. The report grounds every recommendation in HMS's core mission, treating open inquiry and constructive dialogue as foundational to the school's work. It calls on HMS leadership to "coordinate, manage, and assess future HMS efforts and monitor progress," with recurring surveys and focus groups to track the climate over time.

"An optimal state of open inquiry and constructive dialogue requires cultural change, eventually producing a culture of greater trust and respect required for open inquiry to optimally thrive."

Self-censorship and content-neutral policy. The report names the chilling effect of self-censorship and calls for content-neutral application of all institutional policies. It recommends classroom practices such as anonymous in-class polling "as a tool to inform class members of the diversity of class opinions under circumstances where students might be reticent to express these [opinions] publicly." It also affirms:

"HMS community members who engage in respectful, good-faith academic discussion and expression consistent with existing institutional policies, including expression of minority or unpopular viewpoints, should not face academic, evaluative, or professional penalty for doing so."

Viewpoint diversity in the classroom. The report calls on faculty to avoid pedagogy that presents contested topics as settled, and recommends a highly visible event series to model scholarly engagement on controversial issues.

"Preparatory material for classes, particularly for topics that are socially and/or politically controversial, should seek to present an appropriately diverse array of viewpoints, analyses of problems, and proposed solutions."

Constructive disagreement and social compacts. The report recommends training in intellectual curiosity and humility, and proposes value-driven social compacts among community members. The sample compact offered in the report adapts language directly from The HxA Way, which the report cites as "the Heterodox Way."

"Value-driven social compacts can build trust and foster productive interpersonal interactions across the breadth of daily interactions among HMS colleagues, educators, and learners."

Medicine-specific application. The report includes a distinctive focus on tensions unique to training doctors: where personal conviction meets professional duty, and where activism runs up against patient care. As Dean Daley noted in remarks cited in the report, "As doctors, we leave our politics at the door when we approach the bedside of a patient."

Cultural change is not easily achieved, as the report itself acknowledges. Implementation will require sustained commitment from HMS leadership. We will be watching, cheering, and ready to support their efforts.

Six members of the HMS working group, including its chair, Jeffrey S. Flier, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor and former Dean of Harvard Medical School, are HxA members. Dr. Flier serves as Chair of HxA's Board of Directors, a role he took on in September 2025, while the committee’s work was underway. In chairing the committee, Dr. Flier was acting in his capacity as an HMS faculty member. 

HxA President John Tomasi was among the external voices the committee heard from during its deliberations, presenting on open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement.

Congratulations to Dean George Daley, to the full committee, and to the HMS community for a report that takes the culture of inquiry seriously.