In case you aren’t sick of the subject, I have written a full-length take-down of the recent Harvard Salient article on Ethnic Studies. It originally appeared in today’s Harvard Independent. Check out my HPR blog post from last week if you want the pithier, more sarcastic version. An Embarrassment to Harvard Conservatives Harvard conservatives, those Aristotle-citing, modernity-bemoaning, Western canon-promoting Young ... Read More
The Spring 2010 issue of the Harvard Political Review is available here in an online browseable pdf format. Most articles are also now available on HarvardPoliticalReview.com, and the rest will be rolling out soon. Harvard students, look for print copies in your house dining halls starting on Wednesday, and in Annenberg on Friday and Saturday! COVERS SECTION: AFRICA: READY TO ... Read More
James McAuley asks today in the Harvard Crimson: “What is it with Harvard students and pretending to be poor?” James is a polite guy, so he doesn’t name names. He cites “the more well-moneyed of our peers,” he cites “many affluent students,” he cites “wealthy individuals” and “wealthy peers” and “wealthy Harvard undergraduates.” And he cites people with specific phony ... Read More
Last weekend, Harvard’s Model United Nations conference for college students took place for the 56th time, drawing thousands of students from all over the world to Boston Park Plaza. As an uber-important (or not) Assistant Director to the E.U. committee, I got to observe first hand how students acted as delegates from countries they didn’t come from and to debate ... Read More
I hope I’m not too late to the party, but I wanted to address Sam and Kathy on Newsweek’s Harvard and religion article. They both agree that Harvard should implement a religion requirement, but a careful look at General Education’s mission reveals no room for such a requirement. In specific, I took issue with Kathy’s argumentation here: Undoubtedly for some ... Read More
In his post “Harvard’s Supposed Crisis of Faith,” Sam Barr criticizes Lisa Miller’s recent Newsweek article about the study of religion at Harvard: “Of course religion is important to study, …even or especially if you’re a nonbeliever. But I also said, or implied, that she was wasting her time with this article, because religion is not in nearly such dire ... Read More
Sam Barr lambasts the Crimson for “condescending” the Tea Partiers: I really don’t understand the impulse among many Harvard students (if the Crimson is any guide) to pat the Tea Partiers on the head and say, “I don’t agree with you, but you’re totally what this country is all about.” No, they’re not. They’re just crazy. I understand the need to call a ... Read More
I really don’t understand the impulse among many Harvard students (if the Crimson is any guide) to pat the Tea Partiers on the head and say, “I don’t agree with you, but you’re totally what this country is all about.” No, they’re not. They’re just crazy. Do they sometimes “ask the right questions”? Yes, absolutely. Reading Monday’s illuminating New York ... Read More
An excellent op-ed in the Crimson today by Hemi Gandhi criticizes Harvard and its students for having a somewhat superficial commitment to green energy. The criticisms of Harvard are, on the whole, more compelling. If the Environmental Science and Public Policy is really so narrowly focused, as Gandhi says, then it’s not the students who are at fault for its ... Read More
Marc Ambinder, The Atlantic’s politics editor, just gave us a glimpse of his daily reading regime, and it surprised me. There’s an astonishing reliance on Twitter, something I’ve purposefully not used as just another source of news (I don’t want really important tweets, like what my friends had for lunch, being lost in the news shuffle). First thing in the ... Read More
Last Saturday the 2010 Rhodes scholars were announced and a full five Harvard students were among them (along with two Yale students and one Princeton student…but, really, who’s counting?) On the same day, Elliot Gerson, the American secretary of the Rhodes Trust, published an op-ed in the Washington Post, pointing out that more and more Rhodes scholars are pursuing careers ... Read More
Harvard students had Monday off for President’s Day and I made use of my free time by checking in on the final day of this years Harvard Speech and Debate tournament. A good friend of mine from high school was in town coaching his student in the tournament, and the guy made it all the way to finals, though he ... Read More
I was recently reading the Harvard Independent (a mistake, I know), and one of the writers had a piece discussing two widely-read articles over the summer trashing students from Harvard and other Ivy League universities. I skimmed through most of it, and what really struck me was a passage mentioning Harvard students’ homogenized, unfailingly reasoned and moderate political positions. It ... Read More
