Well, that makes sense, and faculty would probably support the idea of reducing their accountability to radical students.
But, the problem with trying to change Harvard is that Harvard is an unfathomably bureaucratic institution.
Endless committees, reviews, feedback loops, and studies are required to evaluate proposed changes. By the time those are completed, the momentum for change has been forgotten, or changed into something new.
Reducing activism and promoting intellectualism is probably best achieved by the admissions office. Change the mix of incoming personalities and things will change, though there should be changes at the faculty level as well.
Admissions changes can happen every year without being delayed by committees and studies and reviews. There is an unstoppable biological clock pushing admissions forward every year.
The one element left out which has and will have a long-term impact is the following. The departments mentioned are those populated by faculty who have fully bought into the left-leaning ideology, either because they earned their Ph.D.'s in departments steeped in it, or who when faced with the tenure and promotion decision realize they must tow the line or they will never make it. This is reinforced by the publication requirement where the author's work has to pass through a journal review process, satisfying both external reviewers, an associate editor and the editor. Going against what might be called 'current thinking (read ideology)' will doom acceptance, making tenure and promotion difficult. So at the moment the situation is self-perpetuating .
It is the role of the university administration and the Board of Overseers to decide if a department or program has undergone ideological capture. Such a determination was made for the FXB center at the School of Public Health and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Leaders of those programs were replaced, and new leaders will hopefully steer their units in a more reasonable direction.
This article raises the important question of which other university units need such attention. If a Harvard grouping has gone off the deep end and is very different from the field nationally it is straightforward to recruit new people. The bigger problem is what to do about fields that have undergone ideological capture nationally - then the problem becomes similar to choosing elements of the governments of Venezuela and Iran to take over.
This is the meatiest and most provocative article I have read in the Salient. As a distant alum I have no way to verify its claims, but it rings true, and I hope it gains sufficient circulation on campus to generate discussion leading to effective remedial action.
Characterizing a Crimson column by Matthew Tobin as asserting that students "complain that Economics professors do not state their left-wing political opinions frequently enough in class" doesn't give an accurate picture of the column.
"It should disturb us that a concentrator can graduate without engaging seriously with some of the most influential economic theorists ever — like Friedrich Hayek and Karl Marx."
Of course Marx was a Marxist, but Hayek was a libertarian economist who won the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Harvard is horrifying
Well, that makes sense, and faculty would probably support the idea of reducing their accountability to radical students.
But, the problem with trying to change Harvard is that Harvard is an unfathomably bureaucratic institution.
Endless committees, reviews, feedback loops, and studies are required to evaluate proposed changes. By the time those are completed, the momentum for change has been forgotten, or changed into something new.
Reducing activism and promoting intellectualism is probably best achieved by the admissions office. Change the mix of incoming personalities and things will change, though there should be changes at the faculty level as well.
Admissions changes can happen every year without being delayed by committees and studies and reviews. There is an unstoppable biological clock pushing admissions forward every year.
The one element left out which has and will have a long-term impact is the following. The departments mentioned are those populated by faculty who have fully bought into the left-leaning ideology, either because they earned their Ph.D.'s in departments steeped in it, or who when faced with the tenure and promotion decision realize they must tow the line or they will never make it. This is reinforced by the publication requirement where the author's work has to pass through a journal review process, satisfying both external reviewers, an associate editor and the editor. Going against what might be called 'current thinking (read ideology)' will doom acceptance, making tenure and promotion difficult. So at the moment the situation is self-perpetuating .
It is the role of the university administration and the Board of Overseers to decide if a department or program has undergone ideological capture. Such a determination was made for the FXB center at the School of Public Health and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Leaders of those programs were replaced, and new leaders will hopefully steer their units in a more reasonable direction.
This article raises the important question of which other university units need such attention. If a Harvard grouping has gone off the deep end and is very different from the field nationally it is straightforward to recruit new people. The bigger problem is what to do about fields that have undergone ideological capture nationally - then the problem becomes similar to choosing elements of the governments of Venezuela and Iran to take over.
This is the meatiest and most provocative article I have read in the Salient. As a distant alum I have no way to verify its claims, but it rings true, and I hope it gains sufficient circulation on campus to generate discussion leading to effective remedial action.
Characterizing a Crimson column by Matthew Tobin as asserting that students "complain that Economics professors do not state their left-wing political opinions frequently enough in class" doesn't give an accurate picture of the column.
Tobin wrote:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/3/23/tobin-harvard-economics/
"It should disturb us that a concentrator can graduate without engaging seriously with some of the most influential economic theorists ever — like Friedrich Hayek and Karl Marx."
Of course Marx was a Marxist, but Hayek was a libertarian economist who won the Nobel Prize in Economics.