The Harvard Plan: Jay & Alan

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4.8 • 11.8K Ratings

🗓️ 24 November 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

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Summary

Harvard president Alan Garber and National Institutes of Health head Jay Bhattacharya are two main characters at the heart of the national fight over the future of academia. Alan Garber has been cast as the defender of academic freedom and democracy; Jay Bhattacharya is Donald Trump’s pick to lead the NIH, the agency withholding billions of dollars in research grants from Harvard. Oddly enough, the two men go way back: Garber was Bhattacharya’s undergraduate thesis advisor and mentor in the late 1980s. This episode tells the story of how the two men found themselves adversaries — and what it means for the future of science. Find more On the Media every week, here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-media/id73330715

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, I'm Kelly McEvers, and this is Embedded from NPR. So we're going to share a new series
0:07.0	about the fight between the Trump administration and the country's oldest university.
0:12.5	It's called The Harvard Plan. It's hosted by reporter Ilya Merritt's and produced by our
0:17.5	friends at WNYCs on the media and the Boston Globe.
0:22.1	The last episode followed the Trump administration's attacks on the university
0:26.2	through the perspectives of three very different Harvard professors.
0:30.9	This episode focuses on the decision makers at Harvard and in the Trump administration.
0:44.9	Turns out the two men at the top actually have a personal connection, which eventually unraveled.
0:47.9	If you haven't heard the first episode, go back and listen.
0:50.7	If you have heard it, here's episode two.
0:52.2	And here's Ilya.
0:54.5	I'm Ilya Merritt. This is The Harvard Plan, Season 2, episode two. And here's Ilya. I'm Ilya Merritt.
0:58.4	This is the Harvard Plan, season two, episode two.
1:03.2	Think about a teacher who made a difference in your life.
1:06.8	Did you stay in touch, visit them, maybe send a Christmas card?
1:11.8	This story is about a teacher and student who went so much further than that.
1:17.6	The student was so inspired by the teacher, he followed in his footsteps, got the exact same academic degrees, then entered the same field.
1:21.4	Then they worked together closely.
1:23.9	They wrote papers, did research, got grants.
1:26.8	For decades, it continued this way. And then something
1:30.0	changed. The country changed. And the younger man and the older man found themselves no longer colleagues.
1:38.3	They became adversaries in a big, big fight, a fight that is still raging today.
	...

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