Standing up for Harvard
by Robert David Jaffee
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In the fall of 1983, when I was a freshman at Yale, Harvard came to town for the 100th edition of The Game, the annual football clash between the varsities of the two schools.
The Game was not memorable that year. Yale did not have a strong team and won only one contest that season, and though Yale played a spirited game, Harvard, a power that year in the Ivy League, won.
What stood out for me more was the jamboree later that night when the Krokodiloes, Harvard’s preeminent singing group, joined the Whiffenpoofs, Yale’s famed a cappella group.
A few members of the Kroks saluted Cole Porter, a Yale graduate and one of the original Whiffs, and the Harvard group then sang a few Porter tunes.
That good sportsmanship meant a lot to all of us assembled that day.
It showed class and charm by the Harvard singers.
I have been thinking about this lately as Harvard, one of the world’s leading universities, is being attacked by Trump.
The world does not revolve around our country’s chief executive, whom I long ago dubbed the solipsist-in-chief.
Nor does the world revolve around any mortal or any institution.
And yet the solipsist in chief seems to be fixated on Harvard, our country’s oldest and one of its most prestigious schools.
Years ago, when I was a junior at Hopkins, a prep school in New Haven, Conn., I won the Harvard Book Prize, which, as everyone knew at the time, tended to be an indication that the winner would be accepted the following year at Harvard.
As it turned out, I applied early to Yale in the fall of 1982 and was accepted there.
Without getting into too much ancient history, I still applied to Brown and Harvard and was accepted at the former. I was told that I was going to be accepted at the latter, but my application to Harvard was evidently undermined by the lies of some people from my high school, who damaged my reputation.
None of this matters much anymore.
For what it is worth, I never felt particularly comfortable at Harvard, when I visited.
I felt more comfortable at Yale and Brown.
But I always had great respect for Harvard as an institution.
Much has been made of Harvard’s role as a research university. It is a leader in the country and the world in trying to help cure many of the planet’s illnesses, including ALS, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis and many other problems.
Harvard should be applauded for being a beacon of medical and scientific advances, one incidentally that employs Jews and others to work in and run its labs and conduct experiments that can save lives.
This makes it particularly deplorable that Trump’s allegation that Harvard, as an institution, is anti-Semitic, a lie on its face, is being used to justify the White House’s attempts to cut funding to Harvard, to deport foreign students and to demand oversight of Harvard’s curriculum and its law review.
It is painful to me that Trump, who spoke of the “many fine people on both sides,” during the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va., would cloak his lie that Harvard is anti-Semitic, so that he can claim to wear the mantle as a friend of the Jewish people.
I recognize that many of us have at times been ticked off at Harvard over the years for various reasons.
I probably brought more bite to my critiques of articles written by some graduates of Harvard because of my own issues with Harvard.
But Harvard is without a doubt one of the world’s greatest institutions of higher learning.
It has produced not only great research to help cure our world’s illnesses. It has also produced great writers, like Norman Mailer, George Plimpton, Michael Kinsley and others whom I admire.
The rivalry between Harvard and Yale has for the most part been a good-natured one.
Yes, it was annoying when Harvard dubbed the 29-29 tie in The Game in 1968 as a “win.”
And, yes, it was distasteful when Harvard posted signs before some football games, “You may win, but you didn’t get in.”
But these are trivial issues, pathetic ones, that we all need to get over.
Harvard’s motto, as we know, is veritas, Latin for truth.
Yale’s motto is lux et veritas, light and truth.
Wherever we have gone or not gone to school, we all need to fight Trump’s assault on the truth.
And we all need to illuminate these issues, including the fact that Trump’s attempt to destroy Harvard is an attempt to shroud us all in darkness and destroy our world.
Robert Reich has pointed out that “ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny.”
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Reich is, of course, right.
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If we don’t illuminate the truth, if we don’t stand up to Trump and for Harvard and all of our institutions, our democracy could perish in darkness.
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In “Bright College Years,” Cole Porter wrote the refrain, “For God, for country and for Yale.”
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I would simply add that God, who always comes first, cannot be happy that our solipsist in chief is claiming to be on a divine mission in any respect.
Our country has never faced such a threat as it is facing now. And we need Harvard, Yale and every school in this country to stand up for one another and the truth.
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