Lewis Bemoans College Values

Harvard University has drifted from its mission of educating students, and it now privileges student satisfaction over intellectual growth, former Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 wrote in this week’s edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education.

“Harvard teaches students but does not make them wise,” he wrote. “They may achieve extraordinary excellence in both academic and extracurricular endeavors, but the whole educational experience does not cohere.”

The article, adapted from a part of the conclusion to Lewis’ upcoming book, “Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education,” is the first and only excerpt that will be published from the book before its May 15 release, Lewis said in an interview yesterday.

According to Lewis’ article, Harvard no longer teaches students many of the fundamentals of a “liberal education”—and today’s Harvard education lacks a “common thread” that guided it in centuries past.

Lewis, who is the McKay professor of computer science and a Harvard College professor, noted that Harvard is not the only university moving away from the ideal of a liberal education, but he faulted the institution’s leadership for not resisting the current trends in higher education, such as the modern consumer culture and the growing costs of universities.

“Harvard, as the best of them all, can push back most easily. But the forces controlling Harvard today want it to follow the crowd.”

For those leaders, he added, “Harvard is no longer a city upon a hill but merely a brand name.”

And University President Lawrence H. Summers’ embattled tenure, Lewis argued, is the result of the same forces.

“Ultimately, Summers lacked the skills needed to make significant improvements in undergraduate education,” Lewis wrote, saying that the former Treasury secretary “was the product, not the source, of the trends that brought Harvard to its present predicament.”

Lewis added that “incompetent administration and lack of sustained attention” hampered Summers’ agenda more than any resistance by the faculty.

“[I]n a university that orients itself toward external markers of prestige and influence,” Lewis concluded, “Summers is a victim in this drama, not a villain—a victim not of faculty anger but of his success at the role assigned to him.”

Lewis called on students, faculty, alumni, and members of the governing boards to restore “a true core to undergraduate education,” even as the University protects its “reputation for excellence.”

“Excellence must remain a guiding value, but the pursuit of excellence should no longer be an excuse for ignoring everything else,” he wrote.

Lewis said yesterday that he has been working on the book since the summer of 2003. Lewis was forced from his post as dean in March 2003, when Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby restructured Harvard’s undergraduate branch by merging the College’s academic and social-life offices under Benedict H. Gross ’71.

—Staff writer Daniel J. T. Schuker can be reached at dschuker@fas.harvard.edu.