This fall Harvard College has been defending its admissions program against charges of racial discrimination brought in federal court. Ironically, this is not the first time that Harvard’s admissions practices have lain at the heart of an important case that could affect college enrollments across…
Were admission to Harvard based solely on academic merit, Asian-Americans would comprise 43% of the freshman class, while African-Americans would make up less than 1%, according to an internal Harvard report discussed at a trial here Wednesday.” That’s the sobering lede of a Wall Street Journal…
Real diversity exists at many public universities, but students often struggle to stay enrolled.
With a big suit against Harvard looming, public opinion continues to disapprove of race-based college admissions.
The government says there is evidence strongly suggesting that Harvard may be engaging in 'racial balancing.'
Investigating discrimination at Harvard.
What should be done about human gene editing? Should it be used by scientists to help parents voluntarily choose to have the best possible children, leading to an all-around improvement in the gene pool? Or would such efforts render people with disabilities "unfit" for the human germline, further…
Ben Carson’s new silverware. Ironically, Ben Carson might not get to enjoy his newly refurbished office at HUD for very long, if recent history is our guide. This from CNN:
The club’s transgression? The Crimson reports that the school’s Office of Student Life placed the group Harvard College Faith and Action on “administrative probation” because the group “pressured a female member . . . to resign in September following her decision to date a woman.”
What the media won't show you about the lawnmower kid... A click-baity Facebook page affiliated with conservative blog Independent Journal Review is being mocked for suggesting that media wouldn't show photos of the 11-year-old boy the White House used as a PR ploy mowing the White House lawn.…
Weekly Standard editor at large Bill Kristol talks about the controversy over Chelsea Manning's Harvard fellowship, Hillary Clinton's self-pitying book tour, and Constitution Day.
CIA director Mike Pompeo cancelled a scheduled appearance at Harvard Thursday after the university hired Chelsea Manning, a former Army private and leaker who Pompeo described as an “American traitor.”
Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell resigned Thursday from his position at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, one day after the school announced it would bring Chelsea Manning to its Institute of Politics as a visiting fellow for the upcoming year.
So the eminent author and social scientist Charles Murray gave a speech at Harvard last week. Ordinarily that wouldn’t be terribly newsworthy—eminent authors give speeches at distinguished universities every day of the week and sometimes even on weekends.
I was apprehensive as I flew to Boston on Wednesday. Protests were being organized for the lecture I was to give at Harvard that evening, and the intel made me think that another Middlebury might be in the works. Many of Harvard’s undergraduates are infected by the same virus that’s been going…
The Justice Department is pushing back against a New York Times article that claimed it was preparing to investigate and sue universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against applicants not of the preferred race or ethnicity.
It looks like the finale for the final clubs. A Harvard faculty committee released a report last week recommending that all fraternities, sororities, and similarly “exclusionary” single-sex social organizations be phased out by the spring of 2022. The committee determined that it would not be…
Harvard is banishing the off-campus “final clubs” that have functioned for generations as the school’s equivalent of fraternities and sororities, as Naomi Schaefer Riley reports elsewhere in this issue. The university has its reasons, most notably a contentious claim that the clubs foster a culture…
It looks like the finale for the final clubs. A Harvard faculty committee released a report last week recommending that all fraternities, sororities, and similarly “exclusionary” single-sex social organizations be phased out by the spring of 2022. The committee determined that it would not be…
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Now that the 2017 commencement season is past, I'm emboldened to express my shock that the University of Pennsylvania didn't honor its most famous—and arguably, most distinguished—graduate, Donald J. Trump (Class of 1968) with an honorary degree. Shock, I would say, but not necessarily surprise:…
As John Tyler Wheelwright sat in Harvard's Holden Chapel listening to Charles Eliot Norton lecture on the fine arts in January 1876, "Ralph Curtis snapped at me a little three-cornered note—'Come to Sherwood's room after lecture. We are to start a College Punch.' " From that paper football sprang a…
As John Tyler Wheelwright sat in Harvard's Holden Chapel listening to Charles Eliot Norton lecture on the fine arts in January 1876, "Ralph Curtis snapped at me a little three-cornered note—'Come to Sherwood's room after lecture. We are to start a College Punch.' " From that paper football sprang a…
In an editorial "Elephant and Man at Harvard," the Crimson advocates openness and understanding in the coming age of Trump. Harvard's campus daily champions diversity of political opinion, largely absent on the Ivy League campus, as an essential priority post-election.
Having officially re-established its Air Force program after 45 years, Harvard University will once again offer all Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) services.
There aren't many political philosophers who operate on the level of Harvey Mansfield. By which I mean that it takes a special kind of smart to be able to explain serious philosophy in a way that even chuckleheads like me can understand it.
From Hong Kong to Harvard, erasing history has become a necessity. In the Chinese territory, it is the authorities in Beijing who want to eliminate any memory of the past; in Harvard Square, it is the Law School students. In Hong Kong, memories of its colonial past cannot be missed: the harbor and…
There are almost no Republican donors teaching at Harvard Law School. Ninety-eight percent of the political donations from faculty go to Democrats.
The latest episode of Coversations With Bill Kristol features Harvard professor Ruth Wisse:
“Chemistry and Physics Get Million from Loeb,” blared the Harvard Crimson headline. “Funds will modernize laboratory facilities and establish chemistry chairs.” The donor: scientist Morris Loeb ’83. A million dollars is indeed generous. But on the Harvard scale, did it really warrant a Crimson…
Harvard's Harvey Mansfield wrote on feminism and the universities for THE WEEKLY STANDARD a few months ago ("Feminism and Its Discontents: ‘Rape culture’ at Harvard"). If you'd like to hear more deep and provocative analysis from Mansfield of some of the consequences of feminism, here's your…
Feminism is in control of America’s colleges and universities, where its principles at least are held as dogmas unquestioned and unopposed. Yet in what should be a paradise with those principles at work, women speak of a “rape culture” that sounds like the patriarchal hell we thought we’d left…
Cambridge, Mass.
Students from the Harvard Extension School at Harvard University are hosting a "Satanic black mass," which will take place tonight in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The attempts of defenders of Obamacare to rouse the American people in favor of the doomed monstrosity have become more desperate and bizarre. The most recent example is taking place in Florida, where the sudden death of a young uninsured woman is being cited as an indictment of the…
Our item on rampant grade inflation at Harvard (“A Gentleman’s A+,” The Scrapbook, December 16) caught the eye of reader Robert D. King, who also happens to be founding dean of liberal arts and Rapoport chair of Jewish studies emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin. Professor King writes to…
Last week, a headline in the Harvard Crimson confirmed that Harvard is continuing its depressing slide from an elite educational institution to a really expensive way to boost the self-esteem of America’s overachieving youth: “Substantiating Fears of Grade Inflation, Dean Says Median Grade at…
The Washington Post, like many publications, has been observing the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in considerable detail. No, make that lurid detail. No day has gone by in recent weeks without extended lists, recycled photographs, old reminiscences, new theories, and the sort…
Good news for foodies. Not that they really need any these days but ... still. As Lauren Salkeld reports on the Epicurious blog, Epilog
Matthew Continetti, writing for the Washington Free Beacon:
Study of the humanities has never been more important to the welfare of the nation. Information whizzes by at breakneck speed. The contest between conservative and progressive visions of government’s scope and aim in a free society implicates rival understandings of human nature. The ways of life…
As the men of Harvard exit the NCAA tournament at the hands of the Arizona Wildcats, you'll surely want to wish them a fond and hearty farewell. So sing along with the final verse of "Fair Harvard," written by Reverend Samuel Gilman for the university's 200th anniversary in 1836.
On March 21, 2013, history was made. Ivy League champion and 14th seed Harvard men's basketball team busted brackets everywhere as it upset 3rd seed New Mexico, winning its first NCAA playoff game ever and notching its first victory over a top-ten team. Read all about it here and here.
Jim Manzi recently delivered this talk on science, knowledge, and freedom at Harvard University, which features interesting colloquy with Harvey Mansfield:
In the 1930s, a group of psychologists and physical anthropologists at Harvard chose 268 students whose medical, amatory, and career experiences they wished to document over the remaining decades of their lives. Department-store mogul W. T. Grant, who bankrolled the study, was curious about what…
A registered Native American and alumna of Harvard has co-authored a column denouncing Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren and Harvard University for perpetrating "nothing less than ethnic fraud."
The Boston Globe reports that Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren admitted in a prepared statement that she told two of her employers that she was a Native American--after she was hired. From the Globe:
Politico has unearthed a 1997 article from the Fordham University law review referring to Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as a Harvard law school's "first woman of color." Maggie Haberman reports:
How could Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic Senate candidate in Massachusetts, Harvard law professor, and (as we all know) 1/32 Native American, miss out on Harvard University's 17th annual Powwow? The Boston Herald reports:
The chairman of the Massachusetts Republican party, Bob Maginn, knocked Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren for her claim that she has Native American heritage. Maginn argued that Warren's registration as a minority professor at Harvard Law could constitute "academic fraud" and urged the…
Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate challenging Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts, has had to address her claims of Native American heritage, despite the fact that genealogists have not been able to confirm Warren is descended from the Cherokee tribe. Warren is a law…
Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Massachusetts running against incumbent Republican Scott Brown, received a 20-year interest-free loan from her employer, Harvard University, in 1996, the Boston Herald reports:
As his 80th birthday approaches, TWS contributor and friend (and my teacher) Harvey Mansfield is profiled in the Harvard Crimson. It's a perceptive and fair article, and provides further evidence for the hopeful view that today's students are surprisingly open-minded and intelligent despite—or…
Earlier this week, a group of Harvard undergraduates aligned with Occupy Wall Street protesters made a statement yesterday by staging a “walkout” of an introductory economics course taught by conservative professor Greg Mankiw. Mankiw, who chaired the Council of Economic Advisers for President…
Navy captain Phil Keith (Ret.), a fighter pilot commissioned through NROTC at Harvard, has just published a history, Crimson Valor, profiling the 17 graduates of Harvard who have been awarded the Medal of Honor. Harvard has more alumni Medal of Honor recipients than any other institution of higher…
Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield delivered the following remarks upon accepting the Bradley Prize last week in Washington, D.C.:
ROTC Returns to Harvard
Harvard President Drew Faust and Navy Secretary Ray Mabus just signed the agreement officially welcoming ROTC back on Harvard grounds.
The return of ROTC to Harvard might be (as the Politico’s Mike Allen notes) “the most underplayed story.” At the Washington Post’s website, the news has been relegated to a mere blog post, while the New York Times webpage is giving better play to a story about James Franco’s studies at Yale. (In…
Great news: Harvard University will officially recognize its Naval ROTC program tomorrow. The agreement – to be signed by Harvard president Drew Faust and Navy secretary Ray Mabus – marks the end of the school’s 41-year ban against the program.
Why the wait? That's the question ACTA president Anne Neal is asking Harvard about restoring ROTC to campus. As she points out, providing official recognition to ROTC – as opposed to establishing a new unit on campus – is an action that the university can and should undertake immediately.
With the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, elite colleges now have a chance to make good on their promises and bring the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) back to campus.
With the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, elite colleges now have a chance to make good on their promises and bring the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) back to campus.