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What Grades Can’t Measure

By Henry F. Haidar
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A Harvard education isn’t defined by the hours spent in Lamont. It’s defined by how we learn to balance ambition with curiosity. Administrators can change the grading curve, but the real learning happens when students decide what matters to them.

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Op Eds

We Lead the Intellectual Vitality Initiative. Harvard Needs To Set Its Standards Higher.

So yes, we’re fans of the report — not for its prescriptions, but for its provocation. It has forced Harvard, for the first time in a long while, to think out loud about what it’s doing. And that, finally, is something worth grading highly.

Op Eds

Grade Inflation is Bad. Grade Deflation Would Be Worse.

Changing the generosity of our grading system will not end the game of grade grubbing — it will just make the game far more toxic.

Columns

Ethicist, Should I Let Go of My Zionist Friends?

At the end of the day, a friendship built across disagreement does not demand that you hide or abandon your beliefs. Sustaining conversations across ideological and moral divides might require that you strengthen your convictions.

Opinion's Choice

  1. The Editorial Board's Guide to The 2024 Board of Overseers Election
  2. Allston Is Gentrifying, but Harvard Isn’t To Blame
  3. Harvard Must Learn Its Lesson. Institutional Neutrality Is Step One.
  4. We’re Really Sorry About That Antisemitic Cartoon, Guys
  5. Harvard Admissions Should Be More Meritocratic

Editorials

By The Crimson Editorial Board

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What Harvard Won’t Let Interviewers Say

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But given the headwinds of higher education, the disappointing change isn’t unexpected. Harvard and other universities are moving to inaugurate colorblindness as the standard for discussing race, scrubbing identity with the hope that “intellectual vitality” or “viewpoint diversity” can take its place.

Dissent: The Editorial Board Cannot Whitewash Hate

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House resident deans shouldn’t advocate hate towards anyone — full stop. To do so prior to their appointment should be disqualifying; to do so while they are supposedly supporting their students’ wellbeing should result in resignation.

Harvard’s Latest Speech Controversy

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For the sake of Harvard’s intellectual community, University employees should be able to articulate their personal beliefs without fear of retribution.

Op-Eds

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Grading the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Harvard

By Derek Miller
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I suggest Trump drop the project — and his involvement with higher education — immediately.

The Harvard Square ‘KiOSK’ is a Waste of Space — and $12.6 Million

One look at the new KiOSK confirms that the old, eclectic Harvard Square has been strangled by the virulent spread of millennial gentrification once and for all.

Student Workers and the Fight for Academia

Harvard’s refusal to bargain in good faith makes clear that it will not change on its own. Real progress will come only through collective action — with graduate workers, faculty, staff, and students standing together — to resist the cuts to our programs and the assault on our rights as workers, as well as to demand a fair contract.

Columns

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The Fun You’re Missing Is in Lavietes

Harvard's women's basketball team is winning and making history — all while playing to half-empty bleachers.

What TF?

Currently, the TF system is failing students and TFs alike. By employing graduate students to teach subjects they are not always expert in, Harvard is providing a suboptimal educational experience.

Independence Isn’t Cheap, but Harvard Can Afford It

By Ira Sharma
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Talk is cheap, and in our case, inaction far too expensive. It’s time to put our money where our mouth is — that starts with the endowment.