Unless someone has taken over the Harvard Crimson website the following isn’t fake news: here’s a link — https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/3/19/wolbach-library-closure/.
The Harvard Endowment was the largest in the world as of June ’22 approaching 50 billion. Yet here is the lede from the article — “The John G. Wolbach Library — which carries one of the world’s largest astronomical collections — will shutter its doors on Friday, in a move that was “driven primarily by financial considerations,” according to an email from Harvard Center for Astrophysics Director Lisa J. Kewley.”
The two undergraduate reporters Neeraja S. Kumar and Annabel M. Yu Crimson Staff Writers totally missed the forest for the trees spending the rest of the article interviewing unhappy users of the library, and never digging into the ‘financial considerations’.
Perhaps they were told not to dig too deeply by the powers that be. Something similar happened 20+ years ago to a nephew writing for the Daily Princetonian. He found something about a person high up in the administration which would have been front page news, but was told that it wouldn’t be published.
Combine this with the 17% drop in early admission applicants and the 5% drop in overall applications and it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Harvard is in trouble. It certainly was a great place to be when I was there ’60 – ’62 and I find it very sad.
There is hope however. Randall Kennedy (another Princetonian and Harvard Law professor ) had the following article in the Crimson 2 Aprilhttps://www.thecrimson.com/column/council-on-academic-freedom-at-harvard/article/2024/4/2/kennedy-abandon-dei-statements/. Kennedy is not a disgruntled WASP.
The there is an old saying “You can always tell a Harvard man but you can’t tell him much” . Maybe Harvard is beginning to listen to what the world is telling it.
Chemiotics II 