How students led a push to improve Harvard’s intellectual climate

Ariel Kohn
The Boston Globe

In my freshman seminar at Harvard on "Morality, Leadership, and Gray-Area Decisions" our professor asked us to debate: Should President Truman have dropped the two atomic bombs on Japan? We had two hours to discuss one of the most consequential moments in human history. Yet after 10 minutes the class had come to unanimous agreement: no. 

My seminar was no aberration. The same frictionless dynamic pervaded student life beyond the classroom. My dorm had students from a dozen countries and every kind of upbringing. The college assigns such rooming groups in the belief that the big existential questions will follow, argued over cold pizza at 2 in the morning. Instead, the early-morning hours of our first months on campus were spent in solitude, poring over consulting-club slide decks and internship applications.

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