Word: emersonic
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Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1837 address to Harvard's Phi Beta Kappa Society bears serious consideration by today's Harvard students. The address is an encomium to the title-less man and an attack on the institutional one. It is praise for those famous men who become famous of their own doing, who arrive at their own conclusions, who stand on feet unbuttressed by typical modes of external recognition...
...Emerson would say that institutional people run the risk of losing their originality. The purpose of the institution is to homogenize, and those who don't homogenize get marginalized. The cost of joining is submitting to other people's ideas, to conforming to a pattern of thought and behavior as predetermined as the one adopted by a cobbler's apprentice...
...Emerson would have us avoid this problem by rejecting the institution altogether. He would have us Harvard students reading and writing on our own, perhaps in the woods or on mountaintop. He would have us hatch theories of republican government and generate interpretations of literary works that are unfettered by the latest conventional wisdom or the newest periodization of artistic movements. He would have us think for ourselves, outside the institution...
...Dean" he will continue to protect the University's institutional memory and have time to work on his own student initiatives. Additionally, it is necessary to preserve the position of Dean of Students for Epps' suc cessor. In announcing his retirement, Epps quoted from the Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, class of 1821, referring to the "long winding train" of men and women who have touched this institution. He now takes his place in that long winding train as a living legend of Harvard history...
...festival was in its third day when I arrived at the Museum of Fine Arts' Emerson Theatre to watch four short films by students of the Ma'ale School of Communication, Art of Film and Television in Jerusalem. What followed a brief introduction by festival director Sara Rubin and former Ma'ale School director Udi Lion was a revelation told in softly lilting Hebrew of aspects of Jewish culture rarely added to the American salad bowl...