Columns
The Unexpected Gift of Being Quadded
Quadded or not, don’t wait for proximity to define your relationships. Reach out to the people who make you feel good and watch as your days become more fulfilling. Make the effort and take the time to be truly intentional about how you spend your precious moments at this school.
Decline in Protest Spells Trouble for Harvard
The University has committed itself to “Intellectual Vitality” to promote challenging conversations on campus. But to be vital means to be lively and active — Harvard cannot fully dedicate itself to such an ideal while stifling the voices of students most active for the causes they care about.
Harvard’s Commitment to Free Speech is Half-Baked
We must commit ourselves to hearing different viewpoints, no matter how detestable we find them to be.
ChatGPT Has Been My Tutor for the Last Year. I Still Have Concerns.
This transition will be messy, and no policy will be perfect. But if we don’t agree on how to talk about AI, when to use it, and when to avoid it, we risk creating fragmented and inequitable experiences instead of preparing students for an AI-driven future.
Applicants: Improving Harvard’s Speech Culture is Worth the Hassle
So, to any prospective applicants: don’t hesitate to apply because you think your voice will be silenced. Rather, apply knowing your voice is the key to sustaining Harvard’s free speech culture. Come prepared.
Harvard Can’t Afford to Neglect the Humanities
Harvard exists to promote the highest intellectual pursuit in every discipline — it can’t leave the humanities behind.
Harvard Has Lost Its Moral Compass
Harvard could have remained steadfast in the fight for a brighter future, but instead chose to prove its own intellectual fragility. It caved to the current political moment, rapidly reorienting its beliefs to best serve its own financial interests.
Dean Deming’s Instagram Is Fun — But the Moment Demands More
Obviously, Dean Deming’s Instagram won’t solve all our problems. But in this time of unprecedented peril for higher education, every effort helps.
Can’t Concentrate? Lose the Double.
Today, many Harvard students know two things well — and nothing else.
Expand Interhouse Dining
Harvard should expand the current sister House system that benefits Quad residents to non-central river neighborhoods.
Why You Should Read Chris Rufo
Students need to practice reading ideas that they’ve been told are too Trump-adjacent, and therefore too offensive, to seriously consider.
How to Make Speech at Harvard the Freest
So yes, Harvard faces some challenges. Students self-censor, administrators waffle, and disruptions occur. But culture is hard to fix. Math is not. With rebuffs, rebrands, and recalibration, we can strategize our way to the top.
Harvard’s Hazing Crackdown Strikes the Wrong Chord
Against the backdrop of Harvard’s vague policies and lackluster training, the HRO suspension seems downright cruel and unusual. The College’s openness to conversations with student leaders to answer questions about initiation traditions is a good first step. But the University needs to do more to avoid a repeat of the HRO fiasco.
Male-Only Final Clubs Are Just Weird
So if you do get a letter under your door, at least consider the implications of joining organizations with allegations of misogyny, sexism, and sexual assault. But even if you’re skeptical about the bad reputation of male final clubs, it’s frankly just weird that these clubs are so desperate to exclude women. Is that really the hill that’s worth dying on?
Harvard Can’t Force Discourse
By trying to solve a large political problem with brute force, Harvard is biting off more than it can chew.
Dear Harvardians — Please Save the Em Dash.
The future of the em dash — and the elements of style more broadly — is in our hands. Let us be a beacon for writers everywhere and keep the shift-option-hyphen in our toolboxes.
What Josh Kraft’s Loss Says About Excessive Ambition at Harvard
There is an unspoken — and often spoken — understanding among students that some of us will go on to hold enormous power. For those who do, Josh Kraft’s campaign should be a cautionary tale — a reminder of what happens when we mistake wealth for legitimacy, or when ambition hides behind philanthropy.
Harvard Should Teach Speech
Harvard should require a public speaking course for undergraduates. By doing so, the College would help students develop the skills for effective oral communication and allow students to practice engaging with peers on controversial issues.
The Truth Behind Harvard’s Ideological Imbalance
Decrying the lack of conservative faculty overlooks a basic point: The structure of universities themselves lends itself to a professoriate whose politics do not perfectly map on to that of the public writ large. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Can Harvard Cure Science’s Mistrust Epidemic?
Harvard leads the world in science and in philosophizing on how to make the world a better place. It’s time to make metascience a bigger part of the conversation.
Harvard’s Silence Speaks Volumes
A university must be able to articulate a mission — principles to guide it in times of crisis and values to be championed. Though discretion can be prudent, Harvard’s silence leaves its students and the public with nothing to rally behind, eroding trust and undermining its defense in the process.
Harvard’s Social Scene Needs a Last Resort
Harvard’s social scene needs a new staple — somewhere that any Harvard student could go to meet another student they may not have otherwise, or somewhere to go if there is nothing else to do.
Harvard Exists for One Reason and One Reason Only
Although it’s impossible to predict the future, it’s a fair bet that Harvard will remain top of mind in our political debates. As myriad actors seek to impose their political projects onto our campus, it will serve us well to remember our core purpose.
A Lament for the Intellectual Conservative
Once defined by deep philosophical engagement, conservative thought on campus today often centers on spectacle and confrontation — a shift that mirrors the changes in conservative political culture in recent years.