Evolution into darkness. . .

Harvard University is, well, Harvard, after all.  It is a singular institution whose reputation is unsurpassed.  Even though it has boatloads of money, it still charges for its services -- especially to overseas students.  It has a cache which is worth as much as its actual educational services, perhaps even more.  Access to the network of Harvard grads is worth more than the instruction in the classroom.  Nevertheless, it is always good to pay attention to what the school says about itself.

Newly installed Drew Gilpin Faust, the first female president of Harvard defined what Harvard has become at her inauguration:  “The ‘Veritas’ in Harvard’s shield was originally intended to invoke the absolutes of divine revelation, the unassailable verities of Puritan religion.  We understand it quite differently now. Truth is an aspiration, not a possession [emphasis added]…We must commit ourselves to the uncomfortable position of doubt, to the humility of always believing there is more to know, more to teach, more to understand."

In other words, Harvard has not simply abandoned its once formative ties with a particular version of Christianity or any version of the faith, it has abandoned the idea of truth itself.  It is the pursuit more than the end, the question more than the answer, and the doubt more than the certainty which Harvard exists to promote.  That is one heck of an enterprise and price tag to find out that truth itself is an illusion or no more than a stopping point along the way in the journey to knowledge.  But what of the knowledge that has no facts, no truth, no abiding reality?  Is it worth the billions in the endowment fund and the tens upon tens of thousands in tuition/room and board to find out that the only things for sure is that nothing is sure?

It would be unfair to single out Harvard when the same thing can be found in universities and colleges large and small, notorious and anonymous.  That is the state of higher education today.  If university presidents, administrations, and faculties exist only to challenge what they have deemed the transmission of the moral and intellectual patrimony acquired over the centuries by tainted teachers and scholars who were once thought noble, why bother with the cost of such an education?  Doubt, after all, is pretty cheap and easy.  You do not need a university education to tell you to question everything.  The end result of Harvard's educational method and the same from any other institution supposedly of higher learning is not knowledge but the worst kind of privilege and elitism parading as truth.  Though it would never happen in a million years, Harvard would be better served returning to its Puritan roots and risk being labeled foolish by the educated elite than to dole out foolishness in place of facts and overcharge for it in the process.  Yet it would seem that Harvard is not really in the education business.  It is selling not a well-rounded education nor an introduction to truth but a network of contacts who share a common sheepskin more than they share a common set of values, facts, or opinions.  Yet by existing merely to challenge Harvard has joined the most elite of roles -- an expensive court jester who entertains more than he informs.  That is not the kind of university we need nor is it the kind of university we can afford.