My New Book!

My New Book!
My New Book!

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

February 19, 2025: Places I Love and Hate: Harvard

[For this year’s installment in my annual anti-favorites series, I wanted to complicate things a bit, considering places from across my life with which I have love/hate relationships. I’d love to hear your own complex (or simple!) anti-favorites, whether places or anything else, for the crowd-sourced weekend airing of grievances!]

I’ve dedicated a number of prior posts to impressive individuals who contributed meaningful moments to my undergraduate experience, including:

Peter Gomes, the groundbreaking minister who sat down with us at lunch one day in the freshman dining hall;

Alan Heimert, the most demanding teacher I ever had and (despite all our differences in style and tone) one of my clearest inspirations for my own teaching;

And Mark Rennella, my senior thesis advisor who became a lifelong friend.

I always say that the people were my favorite part of my time at Harvard, and those are a few of the many reasons why. But my least favorite part was the institution’s snottiness about its own legacies and self-importance, and I have to admit that as a public university professor who despairs at how many news stories focus on Harvard and its Ivy League peers as if they are the norm for (or even vaguely representative of) higher education in America, my frustrations with those aspects of Hahvahd has only deepened over the quarter-century since my graduation.  

Next love/hate place tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Anti-favorites you’d share?

No comments:

Post a Comment