Making Harvard Great Again

In my experience, when people think of Harvard, they expect success.

Whenever I tell someone I go to Harvard, that someone imagines me to be on the way to becoming part of a successful elite who have achieved much and acquired power like numerous other Harvard graduates. Or, similarly, when a professor gets to put Harvard on their CV, it’s hard not to believe that they have achieved some success in academia given that Harvard produces the most Nobel laureates in the world.

But considering many of the issues and recent events facing Harvard today, I think that our expectation of success and ability to create elites have become fragile.

For one, Harvard’s global ranking status has taken hits. Harvard has dropped in rankings of universities in the world according to Times Higher Education, going from first in 2011 to sixth in 2016. And over the past few years Harvard has been hemorrhaging talent to other universities like Stanford, not to speak of the number of talented professors that have turned down offers from Harvard. Comparing Harvard’s past to where it is today begs a question: Why are we losing out to other top-tier universities? To me, it seems that such losses coincide with rising concerns about a fragmented community, and I don’t think that this is accidental.

In the past month alone, students have had to make do without dining halls as centers of house life; Harvard’s administration has decided to create a task force to investigate diversity and inclusivity on campus; and The Crimson has published multiple op-eds concerned with home and community. These events and many others fit into the larger narrative that the University has especially struggled with since President Faust took the reins: namely, that there is supposed to be One Harvard.

These concerns of unifying Harvard are also based on a concern that Harvard is losing its ability to set up its students for success. The University campaign to create One Harvard is motivated by the idea that the disparate parts of Harvard working in unison will make for a greater, more successful whole. And those who are concerned with a fragmented community—whether caused by a lack of initiative on the part of students to create meaningful relationships, or by a strike that has split dining hall workers, students, and the administration into different camps—also implicitly identify the need for consistent and unified support systems in success.

Looking at Harvard’s past, it seems like a homogeneity that is conducive to success has contributed to a large part of its achievements. The fact that many of Boston’s WASP-y Brahmin class sent their boys to Harvard made for a school composed of people with similar values and goals. And with these similar values and goals, it’s easy to imagine how a united Harvard was able to rise as a bastion of success and excellent education.

Nowadays, our expectation for Harvard to breed an elite is tempered by the fact that it is much more diverse in terms of class, gender, ethnicity, and geographic location, a fact that we can attribute to a globalized world governed by global standards that requires Harvard to look far and wide for the best. And to assimilate such a diverse group of students under the banner of Harvard takes much more work than simply admitting them, as some students have realized. It has not been until recently that Harvard has decided to fund an orientation program to help incoming freshmen from under-resourced high schools become accustomed to Harvard.

In some ways, one could say our concerns about a lack of community in a place that creates elites are not all that different from the concerns of those who have committed themselves to Making America Great Again.

The story I have just told of Harvard seems to parallel a story told of the U.S., where a small country quickly rose to power and is now facing problems in its ability to keep a diverse nation together and thriving. Trump supporters seem to believe such a narrative, as they have been shown to believe that America has declined since the 1950’s, whatever their reasons. And as I have tried to explain, such a narrative can easily apply to Harvard.

Regardless of whether or not Trump supporters are right about America’s decline, or whether or not I am right in pointing out potential signs of Harvard’s decline, they are concerned with the same fragility of success in the country that we are concerned with when we talk of community and unity at Harvard.

However, to return to strength doesn’t mean we have to resort to Harvard’s old ways when it was male and white. In fact, the world we live in today requires us to think of new ways to unify an increasingly diverse set of students to set them up for success.

Dan A. Valenzuela, ’17-’18, is a philosophy concentrator living in Cabot House. His column appears on alternate Fridays.