The Harvard Crimson has a grammar-challenged headline asking, “Who Does Harvard Owe?” The editors rebuff all those who believe that Harvard owes something to America. Or for that matter, to “Congress,” the media, its alumni, and others on the question of how the university should be governed.
The Crimson’s answer boils down to ‘shove off, you interlopers.’ In its view, Harvard University belongs to its faculty and its students. Well, perhaps not all of the faculty. The faculty members the Crimson has in mind are those “exemplars of moral clarity [who] are often found in our classrooms.” They are the ones “in the front lines of the struggle for intellectual freedom.” And they can be contrasted to the weak-kneed Harvard administrators who “waffled” when the university came under criticism.
The moral exemplars on the faculty, however, do not stand alone: “Students, too, should play an increased role in shaping the decisions of our University.” That’s because they are affected by policies and must “navigate the uneven terrain between Harvard’s values and its operational priorities.”
At this point, it is probably unnecessary to cite examples of behavior among Harvard faculty members and students that vitiate any idea that they are to be seen as fonts of moral clarity. In the hours immediately following the October 7, 2023 atrocities committed by agents of Hamas against Israeli civilians, a significant number of Harvard students—representing 35 student groups—publicly demonstrated in support of Hamas. Harvard faculty and students could find no grounds to criticize these demonstrators and, in many cases, praised them. In the weeks and months that followed, the demonstrations continued and directed threats, intimidation, and occasional violence at Jews on campus.
[RELATED: NAS Statement: Fighting Harvard and the Other Cultural Warlords]
One thread of the criticism that Harvard has endured since then has been its lackadaisical response to campus anti-Semitism. But there are spools upon spools of other thread. The scarcity of faculty members who entertain any thoughts outside the progressive-left campus orthodoxies is another issue. The suppression of ideas as well as the speech of the few dissenters from those orthodoxies is yet another. The imposition of the DEI as an ideology governing student admissions and faculty recruitment are two more. Harvard’s relentless recruitment of international students at the expense of Americans, to the point where more than a quarter of the enrolled students come from abroad, has attracted critical attention as well.
I could go on, but don’t want to take this space to catalog Harvard’s missteps, which are many and egregious. The real point is that until outsiders took notice of these matters, Harvard was perfectly content to continue spooling out and weaving all these threads together into a grand tapestry of contempt for American society.
Whom Does Harvard Owe? It owes the country that has made its freedom and prosperity possible. It owes the millions of taxpayers who fund its research and pay for its facilities. It owes the alumni who have secured its reputation and, in many cases, elevated its endowment. It owes the U.S. government fealty to the laws of the land. It owes the American people fair-minded treatment of members of minority groups, including Jews. It owes the Truth, which it claims to uphold in its famous motto.
The Harvard Crimson calls the university’s critics “its enemies,” and says those enemies have made it “a juicy political target.” It treats the criticisms as “attacks” that warrant nothing but “creative defiance.” The Crimson calls for defending Harvard’s “autonomy,” which it presents as a set of “values” that cannot be impugned.
But the truth is that Crimson’s editorial board is lost in the wilderness of its own conceit. Harvard, as it is today, is no moral exemplar. It is increasingly a bastion of arrogant disdain and disregard for the country’s laws, which have fostered its rise for 388 years. That country rightly demands that the university set itself right. The Crimson’s editorial is another measure of how lost the university is and how far it must go to recover its once worthy reputation.
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Image: “Harvard University – Eliot House” by Roger W on Flickr
The people and families who’s organs and body parts they were illegally trafficing for one:
https://www.courthousenews.com/harvard-morgue-scandal-reaches-mass-high-court-exposing-vast-gray-market-in-body-parts/
In addition to the rampant assault on jews at Harvard, now with body harvesting, Harvard is relishing in being the modern day Auschwitz!
Obligations usually have some mutuality.
Maybe people owe something to Harvard? I have never been a student or employee at Harvard. In some ways, I kind of dislike the atmosphere there. Yet, having been a faculty member in the Boston area for years, I am grateful for the enormous resources that Harvard offer at no cost to members of the public. I’m talking about relationships with Harvard faculty and students; vast resources of public science, intellectual, and cultural presentations. World famous people performing at their best. I don’t know of any other place quite like Harvard, despite my great admiration for other institutions like MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, Caltech (in no particular order) and other places.
What is being done to Harvard sickens me. Supposedly Trump is trying to revive patriotic and civic feeling in America. Well, what they are doing to Harvard is having the opposite effect with me.
“Harvard’s relentless recruitment of international students at the expense of Americans, to the point where more than a quarter of the enrolled students come from abroad, has attracted critical attention as well.”
I think that international students are one of the great things about Harvard (And a number of other great American universities. And I would add faculty to the students, but that is a topic for another day). It helps make Harvard a World University, in the best sense of that. If some of the best students come from abroad, and some Americans end up going instead to one of the other many splendid colleges in the Boston area, I view it as a net positive.
You remind me of the arrogant UMass administrators who blindly presumed that the Mt. Isa College students would gladly go down to UMass Dartmouth — because they should…
After all, the “other many splendid colleges in the Boston area” need to fund their largesse.
Forget the fact that MASSACHUSETTS taxpayers have been subsidizing Harvard for nearly 400 years — Massachusetts taxpayers, not world taxpayers.
As it was established as a subdivision of what became the Commonwealth, and is explicitly recognized in the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, I would argue that Harvard owes the Commonwealth of Massachusetts….
Here is the relevant portion of the Massachusetts Constitution, written by Harvard Alum John Adams. This was when each town was required to have a Congregational minister, supported by the property taxes — so Harvard was run by the Governor, the magistrates, and the ministers. (Charlestown, Roxbury, & Dorchester are now part of Boston — Cambridge & Watertown are in a different county.)
I argue that Section II indicates that Harvard essentially was a state university with an obligation to promote education in the Commonwealth — note how it is mentioned in the same sentence as the public & grammar schools. As this was written 245 years ago, about a college that was then over 140 years old, I argue it is an indication of what Harvard was.
In other words, Harvard already was what New Hampshire attempted to make Dartmouth into and SCOTUS wouldn’t let them — Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 518 (1819).
Hence the little darlings in Cambridge owe the Commonwealth…
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Chapter V, THE UNIVERSITY AT CAMBRIDGE, AND ENCOURAGEMENT OF LITERATURE, ETC. Section I.
The University.
Article I.
Whereas our wise and pious ancestors, so early as the year one thousand six hundred and thirty-six, laid the foundation of Harvard College, in which university many persons of great eminence have, by the blessing of God, been initiated in those arts and sciences, which qualified them for public employments, both in church and state: and whereas the encouragement of arts and sciences, and all good literature, tends to the honor of God, the advantage of the Christian religion, and the great benefit of this and the other United States of America — it is declared, that the President and Fellows of Harvard College,in their corporate capacity, and their successors in that capacity, their officers and servants, shall have, hold, use, exercise and enjoy, all the powers, authorities, rights, liberties, privileges, immunities and franchises, which they now have or are entitled to have, hold, use, exercise and enjoy: and the same are hereby ratified and confirmed unto them, the said president and fellows of Harvard College, and to their successors, and to their officers and servants, respectively, forever.
Article II.
And whereas there have been at sundry times, by divers persons, gifts, grants, devises of houses, lands, tenements, goods, chattels, legacies and conveyances, heretofore made, either to Harvard College in Cambridge, in New England, or to the president and fellows of Harvard College, or to the said college, by some other description, under several charters successively: it is declared, that all the said gifts, grants, devises, legacies and conveyances, are hereby forever confirmed unto the president and fellows of Harvard College, and to their successors in the capacity aforesaid, according to the true intent and meaning of the donor or donors, grantor or grantors, devisor or devisors.
Article III.
[And whereas, by an act of the general court of the colony of Massachusetts Bay passed in the year one thousand six hundred and forty-two, the governor and deputy-governor, for the time being, and all the magistrates of that jurisdiction, were, with the president, and a number of the clergy in the said act described, constituted the overseers of Harvard College: and it being necessary, in this new constitution of government to ascertain who shall be deemed successors to the said governor, deputy-governor and magistrates; it is declared, that the governor, lieutenant governor, council and senate of this commonwealth, are and shall be deemed, their successors, who with the president of Harvard College, for the time being, together with the ministers of the congregational churches in the towns of Cambridge, Watertown, Charlestown, Boston, Roxbury, and Dorchester, mentioned in the said act, shall be, and hereby are, vested with all the powers and authority belonging, or in any way appertaining to the overseers of Harvard College; provided, that] nothing herein shall be construed to prevent the legislature of this commonwealth from making such alterations in the government of the said university, as shall be conducive to its advantage and the interest of the republic of letters, in as full a manner as might have been done by the legislature of the late Province of the Massachusetts Bay.
Chapter V, Section II.
The Encouragement of Literature, etc.
Wisdom, and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties; and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of the people, it shall be the duty of legislatures and magistrates, in all future periods of this commonwealth, to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them; especially the university at Cambridge, public schools and grammar schools in the towns; to encourage private societies and public institutions, rewards and immunities, for the promotion of agriculture, arts, sciences, commerce, trades, manufactures, and a natural history of the country; to countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and frugality, honesty and punctuality in their dealings; sincerity, good humor, and all social affections, and generous sentiments among the people. [See Amendments, Arts. XVIII, XLVI, XCVI and CIII.]