A Nominal Problem

Pity poor Kleenex. The flagship tissue of Kimberly-Clark, its brand name has skipped the company town and now lives a cheap and licentious life of common usage. Despite the best protective efforts of its parent, Kleenex sleeps with all comers. It has become a corporate ne’er-do-well: it has become generic.

Harvard, wary of Kleenex’s fate, has always taken special care to protect its brand. The employees of the Harvard Trademark Program, with an official Orwellian mandate to “protect and control” Harvard’s brand identity across the world, show up to work each day to ensure that, Heaven forbid, no street vendor in Dakar or Dot sells an unlicensed T-shirt with our sacrosanct insignia on it. The Harvard name does not merely signify unrivaled academic power—it signifies the registered trademark of unrivaled academic power, full rights reserved to the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

So it was that late this summer, student groups across campus received an email from the Trademark Program dictating how to use the University’s name “appropriately, accurately, clearly, and in support of the institution’s educational values and mission.” The missive instructed student groups in the finer arts of disclaiming their use of Harvard’s identity, outlining a collection of waivers and boilerplates which must be added to all websites, publications, and events which bear the Harvard name and shield.

The Harvard College Democrats, the Harvard International Review, the Harvard Black Students Association, and presumably the Crimson itself must now announce themselves explicitly as “student-run organizations at Harvard College,” so as not to misrepresent their affiliation.

The intent is obviously to prevent student groups from passing themselves off as official agents of the University. But was this ever a danger? This sort of minutiae is not only senseless nitpicking that falls apart outside the vacuum of common sense in a lawyer’s office, but it’s also a waste of Harvard’s time and money. The University reportedly spends $500,000 to a million dollars each year on weaseling out trademark violations. One would imagine there are better uses for it.

But worse, this paranoid box-ticking is an affront to the fact that student groups augment, not corrupt, the Harvard name. Legally the name Harvard belongs to the President and Fellows. But without the faculty, students, and sub-agencies of the College cooperating in the Harvard project, it is hard to imagine that the name would be worth very much at all. We students are among the people who vest value in the Harvard name in the first place. It is an insult to assert that we have no right to its use, and that the very name of our own institution is something we must qualify and disclaim.

The reality is that the Harvard name has already become generic to a great extent. Google the phrase “the Harvard of” and you receive over 50,000 unlicensed analogies, including “the Harvard of dog-training schools,” “the Harvard of county jails,” and “the Harvard of Hair,” which all employ that precious trademark to indicate the acme of some discipline. No doubt this gives the good people at the Trademark Program troubled dreams and indigestion, but the fact remains that Harvard is already a global brand, and its name long ago jumped the Trademark Program’s semantic fences.

So cut student groups some slack. While the Harvard name may legally belong to upper management, intellectually it is the property of its users—without whose contributions the name’s meaning itself would evaporate. Harvard’s legal archers would find better targets elsewhere.

Garrett G. D. Nelson ’09, a Crimson editorial editor, is a social studies and visual and environmental studies concentrator in Cabot House.