Half a Century of Changes

I was a French visiting graduate student in the government department at Harvard in 1951-52. I came back to teach in this department in 1955, and have been doing so ever since. In this long period of wars, crises and revolutions, what has changed at Harvard?

The Harvard of a half-century ago was still an ivory tower, complacent in its detachment from the world. This ceased being the case in the 1960s, although it wasn’t fully understood by President Nathan M. Pusey ’28, whose main complaint about the students who disrupted ideas and traditional order in the late 1960s was that they had execrable manners (so bad, indeed, that he called the police hours after their occupation of University Hall, when a little amount of empathy and patience would have avoided the tribulations and histrionics that followed). The University is now so fully engaged in the world that it is barely recognizable. Programs of education abroad, participation in scientific, political and economic enterprises at home and abroad, and a spectacular opening to the arts and cultures of the U.S. and of the world now risk relegating to the sidelines what should be the essence and the bulk of the University’s activities: teaching and research.

In this process, the University has become both a more national and a more international institution. The Harvard of the 1950s was still largely male, white, with an undergraduate student body dominated by alumni sons—many from private schools and from the East. Many of them were, of course, very fine—but quite a number were not, and there was a bit too much homogeneity. In this respect, there has been a revolution, instigated especially by Presidents Derek C. Bok and Neil L. Rudenstine, and carried out by all those in charge of admissions. The triumph of diversity, lamented by some conservatives who mistook it for a degradation of standards, is actually the best thing that could have happened—a grand experiment not only in cross-fertilization, but a breaking down of age-old barriers and of prejudices. It is, inevitably, incomplete, for instance insofar as blacks and American Hispanics are concerned. It must not stop.

The evolution of the undergraduate program of general education has reflected and intensified this expansion of curiosity and knowledge. The postwar Red Book was profoundly and proudly “Western,” and emphasized the humanities more than the sciences. The Core, set up in the 1970s, asserted that it focused on different modes of thinking (something on which a divided faculty could agree), but it also introduced Harvard undergraduates to different cultures, to ethical reasoning, and to more scientific knowledge. The new general education program adopted last year (in a country in which anything that is 30 years old needs to be replaced, even when there is nothing grievously wrong with it) carries forward the work of the Core—so that it aims, in fact, not only at making Harvard students good citizens of the U.S., but citizens of a shrinking world.

Of all the achievements, the greatest have been the recognition of the promise and achievements of women, and of multiculturalism. Like all major transformations, they have come at a certain price. In some ways they have deepened the contrast between undergraduate and graduate education—the latter being inevitably more professional—and tempted many to look at the undergraduates as pre-professionals who need to become specialized early, which is a mistake: the laborious exhilaration of learning a profession should not push aside the broadening of the minds and horizons of the undergraduates, which will make them deeper and subtler specialists later. Thanks to the charismatic Homi Bhabha, the Humanities Center is helping to lower the often artificial barriers among disciplines.

The expansion of the University in all directions has had three other worrisome effects. They have made many departments more heterogeneous (mine, in the 1950s and 1960s, was largely a group of political philosophers and historians; now there are two groups: the tribe of traditional humanists, and a new one of would-be scientists, who apply mathematical economic methods to subjects that can still best be understood by looking at history, anthropology, and psychology). Also, everyone is overworked in a country in which, unlike in France, no bill of rights recognizes each citizen’s entitlement to rest and leisure.

Finally, there has been a vast increase of bureaucracy to cope with all the tasks–connections with the outside world, and management (as well as production) of a Himalayas of paper—both in the form of professional bureaucrats and in that of academics turned, willy-nilly, into part- or full-time administrators. The only law of political “science” I recognize as such is: the greater the bureaucracy, the less efficient it tends to become.

The world of instant communications, globalization, and interdependence, which has made obsolete old models of international relations is the one in which young Americans will have to act. Helping them perform more subtly, more compassionately, more humbly than in the past should be one of the goals of this University. The remarkable enthusiasm of so many of its students for contributing to the welfare of the world is a huge asset—as long as they remember that they need to be more than good Samaritans. Ultimately, wise policies at home, and successful ones abroad, require fair and decent governments. Good citizens cannot turn their backs on politics, whatever the frustrations of political involvement and action may be. If they do, what Tocqueville called “democratic individualism”—the triumph of the private over the public—will prevail.


Stanley Hoffmann is the Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser University Professor at Harvard.