Problems at Harvard
Steven Metcalf has an interesting article in Slate on the state of Harvard University. And, if you don't really care about what messes the twits from Harvard are making of the place (and I don't blame you) it is also a good look at problems in universities in general. My favorite passage is this one:
From Bradley's descriptions"â€and from my own experience"â€academia has devolved into a series of now highly routinized acts of flattery, so carefully attended to that one out-of-place word is enough to fracture dozens of egos.
One only has to observe the shrill and over-the-top reactions to some of Lawrence Summers recent remarks to have this ring true.
I actually have several connections to Harvard. As a high school senior, I was fortunate to have my choice of Ivy League schools, and I chose Princeton over Harvard, in large part because it was obvious even then that the Harvard's graduate schools and faculty egos took precedence over teaching undergraduates. At Princeton I got to know Neil Rudenstine, then provost of Princeton and later President of Harvard. Rudenstine was basically far too good a man to run Harvard, sort of like sending Mother Theresa in to run Haiti. The faculty devoured him, and drove him to a breakdown.
More recently, I attended the Harvard Business School (HBS). Many of you who are unfamiliar with Harvard would likely assume that the b-school was the snobbiest and most condescending arm of the university. In fact, the opposite was the case -- the B-school was both isolated from and looked down on by the rest of the university, its isolation reinforced and symbolized by the river that separates HBS from the rest of the campus. Many an outsider have commented on how approachable HBS students and faculty are as compared to the rest of the university, which is ironic since most of the rest of the university, busy polishing their egalitarian credentials, condescendingly denigrate HBS students for being, well, grubby capitalists rather than lofty intellectuals like themselves. As a result, HBS crew teams were routinely booed through the entire Head of the Charles regatta, and HBS graduates are booed by the rest of the university at every graduation ceremony.
As a result, Princeton gets much of my time and love and attention and, well, money, while Harvard gets nada.
Update: I am reminded that this last feeling about Harvard is not limited to the B-school. My good libertarian college roommate Brink Lindsey (I wish he would start blogging again) tells me that when he was at Harvard Law, a group of his friends formed N.O.P.E., which stood for Not One Penny Ever [to Harvard].
