EDITORS' CORNER
OPINION: Sorry, the ‘Just Trust Me’ tack doesn’t cut it anymore
One of my favorite all-time comedy films in 1980’s “Used Cars” starring Kurt Russell and Jack Warden. In it, Russell plays a stereotypical salesguy who plans to buy his way into the Arizona state legislature.
One of the funniest single moments comes when Russell reveals to his coworker where he’ll be moving on to … by showing him his campaign poster (pictured).
This is just what the Harvard student paper, The Crimson, wants you to do (again): “Trust it.”
Three years ago the paper tried to snow us, saying “while it did favor ‘debate and discourse’ which are ‘central to a vibrant intellectual community’ and the ‘lifeblood of academia,'” it doesn’t mean Harvard needed more conservative faculty.
“We find little reason to believe” more right-leaning professors “would increase productive disagreement in any meaningful way,” the editors wrote. Because hey — “liberal professors can disagree.”
Most recently, Crimson Editorial Editor Henry Haidar says the faculty ideological disparity is “not necessarily a bad thing”; after all, he’s “never had a professor attempt to foist their political views onto” a class. (How very Pauline Kael. But at least she was aware of the social circle she inhabited.)
“Instead of thinking critically about why there might be such an imbalance, critics myopically focus on the raw number of conservative versus liberal faculty,” Haidar (pictured) writes. “From this, they surmise that rampant ideological conformity grips our corner of Cambridge.
“While it is entirely fair to point to the lack of conservative faculty at Harvard, it does not necessarily follow that the University consistently takes a conscious stance in favor of liberal ideology or that liberal excess pools in classrooms.”
And c’mon conservatives — fields like sociology, anthropology, and English literature just naturally attract progressives … in part because “the lack of emphasis on human agency or ethics is not a very conservative framework.”
Might as well throw in journalism too, there, Har. And I suppose he’d argue similarly about newspaper/media types: I never read a story that foisted the journalist’s political views upon readers.
Because that’s as believable as your claim about professors.
Given that liberal students outnumber conservatives by over six to one at Harvard, at least have some self-respect like Kael did many years ago and admit it’s pretty damn cozy being surrounded by ideological peers.
Backing up Haidar in a Wednesday editorial, the Crimson editors allege “free speech on campuses like [Harvard] is under attack by a federal government that should supposedly be its guardian”:
The Trump administration has spent the past six months bullying universities like Harvard into restricting speech in seriously harmful ways — from threatening international students to smothering DEI programs. The government has cracked down on pro-Palestine speech and programming, pushed for restrictions on academic freedom, and all but ordered the shuttering of campus resources for marginalized groups.
Yeah, whatever. Perhaps 10-15 years ago many on the right would share such a concern. But not anymore.
MORE: The Left is either really stupid or purposely devious when it comes to free speech
