Comments on: Harvard is something of a national institution, and its admissions policies have become everyone’s business

By: Fred the Gator

Fred the Gator — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 15:40:36 +0000

Just get government money out of the equation. Then it will stand or fall on its own as a private institution. I’m not sure if I should be surprised that Steven Pinker presumes that accepting government largess in one form or another makes Harvard “everybody’s business” but I think many have that view. Thus “everything’s political,” as Perchik puts it in FIDDLER ON THE ROOF.

Jacques Ellul cogently critiques this view in his book THE POLITICAL ILLUSION. He calls politics the idolatry of the 20th century.

By: Phileas Frogg

Phileas Frogg — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 16:30:38 +0000

The best remedy for Harvard’s travails isn’t a reformation of its admissions procedures, it’s a 20-kiloton nuclear bomb reducing that embarrassment to a smoking crater.

Though I suppose if we must keep it then at minimum we should shut the place down, build a high wall around it, and provide guided tours instructing the public in how rapidly evil can corrupt a seemingly innocuous and respectable institution.

Each tour group could end with free drinks, and a mandatory piss at the entrance.

By: Jim

Jim — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 16:25:23 +0000

Instead of “holistic admissions,” I suggest using a transparent formula that is weighted toward test scores and descent from Our Posterity of whom, by whom, and for whom America was established.

“Demography,” as they say, “is destiny.”

By: Bruce

Bruce — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 02:49:54 +0000

Or we could accept that Harvard’s focus on D party patronage makes it a wing of the D party and treat Harvard as a youth party wing of the D party in a skinsuit college.