As Andrea Baccarelli, the dean of Harvard’s School of Public Health, prepared to open a virtual town hall earlier this month, members of the university’s graduate-student union gathered for a watch party with “Baccarelli Bingo” cards. The game boards were filled with phrases the dean was expected to use: “these are difficult times”; “i know it’s not a satisfying answer but we don’t know”; “… which is why we must be innovative!” At the center of the grid was a free space, bedazzled with emojis, that read, “no meaningful commitments made.”

Baccarelli’s stated goal was to provide an update on the school’s financial crisis. Of Harvard’s schools, HSPH has been by far the most reliant on government grants—and so was the hardest hit by the Trump administration’s cuts to federal research funding. In the spring, essentially overnight, the school lost about $200 million in support. Although a federal judge has ruled that those grant terminations were illegal, the school’s future relationship with the federal government remains uncertain. Long-term survival for HSPH would require dramatic change, Baccarelli said at the town hall: It needed to become less dependent on federal funds. In the process, it would have to cut $30 million in operations costs by mid-2027 and potentially slash up to half of its scientific research. HSPH is one of the most consequential public-health institutions in America: The school once contributed to the eradication of smallpox and the development of the polio vaccine, led breakthroughs linking air pollution to lung and heart disease, and helped demonstrate the harms of trans fats. If the Trump administration’s aim has been to upend American science, HSPH is a prime example of what that looks like.

But the school’s dean, too, has become something of an emblem—of how unprepared many scientists are to face this new political reality. At the town hall, Baccarelli had to address his controversial work linking acetaminophen—Tylenol—to autism and answer for how he’d communicated with the Trump administration about it. (Another Baccarelli Bingo square: “acetaminophen mentioned.”) At a press conference in late September, Donald Trump and several of his top officials announced that they would update Tylenol’s labeling to discourage its use during pregnancy, leaning heavily on Baccarelli’s research on the subject and on expert witness testimony he’d given. “To quote the dean of the Harvard School of Public Health,” FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said, “‘There is a causal relationship between prenatal acetaminophen use and neurodevelopmental disorders of ADHD and autism spectrum disorder.’”

Plenty of the school’s faculty were taken aback to hear Trump officials warmly referencing their dean, especially given that Tylenol’s connection to autism—a complex condition with many contributing factors—is shaky at best.