On 375 Years

Shortly after nine Friday evening, when Yo-Yo Ma finished leading a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday and Drew Faust announced that the cake had been cut, I made the mistake of checking Facebook on my smartphone. To my dismay, but not my surprise, I read statuses from a number of Harvard students complaining about some aspect of the 375^th birthday celebration.
There is no doubt that Harvard’s birthday party had its issues. Thousands of people were stuffed into Tercentenary Theater during a torrential downpour. The grass, so diligently and often fruitlessly maintained, quickly became a mud pit. In a futile effort to avoid soaked shoes and blackened pants, students, faculty, and alumni crowded onto what remained of the Theater’s pathways.
So yes, the night didn’t go off without a hitch. I am hard-pressed to recall a similar event, particularly one that took place during inclement weather, that ran smoothly. Remember when hundreds of guests at the 2009 Presidential Inauguration got stuck in a tunnel?
My larger point is this: in characteristic fashion, Harvard’s efforts to commemorate 375 years as an institution have been satirized and pilloried by a number of Harvard students. The only mention of the event in Friday’s issue of The Crimson was an inept Op-Ed and a mocking cartoon. I still cannot decide whether the Op-Ed was an ill-advised try at satire or a misguided attempt at productive dialogue on the situation. Either way, The Crimson seems to have taken a self-righteous and superficially moralistic tack in response to our University’s 375^th birthday.
While Friday’s party may have seemed exuberant – with living statues, ice sculptures, and the infamous cake – it’s worth considering what it means to mark 375 years as an institution. Harvard Voices, the main target of the Crimson Op-Ed, is a genuine effort on behalf of the University to remind our community that important things have been said and done in the common spaces that define it. It’s easy to deride the project as historical solipsism, but the voices are much more than “Vanitas.”
I could easily fall into the hackneyed narrative of Harvard’s history. Almost four centuries ago, a university was founded in a Puritan backwater (to avoid becoming an even greater backwater) and has since played a role in the formation of a nation and the modern world. Yet Harvard has also been a microcosm, albeit unrepresentative, of progress. It’s an institution that has played witness to the rise and fall of ideologies and of prejudices, an institution that has stood on the wrong side of many a moral debate, and an institution that has seen fit to embody exclusion and elitism.
The feigned attempts at humility, coupled with contemptible complaint, achieved by mocking these celebrations, are in fact insidious examples of that same elitism. They obscure an opportunity to consider what has changed over the past 375 years. On Wednesday evening, the University marked LGBT rights with a vigil attended by the highest members of its administration. Ninety years ago, Harvard expelled a group of homosexuals during the “Secret Court,” viciously organized by Abbott Lawrence Lowell to root out members of the gay community. While those ninety years saw countless broader changes in acceptance of homosexuals, it’s worthwhile to consider that Harvard has recognized this past, and is moreover a living example of how our society has changed in its time.
The “Secret Court” serves as an easy example, but perhaps an outdated one. Friday’s celebration was itself a vivid illustration of progress. Until very recently, Harvard was overwhelmingly white, male, wealthy and Protestant. In a few decades, the composition of the student body has undergone a monumental change. Friday night, cultural groups from across campus performed, despite the weather, and students of every color, ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender stood behind the world’s greatest cellist as he played his most famous piece.
I’ve fallen into what I said I wanted to avoid – hackneyed exuberance about Harvard – but the powerful thought remains. In a short period of time, the external fabric of the Harvard community has changed drastically. This disruption of a culture where one small stripe of society went on to Harvard, in favor of a broader and more heterogeneous one, hasn’t threatened Harvard’s standing as an intellectual beacon. It has enhanced our prowess as an institution that sets an example, as an institution that is a dynamic participant in global progress rather than a stolid dinosaur.
When the speakers in the trees blast Colin Powell, and Leonard Bernstein, and Martin Luther King, and Bill Gates into the Yard, the message isn’t one of vanity, smugness, and complacency. It’s a reminder that the words of Dexter Gate, “Enter to grow in wisdom” and “Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind,” should not ring hollow. It’s a reminder that when George C. Marshall needed to convince a skeptical nation to rebuild the country it had just spent four years fighting, he introduced his plans in Tercentenary Theater. It’s a reminder that Harvard’s graduates, from Charles Sumner to Henry Kissinger, have been very bold, and in some cases very right, and in other cases very wrong.
And that cake? That cake was made by a Harvard graduate who abandoned her comfortable job in finance to do something she loved. She took a risk that was by all means unwise. But Friday night, a few thousand people ate her cake and celebrated an institution that teaches its students how to be comfortable while simultaneously encouraging them to risk wildly and blindly.
It’s disappointing that a moment like this has been reduced to the merits of a party and the moistness of a cake. By choosing to become members of the Harvard community, each of us became willing participants in its history. In this community, so often fixated on pre-professionalism, monetary success and social elevation, a reminder of the broader sweep of history is all too necessary. This anniversary still is the time to question that broader history, to examine the legacies of those who have graced Harvard Yard, and reflect upon what has worked and what has not.
Photo Credit: Harvad Gazette