What's really got everyone hot and bothered at Harvard?

By Larry Lowell
Yard Correspondent

This week The New York Times published its 925th story claiming that Harvard was so, so close to “settling” the Trump Regime's bogus allegations against it, which have been laughed out of court time and again, with the only sticking point being that the proposed $500,000,000 tribute to the Mad King be styled as a “fine.”

The story (per Spy policy, no link to pisspoor content), like all the other pos's, seems to be based largely on leaks from billionaire buttinski Steve Schwarzman's highly-paid flacks.  Schwarzman, desperate to ingratiate himself with his liege, has (according to his shills) been telling Harvard that paying half a billion in fines is no biggie, because finaglers like him do it all the time and they're still regarded as sages by the likes of The Times.

We doubt every f***in' word.  Harvard, notoriously tight with a buck, has no intention of blowing half a billion to ingratiate itself with a demented corrupt goon when it has gotten most of its grant money back through litigation.  Harvard knows that future grants, on the other hand, may be held back on the whim of the Tangerine-Faced Fascist, but may well wait for future legal action before it makes a revenue-maximizing decision.

With the fight between the University and the Regime still raging, we wondered what the undergraduates thought about the effort by a depraved Fascist regime to destroy Harvard and more generally academic inquiry and freedom of thought.

Here's what's on their minds:

 

What a surprise.

By the way, here's a quiz for all you little overachieving grinders, a/k/a Harvard undergraduates: how many of the objects in the drawing can you identify?  For extra credit (catnip to this crowd), identify the proper use of each object you name.

That Harvard undergraduates are more interested in poontang than the pronouncements of Steve Schwarzman should not come as any surprise to anyone who remembers college.  We'd only note that most of the objects drawn are generally intended for solo use.  That sounds about right for Harvard undergrads.

The actual contents of the issue are less salacious than the cover implies.   One notable omission though is the most recent sex scandal at Harvard involving University Professor, fired President, and Ladies' Man Larry Summers.  Summers, regarding as one of the most brilliant economists of his generation, at least by Larry Summers, was recently revealed to have sought the advice of his BFF, Jeffrey Epstein.

Summers had sought the wise counsel of his child rapist buddy because Faculty Lounge Lizard Larry was trying to bang a (much) younger economics professor whom he had mentored.  The younger less powerful academic apparently was not overwhelmed by the ruggedly handsome and charming 70-year-old senior professor for reasons unknown, at least to anyone who has never had to share a meal with this bulvon.

Perhaps the student editors of The Harvard Independent neglected to feature this hot story in their annual sex roundup because to all 20-year-olds, the idea of anyone over 30 having sex is risible, if not inconceivable.

So Summers has to comfort himself with his lucrative no-heavy-lifting University Professorship, his second wife, and perhaps some of the devices pictured on the Harvard Independent's cover.

But sex isn't what Harvard undergrads are getting hot and bothered about.   It's something much more important.

More important than sex to an undergraduate?  Hard to believe, amirite? 

Disgraced Harvard Prof. Larry Summers
and his mentees

But as every Harvard College student (which Larry Summers never was btw) knows, the point of going to Harvard is not to learn great truths or even how to use the devices on the cover of the Sex Issue; it's to get your ticket punched to some greater glory usually involving a graduate degree.  And that requires good grades.

But

“Our grading is too compressed and too inflated, as nearly all faculty recognize; it is also too inconsistent, as students have observed. More importantly, our grading no longer performs its primary functions and is undermining our academic mission,” the report reads. Data from the Office of Institutional Research showed that 60.2% of all College grades awarded in 2025 were As, compared to 24% in 2005.

“Students know that an ‘A’ can be awarded for anything from outstanding work to reasonably satisfactory work,” the report wrote. “It’s a farce.”  

Ruh-roh.

Now it's time for the midterm.  This one's an essay question: why is a 60% rate of A grades a farce as compared to 24%?  What is the proper level of non-farcical A grades?  Explain your reasoning.

It may come as a shock to Harvard undergrads and even administrators, but grade inflation, like sex, was not invented by current students.  Like sex, grade inflation has been a topic of enormous controversy for at least half a century (or at least since the days when the (white male goyische) children of the elite could go on to splendid graduate schools coincidentally also named Harvard just by being “clubabble.”)

The issue in 1975 was not too many A's; it was too few C's.  Then as now the professoriat sought to invent and then elevate an imaginary elite by whining about inflated grades.  Then as now the undergrads fretted about losing the futures they had imagined for themselves.

The reactionary professors imagined they were returning Harvard to the Platonic ideal of a small elite thinking great thoughts in the groves of academe.  Oddly enough, Socrates and Plato never felt the need to grade their students.  Anyone willing to listen and think was welcome.  Then and forever, that was an exceedingly small slice of the polis.

What would be so bad about returning to that grade-free Platonic ideal?  The only problem with abolishing grades is that consumers of Harvard graduates will always demand some way of sorting the little darlings.  If that's not grades, it's the subjective assessments of deeply flawed and often horny academics (like Summers!).  Abolishing grades would lead to even more sucking up to (or if Larry had his way, sucking)  professors and other generators of recommendations.

The issue of grading is a bottomless pit.  Any solution is going to be at best very imperfect.  Perhaps for that reason proponents of one position or another should stop pretending that they and they alone occupy the moral high ground from which they can gaze across at Plato, or at least University Professor Larry Summers attempting to buy some new toys to impress the ladies. 

Actually we have a suggestion for Harvard professors and administrators with time on their hands.  Instead of worrying about grading the students, how about worrying about grading undergraduate education?   In recent decades, Harvard has made some effort to improve the lamentable standard of teaching undergrads, which traditionally involved some old tosser reading from crumbling lecture notes in front of a thousand bored undergrads in Sanders Theater.

One incentive for reform is that the professors are cranky because they are not attracting an audience with formerly boffo ramblings.  Who wouldn't rush to attend lectures from a distinguished economics professor telling Ec. 10 students that the reason that Appalachia was poor was due to a depleted gene pool or a great philosophy professor opining that while most of ethics was worthless, he was “pretty sure” that intentional murder was wrong?

If you think that Harvard College will be like this,
boy will you be disappointed

These days, students are treating these entertainments like episodes of Stranger Things: to be streamed on demand:

“Some of the classes I’m taking have recorded lectures, so a lot of my classmates feel like there’s no need to attend lecture especially when they can watch the lecture back on 2x speed." 

Honestly, who can blame them?

Perhaps if Harvard, like colleges that actually focus on educating undergraduates, replaced its big lectures with small discussion groups led by professors (not by untrained and often weird grad students), Harvard students would show up.

The senior faculty, who regard College students as gnats, would be appalled at the idea that they would have to neglect their magnificent research in favor of wasting time teaching 19-year-olds.  But they should follow the example of University Professor Larry Summers who found time to teach undergrads while still conducting path-breaking research with his colleague Prof. Epstein on the separation of junior economics faculty from their gattkes. 

Maybe if Harvard College poo-bahs spent as much time worrying about undergraduate education as grading, they could actually someday earn an A.  At least for effort.