Cambridge 02138, November-December 1996

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Cambridge 02138

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Members of the class of '00 whose admissions essays appeared in this magazine. From left: Pamela Ng, Michael Jacobsohn, Rachel Glover, Jacqlynn K. Duquette, and Walid Gardezi. Pictured separately, Jennifer Pusey. Photograph by Jim Harrison

The Voices of '00

Why am I so encouraged by the admissions essays from the millennial class (September-October, page 49)? Because they are so intensely personal, they are honest to me, and they seem so refreshingly free of political agenda.

They show that, as Harvard constantly redefines itself, we ought to continuously look to the students for our, Harvard's, redefinition. Where is the school without its students? And with these coming in (if essays are an indication), our school is well-off indeed.

James N. Connor '60
Boaz, Ariz.

Talking Trash

I read with increasing discomfort "MBAs Talk Trash" (July-August, page 64). What was bothering me wasn't the substantive message-of course the way to help economically deprived areas is to develop business in those areas-but the tone. The best and the brightest from Harvard, that shining city on the hill, were descending into the jungles of the "decaying inner cities" to dispel by the light of their wisdom the darkness in which "minority" businesses there would otherwise surely be lost.

No one had to tell a Jewish carter on the Lower East Side which of his customers was "most profitable." The Korean family that runs a grocery store in Koreatown doesn't need a detailed study of their "activity-based costs" to prosper. And "minorities" (by which the article can mean only blacks and Hispanics) don't either.

The truth is that the inner cities have been decaying for more than a hundred years in this country. The solution has never been for the residents to stay put and improve the decaying inner city. Rather, group after group has used the decaying inner city as a springboard to acumulate wealth and escape to prosperity. Inner cities have historically in this society been the perfect environment for wealth accumulation by newcomers and should-like that other rich, but decaying habitat, the wetland-be preserved from conversion into malls.

The subtext of your article is that blacks and Hispanics, however, are subject to a special mandate. For some reason, unlike everyone else, they must stay and rebuild the inner city. This is part of an incredibly intricate and indirect racism, that can aptly be described as the black man's burden. It is most vigorously promoted, ironically, by those-black, white, yellow, and brown alike-most dedicated to the eradication of inequality.

In fact, minorities in the decaying inner cities should, and in my experience generally want to, do the only sensible thing: get rich as quickly as possible so they can get the hell out. The constant, obsessive talk about racism and the need to fix the decaying inner cities is discouraging and frightening to those who live there. It tells them they are failures, when, in fact, they are no more likely to be such in the context of their lives than members of any other group. It serves to disguise opportunity from those most in need of encouragement to seize it.

Chase Mellen III '66
Los Angeles

Michael Porter, and not just his M.B.A.s, is talking trash when it comes to his work on the competitive advantage of the inner city. Porter attacks government programs, while hyping his "innovative" approach to inner-city economic development. Yet I want to know what's innovative about having graduate students consult to businesses? Schools all over the country have been doing it for decades, many with the assistance of "government subsidies" through the Small Business Administration's (SBA) programs that support campus-based small business development centers and institutes.

I've also sat through two of his presentations on this project, and on both occasions he has attacked the SBA's 8(a) program, which sets aside federal contracts for minority-owned small businesses. How ironic it was for me to then see Jet-A-Way Inc. featured as the Porter prototype and example of what his students are working on. Jet-A-Way Inc. participated in the 8(a) program during the 70s and early 80s, and the participation was instrumental in building the competitive business the company is today.

Julia M. Greene, M.P.A. '95
Lynn, Mass.

The National Alumni Forum

Your September-October issue contained a full-column ad (page 37) from an organization that calls itself the National Alumni Forum (NAF). The seemingly innocuous ad invites alumni to "help your alma mater to live up to its highest ideals" by sending donations to the "Fund for Academic Renewal," instead of giving directly to "the college of your choice."

Readers of Harvard Magazine, however, ought to be told more about this organization before diverting alumni contributions to support the kind of bullying tactics and media-crazy operations NAF staged last year at Georgetown University.

The National Alumni Forum is a rightwing pressure group that seems to announce new "funds" and campaigns any time it sees a reporter or camera in the vicinity. Last spring, the cause-du-jour was the formation of the "Committee to Save Shakespeare." The immediate target was the English department of Georgetown University, which had concluded several years of study and discussion by broadening the requirements for the undergraduate major degree. No doubt eager for a publicity-generating campaign that could be run without leaving its oces in Washington, D.C., NAF attempted to present the evolving requirements at Georgetown as some sort of vendetta against Shakespeare.

The committee's declared aim was to pressure the university into reversing the English department's determinations, ignoring the best judgment of professors who-unlike Jerry Martin, the president of the National Alumni Forum-are full-time teachers and scholars, with Ph.D.s in English literature (some from Harvard).

To the committee's disappointment, Georgetown continued to trust and support its faculty. But when bombarding administrators and the trustees with disinformation proved insuciently intimi- dating, NAF stepped up its assault. In the final week of spring semester classes, NAF held a "teach-in" against the English department, right on campus. The name it chose for this sideshow was illuminating, suggesting that although NAF claims to support tradition and high ideals, its true anities are with the disruptive and anarchic excesses of 1960s anti-intellectualism.

The ad in Harvard Magazine asks alumni to place both their money and their trust in NAF's ability to decide which are the "college campuses that emphasize great books, high standards, and excellent teaching." Based on their performance on my campus, NAF is unworthy of that responsibility.

Margaret D. Stetz, Ph.D. '82
Associate professor of English and women's studies, Georgetown University
Washington, D.C.

Learning and Aging

John Lauerman's "Toward a Natural History of Aging" (September-October, page 56) omitted any reference to the tremendous proliferation of "institutes for learning in retirement" (ILRs) here and abroad as an important factor contributing to "senior" well-being.

Tying in with the "use it or lose it" theory from Berkeley in the 60s and many subsequent and ongoing studies since then, more than 200 ILRs are running full steam in the United States, as are more than 1,700 U3As (University of the Third Age) in other parts of the world. These institutes are aliated with universities and colleges and oer a new "community" to retirees-a "learning for fun" center with classes that are mostly peer led.

Is there a cause/eect relationship between intellectual stimulation in later life and the ability to function eectively? Our ILR, the Center for Lifelong Learning at the University of Texas at El Paso, currently has 450 students enrolled in classes, from "Surfing the Net" to "Philosophical Considerations on the Mission of the University in Western Culture." An 85-year-old student surfing the net, planning her next trip abroad, participating in online discussion groups, is too busy to get sick. As Lauerman stated: "the brainrejects mandatory retirement at age 65."

Ruth Taber and Ben Taber, M.D. '52
El Paso

Editor's note: this magazine published "the Little Institute with Immense Potential," about Harvard's Institute for Learning in Retirement, in the May-June 1985 issue and plans to revisit the topic in the March-April 1997 issue on the occasion of the institute's twenty-fifth anniversary.

In Kiely's Corner

I was dismayed by the uniformly negative reaction to Robert Kiely's review "Rabbit Reread" (July-August, page 26). You published several reader responses in the September-October issue, all of which took Kiely to task about as severely as if he had called for reducing the Harvard campus to rubble. One writer compared the "Rabbit" series to the Bible; another said "I hope fervently that Updike will win the Nobel Prize"; a third claimed to know the character Harry Angstrom "perhaps more intimately than some 'real' men in my life"; a fourth remarked that "the Rabbit books marked significant stages in my own life." Yikes!

A common theme in the letters was that even though Rabbit is an uninteresting and unpleasant character, the "books are a portrait of a large segment of America," and Updike is "the ruefully accurate chronicler of our vast middle-class American peasantry and the loving poet of its ramshackle daily environment." But I don't think Kiely's point was that Updike failed to accurately portray the details of middle-class life. The point was that, unlike Saul Bellow in Seize the Day or, I suppose, Flaubert in Madame Bovary (two examples cited in the letters), Updike did not challenge a single aspect of contemporary society in the Rabbit books. Where has Updike ever grappled with racism, sexism, domestic abuse, homophobia, environmental destruction, or any other form of injustice or abuse of power? The point of view is uniformly that of a wasp male. One aspect not discussed by Kiely is the books' persistent sexism. Every major female character finds her way into bed with Rabbit. Even his daughter-in-law Pru seems to have a thing for the fat, unhealthy, unattractive, middle-aged Rabbit. Why, for Pete's sake?

A novel ought to expand the mind in some way, and that is precisely where Updike's books fail.

Bill Reynolds '91
Cambridge

Compensating Force

To use the words of D. Harding '78, in the letters section of the September-October issue (page 14), "I was sickened, saddened, and disgusted upon reading" his comments condemning the publication in Harvard Magazine of any "material that presents homosexuality in a favorable light."

No literature degrades the writer more than that which manifests hateful, narrow-minded bigotry. No one should deny the right of free speech to an individual because of sexual orientation. A publication bearing the name of this nation's premier institution of learning should continue to present multifaceted views on this and other controversial topics. In response to Harding's threatened withdrawal of funds, I am forced to act; you will find my contribution enclosed.

D. Josell '87, Ph.D. '92
Gaithersburg, Md.

CAN'T SPEL, CAN'T READ MAP

The editors thank the many readers who pointed out the three misspellings of "millennial" in the September-October issue, two in the article "'00" (page 49) and one on the contents page. Each time the word lacked the second "n." One reader, fulminating, asked, "How can such a thing happen?" "Human error" is the only possible reply, in this case the error of half a dozen humans who read the misspelled word before it went to press but read it blindly.

The editors also regret that when reporting the death of Michel Breistroff '94 on TWA flight 800 (page 77), they wrote that the plane crashed into Long Island Sound. It went into the Atlantic.

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