Editorial 2015

A Losing Legacy

The advantage afforded to children of alumni flies in the face of fairness and only contributes to the College’s culture of valuing familial connections over individual achievement.

By The Crimson Staff

Unfinished Process

The new policies Faust announced were progress, but far from perfect.

By The Crimson Staff

Faust's Bargain

For all its changes, the role of the president remains a position requiring a vision and novel ideas about improving the University.

By The Crimson Staff

Congratulations, Class of 2015!

If the legacy of the Class of 2015 is a culture of service informed by Harvard’s wisdom, the graduates will have done well indeed.

By The Crimson Staff

Don't Sweat the Plan

Be passionate about what you do, and if your first try doesn’t work, do not be afraid to reinvent yourself and be passionate about the second or third try.

By Michael J Astrue

Now, Register To Vote

If you don’t register to vote, you are signaling that the concerns of young people should not be prioritized—after all, you’re not voting.

By Linda Schlossberg

Serious Adult Advice From a Real Adult

One of the creeping signs of adulthood (other than that your year of birth slides gradually farther and farther out of reach on online forms) is the increasingly persistent worry that you missed orientation.

By Alexandra A. Petri

The Future Could Be Now

Holbrooke’s life shows us what an educated, energetic, idealistic, smart and courageous young person can accomplish by applying talent, time, and effort to the really tough problems of today.

By Maxine Isaacs

Failing in Plain Sight

I was a failure until I was 40, and you will be too if you aren’t careful.

By Jonathan Alter

Victory Isn’t Anything

This commencement season, let us put aside both success and failure, and deal with a more difficult topic: Defeat. Loss. Getting your ass kicked.

By Ron Klain

The Unsafe Marketplace

There must be no safe spaces in the classroom or auditorium that protect members of the university community from dangerous, disturbing or even emotionally unsettling ideas.

By Alan M. Dershowitz

The Liberal Diversity Dilemma

Somehow we have got so caught up in the pursuit of diversity that we have drifted away from the core of what it was all about, the core of liberalism: the individual.

By Ayaan Hirsi Ali

What You Might Remember

I suspect that, for many of you, what will endure long after the speeches have been forgotten (if you even paid attention to them in the first place), will be memories of those moments in college when, for whatever reason, you became a slightly better version of yourself.

By Anne Harrington

Truth, Beauty, and Bullshit

All this is to say that when you hear Polonius’s advice—and at a college commencement, I don’t see how you couldn’t—don’t think about yourself.

By Benjamin Bagley

If You Want to Make a Difference, There's No Place Like Home

Harvard is a place that rewards ambition and exploration. From our first days on campus, we’re encouraged to act boldly, think globally, and travel far. Those are worthwhile traits, and we should hold onto them. And for some of us the boldest and bravest way to have an impact is to go where we are needed most: home

By Eric P. Lesser

Commencement 2015

The Harvard Crimson