Martin Kulldorff is an internationally-renown biostatistician and epidemiologist who was a professor of medicine at Harvard University from 2003 until his dismissal in 2024. Dr. Kulldorff pioneered some of the most widely used quantitative tools for disease surveillance, including software programs for geographical and hospital disease surveillance, and statistical methods used by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) to discover and evaluate vaccine health and safety risks.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Kulldorff was censored by Twitter, Linkedin, Google, Facebook, and TikTok for espousing basic health principles and advocating against unscientific measures such as school closures and COVID vaccine mandates. He was fired from the CDC COVID vaccine working group for opposing the removal of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. He was fired from Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital for not taking the COVID vaccine – having argued that he already had superior, infection-acquired immunity and, at a time of vaccine shortage, vaccinations should be targeted to older and more vulnerable people who were in greater need. Throughout the pandemic, scientists from NIH, Stanford, and Harvard declined his invitations to debate the science, robbing the public at large of his valuable and unique scientific expertise.
For his courage in defending high integrity open debate even in times of crisis, the Columbia Academic Freedom Council is honored to present Dr. Martin Kulldorff with the 2025 Academic Freedom Award.
