Intellectual Vitality Is More than Op-Eds in The Crimson

It’s clear Harvard faces big questions. Their answers are rarely as obvious.

Following the presidential election, The Crimson published a flurry of op-eds as the Institute of Politics’ student president and staff director publicly disagreed about whether campus’s leading political organization should continue to be nonpartisan. Likewise, last semester’s Harvard Yard encampment and this semester’s library protests have raised questions over the role of protest within the university and the very definition of “disruption.”

Too often, rather than carefully confronting the complexity of these questions, each camp has staked out its position — often without showing themselves appreciative of where others might disagree. As members of the undergraduate body advising the College’s new Intellectual Vitality Initiative, we’ve spent months involved with efforts to change this untenably siloed approach to campus’ most difficult and divisive questions.

For semesters, student protesters and administrators have engaged in a slow-motion game of chicken, with each testing the others’ boundaries. We’ve now arrived at the predictable equilibrium point: Administrators hand out library suspensions, protesters post on Instagram, and The Crimson’s Editorial Board yet again decries the University's “reactionary and targeted” time, place, and manner restrictions.

When controversial speakers are invited to campus — like Riley Gaines, an outspoken opponent of transgender women’s participation in women’s sports — denunciations of their invitation erupt. But even amid a wave of scathing comments in The Crimson and elsewhere, there is little meaningful public engagement with the question of who should — and should not — be invited to speak on campus, and who gets to decide. Forgoing difficult conversations, faculty, administrators, and students alike talk past each other.

In our current economy of public discourse, self-assured assertions have replaced open questioning. The opinion section of The Crimson might look like the place to find intellectual vitality on campus. But as a means of grappling with views we find wrong or even downright abhorrent, op-eds can only take us so far. (The irony here isn’t lost on us.)

We don’t doubt that attempts at discourse happen in many students’ private lives, and of course, there’s no one right way to engage those with whom you disagree. Conversations in the classroom, at speaker events, or in common rooms and dining halls have their merits. Still, 65 percent of last year’s graduating seniors, according to a survey by The Crimson, said that most or all of their friends share their political views, and only 36 percent of students felt comfortable expressing their honest views about divisive issues in the classroom.

A culture of intellectual vitality demands that we admit that our campus’ (and the world’s) most controversial questions are far from settled. Indeed, as much as some might believe that the IOP ought to abandon nonpartisanship or that a ceasefire in the Middle East is necessary, the fact remains that others feel just as strongly in the opposite direction, and still others remain unsure about what they believe.

Intellectual vitality calls for more than simply having a conversation with a Marxist or libertarian to check the “have you talked to someone you disagree with” box. Rather, it’s about treating even the person you disagree with most as someone to learn from — not necessarily so that you change your opinions, but so that you understand theirs.

Intellectual vitality, then, is both how you treat controversial issues — with tolerance for nuance, epistemic humility, and a willingness to engage — and also how you treat your interlocutors — with humanity, capacity for reason, and openness to the possibility of friendship.

What we are working for requires a genuine shift of mindset in our community. The changes necessary to cultivate a more intellectually vital campus cannot be imposed from on high. We all need to adjust our attitudes and behaviors to create an environment in which sharing an unpopular opinion doesn’t immediately result in mockery within like-minded circles or defamation via social media apps, like Sidechat.

The barrier to a better campus culture is not resources but initiative, and there’s no silver bullet for fixing campus culture. But that doesn’t mean that progress is impossible — or that we can exempt ourselves from working toward change.

Jack Flanigan ’27, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Social Studies concentrator in Pforzheimer House. Maya S. Rosen ’25 is a Social Studies and History of Science concentrator in Winthrop House. They are members of the Intellectual Vitality Student Advisory Board.