Conservative columnist David French writes in the New York Times this week that he has “a complicated relationship with Harvard.” So do I.
French grew up in a small town in Kentucky and went to Christian schools, then to Harvard Law. As an evangelical, he found the law school’s atmosphere unwelcoming. Harvard “has maintained one of the least tolerant cultures in American higher education,” he writes. Still, he admits, the law school set him on a great career. And he’s not at all happy about the administration’s threat to withhold billions of dollars in research funds if Harvard doesn’t make radical changes in its admissions policies and governance. Me neither.
When I was growing up as a Red Diaper Baby in New Jersey, all I knew about the school was the song “Fight Fiercely, Harvard” on my big brother’s Tom Lehrer record. It’s a brilliant ditty with its own kind of complexity, making fun of Boston Brahmin stuffiness (“impress them with our prowess, do”) while skewering America’s football “fight song” culture.
Lehrer, who turned 97 last month and still lives in Cambridge, wrote the song in 1945 when he was a Harvard sophomore. He later taught math at Harvard, MIT, Wellesley, and the University of California Santa Cruz, and was touched, half a century after composing his effete fight song, to find that the Harvard Band played it at every home football game.
I was shocked when Harvard admitted me, and I had a mixed experience as an undergraduate, not because I found people intolerant but because I felt invisible, lost in huge lecture halls. Singing in the Glee Club saved me for a while, but I dropped out for a couple of years before returning and managing to graduate. Later, I came back to the college to teach writing and work as an editor at the Graduate School of Education.
Harvard taught me to persevere, and the university has certainly helped the Independent do the same. Six young journalists studying there have joined our newsroom for a summer or longer, some with financial support from the Harvard Club of Cape Cod. Two more summer fellows from the Crimson are coming to work with us next month.
It’s hard not to have reservations about some of the ways Harvard wields its influence. But it’s also true that almost every person I studied or worked with there was trying to make the world a better place, not seeking to dominate, debase, or exploit others. Watching the capitulation to autocrats’ clumsy strong-arm tactics by so many politicians, law firms, and universities has been depressing. And seeing Harvard refuse to submit and instead lay the groundwork to fight has put Tom Lehrer’s jaunty lyrics back in my head:
“Fight fiercely, Harvard, fight, fight, fight, demonstrate to them our skill. Albeit they possess the might, nonetheless we have the will…. Be of stout heart and true. Come on, chaps … Won’t it be peachy if we win the game?”
