Remembering Things Past

The following are excerpts from selected staff editorials that appeared in The Crimson during the last academic year.

Kenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. '53 is the focus of yet another controversy at Harvard. That's certainly nothing new. What was new, fortunately, was the campus reaction.

Last week, Mansfield testified at the Denver trial of the Colorado state constitution's Amendment Two, the law that prevents Colorado cities from enacting gay rights statutes...

The College's Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian Student Association (BGLSA) was outraged by Mansfield's testimony...

But besides the meetings and posters, the BGLSA offered something that is too often missing during campus debates: a sincere defense of Mansfield's freedom of speech and, even more importantly, a invitation for him to discuss the issue... October 27, 1993

The revamped Holyoke Center shopping area is bright, flashy and modern....Holyoke Center is now a piece of an ongoing trend: the mall-ification of Harvard Square...

But we have to question the business sense behind Harvard Real Estate's (HRE) apparent decision to pursue the yuppie market. While the trend might lead to big profits in the short run, HRE could well be bartering away the future of the Square...

And another thing. That huge "Shops by Harvard Yard" sign by Massachusetts Avenue--we think it's ugly and gaudy and call for its immediate and complete removal...   November 10, 1993

Since 1991, the Harvard community has marveled at the tremendous growth within the Department of Afro-American Studies. With the appointment of Cornel R. West '74, Harvard's Afro-Am department has established itself as the country's unequivocal center of Afro-Am scholarship...

It only goes to show what a little commitment can do. Three years ago, when West refused a tenured post in Afro-Am, the department had only one tenured professor and a small, embitered group of concentrators who were certain that Harvard was not taking their needs seriously. Since the, Afro-Am has been transformed--not only because of [DuBois Professor of the Humanities and Afro-Am chair Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s] charismatic leadership, but also because [former President Derek C. Bok and former Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky ] were willing to devote the resources to rebuilding Afro-Am.   November 19, 1993

The headline in The Harvard Gazette, the University's propaganda organ, put it euphemistically: "Museum Staff to Be Restructured." The staff of Harvard's Semitic Museum wasn't "restructured"--it was fired...

As more facts have emerged about the struggle over the museum, it has become clear that [Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles'] decision to sack the museum's 10-member staff...was not a tough-minded act to courage, but a misguided act to cowardice in the fact of a tenured professor's power play...

Rather than "restructuring" the museum, Harvard should revitalize it by raising money, keeping the staff and seeking new exhibitions that attract students, faculty and the wider community to his unique and valuable resource.   December 8, 1993

...After all the recent controversy surrounding the Expository Writing program--culminating in the December resignation of its embattled director, Richard C. Marius--we would expect Harvard administrators search for Marius' replacement...

Several Expos staffers have told The Crimson that the administration has all but guaranteed Marius' post of his current associate director, Nancy Sommers...

It's not that we think Sommers is a poor candidate. Indeed, we think she presents strong credentials...

In any case, the troubles of the past certainly merit more than a token search for the person who is to lead Expos into the future. And if Nancy Sommers is indeed the best person for the Director's job--as she may well be--then she should be able to win it through a legitimate national search.   February 4, 1994

...Students have complained for years about the Harvard tradition for holding fall semester exams after winter recess. The winter vacation rings hollow as papers and problem sets remain due well into reading period and finals linger menacingly in the not-too-far-off future. And time spent with family is often cut short as Harvard students are compelled to rush back to campus in January and then must decide whether it is worth their time and money to attempt to return home for the few days of intersession...

We fear the calendar torture persists largely because administrators are able to withstand complaints long enough for each crop of students to graduate...   February 5, 1994

Together with the rest of the nation, we have watched with horror as details of radiation tests on unknowing subjects during the 1940s and fifties have become known. And we have been especially distressed upon learning that some of the tests--those that took place at the Walter E. Fernald State School for the retarded in Waltham--were led by Harvard faculty...

Harvard, MIT and the state should expeditiously acknowledge the full extent of their responsibility for the Fernald experiments and should be forthcoming with substantial financial compensation that includes lifelong health care for the victims. Refusing to do so--and extending this saga further through legal maneuvers and court battles--would only compound the tragedy of the crimes that were committed.   February 7, 1994

...Although we do not support the complete elimination of Radcliffe per se, we do advocate opening Radcliffe completely to men and making equal, joint citizenship a reality for male and female students.

While Radcliffe offers many benefits only to women, the existence of Radcliffe as distinctly separate from Harvard implies that female students are not fully a part of Harvard. In this manner, Radcliffe relegates women to the status of second class citizens at Harvard...

At the same time, significant opportunities are offered only to Radcliffe students...

Just as women should not denied the benefits of final clubs merely because they are women, men should not be denied the benefits of Radcliffe simply because of their gender...   February 11, 1994

...At least last year..students had a possible reason for protesting at Junior Parents Weekend that was related to the event itself--there was no Asian-American representation on a student panel about race relations..

Following last year's protest the students kept thee momentum going, meeting one-on-one with various toplevel administrators and participating in a town meeting to discuss their concerns...

This year, however, the students haven't done much until now. Indeed, even this weekend's protest seemed half-hearted...

We're not condemning the protesters for voicing their concerns. But we hope that, in the future, they choose forums for expressing themselves carefully, and not simply protest for the sake of protesting.   March 7, 1994

The residential real estate market in Cambridge is in a peculiar state of forced equilibrium. The tenants aren't moving, the landlords aren't buying and the rents just stay the same...

The current rent control system is rotten to the core..

Basic economic theory points out that the surest way to generate a short-age in the supply of a certain good is to institute a price ceiling. This is exactly what we are seeing now in Cambridge...

The City of Cambridge has made a mockery of property rights and is discriminating against those who possess land in favor of those who do not, pursuing no clear end save to wantonly transfer value from landlords to tenants without regard to financial status.   March 10, 1994

...Just as students may choose their activities and concentrations based upon their particular preferences, so too should they be able to choose the house in which they wish to live, sleep and socialize...

A better plan would be to allow each blocking group to list all 12 houses in order to preference and assign them accordingly. This utilitarian system would achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of Harvard undergraduates.

Any attempt to limit the freedom to choose a house has an insulting and paternalistic aspect....It denies that students may have the character and maturity to find a good mix of difference and similarity in their social interactions...   March 11, 1994

With his recent controversy, we must begin to wonder about the intentions of the Undergraduate Council. Isn't it time to worry when the president of our student government only selectively follows the will of students and the mandates of the council's own constitution...

With these questions, we applaud the likely intervention of Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III....Epps should immediately instruct the council to follows its own rules...

It is a sad day when students can be saved from their own representatives only by the grace of sympathetic administrators. Unfortunately, that day has come.   April 15, 1994

When the news came last week that just, over two years after being appointed, Provost Jerry R. Green was resigning to return to the Harvard economics department, we--along with the rest of the University--were shocked. And dismayed. And confused.

Shocked, because there were no indications, not even the slightest hints, to regular Mass. Hall watchers, that Green wasn't enjoying his job, or that others were dissatisfield with the job he was doing...

Dismayed, because we like Jerry Green....Indeed, among administrators, Green is a rare breed--he says what he thinks....

Finally, we were more than a little confused by the announcement of Green's resignation. Most curious fall is that, to this day, neither Green, nor Rudenstine, nor anyone else has said why the Provost decided to return to active scholarship...

We...are sorry to see the Provost go. We'd just like to know why.   April 18, 1994

Once more, the top officials of the Harvard Management Company (HMC) have pocketed barrels of money for investing Harvard's $6 billion endowment...

If Harvard's performance justified the higher salaries, we might not be so concerned. But it doesn't....Other leading universities typically also perform as well or better than Harvard does over the long term, while paying far lower combinations...

As Harvard embarks on the biggest fundraising campaign in higher education history, we think the University's reluctance to reassess HMC's purpose and procedures is unfortunate. There has never been a better time for a comprehensive re-evaluation of the way Harvard manages its money.   April 29, 1994

It is increasingly clear that the term "core" is a misnomer. The name implies that what is learned in the core is basis, essential knowledge for a liberal arts education. The reality is that the core is a selection of poorly administrated classes of peripheral importance to student's educations...

The program, created in 1979, was intended as a means of teaching students "approaches to knowledge."...

But is the core is supposed to teach "approaches to teachers don't appear to know how.

Ways of improving the core are out there. Unfortunately, the administration doesn't seem to be looking for them...   April 26

...Harvard's administration must put an end of its cowardly dance with discrimination: Cut all ties with ROTC, effective with the Class of 1999.

The military's policy only lingers because of lingering prejudice, which fosters ridiculous stereotype and false assumptions...

By affirming its own ethical stand against discrimination, the University would be sending an urgent message to washington, and to the rest of the country. Harvard could credibly use its bully pulpit to decry the military's ban on gays as nothing more than a homophobic defense of the status quo...   April 29