Senior spring is a wonderful time at Harvard. Theses are done, coursework is light, and the weather has (finally) improved. I have enjoyed senior spring tremendously since turning in my thesis, and I am confident that it will be my best semester yet. But one thing still troubles me. As commencement nears, seniors are constantly subjected to the question, “What are you doing next year?” Many Harvard students have an answer by senior spring, even in this economic downturn, so perhaps the question does not bother them. For students like me, however, who can only answer with a shrug of the shoulders, the question can be a bit distressing.

Harvard students are neurotic, and so I attribute part of my unease to a crisis of confidence. If other students have successfully courted an employer or a graduate school, why haven’t I? And what does that say about me? This is indeed troubling, but I think something else is at work too. Lately I have started to think that I dislike the question not only because of the uncertainty in my future, but also because of what the question typically implies. When someone asks, “What are you doing next year?” at Harvard, there is a good chance the answer will be finance or consulting. In the last few years, anywhere from 20 percent to nearly half of all seniors entered one of those two professions.

Harvard students’ affinity for investment banks and consulting firms is unsettling because it suggests that the leaders of tomorrow are choosing their careers in a moral vacuum. The more we learn about the financial sector, in particular, the clearer it becomes that it is comprised largely of vulgar con artists. Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone has written a number of damning exposés demonstrating that financial firms routinely resort to fraud, bribery, and anything else that increases their profits. Most recently, evidence is emerging that “synthetic rate swaps” by Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan are behind much of the crippling debt owed by cities, states, and countries, from Chicago to Mississippi to Greece.

I suspect that, by and large, the bankers and consultants of tomorrow are not asking themselves, “What can I do for my community?” They are instead asking, “How can I most profitably sell my labor?” Harvard students know that they have the skills that financial and consulting firms desire, and these companies spare no expense when courting in Cambridge.

As a result, for many of my peers their career choice is a decision between competing offers to do different versions of the same thing: make a very small group of extremely wealthy people even wealthier, often at the cost of everybody else.

Too many students are willing to ignore questions like “Is this ethical?” and “Who will benefit from my work?” They ignore these questions on the false premise that the private sphere is devoid of moral considerations. When I ask friends what they think about their future in banking or consulting, they typically acknowledge the improprieties while conceding that it does not bother them; it is as if the moral character of their work were irrelevant.

Yet your career choice is a moral decision, perhaps the most significant moral decision we will make. Students should reject the false notion that their career choices have no bearing on society and embrace the social responsibility that comes with the influence and prestige that a Harvard degree affords.

I have no doubt that my peers will be the leaders of tomorrow, but I worry about where they will lead us. Rather than lining up to serve those who need no assistance, my fellow seniors and I should search for where we can make the greatest difference. This will be difficult and will surely produce uncertainty, but I can live with uncertainty if it means I do not have to compromise my values. This comforts me every time I admit that I do not know what I am doing next year, and I hope that more of next year’s seniors will take comfort in it as well. Harvard students are diligent and talented, and the world can be a better place if we decide to make it so.

William Leiter ‘10 is the Editor-in-Chief Emeritus

Photo Credit: Flickr (laverrue)

The announcement, which came during a Super Bowl pre-game show, is noteworthy for a number of reasons. First, it finally represents a decision to fulfill Obama’s campaign promise to conduct negotiations in front of CSPAN cameras. In this regard, it is hard to argue with the summit given that the alternative to such negotiations is months of back-room deals with moderates in the House and Senate. Moreover, the summit will augment the scrutiny of Republican counter-proposals, which the White House has clearly prioritized after the Scott Brown debacle. But does that mean it moves us any closer to passing health care reform?

My initial reaction is skeptical. From the perspective of the White House, there appears to be two possible positive outcomes from these negotiations: A) A handful, or just one or two Republicans acquiesce and agree to a further stripped-down bill, perhaps focusing primarily on “insurance reform” that does little to expand health care. B) Voters gain a better grasp of the Democrats’ position on health care, recognize that the GOP is not offering viable alternatives, and therefore decide to support health care reform after all. This latter option, I can only assume, is understood as an indirect path to a better bill.

It’s hard for me to imagine either of these scenarios producing a better health care bill than the ones the House and Senate already passed. The first would be quite strange given the tremendous success that the GOP has achieved through its current strategy of obfuscating the debate and rejecting most all reform provisions out of hand, and even if it succeeded it would produce a bill that will most likely not expand coverage. The second seems even more unlikely given that it would require the public to demonstrate more patience and understanding than it has since this process began.

Unfortunately, my guess is that option A is the most likely, and that the White House knows this. Even if House Democrats had the votes to do it, the Obama administration is clearly uninterested in passing the Senate bill. If this were not the case, why would the President be calling for a health care summit to debate the issues further? Reconciliation also appears off the table for the same reason. Yet at the same time complete failure, i.e. not passing anything, is still the worst possible scenario for Democrats. Accordingly, I expect the White House and Senate Democrats to focus on picking up a handful of GOP votes for something that is called “health care reform,” but does little to expand coverage or reduce costs. The President said that he will not start these negotiations from scratch, which I interpret to mean that they will focus on passing a package of reforms picked from the original bill, but without the more controversial elements.

A bill that banned insurance providers from rejecting applicants because of pre-existing conditions will still do a lot of good for Americans, but I doubt too many liberals made this their top priority to get “insurance reform”.

Photo credit: Charles Dharapak/Associated Press

The address, titled “The Press Under a Free Government,” was actually a consideration of the possibility that wealthy newspaper owners would put profit before the public interest in covering the news. In the speech, Coolidge concluded that the dual role of the press, “whereby it is on one side a purveyor of information and opinion and on the other side a purely business enterprise,” was not a “cause for alarm.” He felt that because business was so much a part of America -”After all, the chief business of the American people is business” – and because wealth is not an end in itself but rather a means to “the widening of culture,” we need not fear the influence of profit on the press.

Looking back on Coolidge’s remarks, one is struck by both the prescience of his concerns, and the falseness of his reassurances. Recent financial trouble in the media, particularly with newspapers, has forced profitability to the forefront of decision making in the press. Coolidge believed that, since business was an integral part of America, a newspaper that was not influenced by profit would be less reliable than one that was, but even a brief comparison of the news programs on PBS to those on Fox News or MSNBC strongly suggests otherwise.  The preponderance of misinformation on death panels and President Obama’s citizenship indicate that the quest for ratings has indeed detracted from news quality.

Coolidge’s second point, that Americans are not driven to pursue wealth itself and that newspaper owners will thus consider the greater good, is even more off the mark.  He felt that, “So long as wealth is made the means and not the end, we need not greatly fear it,” and that 1925 America exemplified this correct view of wealth. To say that his confidence on the brink of the Great Depression was misplaced would be a painful understatement. Even more painful is the resemblance between 1925 and 2007, where from bankers’ bonuses to golden parachutes wealth was again viewed as a panacea, with consequences nearing those of 1929.

Yet we should not let Coolidge’s shortsightedness stand in the way of embracing what he got right. In the speech he wisely remarked that, “The accumulation of wealth can not be justified as the chief end of existence,” and that in America, “we make no concealment of the fact that we want wealth, but there are many other things that we want very much more.” In reconstructing our economy we should forget Coolidge’s policy prescriptions, but remember his recognition of the limits of wealth. Failing to do so would be both morally disastrous, and bad for business.

The two losses were the narrowest selections I have witnessed, and were more contentious than usual. I can understand why “Fog of War: Drug Policy in America” is controversial. Supporters felt it exemplified the characteristics of a good covers topic – coherency, a diversity of topics, and a dearth of media coverage. Opponents worried that a college publication would not be taken seriously on the issue, and insisted it was untimely. But something else also stirred unease; there was squeamishness at discussing U.S. drug policy. It was as if students worried that by choosing the topic, the HPR would be condoning the influence of drugs on the United States, or making light of the consequences of drug abuse. While neither could be further from the truth, these misconceptions unfortunately plague our country even more seriously than they did the HPR’s cover selection.

There are myriad reasons why the discourse on drug policy is so unsophisticated in the United States. Those who suffer the consequences of misguided drug policies are likely to be disenfranchised from the political process, including people with criminal records, the poor, and youth. The common presumption that anybody who supports drug policy reform is simply seeking easier access to his or her drug of choice only makes it more unlikely the issue will attract vocal advocates. And the most depressing part is that America’s imprudent drug laws do not just impact drug abusers and those convicted of drug crimes, but too often their families, friends, and neighbors as well.

What is needed, then, is for more Americans not directly affected by drug policy to reconsider the issue. A little time spent reading about the costs and ramifications of drug prohibition, the effectiveness of substituting treatment programs for incarceration, and the success of new methods for minimizing the social harms of drugs will go a long way. The covers section in this issue is an excellent starting point, and I hope it will motivate readers to continue to explore. I am confident that anybody who considers, for example, the tremendous success of Portugal’s decriminalization measures, or Switzerland’s experiment in prescribing heroin addicts their fix, will return to his or her thoughts on drug policy with a different outlook.

It is of course unreasonable to expect a surge of Americans to study the issue in this way. But there is already momentum behind reform, and if even a handful of informed individuals are willing to speak unabashedly about the dire need to revisit America’s drug policy, it will go a long way. It took three hours of discussion over seven months for the HPR, a group of college students disproportionately from California, Massachusetts, and New York, to come around on the seriousness of addressing U.S. drug policy. It will undoubtedly take the American electorate much longer, but I am confident that with effort, it eventually will.

Maybe it is a minor case of claustrophobia, but whatever the reason I find the Empire City quite unpleasant. Hailing from northern California, I am used to things being fairly spread out; even San Francisco, the third most densely populated city in America, is only 60 percent as dense as New York. The most troubling consequence of the extreme density, for me, is the frequent inability to see the horizon. San Francisco, while home to its fair share of skyscrapers, is a hilly city and thus regularly allows one to see far off into the distance. Golden Gate Heights, Telegraph Hill and many other spots afford tremendous views of the City by the Bay. In this regard New York, which is comparatively flat, cannot compete. Sure, you can see all of New York from the top of a skyscraper, but it is just not the same as viewing it from a natural part of the landscape.

Harvard is home to a lot of New Yorkers, so my distaste for the city often produces arguments. I typically contend that New York is crowded, expensive, superficial, and lacking in park space. While the first two are undeniable, advocates respond that the third is true only for the touristy parts, and that the fourth is just plain wrong (which it is, New York is actually almost 20 percent park space, the most of any densely populated American city.) But I maintain that since most of that space is a rectangle circumscribed by tall buildings, it should count for less than the parks in San Francisco, which are not geometrically shaped and run mostly along the Pacific Ocean. I always thought this was an excellent point, but it never seems to persuade New Yorkers.

After about two years of coastal feuding, I came to realize that it is virtually impossible to convince someone your city is superior to his or hers, especially if that city is New York. People love the big cities they consider their own, despite the problems Urban America examines. I still refuse to concede New York’s superiority, but am content with the uneasy truce that permits me to avoid disagreements and instead focus on what I love. I am thrilled to be living in San Francisco this summer, and while I will return to Harvard in September to write my thesis and help produce two more issues of this magazine, my efforts will almost surely be lacking in heart.

One would think that at a time like this, with so many in so much trouble, altruism would be in vogue. Yet instead it seems a never-ending supply of Ponzi schemes and executive retreats symbolize the avarice that caused this calamity. On February 19th two articles on the front page of the New York Times website, one next to the other, epitomized this troubling state of affairs. The first article, “Newly Poor Swell Lines at Food Banks,” reported huge increases in demand at food banks across the country, while the second, “A Swiss Bank Is Set to Open Its Secret Files,” disclosed UBS “urged some American clients to destroy records and to stash watches, jewelry and artwork that they had bought with money hidden offshore in safe deposit boxes in Switzerland” in anticipation of investigation by the IRS. To say that something has gone terribly awry seems an understatement.

While the myriad of economic policies aimed at resuscitating the economy is of supreme importance, I mean to focus on something else. How have we arrived at a point where it is commonplace to watch some hide their jewelry while others starve? The answer will explain, in one-way or another, how so many today have come to believe that they are not their brother’s keeper. This is, perhaps, the most pressing issue facing our generation. It is thus not a coincidence that amid this crisis the HPR chose a covers topic, Beyond Borders, that while not directly addressing the recession, attends to problems whose solutions require international cooperation, and a belief that we all share a fate as residents of the same planet. Or in other words, that we are all each other’s keepers.

Such a fundamental psychological shift seems less a subject of politics than epochal change, and may be little more than the naïve hope of a young American. But there is reason to believe our bonds can be stronger than is suggested by simply inhabiting the same place. As humans our activity is inherently social, even the most ardent individualist cannot deny their indebtedness to family, friends, and history; our fellow humans make possible all of our individual thoughts and activities. Recognition of this fact may hold the key to overcoming the self-centeredness that is today so hard to ignore, and I hope Beyond Borders, by pointing towards cooperative solutions to the most difficult problems facing humanity, helps to demonstrate it.