Dean Pfister Delivers Again
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Donald H. Pfister, a longtime Harvard faculty member and administrator who chaired a committee that reviewed the Administrative Board in 2008-2010, will serve as interim Dean of the College.
The eagerly anticipated piece of surrealism and wit from Donald H. Pfister, Interim Dean of the College, appeared in undergraduate mailboxes on Tuesday afternoon and changed the administrative email game once again, offering intense revelations on subjects as varied as gigantic pumpkins and Instagram.
The subject line, a subtle interpolation of the popular Anglophilic meme of “Keep Calm and (Additional Instruction)” to “Keep Calm and Go Sox,” acts as a bitingly skeptical rebuff of conformity and literary convention.
Pfister next delves into his professorial goings-ons, offering a detailed description of his class’s apple experiments. The Dean even offers a spoiler to those in his course, revealing that “coming on Halloween I will be mentioning the world record pumpkins.” With the kind of technical flourish we have come to expect from Pfister, he embeds a link to the Topsfield Fair, where said pumpkins were put on display earlier in the month.
The highlight of the email is undoubtedly Pfister’s advertisement of his Freshman Parents' Weekend tour of the myriad varieties of trees in Harvard Yard.
No Pfister communiqué would be complete without an erudite literary allusion, and, true to form, he again references how much he "enjoy[s] reading a good mystery." (I also recently learned that my mother bought "How the Light Gets in: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel," Pfister’s recommended text from last month’s letter, for a plane flight between Denver and San Francisco. Is a merger with Oprah’s Book Club in the works??)
Pfister’s letters captivate the community with their trailblazing honesty, candor, and intellectual depth. I wait with bated breath for what new innovations and insights are in store for the next missive.