What’s Bad for Harvard Is Good for America
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-01-03/what-s-bad-for-harvard-is-good-for-america
The nation’s elite universities are an unaccountable oligopoly, and the signaling they convey is overvalued.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-01-03/what-s-bad-for-harvard-is-good-for-america
The nation’s elite universities are an unaccountable oligopoly, and the signaling they convey is overvalued.
Harvard Crisis Signals Broader Fight Over What a University Should Be
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/harvard-president-claudine-gay-university-b911ca7e
Claudine Gay was at the center of a campus debate over the direction of education
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/harvard-president-claudine-gay-university-b911ca7e
Claudine Gay was at the center of a campus debate over the direction of education
The age of Claudine Gay – and diversity box-tickers
– is over
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2024/01/04/claudine-gay-dei-diversity-hr-madness-affirmative-action/
Gay’s time at Harvard is associated with the “diversity, equality and inclusion” (DEI) agenda, with calls for re-naming spaces, replacing portraits of white men and encouraging students to confront their white fragility. Yet Harvard doesn’t only try to promote black Americans; it is also accused of granting privileged admissions access to relatives of alumni (typically white). The Supreme Court’s proceedings exposed how in some elite universities, so-called “legacy” students, often related to big money donors, are allowed to jump the queue. One piece of research has found that they are four times more likely as a non-legacy student with the same test scores to get a place.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2024/01/04/claudine-gay-dei-diversity-hr-madness-affirmative-action/
Gay’s time at Harvard is associated with the “diversity, equality and inclusion” (DEI) agenda, with calls for re-naming spaces, replacing portraits of white men and encouraging students to confront their white fragility. Yet Harvard doesn’t only try to promote black Americans; it is also accused of granting privileged admissions access to relatives of alumni (typically white). The Supreme Court’s proceedings exposed how in some elite universities, so-called “legacy” students, often related to big money donors, are allowed to jump the queue. One piece of research has found that they are four times more likely as a non-legacy student with the same test scores to get a place.
The fate of Harvard’s president is the latest evidence of a deep crisis in American academia.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/03/books/review/claudine-gay-harvard-resignation-letter.htmlA.O. Scott:
Higher learning is plagued by opaque admissions policies; runaway tuition costs; administrative bloat; grade inflation; helicopter parents; cancel culture…
“These last weeks,” Dr. Gay writes, “have helped make clear the work we need to do to build that future — to combat bias and hate in all its forms, to create a learning environment in which we respect each other’s dignity and treat one another with compassion, and to affirm our enduring commitment to open inquiry and free expression in the pursuit of truth.” …
The real question, though, is how one institution can be for all of it. Is this work the university is really equipped to do? Combating bias may involve constraining open inquiry; free expression is not always respectful or compassionate. The pursuit of truth may outrun everything else. This cascade of noble imperatives can be read descriptively, as a diagnosis of the causes of campus turmoil. What is presented as a list of unimpeachable virtues and laudable goals is in practice a web of contradictions.