Idiots on the Charles

My favorite nickname for Harvard has always been “The Kremlin on the Charles.” There is something subversive in the name that touches the inner rebel in me—the idea that my school, however idealized by U.S. News & World Reports and The New York Times, is considered by some (or many) Americans to be a bastion of elitist, pinko revolutionaries.

Elitism and Communism have been hot topics on the campaign trail recently because of Barack Obama’s infamous “bitter” comments. William Kristol ’73, a sometimes Harvard lecturer and a new addition to the Times’ opinion page, made the connection explicit in a column titled, “The Mask Slips.” With McCarthyite overtones everywhere, Kristol compares Obama to Marx, quotes a little German, and makes sure to reference San Francisco. The message, though cloaked in academic language, is clear: the real Obama is a German Commie, who showed his true self when surrounded by freaky West Coast liberals.

Many people have defended Obama better than I can here, so I’ll be brief: What Obama was (maybe) getting at in his comments was what Marx called the idiocy of rural life—a much abused phrase, one that conservatives such as Kristol love to cite.

“Idiocy” or “idiots” for Marx are not defined simply by levels of intelligence. They are descriptive terms that refer to the apolitical nature of rural people. Industrialization excited Marx because he believed that capitalism could be overthrown only through a consolidation of people in cities; then the masses could achieve political power, instead of remaining isolated in their previously family-centric, “private” lives.

Whether people in rural Pennsylvania are “apolitical” or not, whether they foolishly vote against their economic interests or not, are huge issues that Obama and the nation should confront. But what interests me more about Marx’s conception of idiocy is its applicability to life here at Harvard: Maybe “Idiots on the Charles” is a better nickname for 21st century Cambridge than “Kremlin.”

An obvious question is: Who cares? Isn’t college supposed to be “private” time for students, when Wu-Tang and Coors Light are supposed to be at the top of our priority list? Or, the student-scholars on campus might respond, shouldn’t I work a little harder, alone in the stacks of Widener, rather than teach in Mission Hill—isn’t that what Harvard is for?

Such questions obviously apply to any student, but I think that they may be most important for those students on campus who see themselves as “public” figures; who view their work as different from the “private” lives that “COLEGE” is traditionally characterized as; who hope to create a culture of commitment on campus toward service.

After college, only a small portion of Harvard grads continue the service or political work of their time at school—most head to some sector of the business world, while others head to law, medical, or other graduate schools. Maybe they will send some money to help AIDS in Africa or make a phone call for Darfur, but will they care about their neighborhood meetings? Will they think about who is making and enforcing the possibly discriminatory laws in their towns and cities, or who sets up budgets for inner-city versus suburban public schools?

What concerns me is the lack of care at Harvard for politics in our backyard—the politics of everyday life that defines engaged citizens. This type of work lacks the sexiness of “saving the world” ideals, yet is arguably just as important in developing a sense of participation in public life and ending the disengaged apathy that Obama may have been referring to.

The issues that students have the most power to affect are the ones that are most often overlooked: college governance, undergraduate education, expansion into Allston, staff workers’ pay and treatment, etc. There seems to be an inverse relation between the closeness to which an issue hits students and their commitment to specific issues.

My fear is that the far-reaching nature of undergraduates’ political and service work sets up a debilitating separation between those who act and those who do not. Although people make fun of all the little things that House environmental representatives ask of us, they may be doing the most tangible and influential work in making students more socially conscious for the post-Harvard world.

Too often service is separated from everyday life, so that a person has to go to Texas on Alternative Spring Break or be concerned with Darfur to do “good.” That is not to say that going to Texas or Darfur is not good, but only that the idea of service on campus may be too restrictive—that we have given up on affecting major change to the issues that immediately surround us.

If academia teaches us anything, it is that we learn best from specificity: Practicing civic engagement on a local, tangible level at Harvard and in Cambridge might make us much better citizens once we leave the so-called “Harvard Bubble.” If not, the valuable work that students do here might just be a phase, another extracurricular that alumni look back on with nostalgia, which they can no longer fit into the busy schedules of their private lives.

Andrew D. Fine ’09, a former Crimson associate editorial chair, is a social studies concentrator in Eliot House. His column appears on alternate Mondays.