Get Some Morals, Harvard

The School for Moral Ambition will give you fifteen grand to be a better person.

Besides its attempt to dissuade students from selling out by giving a select few a small fortune to work at non-profits this summer, the organization raises a much bigger question with its name alone: Do students need a school to teach them morality? We think they do — and they want to be taught, too.

So, Harvard should implement a morality course requirement.

The idea of imposing didactic moral teachings on students may seem inappropriate, but Harvard has recognized this necessity from its founding into the 21st century. During the College’s infancy, its Puritan curriculum included philosophical ethics and moral teachings. Even as the University secularized, this requirement remained; for much of the 19th century, seniors at the College reportedly had to take a year-long course in moral philosophy taught by the University President.

Through the turn of the 20th century, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Francis Greenwood Peabody, Class of 1869, encouraged students to consider the religious and social consequences of their era’s progress, helping to start the University’s “Social Museum” and Department of Social Ethics.

His course on social ethics — nicknamed “drainage, drunkenness, and divorce” — was so popular that one out of every four students took it.

There are, of course, significant differences between past epochs and ours; drainage is no longer a primary concern, and explicitly religious instruction favoring one sect would be incongruous with today’s Harvard.

But while teaching about morality has often been religious, it need not be. We’re not proposing that students should subscribe to any faith, but we do believe students would live more fulfilling lives — both now and in their future careers — if they had to engage with morality.

We need not harken back to 1636 to find this; from 1978 to 2007, students at the College could fulfill one of their “Core” requirements with a course in moral reasoning. During that period, one class — Michael J. Sandel’s Moral Reasoning 22: “Justice” — attracted hundreds of, and sometimes over one thousand, students each year. Across decades, Justice was not just the most popular Core requirement, but the most popular course at Harvard College, beating out familiar favorites like Economics 10: “Principles of Economics.”

It’s difficult for us to imagine a similar level of excitement for most of today’s General Education courses — the only exception being when Justice was revived in 2024 for the first time in over a decade, enrolling over 800 students.

Evidently, something horrible happened in 2007 when the College phased out the Core Curriculum in favor of General Education: It got rid of morality — or at least the category. Gone are the Core’s “Moral Reasoning” courses. Now, the closest thing students have are “Ethics & Civics” Gen Eds.

This rebrand has been troublesome for two reasons. First, course topics seem to have changed. Many “Ethics & Civics” classes seem to favor civics over ethics or morality — such as those on republicanism, globalization, and law, politics, and policy. Others have narrow foci, like the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

Second, the words we use — and the questions we ask — matter.

There is too much daylight between the current courses and an explicitly “moral” requirement. The fact that “moral” can be a scary word is the very reason why it is necessary. It is loaded with a value judgment of a person and their actions, and that’s a judgment we must learn to make one way or another.

The College, of all places, needs this kind of edification. Many of its students sell out. A disturbing number of them cheat. It shouldn’t surprise us that admissions to an elite university doesn’t make someone morally flawless — it might even make one more susceptible to such temptations.

Part of the problem with Harvard’s speech climate lies in the fact that students are uncomfortable talking about moral issues, many of which need to be confronted not just in theory, but in our lives and choices. Did we rich meritocrats really deserve to be admitted? If I sell out to McKinsey, am I a bad person? These are uncomfortable questions, but ignoring them is its own answer.

The point of a moral education is not navel gazing about the abstract concept of good and bad. Harvard students go on to become leaders in government, finance, technology, and science, and we cannot assume that moral reasoning will automatically develop alongside technical prowess. They need a moral toolkit to help them think about real problems. As trust in higher education dwindles, the College must introduce a morality requirement to help ensure that every graduate leaves equipped to question how and why power should be used.

We don’t believe there is one correct conclusion or method of moral reasoning; in fact, the point is that there isn’t. But it’s only by critically engaging with the subject that we can come closer to the right answer.

Hopefully then, students will think about their moral responsibility at Harvard and beyond.

Taylor P. Beljon-Regen ’29, a Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Thayer Hall. Matthew R. Tobin ’27, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a double concentrator in Social Studies and Economics in Winthrop House