This is the first honest essay that I have read on the problems with our top universities. Others are long-winded word avalanches that could be reduced to “everything we do cures cancer and if you don’t give us endless amounts of unaccountable cash, people will die.” Just talking about fiscal accountability can kill people. Every administrator is essential, as is every overhead expenditure. Efficiency equals mass extinction. I imagine that we heard the same thing from the church in pre-revolutionary France. The people are shoeless and the kids are starving, but the tithe is essential.
Great piece. A critical point is that Harvard also has a massive influence on other universities. I’m a tenured prof at a mid level university, and I cannot understate just how conformist universities and their administrators are. My university would never dream of taking a bold step (like institutional neutrality) unless the proximal university of higher stature nearby did the same. If Harvard had resisted woke incursions, it might have limited the damage across universities. Harvard’s influence would trickle down throughout the country.
Harvard is not beyond recovery, but is very deeply in trouble. If Harvard started now and worked without let-up, recovery would take something like five decades to retire certain people. Cutting out all the rot without cutting out balanced thinkers that now cower in silence would take saintly restraint and equity. Harvard has too little saintliness to go around.
Harvard reminds some of us of the 1957 movie title 'Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?' Success at raising always more money did Harvard in. Money raising became Harvard's focus. Focus on the ever-growing endowment became reassuring as administrators, administrative salaries, and tuition and other fees ballooned. 'We are the biggest, the richest, and going gangbusters materially so we must be doing something right' was the assumption.
More money means better self-sufficiency and money's versatility of use makes it a marvelous invention. Money certainly brings power which intoxicates all but the most balanced people.
Somewhere around Pres Rudenstine, endowment focus started to get out of hand. Harvard invited its more aggressive Wall St types aboard. Scrutiny of permanent staff's character (their breadth of exposure, prior responsibility, results, and inner security to play the game straight) relaxed to make Harvard more corporate than academic or serving broader society.
Pres Faust was a genteel scholar, suddenly overwhelmed by her vaster presidential responsibilities. She then got rolled by the many corporate types who were able to remake Harvard more in their own images.
Now Pres Garber is in a funk. With an MD and a PhD he surely lacks no brains. But he surely loses perspective. Harvard's distaste for Big Orange vulgarity leads Garber to mistake himself for a crusader against an assault on academic values. Garber loses sight of the 1st Amendment's enshrinement of freedom of speech and opinion. The 1st Amendment is all about the importance of Truth or Veritas. Veritas cannot be gained without peaceably airing all views to decide what to do next.
Pro-Palestine factions should be able to state their views as much as anyone else. But they do more, ie, block others' passage, threaten, batter, assault them, and destroy property. Even back in the 1950s Harvards would hiss and boo at whatever they did not like to hear. When others cannot be heard they have no free speech. It's getting late.
Today is another time when the vulgar Big Orange was right. Harvard is owed no US funds just for humane use. Harvard deserves US funds only when it acts like a university and protects everyone's right to be heard.
Threatening others, calling for their harm, drowning them out, pushing them away, battering and assaulting them are what some alien cultures do. Harvard has allowed hostile action to interfere with Western values. At some point, if not already, that abandons Western values.
Until Harvard re-embraces Western values and gets rid of 3d-world thinkers, it should get no US funding of research, should lose tax-exempt status, and should get no more full freight-paying, foreign students (who more than ever now see their anti-democratic values and customs accepted and affirmed). How educational is that?
The requirement to be politically correct in one's research can be pretty dramatic. Professor Judith Curry, a well respected member of several National Academies boards who studied climate at Georgia Institute of Technology, retired after finding the political state of climate science demoralizing or as she said, "the poisonous nature of the scientific discussion around human-caused global warming".
In research into the roles of guns in interpersonal violence, there is likewise a seeming requirement to toe the party line, made worse by sometimes awful peer reviewing. Not to mention, authors not knowing from one minute to the next if they are partisan advocates for gun control or social scientists dispassionately testing models. Probably the most famous case of a flub was a Lancet article from about a decade ago that claimed three laws would drastically reduce gun violence in the U.S. What both the authors and the reviewers missed was that some of the laws in the model had not even been implemented and the conclusions highly improbable anyway. That paper was so bad the Harvard and Hopkins researchers condemned it (but a little too late--what happened to peer review?). As with many other studies, the university press office went public with a dumbed down version of the latest and greatest, conflating causation with correlation and of course, being clueless about the details of the science. In that Lancet case, before anyone caught the error the paper was all over the popular press claiming a cure for violence in three easy steps.
Perhaps in today's dog-eat-dog academic competition, one cannot afford to be careful if it means being scooped. So we get junk science as well as science.
The article is largely wrong on most fronts, the race based hiring concern being partly correct. Very selective citing of concerns over reproducibility can't rescue that, nor is it anything more than an excuse for attacks on academia. The federal government under a crazy admin isn't the place to try to correct any real problem but if it were the situation would call for a scalpel, not a hammer.
This is an excellent and comprehensive essay on a key problem in today’s elite university: an anxious sense of moral superiority. JD Vance tends to be articulate and even-toned in his response to this attitude that has, tragically, been an aspect of progressive politics for a couple of decades now with the exception of Bernie Sanders who was down-to-earth and inclusive of his conservative colleagues here in Vermont, at least initially. While I am loathe to engage directly in political debates, I am well versed in seeing how and why the brutality of disgust, moral superiority and contempt for others’ beliefs and life styles will never lead to a true investment in humanity and human beings. Dialogue and trust require respect for other people and their approaches and ideas. Open dialogue and free speech are founded on the proposition that our humanity should be more important than our ideology. To be clear, the scientific method rests on a disciplined interchange that rises above lifestyles, individual differences, and opinions to search for the truth through mathematical and experimental means. This kind of disciplined exchange allows human beings to engage with their hypotheses without brutalizing each other for having them. Morality superiority and relentless attacks on other peoples’ characters and points view have sadly and ironically tended to be a part of “inclusivity” and virtue signaling for quite a while now. Loyalty to one’s in-group and contempt for the “other group” are inhumane, unscientific and unworkable for liberal democracy and free speech. I hope that elite universities can learn this truth.
"But the real problem will come when professors and researchers who wish to apply for federal grants decide they can engage in their work with far less hassle if they just do it somewhere other than Harvard. If they can do the very same work without these roadblocks at a place like Caltech, Vanderbilt, or even (shudder) a Big Ten school, why not?"
This is precisely what needs to happen. If Harvard were a corporation, the same elites crying foul over Harvard's treatment would be clamoring for it to be broken up for undermining competition and harming consumers (although consumers are no longer a significant concern for the elites). So the Fed puts a little pressure on Harvard and creates a more competitive market for academic research. Imagine how far those same billions in research dollars could go at an institution where the cost of living is half that of Cambridge. Let the markets decide where the research gets done.
Very poignant. This seems doomerist on the surface, but in reality the result would be a win for US science.
Harvard has options. If they weren’t so tribal and stubborn they could copy Columbia’s example of beginning to soften towards the demands of the Trump admin.
Regardless of what happens, US science will likely be absolutely fine (as I point out in my recent essay — it pairs really well with this one tbh, very much enjoyed reading it!)
“One of these things is not like the other.” A university endowment is not comparable to a nation’s GDP. It is more nearly comparable to the total value of a country’s infrastructure, or perhaps its sovereign wealth fund. By that comparison Harvard is _puny_.
This is the first honest essay that I have read on the problems with our top universities. Others are long-winded word avalanches that could be reduced to “everything we do cures cancer and if you don’t give us endless amounts of unaccountable cash, people will die.” Just talking about fiscal accountability can kill people. Every administrator is essential, as is every overhead expenditure. Efficiency equals mass extinction. I imagine that we heard the same thing from the church in pre-revolutionary France. The people are shoeless and the kids are starving, but the tithe is essential.
Great piece. A critical point is that Harvard also has a massive influence on other universities. I’m a tenured prof at a mid level university, and I cannot understate just how conformist universities and their administrators are. My university would never dream of taking a bold step (like institutional neutrality) unless the proximal university of higher stature nearby did the same. If Harvard had resisted woke incursions, it might have limited the damage across universities. Harvard’s influence would trickle down throughout the country.
Harvard is not beyond recovery, but is very deeply in trouble. If Harvard started now and worked without let-up, recovery would take something like five decades to retire certain people. Cutting out all the rot without cutting out balanced thinkers that now cower in silence would take saintly restraint and equity. Harvard has too little saintliness to go around.
Harvard reminds some of us of the 1957 movie title 'Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?' Success at raising always more money did Harvard in. Money raising became Harvard's focus. Focus on the ever-growing endowment became reassuring as administrators, administrative salaries, and tuition and other fees ballooned. 'We are the biggest, the richest, and going gangbusters materially so we must be doing something right' was the assumption.
More money means better self-sufficiency and money's versatility of use makes it a marvelous invention. Money certainly brings power which intoxicates all but the most balanced people.
Somewhere around Pres Rudenstine, endowment focus started to get out of hand. Harvard invited its more aggressive Wall St types aboard. Scrutiny of permanent staff's character (their breadth of exposure, prior responsibility, results, and inner security to play the game straight) relaxed to make Harvard more corporate than academic or serving broader society.
Pres Faust was a genteel scholar, suddenly overwhelmed by her vaster presidential responsibilities. She then got rolled by the many corporate types who were able to remake Harvard more in their own images.
Now Pres Garber is in a funk. With an MD and a PhD he surely lacks no brains. But he surely loses perspective. Harvard's distaste for Big Orange vulgarity leads Garber to mistake himself for a crusader against an assault on academic values. Garber loses sight of the 1st Amendment's enshrinement of freedom of speech and opinion. The 1st Amendment is all about the importance of Truth or Veritas. Veritas cannot be gained without peaceably airing all views to decide what to do next.
Pro-Palestine factions should be able to state their views as much as anyone else. But they do more, ie, block others' passage, threaten, batter, assault them, and destroy property. Even back in the 1950s Harvards would hiss and boo at whatever they did not like to hear. When others cannot be heard they have no free speech. It's getting late.
Today is another time when the vulgar Big Orange was right. Harvard is owed no US funds just for humane use. Harvard deserves US funds only when it acts like a university and protects everyone's right to be heard.
Threatening others, calling for their harm, drowning them out, pushing them away, battering and assaulting them are what some alien cultures do. Harvard has allowed hostile action to interfere with Western values. At some point, if not already, that abandons Western values.
Until Harvard re-embraces Western values and gets rid of 3d-world thinkers, it should get no US funding of research, should lose tax-exempt status, and should get no more full freight-paying, foreign students (who more than ever now see their anti-democratic values and customs accepted and affirmed). How educational is that?
Great post, with informative historical background of Harvard's moral and intellectual corruption.
The requirement to be politically correct in one's research can be pretty dramatic. Professor Judith Curry, a well respected member of several National Academies boards who studied climate at Georgia Institute of Technology, retired after finding the political state of climate science demoralizing or as she said, "the poisonous nature of the scientific discussion around human-caused global warming".
In research into the roles of guns in interpersonal violence, there is likewise a seeming requirement to toe the party line, made worse by sometimes awful peer reviewing. Not to mention, authors not knowing from one minute to the next if they are partisan advocates for gun control or social scientists dispassionately testing models. Probably the most famous case of a flub was a Lancet article from about a decade ago that claimed three laws would drastically reduce gun violence in the U.S. What both the authors and the reviewers missed was that some of the laws in the model had not even been implemented and the conclusions highly improbable anyway. That paper was so bad the Harvard and Hopkins researchers condemned it (but a little too late--what happened to peer review?). As with many other studies, the university press office went public with a dumbed down version of the latest and greatest, conflating causation with correlation and of course, being clueless about the details of the science. In that Lancet case, before anyone caught the error the paper was all over the popular press claiming a cure for violence in three easy steps.
Perhaps in today's dog-eat-dog academic competition, one cannot afford to be careful if it means being scooped. So we get junk science as well as science.
Yeah I know a fair amount of scientists don’t like to be scooped, but it’s a lot better to have a paper that is well reviewed and replicable!
The article is largely wrong on most fronts, the race based hiring concern being partly correct. Very selective citing of concerns over reproducibility can't rescue that, nor is it anything more than an excuse for attacks on academia. The federal government under a crazy admin isn't the place to try to correct any real problem but if it were the situation would call for a scalpel, not a hammer.
And speaking of more political bullshittery.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/us/politics/fulbright-board-resign-trump.html
About as even-handed as it gets. Thank you.
Harvard didn’t collapse from a single mistake.
Bad incentives were layered quietly over time: publish novelty, reward conformity, protect identity over inquiry.
What you get isn’t corruption. It’s something more ordinary: insulation without accountability.
This is an excellent and comprehensive essay on a key problem in today’s elite university: an anxious sense of moral superiority. JD Vance tends to be articulate and even-toned in his response to this attitude that has, tragically, been an aspect of progressive politics for a couple of decades now with the exception of Bernie Sanders who was down-to-earth and inclusive of his conservative colleagues here in Vermont, at least initially. While I am loathe to engage directly in political debates, I am well versed in seeing how and why the brutality of disgust, moral superiority and contempt for others’ beliefs and life styles will never lead to a true investment in humanity and human beings. Dialogue and trust require respect for other people and their approaches and ideas. Open dialogue and free speech are founded on the proposition that our humanity should be more important than our ideology. To be clear, the scientific method rests on a disciplined interchange that rises above lifestyles, individual differences, and opinions to search for the truth through mathematical and experimental means. This kind of disciplined exchange allows human beings to engage with their hypotheses without brutalizing each other for having them. Morality superiority and relentless attacks on other peoples’ characters and points view have sadly and ironically tended to be a part of “inclusivity” and virtue signaling for quite a while now. Loyalty to one’s in-group and contempt for the “other group” are inhumane, unscientific and unworkable for liberal democracy and free speech. I hope that elite universities can learn this truth.
"But the real problem will come when professors and researchers who wish to apply for federal grants decide they can engage in their work with far less hassle if they just do it somewhere other than Harvard. If they can do the very same work without these roadblocks at a place like Caltech, Vanderbilt, or even (shudder) a Big Ten school, why not?"
This is precisely what needs to happen. If Harvard were a corporation, the same elites crying foul over Harvard's treatment would be clamoring for it to be broken up for undermining competition and harming consumers (although consumers are no longer a significant concern for the elites). So the Fed puts a little pressure on Harvard and creates a more competitive market for academic research. Imagine how far those same billions in research dollars could go at an institution where the cost of living is half that of Cambridge. Let the markets decide where the research gets done.
Very poignant. This seems doomerist on the surface, but in reality the result would be a win for US science.
Harvard has options. If they weren’t so tribal and stubborn they could copy Columbia’s example of beginning to soften towards the demands of the Trump admin.
Regardless of what happens, US science will likely be absolutely fine (as I point out in my recent essay — it pairs really well with this one tbh, very much enjoyed reading it!)
“One of these things is not like the other.” A university endowment is not comparable to a nation’s GDP. It is more nearly comparable to the total value of a country’s infrastructure, or perhaps its sovereign wealth fund. By that comparison Harvard is _puny_.
So even if Harvard’s endowment is smaller than so many countries’ GDP, where does the annual return fall?
Sorry but fuck Harvard.