Columns
What Grades Can’t Measure
A Harvard education isn’t defined by the hours spent in Lamont. It’s defined by how we learn to balance ambition with curiosity. Administrators can change the grading curve, but the real learning happens when students decide what matters to them.
The Fun You’re Missing Is in Lavietes
Harvard's women's basketball team is winning and making history — all while playing to half-empty bleachers.
Ethicist, Should I Let Go of My Zionist Friends?
At the end of the day, a friendship built across disagreement does not demand that you hide or abandon your beliefs. Sustaining conversations across ideological and moral divides might require that you strengthen your convictions.
Independence Isn’t Cheap, but Harvard Can Afford It
Talk is cheap, and in our case, inaction far too expensive. It’s time to put our money where our mouth is — that starts with the endowment.
Harvard, Stop the Handholding
When it comes to building a real family at Harvard, less parenting from the College is better.
Does Community Input Speak for Cambridge? According to the Data, No
That’s not to say Cambridge shouldn’t listen to its residents. But when public comment becomes a ritual stage for a tiny, unrepresentative minority, it’s worth asking whom that process really serves.
Institutional Neutrality Is Impossible. Harvard Must Accept That Fact.
For Harvard, institutional neutrality is a convenient cop-out. In the face of intense public, political, and financial scrutiny, urging the University to pick a side, it can remove itself from the equation entirely. Meanwhile, Harvard’s partisanship lurks in the decisions it inevitably has to make.
The Tourists Know More Than You
By encouraging the student body to wrestle with the weight of Harvard’s legacy, the University can both educate and inspire students to wield its name wisely.
Ph.D. Cuts Are the Beginning of the End for Academia
Trump’s attacks have irrevocably altered the playing field for academia, and it may never recover.
An Update on Gr*ding at Harvard
And lest I neglect to mention: These things are changing now. Three, two, one, go. What are you still reading this report for? Don’t you have a discussion post to do? Move it!
Want to Beat Trump? Include Students.
The battle against higher education is far from over. But due to the range of sacrifices students have had to make, Harvard owes its students a listening ear at the very least.
It’s My Right To Pull an All-Nighter, Canvas.
As we recover from our fifteen hours without Canvas, we should reflect on how sites like these affect our lives and those around us — for better and for worse. All I ask is this: Professors, please extend a little compassion to us students and give us back our evenings.
Diversity Requires Your Participation
I used to see this archetypal Harvard student as the ideal. But as an Orthodox Jew, my own self-identity often failed to adhere to this model — both in theory and practice.
The Bandaids on a Pedagogical Bullet Hole
Both attendance requirements and “flipped classrooms” are bandages on the festering problems of lecture-skipping and a lack of engagement.
The Media Must Stop Oversimplifying Harvard
When national media outlets cherry-pick evidence to lambast rampant antisemitism or lack of rigor at Harvard, this coverage helps lay the justificatory groundwork for such attacks. Harvard may be an easy target due to its perceived elitism, but the downstream consequences are dire.
I Want More of a Voice in AI Policy — We All Should
We may not be able to change the stress of midterms, but we can voice our thoughts on AI in the classroom and expect Harvard to listen.
Harvard Cannot Save Us From Ourselves
If a publication prints something offensive, the answer is speech, not sanction. If a chant crosses a moral line, the answer is argument, not discipline. Students should not call for an intifada nor should they quote Hitler. It’s our job to say so, not the Dean’s.
Harvard’s Nanny State Is Putting Campus to Sleep
Time and time again, the Harvard administration has shown nothing scares it more than its students having fun of their own design.
The Great Feminization Has Come to Harvard
If there is a silver lining in these estrogen-encrusted times, it is that the bros are on their way back, baby. Boy am I excited for the dawning era when he-men will once again run our institutions. I simply adore the way they do things.
If Cambridge Wants To Spend, It Has To Build
In order to deliver on expensive candidate promises, Cambridge desperately needs extra income. Building is the way to get it.
Visit The Harvard Archives
Our University’s history is far more extensive than buildings and statues. The direct experiences and ponderings of its founders, most notable alumni, and more are at our finger tips.
Harvard Students Aren’t Responsible For the Nation’s Flaws
Students have become walking emblems of everything people think is wrong with higher education.
Ethicist, Should I Date My Comp Director?
I feel like something is forbidden about it because he's my superior, and I'm also not totally sure I'd actually want to date him, to be honest. What should I do??? —Signed, Dubious Debbie.
History 10 and the Fear of Facts
Harvard’s History Department should make History 10 a modern world history survey course that includes map quizzes, sit-down exams, in-class essays, and (gasp) even some date memorization.