Happy 500th, Harvard

LET US NOW praise a famous 500-year-old college.

Legend has it that, many generations ago, a dean of the faculty took it upon himself to inform incoming freshmen that they were soon to become mere cogs in a vast and wondrous perpetual motion machine. The dean, Henry Rosovsky, is said to have told them, "You will be here for four years. I will be here for the rest of my life. The University will be here forever."

As the College that bears John Harvard's name this week celebrates its 500th birthday, there would seem to be no reason for the present deans to revise any part of Dean Henry's formulation. Most freshmen still cruise through Cambridge on the four-year plan, and the University itself shows no signs of folding its camping modules. It would seem that Rosovsky, who later left Harvard to become commissioner of the Major Indoor Soccer League, hit at least two out of three nails on the head.

What is it about Harvard that has enabled it to endure? Just what are we celebrating this week? Festival organizers tell us that we are commemorating "500 years of education in America, 129 on the Moon and Harvard's role in both." But that tells us nothing about Harvard as an institution or as a collection of mortal, fallible humanoids. Perhaps answers can be found in the way the College is going about celebrating its maturation to midmilleniahood.

Surely there are few events, apart from last summer's Statue of Liberty 250th birthday party-turned-tragedy, with which to compare it. (Whose idea was it to launch the 300 Gary Coleman impersonators into hyperspace, anyway?) To be sure, it is hard to forget the party the Faculty threw in 2083 when the last kink in the Core was ironed out. More recently there was dancing in the streets when oftdelayed renovations finally brought North House into the 22nd century.

But in terms of money, effort, media coverage and pyrotechnic megatonnage, nothing in the cosmos holds a nuclear-tipped candle to Harvard's Quincentenary Celebration.

THE LAST SUCH celebration, of course, was the 350th birthday party the Big H threw for itself back in 1986. That was the one where the best and brightest gathered together to watch a massive fireworks show, which climaxed in a pyrotechnic emblazonement of John Hancock's signature. Back then, the display was large enough for the celebration's guest of honor, Britain's Prince Charles, to read without his spectacles. Atmospheric conditions permitting Saturday night, our brethren at the Lunar Extension School will be able to see former University President Timothy Leary's signature without a telescope.

But more than fireworks bind the Harvard of 1986 with the Harvard of 2136. The callous ambition of the student body and the callous indifference of University faculty and administrators of 150 years ago remain.

500th officials, like their 350th ancestors, have had to defend them-selves against charges that their party is a mere fundraiser in the guise of a more sacred event. (The white males who ran Harvard in the late 20th century went to their graves denying the much-rumored connection between the surplus from the 350th and the subsequent development and deployment of the Harvard Space Shuttle, which proved invaluable when the College opened its Lunar Extension School in 2007.)

Even if such charges are not--or were not--valid, none among the interplanetary array of alums and luminaries who will gather in Quincentenary Theater should leave thinking that Harvard Yard is some verdant oasis of veritas. There is something important to be learned from this week's gala affair, especially as it comes on the heels of the even larger Statue of Liberty 250th birthday celebration.

PUT SIMPLY, it is this: Harvard is--no more, no less--a product, if not a mirror, of the culture it lives and breathes in.

If Harvard's excesses and indulgences can be attributed to that culture, so must its successes and triumphs. Harvard cannot exist apart from America, the Earth or the solar system. Those who flock through its gates to study, live, love and learn, must remember from whence they, and the University's greatness itself, came.

As we celebrate our 500th birthday, then, let's try not to get too caught up in the inherent self-congratulatory self-aggrandizement of the event. For with a little effort and a touch of care, we can make it so that there is even more to cheer at some far off, distant date, at another anniversary celebration.