UNITED STATES
Leading university presidents plead for drastic action

Brendan O’Malley 21 March 2020
The presidents of three of the top universities in the United States have issued a joint plea to all higher education institutions and all other organisations across the nation to follow their example and take drastic action to address the threat of the coronavirus pandemic.
Harvard University President Lawrence S Bacow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) President L Rafael Reif and Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, writing in a joint article in the New York Times said: “The experience of other countries has shown the crucial value of making big moves as quickly as possible to ‘flatten the curve’ – to slow the rate of infection so that our hospitals and health care workers are not overwhelmed.