I’m a member of the Harvard Class of 1967 and, with my having entered in 1963, “Fair Harvard” has been a part of my world therefore for sixty years.
In the wake of the Supreme Court having struck down Harvard’s use of race in its admissions decisions, there’s been news about a challenge to Harvard’s having another form of favoritism in deciding whom to admit: i.e. favoring the children of alumni, the “legacy” policy.
I’m not here to either support or oppose that policy, but only to share my understanding of what Harvard — and, I imagine, other universities with similar policies — are doing with these “legacy” preferences.
Or, more particularly, what they are not doing. And what they’re not doing is anything that’s about race.
There are reasonable objections to be raised that this policy favors the historically privileged, and that it should be challenged now that the Supremes have thrown out policies that have sought to provide important opportunities to groups that have historically been denied opportunity.
But the institution’s intentions are not about bolstering privilege, not about adding to the inequalities that beset today’s America. Those are unintended consequences.
And I thought it worthwhile to make that distinction, so that Harvard — this generally rather worthy and caring institution — be properly perceived.
One of the things I’ve come to appreciate more and more about Harvard is how seriously it tries to maintain a community of alumni. It does this, I imagine, for mostly self-interested reasons: it pays to have alumni — who tend to go on to successful careers — continue to feel connected in a positive way to the institution. The more durable the feeling of connection, the more likely the alumni will be to donate to the University.
I think it is more than that, however. Harvard also seems to place a real value on developing a sense of the wider Harvard community as part of the soul of the institution.
(Harvard is a famously rich institution. And no doubt its cultivation of its connection with highly successful alumni, and its history with generations of some of America’s historically most privileged families, is a major reason for the billions of dollars in its Endowment.
(But Harvard is not just about the money. To the best of my knowledge, Harvard was the first of the prestige universities to give a completely free ride to any students from families making less than something like America’s median income, and to give considerable outright relief to students with incomes up to twice that amount.)
But however much this “sense of the wider Harvard community” is about the money, and however much it is about the value Harvard places on the institution’s continuing to be part of the lives of individuals and families over long stretches of time, Harvard has impressed me with the variety of ways it achieves that maintenance of connection.
One way it does so is with its bi-monthly Harvard Magazine, which is an exceptionally fine publication. For more than half a century, I’ve been reading this publication because it is actually of high quality, and real substance, and worth reading. It is largely because of this magazine that — though I started out my post-college years with some feeling of alienation from Harvard — I’ve continued to follow how the University has been evolving.
(And I’ve been impressed with the integrity with which Harvard has wrestled with questions of values, and how they should inform the education it offers its students.)
Another way that Harvard works to bolster how much Harvard stays alive in their alumni’s sense of identity and in a feeling of relationship, is in the publication — every five years — of books to which all members of a given class are invited to contribute. The invitation is to share with their classmates whatever they want to convey. Some apparently don’t respond to the invitation at all. Some provide only the minimal contact information, etc.. But a fair number of others actually write messages that say something that matters to them. And it is latter that form most of the body of these Class Anniversary Reports. I’ve read these entries over the years, and had some feeling of knowing classmates I hadn’t known at all when we were in the same place at the same time.
(As for how I’ve dealt with that invitation, every five years since 1977, I have sent in statements in which I’ve tried to contribute as meaningfully as I could — sometimes personal, sometimes political, and once (1982) a critique of how Harvard dealt with us back in the 1960s.)
Because of these books, I do have an ongoing feeling of “membership” in a “Class” consisting of more than a thousand people who I didn’t feel all that much — at the time — were a “community” I was glad to be part of.
I see the “Legacy” policy as part of that same overall effort of the University: the legacy policy, like the magazine and the quinquennial Class volumes, is a means to cultivate enduring connections between its alumni and the institution. The institution is working to build bonds not just with individuals, but with families as well. It is not just that John Doe (or Mary Doe) spent time at this institution, but that Harvard will have a place in the enduring family culture.
Maybe such legacy policies should be forbidden, because clearly they do exacerbate our dangerous levels of inequality in America, including inequalities among racial groups. The magazine and the class books have no such downsides. The legacy preference may be just not a right way to do it in the America we can see today, where the idea of “equality of opportunity” has lost a lot of ground in recent decades.
But in any event, my purpose in writing this is not to come down on that policy question, but to explain why I don’t think these policies should be regarded as expressing anything racist, or as intended to bolster inequalities in America.