Harvard University is keeping its requirement for students to have received the COVID-19 vaccination.
Sixty-nine other schools also have the vaccine mandate.
“Harvard requires all students who will be on campus to have some protection from COVID-19 through vaccination,” reads a statement from the university. “This may be through the initial primary series of COVID-19 vaccination or one of the most recent COVID-19 boosters. Vaccines must be FDA- or WHO-approved vaccines.”
“As we work to continue the high levels of vaccination needed to protect our community, Harvard highly recommends being up-to-date per the CDC definition for all Harvard community members, including faculty, students, staff, and researchers, who will have any on-campus presence.”
No College Mandates tracked colleges and universities across the United States that require a COVID-19 vaccine.
Some of the universities implementing vaccine mandates include St. Anselm College, Montclair State University, Rutgers University, Ohio Wesleyan College, Southwest University, Johns Hopkins University, and many others.
In 2021, former U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams wrote an open letter to higher education leaders, urging them to mandate COVID-19 vaccines.
“Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs), which employ over 3 million individuals and are attended by over 19 million students, must continue to pull together. College campuses, by their nature, are high-risk congregate settings for infectious disease transmission. People not protected by vaccines are becoming infected faster, from more limited contact,” the letter read. “The Delta variant represents a more dangerous threat to your campus health and safety, operational continuity, and ability to meet the safety expectations of faculty, staff, students, and their parents. Last year’s plan may not prevent outbreaks from this year’s variant. Delta is different.”
“This is why we, public health and science experts, leaders in health, education, and civil society, and former officials from both political parties, have come together to ask you to join us in taking further steps to maintain public health and safety, prevent spread, and keep your institutions open for student learning.”
In August, Rutgers University threatened to disenroll students who failed to comply with COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
The university stated that it has a “commitment to health and safety for all members of its community,” although former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky admitted that COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent one from contracting the virus.
