Harvard Diary
Harvard Was Founded In 1636, While Galileo Was Still Alive, And Academia Believed The Sun Revolved Around The Earth. January 26, 2015
Jan 26, 2015
The Harvard Snob
It’s said that there is no snob like the Harvard snob. But most snobbish of all, arguably, is the Harvard Business School snob. An HBS friend of mine who went on to teach at Stanford says that one day somebody on the Stanford campus asked him where the business school was. So, with great relish, he turned around, pointed in the opposite direction and said, “Go that way to the airport, take the next flight to Boston, and it’s the big brown building beside the Charles River.”
From Cambridge to Cambridge
It’s interesting to think that Harvard was founded in 1636. Which, to put it into historical perspective, was while Galileo was still alive, and academia believed the sun revolved around the earth. In fact, Harvard was founded just 16 years after the Pilgrim Fathers first landed in America. A charming contemporary pamphlet tells us of the priorities of those visionary settlers: “After God had carried us safe to New England, and we had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, rear’d convenient places for God’s worship, and settled the Civill Government, one of the next things we longed for was to advance Learning.... And as we were thinking how to effect this great work, it pleased God to stir up the heart of one Mr Harvard (a lover of learning) to give one-half of his estate, being about £1,700 towards the erecting of a Colledge” in Cambridge, Massachussets.
Harvard was based largely on the model of England’s Cambridge University, where many of the colony’s leaders, including John Harvard, had studied. But, ironically, while there are various statues of the university’s historical luminaries dotted around the campus, there is none of John Harvard himself. Or rather, there is a statue that purports to be him but, in fact, it is not. Yes, it is confusing. According to Harvard lore, since there was no likeness of John Harvard available, they based the statue, instead, on a likeness of Leonard Hoar, an early college president, and passed it off as John Harvard. And why did they choose Mr Hoar for this particular honour? Well, apparently to compensate for the fact that, contrary to the usual practice, they were unable to commemorate him by naming a house on the campus after him for one rather embarrassing reason. After all, how would it sound for Harvard students to go around telling people they lived in Hoar House?
Signs of the Times
In the Harvard Class of 2014, 34 per cent of the students were from overseas, most of them, as is evident on campus, from China and India. At the Harvard Coop Cafe, I was interested to note, there were three newspapers available for customers to read over their latte: the Boston Globe, the New York Times and—guess what?—The China Daily. Which is obviously indicative of something. But, on the other hand, on the HBS notice boards, I came across the list of the MBA Class of 2014, and felt a certain pleasure in seeing prominently displayed among the ‘High Distinctions’—the creme de la creme—the names of Vaibhav Gujral, Ankur Gulati, Nickhill Singh and Gaurav Toshniwal, while there were (I couldn’t help counting) only two Chinese names, Cathy Zhou and Sean Liu. How easy it is to lapse into this kind of competitive jingoism.
In the HBS men’s toilets, meanwhile, there was a different kind of sign of our times: nappy-changing stations for babies. You may have leap-frogged into the $138,000 salary bracket, buddy, but you still can’t shirk your daddy chores.
Celeb Dropouts
Going to Harvard has obvious advantages. The university can claim a total of 153 Nobel Prize winners, more than any country, other than the US. Even the dropouts don’t do too badly. One, for example, co-wrote the script of the multiple award-winning Goodwill Hunting, and went on to a successful acting career. That was Matt Damon. Meanwhile, another dropout could well be the university’s 154th Nobel Prize winner: Bill Gates, for the remarkable work of his Gates Foundation. But then he’s also the only dropout whom Harvard has deemed worthy of a compensatory honorary degree.
Quants vs Quals
Much has been said about the cultural differences between Harvard and its neighbour, MIT, the latter allegedly being quantitative in its approach, the former more qualitative. The story goes that at a local Cambridge supermart, an Express checkout counter had a great big sign above it saying, ‘FOR SHOPPERS WITH 5 PACKAGES OR LESS’. A student lands up here with a trolley piled high with groceries. The cashier turns to him, wearily, and asks, “So, are you one of those Harvard grads who can’t count, or one of those MIT ones who can’t read?”
At Mr Bartley’s Gourmet
Burgers near Harvard Square, and they serve a burger called the Obamacare Burger. The menu says, “Nobody knows what’s in it. Ask the liberal next to you.”
