Harvard Exceptionalism?
The case against holding ourselves to a higher standard when it comes to awards such as the Marshall and Rhodes Scholarships
The case against holding ourselves to a higher standard when it comes to awards such as the Marshall and Rhodes Scholarships
Last week, the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies released a report called Americans’ Knowledge of Climate Change. The document is the result of an extensive analysis of how well Americans grasp the practical and scientific nature of climate change, and by the fifth page, the authors have declared the quality of the knowledge for 52% of those surveyed [...]
It’s scandal day in the world of politics. First, Sue Lowden, the front-runner in the Nevada Republican primary, looking to replace Harry Reid, seems to have broken campaign finance laws by accepting a luxury campaign bus from a donor. This could be good news for Reid because Lowden has been performing better in polling match-ups against Reid than have either [...]
Sorry, Yale. No contest. I won’t go on about the nomination process, which has been covered to death. But, I just wanted to point out this particularly conspiratorial, but savvy, analysis at Above the Law about Deputy Principal Counsel (and Harvard law professor, again) Dan Meltzer: Also on Friday, Daniel Meltzer resigned as deputy principal counsel, to return to his post [...]
We began The HPRgument with the goal of creating a new space on campus for lively discussion of the things that matter — political, cultural, or Harvardian Since we began three weeks ago, debate on this site has been spirited and engaged: we’ve taken on the racial politics of Avatar, praised Obama’s “shrewd” bank tax, discussed the “ Sociology of [...]
Check out Jon Yip’s post, “The Asian Ceiling” for a review of a Kara Miller’s Boston Globe editorial about Asian discrimination in the college admission process. Asians are the new Jews, Miller explains: In a country built on individual liberty and promise, that feels deeply unfair. If a teenager spends much time studying, excels at an instrument or sport, and [...]
Today's colleges welcome Asians with open arms—they just don't want too many of us
Perhaps I’m harping too much on this news-reading thing, but Yale is currently in a fervor over cost-cutting plans to scrap dining hall subscriptions of the New York Times. One Yalie said that he “had a slight heart attack”—and I thought having a heart attack was pretty binary—when he saw plans to terminate the $50,000-a-year subscriptions. One student wrote an [...]
Last Saturday the 2010 Rhodes scholars were announced and a full five Harvard students were among them (along with two Yale students and one Princeton student…but, really, who’s counting?) On the same day, Elliot Gerson, the American secretary of the Rhodes Trust, published an op-ed in the Washington Post, pointing out that more and more Rhodes scholars are pursuing careers [...]
It now appears that the Obama administration, which once seemed so eager to explicitly press the case for liberal constitutional jurisprudence, is trying to characterize Sonia Sotomayor as a bona fide judicial moderate, if not an outright conservative. Take a look at the administration’s talking points: no more talk of “empathy” is to be found. Rather, they highlight her frequent [...]
As I studied for my ConLaw final, this question popped into my head: How can people claim to be able to wring objective meaning or “original intent” out of vague phrases like “the freedom of speech,” “equal protection of the laws,” and “due process of law,” when constitutional experts can’t even agree whether or not the Senate is allowed to [...]
On April 29, 1972, the Barristers Union at Yale Law School held its annual Prize Trial, in which four top lawyers, two to a side, competed. Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham formed the prosecution team on a fictional case about police brutality in Kentucky. The case was presided over by Abe Fortas, who had recently been forced to resign from [...]