Tricia Schumann Rakusin

Health Innovation Capital, Chief Investment Officer Life Sciences, Board & Advisor @healthcare, @HarvardHBS @hbshealthalumni. Opinions are my own.

[Bryan Johnson @bryan_johnson]

The coming years are going to be insane. I say this figuratively and literally. The primary reason is because society is about to enter a phase transition.  This is what a phase transition looks like.

Water at 99°C is hot, stable, behaves like a liquid and follows the laws of hydrodynamics. At 101°C, water becomes a gas, making it chaotic, expansive, and following a different set of physical laws.

The difference between 2026 and 203X is the difference between 99°C and 101°C.

To make this tangible. Imagine you’ve become a proficient swimmer. Mastering your stroke, breathing and pacing. The water is a predictable substrate that you use to model your decisions. This is life at 99°C.

At 101°C the pool turns to steam. You stroke your arms but don’t move. You kick and don’t find resistance. Your swimming proficiency is no longer an asset, it’s a liability. Your muscle memory is a mismatch for the new environment. You have to unlearn to relearn.

This is what life planning is going to feel like going forward.

For most of history, you could make a pretty decent guess about what the future would look like. If you were a farmer in 1400, you knew your grandchild would probably be a farmer in 1450. That was even true in 2003 when I entered college. One could confidently attend college, select a career, plan a profession, and map out retirement by age 65.

We felt confident in these plans because we depended on broad trends (coarse graining) that reliably predicted the future. Things may change here and there, but not enough to give you any pause in your life-planning decision making.

That stability is now gone. For example, my son is 20 and neither he nor I have any idea how to think about his life. Should he go to college? Is college still relevant? What should he learn? Life planning shortcuts are now dead. No one knows. Before, having a five year plan was responsible. Now it’s reckless because the world is moving faster than we can model. The speed of reality exceeds the speed of the observer.

This is the source of the low level anxiety that many people feel. Humans are prediction machines. When an error emerges from what you predicted (water) to what you get (steam), the body registers it as trauma.  It leaves us in a state of chronic hyper-vigilance, scanning a horizon that refuses to sit still.

In this new reality, the move is not to have better maps, but to build better systems. This is what I’ve been building with Blueprint. An algorithmic system of health and decision making that moves as fast as technology, allowing me to evolve alongside.  The more I detach from ideas, norms and expectations, the smoother the glide. The hardest part is letting go of what we know and trust.

This is part of a series of essays that I’ve been writing for my upcoming book Warriors & Caretakers of Existence. A plan on what the human race does when giving birth to super intelligence. If we want the extraordinary existence that is on offer, we’ll need to fight for it.

[Rick J. Caruso @RickCarusoLA]

“Unprecedented failure.” “Predictable.” “Manageable.” These are some of the words used in this report to describe the situation that led to the wildfires in January.

No more buck passing. We need a clear response from Mayor Bass on what happened.

Read the report: https://t.co/m1YLvlrXpj

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

It has saddened to me watch @Harvard, a university that I love from which I have greatly benefited, self-immolate through gross mismanagement, poor governance, and ideological capture that have occurred over the last 15 or so years, and that have been brought into clear focus beginning on October 8, 2023.

When a day after the launch of the Hamas attack on Israel, 33 Harvard student organizations held the victims “solely responsible” for the acts of the terrorists while their extraordinarily barbaric acts were still underway, I realized that something had gone profoundly wrong at my alma mater. Further investigations on campus, including interviews and meetings I held with students and faculty, led me to conclude that the issue was not simply one of anti-Zionism or antisemitism, but rather the anti-American ideological capture of a once-great educational institution that has grossly veered from its original mission of Veritas and academic and research excellence.

For nearly two decades, Harvard students have been taught that the world can only be understood as a battle between the oppressors and the oppressed, a dangerous anti-American neo-Marxist ideology that emerged on campus, permeated the administration and the faculty, and one which has been promulgated and implemented by Harvard’s Orwellian-named Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging.

While the OEDIB has recently been renamed the Office for Community and Campus Life and has taken down its website in an attempt to avoid scrutiny from the @realDonaldTrump administration, it has otherwise remained under the same leadership, personnel, and mission.

Rather than promoting the issues suggested by its nomenclature, in practice, DEI as implemented at Harvard is a political advocacy movement that advocates and executes on behalf of certain groups that are deemed oppressed under the DEI methodology.

Under DEI, one’s degree of oppression is determined based upon where one resides on a so-called intersectional pyramid of oppression where whites, Jews, and Asians are deemed oppressors, and a subset of people of color, LGBTQ people, and/or women are deemed to be oppressed.

Under DEI’s ideology, any policy, program, educational system, economic system, grading system, admission policy, (and even climate change due its disparate impact on geographies and the people that live there), etc. that leads to unequal outcomes among people of different skin colors is deemed racist.

As a result, according to DEI, capitalism is racist, Advanced Placement exams are racist, IQ tests are racist, corporations are racist, or in other words, any merit-based program, system, or organization which has or generates outcomes for different races that are at variance with the proportion these races represent in the population at large is by definition racist under DEI’s ideology. But rather than being anti-racist, DEI and its ideological framework are profoundly racist and illegal, and an important to contributor to what has gone wrong at Harvard in recent years.

DEI has poisoned Harvard admissions practices as evidenced by Harvard being found in violation of race-based admission practices by the Supreme Court. It has led to the decline of excellence and meritocracy at Harvard, both in the student body and in the faculty. It has allowed antisemitism to explode on campus where chants for “Free, Free Palestine, From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free, and Globalize the Intifada,” were dismissed as viewpoint diversity and free speech “depending on the context” by the previous Harvard President despite repeated warnings that such calls for global violence would lead to innocents being harmed.

The irony of Harvard claiming to protect free speech and free expression on campus while contemporaneously being ranked last on the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) free speech rankings has not been lost on anyone.

This past week’s brutal executions of a Christian and a Jewish staffer of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. by a man who shouted “Free Free Palestine” after finishing off his victims as they attempted to crawl away are but a recent stark and egregious example of the consequences of the same intonated calls for violence against Jews by Harvard students and faculty who have encamped on Harvard Yard and barged into classrooms bullhorns in hand.

Harvard has had nearly two years to get its act together to address antisemitism on campus, and it has been more than 18 months since the Congressional hearing at which Harvard’s former president equilibrated, ducked, smirked at, and dismissed Congresswoman Elise Stefanik’s penetrating and elucidating inquiry.

While the University has taken token steps to address these issues, the April 29th release of its Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias makes clear that antisemitism remains pervasive on campus because of its deep ideological roots within the faculty as explained by David Volpe (a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Divinity School who resigned from Harvard’s Antisemitism Task Force) in a Free Press article on May 2, 2025 after the publication of the report:

“But what the report offers no solution for is that there is a deep ideological commitment among much of the faculty—particularly in the humanities and social sciences—that is anti-Western, anti-Israel, and often antisemitic… Without a vast unlearning—among the faculty, not just the students—all the reports in the world will not change the atmosphere on campus. We will only be spraying perfume on a sewer.”

I have recently visited the Harvard campus and spoken to students and faculty. Unfortunately, while the University has taken some steps, David Volpe is correct. The rot runs deep.

Harvard has been on notice for nearly 18 months by the Congress that its failure to address antisemitism threatened the University’s federal funding. The University now appears to be shocked – despite the many previous warnings made by the Trump administration – that its Federal funding has been paused, that future Federal grants will not be considered, and that its refusal to provide requested documentation about its foreign students has led to the cancellation of Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visa Program certification.

Why is Harvard in this mess? The answer I believe is arrogance.

Harvard’s President Garber recently held a Zoom with alumni and claimed that the administration’s attempts to enforce Title VI violations is simply a ‘guise’ for the ideological takeover of the University by right wing interests.

Rather than engage with the Administration and attempt to negotiate a resolution of these issues, Harvard has chosen to dismiss the Administration’s attempt to enforce the law as pretextual and brought lawsuits not just against the various Federal agencies, but also has chosen to personally sue Secy of HHS RFK, Jr, AG Pamela Bondi, Secy of Education Linda McMahon, Acting Administrator of the GAO Stephen Ehikian, Secy of Energy Chris Wright, Defense Secy Peter Hegseth, Secy of DHS Kristy Noem, Director Todd Lyons of ICE, Secy of State Marco Rubio, and the Directors of the NSF and NASA.

When one brings a lawsuit against an individual when litigation against an entity would legally suffice, it is done to intimidate, harass, and/or waste the time of the target. Harvard had no legal need to bring personal lawsuits against these public servants, but it did so anyway out of spite.

What more do you need to know to understand why President Trump and the other leaders of this Administration would be appropriately angered by this dismissive and extremely antagonistic response of Harvard?

My goal is to help Harvard out of this mess, but I have been stymied in doing so. Multiple Harvard affiliates have suggested that I reach out to the Harvard Corporation Board, and I have done so. I have received no response to my outreach to the members of the Board with whom I have had a (perhaps once) good relationship. A number of others have offered to connect me with President Alan Garber or have told me that he would be reaching out to me shortly, but no such outreach has occurred; hence, I am herewith sharing my advice to Harvard.

So what should Harvard do?

While much has been made of the Administration’s April 11th letter to Harvard which was clearly overreaching in certain respects, I am relying here on the April 3, 2025 letter from the Administration rather than the April 11th letter, as the Administration has explained that the April 11th letter was sent in error. (See: https://t.co/UCD8FIhJLC)

The April 3rd letter https://t.co/oTQTWdzU7u makes nine reasonable and straightforward requests:

“1. Oversight and accountability for biased programs that fuel antisemitism. Programs and departments that fuel antisemitic harassment must be reviewed and necessary changes made to address bias, improve viewpoint diversity, and end ideological capture.

2. Disciplinary reform and consistent accountability. Harvard has an obligation to consistently and proactively enforce its existing disciplinary policies, ensuring that senior administrative leaders are responsible for final decisions. Reforms must include a comprehensive mask ban (with medical and religious exemptions, given identification is always displayed) and a clarified time, place, and manner policy. Harvard must review and report on disciplinary actions for antisemitic rule violations since October 7, 2023.

3. Student group accountability. Recognized and unrecognized student groups, and their leadership, must be held accountable for violations of Harvard policy.

4. Governance and leadership reforms. Harvard must make meaningful governance reforms to improve its organizational structure to foster clear lines of authority and accountability, and to empower faculty and administrative leaders who are committed to implementing the changes indicated in this letter.

5. Merit-based admissions reform. Harvard must adopt and implement merit-based admissions policies; cease all preferences based on race, color, or national origin in admissions throughout its undergraduate, graduate, and other programs; and demonstrate through structural and personnel action that these changes are durable.

6. Merit-based hiring reform. Harvard must adopt and implement merit-based hiring policies; cease all preferences based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in hiring throughout its teaching and research faculty, staff, and leadership; and demonstrate through structural and personnel action that these changes are durable.

7. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs. DEI programs teach students, faculty, staff, and leadership to make snap judgments about each other based on crude race and identity stereotypes, which fuels division and hatred based on race, color, national origin, and other protected identity characteristics. All efforts should be made to shutter such programs.

8. Cooperation with law enforcement. Harvard must cooperate with law enforcement to ensure student safety.

9. Transparency and reporting to ED, DHS, and other federal regulators. Harvard must comply fully with existing statutory reporting requirements under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, commit to full cooperation with DHS and other federal regulators, and make organizational changes as necessary to enable full compliance.”

None of the April 3rd requests are unreasonable. and all appear to be lawful. Furthermore, the nine requirements would likely be welcomed by the substantial majority of faculty, students, and alumni of the University.

President Garber has labelled the Administration’s demands as “violating Harvard’s First Amendment Rights,” “exceeding the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI,” and “threaten[ing] our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge.”

While President Garber’s strong words have inspired some alumni donors to make donations, I can find no basis for his statements in the demands made by the Administration in its April 3rd letter, in its cancellation of the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, or in the law.

The answer to what Harvard should do is therefore obvious and straightforward.

Harvard must commit that it will promptly accept the Administration’s requests and take all necessary steps to immediately implement its requirements.

The recent cancellation of the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (“SEVP”) is devastating for foreign students and the University, and it needs to be resolved immediately. The solution here is simple:

Harvard must comply with the record requests from the Administration. Harvard has no right under the law or our Constitution to have a SEVP program or to withhold the requested student records. Furthermore, the information requests appear to be appropriate and having an adequate basis. There is credible evidence that certain foreign students at Harvard have received funding from foreign actors, have been involved with facilitating funding and/or otherwise been supporting foreign terrorist organizations, so there is no basis for Harvard withholding this information.

Harvard must also show that it is taking the Administration’s requests for governance reform seriously. While Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker may be a fine person, she has led Harvard during a period of substantial damage to the institution’s global reputation, the explosion of antisemitism on campus, and dramatic deterioration in Harvard's financial wherewithal. She has destroyed Harvard’s relationship with the Trump Administration, which will remain in office for nearly four more years. For all of these reasons, she cannot effectively continue as Harvard’s leader.

I have also heard from hundreds of Harvard alumni, faculty and students, a clear and resounding call for Penny Pritzker's replacement, including from members of her own family, for the harm she has caused during her leadership of Harvard during her term in office. Don’t rely on my words, just ask around.

Importantly, it is critically important that Harvard sends a very clear message to the Trump Administration that it is taking its requests and concerns seriously, and that material and responsive actions will immediately occur.

I bear no personal grudge against Penny Pritzker, but her involvement here is toxic and antithetical to restoring Harvard to excellence and solvency.

If Harvard continues on its current path, it won’t be long before permanent and irreversible damage is done. Leadership and good governance require strong and decisive actions, particularly in the midst of a crisis.

The time to start saving Harvard is now.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Robots will surpass good human surgeons within a few years and the best human surgeons within ~5 years.

@Neuralink had to use a robot for the brain-computer electrode insertion, as it was impossible for a human to achieve the required speed and precision.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Bigtime.

The Democrat government-funded NGO scam might be the biggest theft of taxpayer money ever.

[Rick J. Caruso @RickCarusoLA]

We need a full, independent investigation about what happened in the run up to the fires and we need it now.
https://t.co/wloEs57l2M

[Elizabeth Barcohana @E_Barcohana]

Dear California Democrats:

59% of Californians oppose men in female sports, and yet both @AdamSchiff and @AlexPadilla4CA voted against the will of the majority today.

They don’t represent you.
Change your voter registration today.
Vote different in 2026.

[Riley Gaines @Riley_Gaines_]

Name and shame them all.

Specifically, I want to highlight GA Democrat @SenOssoff. You have a daughter. Have you no shame? Georgians are watching. I will make it my mission to do what I can to remove you from your senate seat in 2026.

[Tricia Schumann Rakusin @tlschumann]

@MayorOfLA @NotifyLA @MayorOfLA Why did you post this the day before the wildfires and now say you weren’t warned?

[Mayor Karen Bass @MayorOfLA]

There is an expected destructive and potentially life-threatening windstorm starting Tuesday morning through Wednesday afternoon.

Red Flag No Parking Restrictions will go into effect in certain areas tomorrow morning.

Stay safe LA! Join @NotifyLA here: https://t.co/C2EO2lzTXO

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

This would have happened in America if President @realDonaldTrump had not won

[Ryan Flinn @RS_Flinn]

It’s been exciting watching @bradloncar build out @BiotechTVHQ and I can’t wait to contribute. Reach out to me at [email protected] with your ideas and suggestions.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Well, maybe this explains why the Democrats don’t want @DOGE to investigate.

Biggest fraud operation in human history!

[Tricia Schumann Rakusin @tlschumann]

@elonmusk It should be illegal for these wokes to create or spread propaganda. Maybe something else #DOGE can accomplish?!

[Tricia Schumann Rakusin @tlschumann]

@TheKevinDalton I was there, you were not. Where was the evacuation order you gave us @GavinNewsom when I looked down the street and saw flames? You truly are the most incompetent person I’ve ever known.

[Dr. Pat Soon-Shiong @DrPatrick]

I had not met Bobby Kennedy until a few months ago. The more I got to know him I truly believe he has the American public’s best interests at heart. I have worried about toxins and the cause of cancer my entire career. As a physician scientist I really hope he is confirmed tomorrow @RobertKennedyJr

[Dr. Pat Soon-Shiong @DrPatrick]

Officials were warned of failing water system before Palisades fire. Fixes never happened. This is why competence and accountabilty matters. We ⁦@latimes⁩ will keep investigating . https://t.co/asT6DJsPeQ