Columns
Hosting Harvard-Yale at Fenway Is the Right Move
This change isn’t the death of tradition — it’s tradition evolved. So, next fall, enter The Game at Fenway with an open mind and a lot of school spirit, and we might just make Harvard-Yale better than ever.
Our Professors Say We Don’t Care Enough about Our Classes. What Did You Expect?
These activities give us purpose and prepare us for life beyond academia. Harvard’s mission to develop “citizen-leaders” can’t succeed if leadership and learning are treated as separate goals.
The Real Reason Trump Is Attacking Harvard
Harvard’s top priority should be to rehabilitate its public image by advertising its positive effects — from scientific breakthroughs made here to the University’s broader economic impact — which would help insulate itself from its current political woes.
Harvard’s Research Saves Lives. Let’s Train Students To Do the Same.
Harvard generates extraordinary science. Students deserve courses that show them how to use science to help people live extraordinary lives.
This Semester, Join a Club Just for Fun
For the most part, Harvard students don’t have to worry about finding professional success — so let’s make more of an effort to enjoy ourselves while we do.
Harvard Professors Are Adapting To AI. It’s Time Students Do the Same.
Harvard, like every other institution, is figuring out what learning looks like in the AI age. It’s messy, imperfect, and evolving quickly. But if this semester is any indication, faculty are meeting us halfway.
Stop Complaining About the Laundry Prices, You Unpatriotic Cheapskate
And I’m proud to be a Harvardian, at least I know I’m free. And I won’t forget the liberal judges of the First Massachusetts District Court who temporarily gave that right to me. And I’ll gladly stand up next to you, and contribute every extra quarter I’ve got to stanch the bleeding.
Harvard Should Invest in Vocational Education
Now more than ever, Harvard is struggling to recast itself as serving the needs of the broader American population. While funding new programs may not be feasible under Harvard’s current constraints, in the long-term, it should consider how it can support a more diverse range of forms of education.
Harvard Must Confront Trump’s Demands for What They Are, Not How They’re Made
The real danger for Harvard is not reforming under pressure, but defending itself only on the grounds of pressure. If we let “who gets to tell Harvard what to do” replace “what should Harvard actually do,” we cede the substance of the debate.
Harvard Will Have to Sacrifice Something. It Should Be Our Funding.
In these trying times, it is the responsibility of students and affiliates to resist federal concessions in any way possible. Relinquishing our responsibility to defend higher education will come at great cost to the next generation of leaders.
AI Defeats the Purpose of a Humanities Education
While Harvard apparently worries that its educational programming is losing rigor to grade inflation and lax attendance norms, it can start making a difference by curtailing a problem in part of its own making: ban AI use, and the quality of humanities education at Harvard will improve.
The Women’s Center Is Gone — But Its Work Isn’t Finished
When I came to Harvard, I was fortunate that the University offered crucial support through the Women’s Center. I hope the same kind of resources are still available when I leave.
Harvard Needs the Kind of Exams AI Can’t Take
It’s time to do our work ourselves instead of delegating it to AI. It’s time to hold ourselves to the standards that the Harvard name implies.
Harvard Needs to Look into Industry for Scientific Funding
We are in dire times, which call for dire measures. Should disaster strike us again, it seems as if the best way for scientists at Harvard to keep the lights on is to collaborate with private companies — or else risk losing it all.
The Life and Times of The Canadian Harvard Jew
After considerable thought, I’ve determined the ideal American reaction to my patrial predicament would be: “Wow, what an enviable country you have, but we have no intention of applying sovereignty to it at this time.” I’m still waiting.
How Many Email Lists Does Harvard Need?
Of course, there are limits to what Harvard can do. But to provide as many opportunities to as many undergraduates as possible, it’s necessary that the College improves how information is disseminated.
Harvard Needs More Quizzes
Testing isn’t the enemy of intellectual curiosity. It’s an ally of convenience — an invitation to stop hoodwinking our peers on a weekly basis and hit the stacks instead.
It’s Time To Ban Laptops at Harvard
Perhaps if students were actually forced to listen in class (or at least to not actively ignore), they’d end up taking more classes they find legitimately interesting, and embracing the sort of vulnerability that comes with making eye contact with a professor and with peers.
Harvard’s Generative AI Policy Is Inequitable
But in order for AI to benefit every student regardless of their race, gender, or socioeconomic status, it must first be allowed in every Harvard classroom.
What the Empty Basement in Canaday Says About Harvard
While the quiet dismantling of the Women's Center and other spaces might sound like mere bureaucratic restructuring it reveals an unspoken yet potent truth: Harvard couldn’t care less about its own students.
Come At Me, Bro
I propose an alternate strategy: I shall fight Secretary of Education Linda E. McMahon in a televised cage match, the winner of which gets $2.7 billion in federal grants and the power to uphold or destroy America’s continued technological and economic success. Secretary, I hope you brought your mouth guard.
With Discipline Changes, Harvard Listened to Trump — Not Students
Harvard’s discipline problem starts with who’s missing from the room. Until students win seats at the table and presidential decree is swapped for participatory governance, inconsistent justice simply becomes consistent injustice.
Viewpoint Diversity and the Scientists
Yet, when we turn from science to the humanities we encounter postmodern arguments like Kuhn’s helpless relativism. Far from giving reason why science might be good, the humanities fail to justify themselves. They know they are not science, but then what are they, and what do they know?
An Endowment Tax Is Worse Than You Think
As I’ve written previously, university spending generates enormous social good. That’s why, for generations, the government has subsidized our research. Now, in a complete about-face, the Trump administration wants to punish us for it.
Is Going to Class Still Worth It?
In the digital era, education looks different. We have access to unlimited information at our fingertips, and our approach to in-class learning must therefore adapt to be more collaborative and discussion-centered rather than the pedagogic teaching that has traditionally been the norm.