The Harvard Campaign and the English Language

Harvard is finally launching a major capital campaign. Leadership instability caused years of delay, the House renewal project could not be put off any longer, and Harvard's endowment took a huge hit (see, from Bloomberg, this good reminder of why Larry Summers might not be the best person to prognosticate interest rates for all of us as chair of the Fed). In the meantime the student body has, by design, become less able to pay Harvard's list prices, financial aid has become more generous, science has gotten more expensive, and the Engineering School, intellectually constrained because it is physically landlocked, will move to a new site across the river in Allston. So it is time for Harvard to launch its campaign. It is no secret that the "quiet phase" has been going on for some time now. Rumor has it that the early returns are promising. I am all for it. After a bumpy start, a thrilling vision for Allston is emerging; I hope it will come together for the campaign kickoff. A generation of my students, many of whom came to Harvard on scholarships, have prospered since the last campaign. Even those whose parents were able to pay Harvard's "sticker price" know that they have gotten back far more than they invested, through the "beauty, individuality, and wealth of associations" they experienced (to quote Santayana) and the opportunities they had to depart from whatever they thought they were going to college to achieve. The time has come for them, and other Harvard alumni, to pay their debt to the future, their moral obligation to help Harvard make possible for future generations what was possible for them. In the way politicians announce that they are going to announce their candidacy for some office, President Faust officially announced in May that the campaign would be announced in September. Given that the campaign was a long time coming, the announcement, a sort of manifesto, is disappointing, as several alumni have observed to me privately. It doesn't sing. In fact it doesn't even hum. It doesn't elevate the spirit, or inspire optimism or pride. In fact, five minutes after reading it, I couldn't remember what it said. I fear that criticizing language is rather like criticizing hairstyles or clothing. We are supposed to have enough respect for individual differences and cultural diversity not to get elitist over the way things are said, as long as the prose is, more or less, grammatically correct. I find this when I correct students' writing—they take offense, as though I was suggesting that their hair was the wrong color. So no offense is meant here. It's obvious that the prizewinning author of This Republic of Suffering did not actually write the document over which her name appears, and I don't know who did. I just keep thinking this is Harvard. This might do for Eastern Missouri State, or even Yale! But Harvard should be able to say something more profound about our future, and say it better. For the success of the Campaign, which is vital to our future, I hope September's rhetoric will be better. Take the second sentence of the manifesto: "The process of preparing for a campaign is one that focuses us on defining our future." Wouldn't any freshman writing teacher have marked that up, perhaps thus: "The process of pPreparing for a campaign is one that focuses us on defining our future." (If not simply "defines our future.") Well, perhaps the sentence really is intentional, because apparently the very first thing Harvard wants us all to know about the Campaign is the dreary process by which it was planned. The next several sentences list the many people and groups who were consulted, perhaps as a way of warning off those who think nobody asked them. We do love process at Harvard, and talking about it. Process is clean, unlikely to excite animosity, a ready tactic for the defense in case of litigation, and a counterargument to claims of bad results. Once when a terrible appointment was made, I was told that the process was impeccable. It involved lots of interviews, letters, and other documents; it just did did not involve an off-the-record telephone call to the candidate's supervisor. But it was a good process, I was told, completely by the book, so I should hold my tongue about the incompetence of the person who got the job. After the windup, we get the pitch, or rather the seven pitches. But they aren't really pitches; they are rubrics, abstract categories like "Nurturing talent and leadership requires investment." Any fool can see where that one is going, but apparently it is too soon to say anything specific like "scholarships" or "professorships." That will come in September. It is much less clear what other rubrics will mean in practice. "Harvard is d