The New Provincialism

Perhaps the most humiliating characteristic of a typical Harvard student is her lack of experience in the country in which she attends college. Speak to some students admired for being well-traveled and culturally aware, and you will be surprised at how many of them have gleefully globetrotted, proclaiming their status as a “cosmopolitan scholar,” while never having set foot beyond the coastal enclaves of the United States.

Over spring break, I did Harvard Habitat for Humanity in the Mississippi Delta, not for Katrina relief, but for people who are simply poor. It would have been an amazing experience for East and West Coast liberals to actually see the people they claim to champion. This is especially true for those in leadership positions (largely filled by men) at various political organizations.

Instead, the only men on my trip were three members of the Delphic. Liberals chastise final clubs for their supposed regression and ignorance of non-elite society, but in this case, their inconsistency was very difficult to ignore.

The opportunities for American college students to study abroad has fostered a craze to jump ship for a semester or a year and study overseas. Harvard has been especially assertive. But to operate under the impression that one must leave the country in order to gain perspective is narrow-minded. A disproportionate amount of Harvard students come from the East Coast and California and know little of the great cultural diversity in the thousands of miles in between.

To a Manhattanite, a trip to rural Mississippi is probably a greater culture shock than a trip to Barcelona. Visiting a destitute, third-world country is admirable and even comes off as “slumming chic” to wealthy Americans, but a visit to the poorest conditions in the U.S. might hit too many of our nation’s “well-traveled” intellectual elite too close to home. In this way, poorly-traveled liberals have little grounds for mocking the “backwardness” of Americans who have never been to the big city when they themselves have never been to a small town. (Nantucket does not count.)

Liberals may jostle, hoping to win back the heartland vote with a hypothetical Messianic, charismatic Democrat. But for many land-locked liberals like myself, it is still heartland conservatives who are more in touch with the sentiments of most Americans­—even if they are not the people who would be best in office.

I am constantly amazed by Harvard students’ ignorance of parts of the U.S. that aren’t “privileged” enough to have their backs against saltwater. When I asked if one of my fellow freshman had ever been to Illinois, where I am from, they responded that they feel uncomfortable if they’re not near a large body of water. I live less than a mile away from the largest cluster of freshwater lakes on the earth, and to me, that comment isn’t cute: it’s embarrassing.

Harvard should offer programs elsewhere in the United States for credit, just as they do for study abroad. Harvard students should not have to take time off or work during the summer if they wish to study the lingering effects of sharecropping and the Reconstruction in the American south, the public housing crisis in Chicago, or issues of immigration in Texas. If a Harvard student can organize a semester in Morocco with one application and a few clicks of the mouse, she should have similar ease in planning a course of study that will open her eyes to unfamiliar aspects of her own nation.



Emma M. Lind ’09, a Crimson editorial editor, lives in Grays Hall.