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[Order David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed, HERE.]
I went to Harvard. I don’t remember exactly when. I visited Boston several times during the 1980s and 90s, and on one of those occasions I decided to take the appropriately named Red Line up to Cambridge and check out the campus of America’s oldest university. It was cute. It was certainly prettier than my own alma mater, Stony Brook, which at the time must have been one of the world’s premier showplaces of brutalist architecture at its most brutal. But on the other hand I’d seen a lot of campuses that were more beautiful than Harvard’s, among them Chapel Hill, Duke, Ann Arbor, Michigan State, Berkeley, and Stanford. Yes, the buildings – and the trees – were old and stately. But there was a stuffiness about the place. You could feel it. Or maybe I’m just guilty of committing the pathetic fallacy. Admittedly, a couple of my closest and very smartest friends went to Harvard; so did a few of the dumbest people I’ve ever met. You can get a great education there, but that’s true of a lot of places. What sets Harvard apart is that it inculcates in its students (not all, but many) an obnoxious sense of superiority, readies them to rise to the heights of the American establishment, and encourages them to subscribe to that establishment’s most cherished orthodoxies.
Pretty much every one of my closest friends in high school ended up at an Ivy League college. I had the highest SAT scores in my graduating class of more than a thousand, but partly because my father wasn’t eager to shell out Ivy-level tuition and partly because of what now seems to me an odd indifference to the whole business on my own part, I ended up at a state school. I’m glad I did. When an accreditation team came to check out our English department – that was the subject in which I received my B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. – they said it was better than Harvard’s. But who cared about things like that? Stony Brook, founded in 1957, was still half-finished, an active construction site where, when it rained, you had to slog through mud to get from one hideously ugly building to another. Harvard had over three centuries’ worth of cachet. Its name was synonymous the world over with academic excellence. However much of an idiot you might be, a Harvard diploma could take you anywhere. Even our own department chairman felt obliged to rub in the difference. When a bunch of us Ph.D. students got to the point at which we were supposed to start thinking about applying for jobs, our chairman gathered us together and explained how he and his faculty colleagues dealt with applications from newly minted Ph.Ds. “We put them in two piles,” he said. “Ivy and non-Ivy.” The next step for the latter, he made clear, was the trash bin.
Stony Brook gets somewhat more respect these days than it used to. As for Harvard – well, it’s been wonderful of late to see it taken down more than a few pegs. Last September, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) gave it the worst rating for freedom of speech than any other institution of higher education in the country. No surprise there: it has long been known that America’s supposedly “best” colleges are also its most ideologically rigid, specializing far too infrequently in the dissemination of objective knowledge and the development of critical thinking and far too often in the inculcation of propaganda and the ruthless silencing of dissent. Two months later, at a time when those “best” colleges were also Ground Zero for the public expression of Jew-hatred, Harvard President Claudine Gay – whose administration would have handed out harsh punishments to any student guilty of, say, misgendering – told a House Committee Hearing on Anti-Semitism that calls by Harvard students for the genocide of Jews might or might not be considered violations of Harvard’s code of conduct, “depending on the context.” Gay’s fellow panelists, the presidents of MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, displayed an equally shocking level of moral callousness, providing a vividly instructive picture of what America’s purportedly elite universities really stand for.
Of course, it turned out that Gay wasn’t just morally despicable. During the ensuing weeks, hero journalists Christopher Rufo and Aaron Sebarium provided ample evidence that Gay’s so-called research – in a field (race and identity) that is mostly a load of hogwash anyway, consisting of endless reaffirmations of politically correct dogmas – was rife with plagiarism. Imagine stealing such garbage! The samples of her work that were put on display were embarrassing in their banality – and to think that she cribbed this crap from other people! Even the acknowledgements section in her dissertation wasn’t free of plagiarism. While the plagiarism stories were dribbling out, other illuminating information about her tenure emerged. We learned that, prior to her presidency, when her title was Dean of Social Sciences at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Gay focused largely on “diversity” and “inclusion” and the expansion of ethnic studies programs. On her watch, Harvard law professor Ronald Sullivan was punished for representing Harvey Weinstein – a blatant rejection of the fundamental American principle that every individual accused of a crime, however heinous, deserves a defense. Gay, then, it turned out, was iniquitous, unscrupulous, and, at best, an academic mediocrity. And this was the woman who rose to what was supposedly the very topmost position in America’s academic pantheon? This was the woman who presided over…Harvard?
Yes, she was soon obliged to resign as university president. But she’s still on the faculty. She still has an endowed chair – she’s the Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government and of African and African-American Studies. And instead of reacting with institutional shame, many (if not most) members of the Harvard community rallied around her, attributing all her woes to – what else? – racism and misogyny. Her acts of plagiarism, which would have been far more than sufficient to result in the expulsion of any undergraduate from any responsibly run university, were euphemized as cases of “inadequate citation” and “duplicative language.” Meanwhile, members of the Harvard community continued to gather in public to demonize Israel, harass Jews, and praise Hamas, leading not a few well-heeled Harvard alumni, among them hedge-fund billionaires Bill Ackman and Ken Griffin, to slam their checkbooks shut – and make a good deal of noise about it. As if all this weren’t appalling enough, Daniel Greenfield reported at FrontPage last month on Harvard’s cozy relationship with Birzeit University, a staggeringly vile nest of Hamas members and terrorism fans on the West Bank.
Now, you might, at this point, expect the powers that be at Harvard would gather together in a spirit of humility (if not outright humiliation), examine their consciences, ponder their past errors, take a gander at the impact that their ideological indoctrination had had on a large proportion of their student body, and do some very serious course correction. Nope. We’re talking about Harvard, after all. These people still think that they’re the bee’s knees, the gold standard, the more than worthy shapers of the leaders of tomorrow. They think they’re too exalted to have to answer to mere legislators; they think that answering to the great unwashed, the illiterate proles, the barely human Trump supporters and flyover nonentities, is far, far beneath them. Hillary Clinton views most ordinary middle Americans as “deplorables”; that’s too weak a word to capture what most of the people who run a place like Harvard think of their inferiors out there in the hinterlands.
So it is that in mid June, thanks to another Harvard eminento, Lawrence D. Bobo, Dean of Social Science and the W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard found itself in the headlines yet again. The reason: in an op-ed for the Harvard Crimson entitled “Faculty Speech Must Have Limits,” Bobo reacted to what he called “the appallingly rough manner” in which certain Harvard professors and alumni, and even “one former University president,” had “publicly denounced Harvard’s students and present leadership.” The former president in question was apparently Lawrence Summers, who had reacted sharply to the repeated displays of rabid anti-Semitism on the Harvard campus and the university’s scandalously lame response thereto. Bobo’s take on this situation was clear: it was simply unacceptable for anyone connected with Harvard to dare to air its dirty laundry in public. When past or present members of the Harvard community engaged in such criticism, they were committing “sanctionable violations of professional conduct.” To be sure, Bobo made the usual noises about the value of “[v]igorous debate” and “freedom of expression.” But for him, the bottom line was that “sharply critical speech from faculty, prominent ones especially, can attract outside attention that directly impedes the University’s function.” You see, “[a] faculty member’s right to free speech does not amount to a blank check to engage in behaviors that plainly incite external actors — be it the media, alumni, donors, federal agencies, or the government — to intervene in Harvard’s affairs.” In other words, yes, “free speech has limits.” Harvard’s motto has long been Veritas (truth). But Bobo’s line “free speech has its limits” does a much better job of capturing the spirit of the place in the year 2024.
Just one example before I wind this up: on a recent episode of the Triggernometry podcast, Roland Fryer, a young and highly regarded professor of economics at Harvard, discussed a study that he initiated in 2014. Collecting data with an eye to proving the widespread contention that American police are systematically biased against blacks, he found evidence of an excessive use of lower-level force against blacks as opposed to whites, but also discovered – to his utter astonishment – that there was absolutely no racial difference when it came to the use of lethal force. These results were “so counter to my own beliefs,” he said, that he kept plugging away, collecting more and more data – but the more information he gathered, the more he found his conclusions being confirmed. And as stunned as he was by his findings, he was even more stunned by the way in which the academic community – not least his colleagues at Harvard – responded to them. Veritas be damned. They didn’t want the truth – they wanted to see the official narrative reinforced. In short, Fryer was put through the wringer: “My life really got turned upside down.” At one point he required police protection. His own department issued a statement essentially denying the facts he’d uncovered. Fryer should be considered a treasure by his employers; instead, the only reason he still has a job at Harvard is that he’s got tenure. I know Harvard is sitting on a fifty billion dollar endowment – enough money to keep even the most overrated and incompetently administered institution going for decades – but it’s one thing for a place to hang in there living off its savings, and another thing for it to retain for very many years a reputation as the crème de la crème of universities. Conclusion: it’s long past time for Harvard’s image to take a very big and well-deserved nosedive.
I met a Harvard guy at a dinner party may years ago. I was sitting next to him and when he learned that I attended Illinois Wesleyan University (after having asked me “and where do YOU go to school?”) he said, in a disparaging and uninterested tone, “oh,” turned away and never spoke another word. This article rings true.
I had the same experience at a diner/gathering.
Harvard breeds an arrogance in its students, graduates, and faculty that is very often not justified.
Now Harvard ( and other Ivy Leagues ) recruits students and faculty who are “educated” far beyond their intelligence and wisdom.
Veritas … Truth has an altogether different meaning for these bobos.
.
Yes, this is true. And yet you still deny the anointed one, i.e., the Christ. You, and whom you speak of are one and the same. There is no difference. You’ve condemned yourself by condemning those which you spoke of.
There were two self-avowed communists on the Harvard Law School faculty when Barack Obama matriculated there: Derrick Bell and Charles Ogletree. I believe it was Professor Bell who developed critical race theory (Crit) and first taught it to HLS students. No doubt Professor Ogletree did as well.
A few years ago, I saw a video of Barack Obama introducing Professor Bell at an open-air event at Harvard.
I don’t believe Barack Obama actually earned a Harvard Law degree. I think Bell, Ogletree, and Professor Lawrence Tribe were all too eager to see an affirmative action student succeed at Harvard. They even put him on the law review. Parenthetically, Obama was never the Editor of the HLR. He was elected the “President” of the HLR, which meant that his task was to pass out assignments to the other students.
Since Obama has never permitted anyone to see his Harvard records, we’ll probably never know who his professors were, but I wager, he enrolled in Tribe’s, Ogletree’s, and Bell’s courses whenever possible.
Bruce,
When will people stop denying Christ? In this world, never.
When will God?? start preventing evil?
Lose the bible babble.
God will not fix the evil that is going on because God will do nothing to prevent it!
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
-Epicurus, Ancient Greek Philosopher
Humans dint come from a Monkey and no fish ever crawled out of the Ocean Evolution is a Lie
When I lived in San Francisco in the 1980s I met a women at a Dinner Party who taught at Berkeley and after some engaging conversation she mentioned my Scottish accent and said she was glad to speak with somebody from such an ancient deep important culture and who she was so glad to be able to share many of the things we spoke about and so she asked me which University did I attend, with a big smile on her smug face, so I informed her that I finished my schooling in a Slum school in Glasgow Scotland, born there in 1948 and came out of School aged 14 years and six months and she was visibly shocked so I told her that I never let my lack of schooling get in the way of my education as I graduated from Der Universat Auf Dem Strasse… She smiled understanding nothing of what I said…
I have probably forgotten more than she will ever learn about life on Planet Earth.
So you met Frazier??
I used to love watching that show because they made so much fun of the Harvard Idiots.
There is another infamous product of Harvard that was a sign of things to come: Theodore Kaczynski. He began his reign of terror in 1978 with the explosion of his first, primitive homemade bomb at a Chicago university. Over the next 17 years, he mailed or hand delivered a series of increasingly sophisticated bombs that killed three Americans and injured nearly two dozen more. Along the way, he sowed fear and panic, even threatening to blow up airliners in flight.
Way to go Harvard. Some say that he was motivated by the anti-America, anti-capitalist sentiment that he acquired in that subversive institution.
There is another infamous product of Harvard that was a sign of things to come: Theodore Kaczynski. He began his reign of terror in 1978 with the explosion of his first, primitive homemade bomb at a Chicago university. Over the next 17 years, he mailed or hand delivered a series of increasingly sophisticated bombs that killed three Americans and injured nearly two dozen more. Along the way, he sowed fear and panic, even threatening to blow up airliners in flight.
Way to go Harvard. Some say that he was motivated by the anti-America, anti-capitalist sentiment that he acquired in that subversive institution.
There is actually a riveting book called, Harvard and the Unabomber that contends that prevalence there of certain moral ideas common during the Cold War, his participation at Harvard in controversial psychological tests and experiments, and the impact of these tests on his psyche created the infamous Unabomber.
Angry, bitter, pessimistic, contemptuous, narcissistic, and hyper-controlling academics? How shocking!
Our places of Higher learning have become Leftists Indoctrination Centers and its way past time to take them Back
Take them back? To do that is amazingly simple: fire all college professors and 80% of the institutional bureaucracy. The only exceptions are professors who teach STEM courses. And no more useless degrees (e.g, ethnic studies, women studies, liberal studies, sociology, dance, theater, etc..)
And your solution?
A Harvard-grad actor interviewed by Howard Stern said, “One result of being a Harvard grad is it gives people the chance to say, `You graduated from Harvard? Then how come you’re not doing better in life?'”
Howard Stern interviewing a Harvard grad actor is like the commie marxist anti-American never-Trumper, antisemitic anti-Christian pro abortion pro-transgender anticapitalism swamp dwelling slime creatures spinning in their Mad Hatter Tea Cups in the swamp and are vile and offensive to those of use merely trying to survive and get along – they do not live in reality
The Ivy schools excel in only one area, self promotion. They have never really changed from their founding purpose as backwater seminaries. However the Gods they now worship are money and self esteem. Until the War of Northern Aggression, many fine schools were in the South. Why, because there was more money in the South which supported the self-styled social elite. Hmmm?
The big boost came during the Gilded Age when Rockefeller and Carnegie started writing checks for self promotion and academic support for their business endeavors such as the American Medical Association.. Today the schools have devolved into employment contact centers feeding upon their alumni egos and Puritan self promotion..
Ciceros’ lectures have not changed much in 2000 years no matter where they are studied. What difference is there as to whether you read physics or chemistry in Boston or Saint Louis? Hopefully there is less propaganda about thermodynamics being “ray ciss” in Saint Louis.
“ Lawrence D. Bobo, Dean of Social Science”
My wife is from Spain, and I believe she has just about given up on teaching me Spanish.
However, sometimes a Spanish word or two manages to get into my thick skull.
One such word is bobo, a Spanish slang word which means “… fool, foolish, stupid, half-wit, booby, stupid, silly, half-witted”.
How entirely appropriate a name!
Louis Armstrong, about 100 years ago, made a great record called, “Georgia Bobo” referring to a stupid man from . . .
Like Kwanza and Juneteenth, has Harvard become a parody of something serious? Is Claudine Gay gay?
Leftist indoctrination fosters a distinct lack of intellectual curiosity, aversion to the truth, and total absence of critical thinking skills.
Perfectly Biblical evolution. 1. Harvard established to train ministers so as to educate congregations in the Judaeo Christian ethic and faith, 2. Buy into European liberalism, 3. Overthrow any moral authority, 4. deify humanism, 5. standing for nothing faculty falls for anything, 6. endorse Godlessness as though intellectually sophisticated.
St. Paul warns of the moral depravity attending the above in his classic Epistle to the Romans in the New Testament…..Romans 1:18-32 (esp. vs. 28).
In short, America is near ripe for the promised judgments of the God it has abandoned. “Remember Lot’s wife.”
The communists and islamists can not tolerate anybody to be smarter than them.
In their ideal world of “equity” everybody must be as dumb and stupid as themselves.
The only way for that to happen is to eliminate anybody who is superior to them.
They have in fact put this to test in many places. It has never worked. Only leading the entire society and nations into misery. But of course, they are to dumb to see it.
Great article. Unfortunately with that huge endowment Harvard will be around for a long time “indoctrinating,” not educating, students, and parents will continue to fork lift Harvard’s exorbitant tuition so that their child can say “I went to Harvard.”
“But there was a stuffiness about the place. You could feel it. Or maybe I’m just guilty of committing the pathetic fallacy.” A few years ago, when we were looking at schools for my daughter, who is eminently qualified , we visited Harvard. Due to some money her great-great grandfather gave Harvard about 100 years ago, if admitted she would have had a free ride for 4 years. But neither she, my wife, nor I liked the place or was impressed by the people there. All of us liked Columbia much better, even though there was no free ride there. And that’s where she went (I went there too). She got a good education there, but for sure Columbia has gone downhill over the past 50+ years since I was there. Still the same wonderful libraries and beautiful buildings, but the mantle is going to pass soon from the Ivys to other instutions that prioritize real learning, appreciation of Western culture, critical thinking, and objective analysis. The Ivys will still be valued for a long time, not for their education, but for the quality of their students, since everyone knows how difficult it is to get into these places. But eventually even that quality will be lost, unless they turn many things around, and fast.
My wife and I consulted a physician many years ago for a fertility concern. While the doctor was informed, informative, and provided a solution to our problem, I found it intriguing he felt compelled to mention his attendance and participation in research at Harvard at least `12 times in the half-hour we spent with him. Rather than say, “we discovered that we could down regulate the pathway by utilizing…”; he would say “we AT HARVARD discovered…” On and on, ad nauseam.
I think most Americans, like us poor slobs who went to State schools, are tired of the elitism.
The Harvard Magazine boasts there were 5o Harvard degree-program alumni or matriculants in the 117th Congress. They are across both parties, with the majority of those grads being Democrats elected to the House.
The school’s poor showing post Oct 7th suggests it’s time to cull them in future elections.
Doesn’t matter what college you go to if you come out of it more ignorant than when you walked in.
This is obviously what the Ivy League colleges specialise in.
They take (apparently) bright kids and turn them into village idiots.
Old joke: A Harvard freshman from Texas is walking around the Harvard campus. He stops another Harvard student and says “Excuse me. Where is the library at?”
The student flies into a rage, responding with “You idiot! This is Harvard! Don’t you understand basic grammar? You never end a sentence with a preposition! Please rephrase you stupid question!”.
The Texan looks him in the eye and says “Yes, sir! Where is the library at, ASSHOLE?”
While the “eloquent phrase'” and “ultimate hypothesis” may slip away from Harvard’s day-to-day conversation, maybe its classic Ivy League football cheer will survive. “Fight fiercely. Fight fiercely. Endeavor to win!”
I went to a local community college and we had professionals teaching us
Harvard? Meh. Arrogant Ivy league twits. So they graduated from Harvard? And…..? I graduated from a state college with an engineering degree and have known a few “Ivy league types (lawyers and MBAs) in my career. I was not impressed.
Interesting. I applied to Stony Brook’s Ph.D. program in the early 80’s. Was turned down because I was too Catholic for the history department.
We called the buildings “Neo-Penal” in style.
SB ’72.
Thanks Bruce, great article !!!
as long as democrats exist [ and going by the polls at the moment ] and biden voters continue their self immolating habits, harvard and its proxies will always be around . the left own everything and going by the last few years the republicans are fine with that . they are just relieved that they dont need to work hard to save america , not that it can be . just like epimenides said of his own cretan countrymen , they are the dregs of society , liars , evil beasts , lazy gluttons. pretty well sums up the elite in the so called higher learning cess pits .
“Imagine stealing such garbage!”
Great line!