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Harvard and America
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, FIRE, announced the results of a recent survey on the free speech climate at America’s universities. Out of 254 colleges, Harvard University ranked at the absolute bottom.
I’m reminded of some comments about Harvard written by the English traveler Harriet Martineau following her visit in 1835:
The politics of the managers of Harvard University are opposed to those of the great body of the American people. She is the aristocratic college of the United States. Her pride of antiquity, her vanity of pre-eminence and wealth, are likely to prevent her renovating her principles and management so as to suit the wants of the period; and she will probably receive a sufficient patronage from the aristocracy, for a considerable time to come, to encourage her in all her faults. She has a great name, and the education she affords is very expensive in comparison with all other colleges. The sons of the wealthy will therefore flock to her. The attainments usually made within her walls are inferior to those achieved elsewhere, her professors (poorly salaried, when the expenses of living are considered) being accustomed to lecture and examine the students, and do nothing more. The indolent and the careless will therefore flock to her. But, meantime, more and more new colleges are rising up, and are filled as fast as they rise, whose principles and practices are better suited to the wants of the time. In them living is cheaper, and the professors are therefore richer with the same or smaller salaries; the sons of the yeomanry and mechanic classes resort to them; and, where it is the practice of the tutors to work with their pupils, as well as lecture to them, a proficiency is made which shames the attainments of the Harvard students. The middle and lower classes are usually neither Unitarian nor Episcopalian, but“orthodox,” as their distinctive term is; and these, the strength and hope of the nation, avoid Harvard, and fill to overflowing the oldest orthodox colleges; and, when these will hold no more, establish new ones.
Also, after attending a meeting of the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa society, she said:
The traveller is met everywhere among the aristocracy of the country with what seems to him the error of concluding that letters are wisdom, and that scholarship is education. Among a people whose profession is social equality, and whose rule of association is universal self-government, he is surprised to witness the assumptions of a class, and the contempt which the few express for the many, with as much assurance as if they lived in Russia or England. Much of this is doubtless owing to the minds of the lettered class having been nourished upon the literature of the old world, so that their ideas have grown into a conformity with those of the subjects of feudal institutions, and the least strong-minded and original indiscriminately adopt, not merely the language, but the hopes and apprehensions, the notions of good and evil which have been generated amidst the antiquated arrangements of European society: but, making allowance for this, as quite to be expected of all but very strong and original minds, it is still surprising that within the bounds of the republic, the insolence should be so very complacent, the contempt of the majority so ludicrously decisive as it is.
Excerpt of her full remarks on Harvard here.
I’m also reminded of something that a great writer on management and society, the Austrian-born Peter Drucker, wrote back in 1969:
One thing it (modern society) cannot afford in education is the “elite institution” which has a monopoly on social standing, on prestige, and on the command positions in society and economy. Oxford and Cambridge are important reasons for the English brain drain. A main reason for the technology gap is the Grande Ecole such as the Ecole Polytechnique or the Ecole Normale. These elite institutions may do a magnificent job of education, but only their graduates normally get into the command positions. Only their faculties “matter.” This restricts and impoverishes the whole society…The Harvard Law School might like to be a Grande Ecole and to claim for its graduates a preferential position. But American society has never been willing to accept this claim…
We as a country are a lot closer to accepting Grande École status for Harvard Law School and similar institutions than we were when Drucker wrote the above. A distinction between “schools for leaders” and “schools for followers” is, as Drucker noted, a socially malign one. Extreme Ivy credentialism is much stronger in some industries than in others. It is especially high in government, in ‘nonprofits,’ and in finance.
I’m sure it’s possible to get a great education at Harvard and other Ivies, at least in some fields, and I’ve known several impressive individuals who graduated from these schools, both as undergrads and from the business schools. But I’ve also need a lot of impressive people who followed other educational paths, and I don’t see that there is any magic sauce possessed by the ‘elite’ universities, at least as far as actual education goes. But as far as the contacts and the ‘brand’ go, there is indeed some magic, though not of a beneficent kind. The dominance of these universities in government and the archipelago of institutions that surround it has reached the point that an Ivy degree is something like one of those Titles of Nobility that were prohibited by the US Constitution.
(I see that former Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot is now a lecturer at Harvard. Her scholarly attainments may not be particularly noteworthy, nor did her job performance reach a level of excellence that would make a useful case study–but her appointment does strengthen the Harvard linkage with the governing party.)
On a positive note, there is starting to be some significant pushback against Ivy credentialism and academic credentialism in general. For example, the Thiel Fellowship “gives $100,000 to young people who want to build new things instead of sitting in a classroom.” (Ten of the companies started by Thiel Fellows now have valuations of over $1 billion.) The 1517 Fund defines itself with the line: “We back dropouts, renegade students & sci-fi scientists at the earliest stages of their companies.” Michael Gibson, co-founder & co-manager of 1517, has written an interesting book titled Paper Belt on Fire:
Paper Belt on Fire is the unlikely account of how two outsiders with no experience in finance—a charter school principal and defrocked philosopher—start a venture capital fund to short the higher education bubble. Against the contempt of the education establishment, they discover, mentor, and back the leading lights in the next generation of dropout innovators and in the end make their investors millions.
(Former Harvard president Larry Summers is not a fan of the Thiel Fellowship, calling it “the single most misdirected philanthropy of the decade” and averring that it would be “tragic” for intellectually capable young people to eschew college in favor of Thiel’s backing. I doubt he is very fond of the 1517 fund, either.)
Some corporations and some states (Virginia) are eliminating universal college requirements for a broad range of jobs. The Federal Aviation Administration no longer requires a college degree for Air Traffic Control candidates (although degrees are still considered a positive). There is a revived interest in vocational education and trade schools.
Universities and K-12 schools have been seriously abusing their power, with malign consequences for the economy and the full use of human talents. The only hope for reform lies in the reduction of that power through the development of alternative paths for the acquisition of knowledge.
Some related previous posts and discussion threads:
The Ivy League and American Society
The Scribes and the Idea of Freedom
The Rule of the Prince-Electors
Published in General
I was thrilled to see Harvard top the list because my alma mater was #1 last time around. To their (DePauw University administration) credit, they worked with FIRE to reform campus speech codes and change the culture. Well done.
Can’t see how this is a big shock with so many students graduating without workplace skills. If you have to train them anyway, why have a degree requirement? It’s also closer to something being based on merit. If you have an eighteen year-old who is eager to learn, that’s infinitely better than a 22 year-old who is ready to tell you how to do your job.
Good post!
All my experiences confirm that.
It’s interesting that Martineau discusses the religious differences between Harvard and the bulk of the US population in the 1830s. She characterizes Harvard as “Unitarian and Episcopalian,” and the bulk of the country as “orthodox,” though this doesn’t mean Eastern Orthodox. I infer that “orthodox” means generic Protestant.
The dismissal of the value of learning, in both Martineau’s quote and the OP, is noteworthy. It is presented by Martineau as quintessentially American, though it is contrary to the consensus of at least two major Founders, Adams and Jefferson, about the importance of creating schools and social institutions to promote the “natural aristocracy” of talent. (Jefferson called it the “aristoi” in their correspondence, I think.)
This dismissal of the value of learning was notable in the early years of what we now call the conservative movement, particularly with Buckley’s famous quote about the faculty of Harvard.
I don’t think that the problem is education or the sense of superiority that it can engender. Often that sense of superiority is warranted, as the uneducated often have strong opinions on issues about which they are impressively ignorant. It is a good thing to have the common touch, of course, but it’s also a good thing to understand one’s limitations.
Educational institutions can be dominated by erroneous ideologies, though, and I think that the principal driver of such error is theological. This is suggested by Martineau’s quote, with its emphasis on religious differences. In modern times, our elite cultural class is characterized by its atheism generally, and its hostility to what Martineau called “orthodox” Christianity particularly.
Some information about Martineau might be useful here.
I don’t see a dismissal of the value of learning in Martineau’s piece, rather, the belief that classroom learning is not the only kind of learning that matters, coupled with a distaste for assertions class superiority more based on rigid barriers than on the emergence of a ‘natural aristocracy’…”hat men of letters are the educated men of society in regard not only to literature and speculative truth, but to morals, politics, and the conduct of all social affairs”…“that industry is to be the possession of the many, and property of the few”.
Indeed, the critique of ‘the ignorant masses’ comes across as quite similar to some of today’s attacks on the Deplorables.
Victor Davis Hanson and Thomas Sowell have both spoken at length on the contempt that university elites hold for ordinary working folks–contempt founded on class snobbery and a wholly unjustified sense of their own universal knowledge and unquestionable wisdom.
Chris, would you agree with me that all of the below are true statements of fact?
Unfortunately, there is not much education in today’s higher education.
2. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, FIRE, announced the results of a recent survey on the free speech climate at America’s universities. Out of 254 colleges, Harvard University ranked at the absolute bottom.
@markcamp
Are both the above true?
Hey, Mark. I’m afraid my experience doesn’t conform to this, but I am aware, or at least hear it said often, that most higher education experiences do. If I described my higher education experience, it was learning how to independently acquire knowledge and skills needed to achieve a desired goal. Some, and not a few, already have that knowledge/skill/tendency at age 18-ish. I did not.
Plus, I don’t know how to categorize skills such as creative problem solving. Creating a mass marketing campaign is not an a-b-c-d thing. There is no right answer except the one that works, and there are countless levels of success and failure. One can create a campaign just as they find it in a textbook, but without the creative skills, or even the social skills, to analyze the market, they have no tools to discern whether it fits the market.
Granted, more than a few try to ram that campaign through regardless and find frustration not with themselves, but with those who were meant to positively respond. And, yes, it is difficult for me to give a straightforward answer because I was taught to examine many sides of a presented problem! Believing in that a-b-c-d thing is much more attractive.
You have my full agreement on numbers two through five.
Reason number 3,590,451 why I didn’t go into marketing.
There is one recent, and particularly glaring, object lesson that demonstrates how costly some market lessons are.
I must add, though, the part about finding fault with the audience and not the message; that thought was more politically inspired.
Yes, certainly. The survey results have nothing whatsoever to do with the question of which of the two functions Harvard is there to serve.
Do you suppose that a person who wants to learn that to weld thinks, gee, Harvard is doing a crap job as an elite university—a pre requisite of that function is to provide a good free speech climate, and their performance at that is horrendous. Therefore, it follows that they must have gone out looking for the best welding instructors, and found them. What welding instructor wouldn’t want a job trying to teach people who have absolutely no interest in welding, and no ability to learn welding, how to weld!?
https://libquotes.com/james-barnes/quote/lbs2q2o
‘Elite’ seems to me to imply that an institution is actually Good at whatever it is doing. If a welding school graduates students who can’t weld, I don’t think you can could call it an ‘elite’ welding school. If a university’s mission is really to ‘“teach future leaders of the society how to think, read, and write”, can the ‘think’ part of this really be done if the campus climate is hostile to open discussion? Indeed, can the ‘read’ part really be done under such circumstances at more than a basic level of literacy (which should be learned much earlier, anyhow)?
We also don’t know how much internet and print information is blocked by Harvard as part of this. This is what prompted my question to Mark because he is always keen on definitions and Harvard does not fit the definition of ‘elite’ as presented.
In my particular sub-discipline, there used to be a belief, with some data behind it, that the quality of the institution was inversely related to the proportion of Harvard graduates on the faculty.
Wouldn’t that belief be even stronger now, especially in science, law and medicine since the money for science and medicine comes from federal tax dollars and the Constitution is no longer recognized as supreme law of the land?
I see several aspects to the problem. The first is that our universities are not teaching what they originally set out to do. If we had universities that taught students as future leaders and even included the classics, they could serve a valuable purpose. And since some people are not oriented that way, they may want to pursue another learning environment. The problem I see is that many universities are teaching over-priced garbage and too many students think they must go there to be successful. I thank you for trying to provide an honest assessment of advanced teaching, David.
To repeat a widely recognized fact, schooling does not equal education.
A couple of points:
First, I don’t think the distinction between “knowledge required for citizenship and leadership” and “knowledge required for one’s profession” is generally all that sharp. Ability to read carefully, to speak persuasively, to make logical arguments..all those things are important in a lot of business & other organizational contexts. Similarly, ability to understand statistical methods and approaches to quantitative modeling are important in many professional fields–they are also important in matters of public policy. Knowing the difference between a megawatt and a megawatt-hour is essential if you want to be an electrical engineer specializing in power systems, it is also pretty important if you want to make intelligent comments about national or world energy policy.
Second, I question how many people seeking admission to ‘elite’ universities are doing so because they want to maximize their knowledge acquisition, whether under the belief that knowledge in valuable in itself and they find it interesting OR under the belief that they need particular kinds of knowledge to do their future jobs well. I think an awful lot of them are just looking for a magic ticket.
I think this is absolutely all that distinguishes Harvard, Yale. the other Ivy League schools and a few others.
In a section of the US Constitution, it is stipulated that Congress shall allow for the creation of no titles of nobility.
However, as long as no one addresses anyone in the Harvard Insider Crowd as “Sir,” that crowd has attained a super nobility that the noblemen of 18th Century France could never have dreamed of.
They own Senators and presidents, control the media, ensure that the political system consists of two major parties, whose leaders almost always hail from the One Big Money Party.
The fix is in. With this Insider Crowd understanding that the UN and its owner Communist China are to be the unifying force across the globe, they readily are selling us out in terms of our nation being energy sufficient, as well as selling out the public in terms of actually protecting the environment.
They agree with Bill Gates that 70 millions of lumber shall be cut and then buried, supposedly to “sink carbon” without so much as asking each other if Bill Gates has shorted his interests in lumber company stock holdings lately.
Farms are still being destroyed via “accidental” train derailments. This will help reduce the amount of food that is available. These destructive activities continue on a monthly basis, as though the increase in fuel prices now that Biden’s handlers have made the oil reserves in Alaska off limits was not enough to do the trick of depriving the public of food. (Some experts say if these policies are expanded, then this and other future similar actions of the Biden Administration could result in half of humanity starving.)
Even our bodies have been monetized in a manner that these Lords and Ladies of The Universe insist is for our own good. As one whistleblower against COVID explains it, Pfizer could be on the hook for 3 plus trillions of dollars for its fraudulent criminal trials, for its release of all the vaccines despite what court released docs reveal: the execs knew the vaxxes were ineffective, risky and deadly. (This fore knowledge removes their immunity from liability.) Pfizer also gave payments to doctors and nurses to insist pregnant women get the untested COV vaccines.
Our children are indoctrinated that our planet is about to die a horrible death, and that any activities, no matter how drastic, should be undertaken. They also are taught by teachers and school boards who pester them to abandon childhood games and pursuits and instead must focus on sexual activities and continual worries about whether they are in their right bodies or not.
The only bright hopes amidst all of this is how many of us are turning to God, as we human individuals certainly feel rather powerless.
The other bright hope has been the rise of the indie media. Except that bright, magical awareness tool is about to be hit with penalties including imprisonment for any of the journalists and promoters of truth since their teaching is against the Dark and Evil Mordor now upon us.
The principle advantage that these students and their families are seeking is connection to to those who will be the movers and shakers.
Yes. It appears the established Republican Party leadership has continued operating under a long standing practice of alternating Executive Branch control with the Democrat Party without recognition of the ultimate effects of the weaponization of the federal government created by the Patriot Act after 9/11. We are in a different game now.
The Overthrow of Our Constitutional Republic has already happened!
David,
The question you are addressing is
To start with, let’s remember, and act in accordance with, a fact that we are in the bad habit continually forgetting, and failing to heed when reminded of it, on Ricochet:
If you want a meaningful answer, you must start with a meaningful question: ensure that the writer and the readers are using materially the same definitions and assumptions.
You have chosen this definition of elite:
Given your definition, I agree with you that the answer is No.
Given my definition, do you agree with me that the answer is Yes?
Harvard’s purpose is to be elite but it fails to achieve that purpose.
You didn’t answer the question.
(You still have two tries left to heed the fact that we are in the bad habit continually forgetting, and failing to heed when reminded of it, on Ricochet.
Yes, I agree that I did not answer the question. Sometimes I am able to convey what I think with my own words. But I’m not perfect.
I don’t see where you define the word ‘elite’ except via the assertion: “Higher education is a necessary function of an elite college or university:.” Doesn’t seem particularly meaningful unless you also define “higher education” and also specify that it can only be conducted by elite colleges.
Again, I doubt that Harvard today can be considered to be particularly good at higher education, as experienced by most students there, if ‘higher education’ requires good education in the traditional knowledge base of the humanities
Now, if by ‘elite’, by mean ‘graduating students who will act as a virtual aristocracy is filling the key power positions of society,’ they have been pretty successful in recent decades. It was precisely this that Drucker warned against with his distinction between ‘schools for leaders’ and ‘schools for followers’ and the malign effects of such a distinction.