Harvard Heading For Toilet

MANY OF US hoped that the fall of Larry Summers would not mean the end of Harvard University as we know it. We hoped that the Harvard Corporation, the governing body of the university, would act to preserve the univesrity’s ancient tradition of scholarship. But perhaps we were being too optimistic.

In The Weekly Standard retired Olin Foundation executive director James Piereson gives us the bad news.

The Harvard Corporation is a corporation very like the university faculty. There are a couple of liberal Democrats, policy wonk types, and there is a “feminist” seat and a “black” seat.

The membership of the Corporation, in other words, runs the gamut of political opinion from A to B, from liberal Democrat to left-wing Democrat, and seeks to represent the same groups as are active on the arts and sciences faculty. It stands to reason that they would be willing to force out their president.

That means that Harvard is going to get worse and worse. Harvard is completely under the control of the “progressive” class that emerged at the end of the 19th century and ruled the politics and culture of the United States for the entire 20th century.

Those of us who live to divest this proud oligarchy of its power, its privileges, and its sinecures had better understand that we have a fight on our hands. And we had better understand that the progressive class may not go as quietly as the landed aristocracy.

But at least we are the good guys.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
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In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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