Oh those open-minded liberals.
On Thursday, the Harvard Crimson cautioned conservatives about attending their fine school in an article titled "Warning: Do Not Enroll. If you might want to insult Harvard down the line, go elsewhere":
If you think Harvard is a revolutionary communist hotbed, don’t apply. If you think Harvard is full of “pinheaded” professors, don’t enroll. And if you think Harvard pollutes the minds of its students, don’t walk out of here with a degree—and certainly don’t get two.
Nice beginning, dontcha think?
So what got the Crimson so angry?
You see, lately, there seems to be a pernicious trend of public figures—especially those on the right—falling in love with Harvard just long enough to benefit from its educational resources and, yes, its social prestige, before turning against our school.
Those conservative public figures were Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tx.), Fox News's Bill O'Reilly, and former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney who have all recently made disparaging remarks about Harvard.
After relaying the threesome's transgressions, the Crimson continued:
Such episodes of treachery are apparently attempts to curry favor with the more anti-intellectual members of our body politic. Yet it is finally time that we say enough is enough. We at The Crimson urge anyone who plans on one day scoring political points by maligning Harvard to neither apply, enroll, nor graduate from this fine institution.
Treachery? Anti-intellectual? Is this what people learn at arguably America's finest university today - that speaking against the school you attended is an anti-intellectual act of treason?
Heck, when I went to UC-Berkeley decades ago, it was encouraged.
Let's also be clear that it was indeed a "revolutionary communist hotbed" filled with students worshipping leaders of the former Soviet Union and Cuba.
Now I certainly don't imagine Harvard to be as left-wing as UC-Berkeley, but I'd be shocked if there weren't large numbers of perilously liberal professors and students there today espousing anti-capitalist precepts akin to what I was exposed to decades ago at a school on the other side of the country.
Seemingly oblivious, the Crimson concluded:
If we could have spoken to these three young men, we could have spared them from the fear and anguish that must come part-and-parcel with seeing oneself as instructed by insurrectionists or buffoons. If we could have spoken to these three men, we would have told them never to come to Cambridge.
How foolish. I don't for a second regret attending a school that represented an ideology completely diametric to mine today, nor do I imagine Cruz, O'Reilly, and Romney ruing having gone to Harvard.
Maybe being exposed to extreme liberalism helped shape the four of our beliefs into their present form.
I guess such a conclusion is too intellectual for the folks at the Harvard Crimson.
(HT Craig Moncho, a dear friend I've known since kindergarten.)
