Swathi Kella

Harvard College’s Undergraduate Council, while it existed, carried with it an undercurrent of absurdity — almost every campaign cycle in recent memory has featured a farcical candidacy promising to instate a daily tomato ravioli soup, thicken the school’s toilet paper, or abolish the institution entirely. On more than one occasion, the joke ticket has won a plurality of the votes.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Fauci has advised seven United States Presidents on infectious disease and public health matters, including HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis, malaria, Ebola, Zika, and most prominently, COVID-19. Today, he serves as the Chief Medical Advisor to President Joe Biden. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

As students, we’ve seen “Veritas” crest everything we do. Meaning “truth” in Latin, the word takes its place within the Harvard laurel, letters scattered across three open books, professing to ground the university’s knowledge-seeking ethos. “Veritas” is etched into every nook and cranny on campus, both in our physical terrain and our linguistic landscape — from “Veritaffles,” the coveted Annenberg brunch meal, to “sanitas,” the now-defunct Dorm Crew’s tongue-in-cheek slogan.