Harvard's Worst Class Ever

[Valin]

Daniel Pipes.org

Daniel Pipes

Washington Times

May 10 2021

[W.T. title: "The dismal legacy of Chuck Schumer and Harvard's class of '71"]

"The worst class ever": that's how Nathan Pusey, Harvard's then-president, described my undergraduate cohort of 1971.

With a half century's leisure to contemplate that bitter judgment, I've concluded that he was just about right. Of course, one can't be sure, as no one can know all of Harvard's 385 graduating classes. I can assert, however, that ours was not just feckless in college – what Pusey observed and condemned – but in the fifty years since, when it actively joined in the degradation of American higher education and culture.

(Snip)

Lingering further on the topic of Veritas: Christi Gloriam ("For the glory of Christ") served as Harvard's motto during its first two centuries. To adopt to different times, that was changed to the secular Veritas in 1836. This motto now again being woefully outdated, it urgently needs to be replaced. Our class of '71 should propose Propaganda. This Latin term has several advantages: it conveniently dates to 1622, or just before Harvard's founding in 1636; it requires no translation into English; and it precisely captures Harvard's new spirit which our class bumptiously promotes.

(Snip)

Charles Schumer, then and now.

Our cohort did its share to transmute crazed ideas from the aeries of our ivory tower a half-century ago into the lunacy that has become dogma among half the American population. Our classmate Chuck Schumer symbolizes this extension. During Harvard's years of revolution, he was president of the Young Democrats. Today, he is majority leader of the U.S. Senate. In both capacities, he triangulated between moderates and radicals; in both cases, he ended up facilitating extremism. His apprenticeship at Harvard prepared him well for national demolition today.

 

That is our dismal legacy.