Word: harvardism
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Maxwell L. Child ’10, the former president of The Harvard Crimson, is an economics concentrator in Lowell House...
...head start in order to avoid the usual tropes, so about a year and a half ago, I sat down and wrote a fantastic parting shot. I was ready to submit it, but now it just feels a little out of place and artificial, like the Harvard Community Garden (the agriculture jokes are just getting started). So today, I’ve decided to throw it out and write from the heart instead...
This finality filled a void for me, like a finality club. Otherwise, at Harvard, it is simply much too easy to live life in the shadows, to avoid conclusion. We simply nod and halfheartedly agree with most statements. Think about it: We are much more likely to agree than disagree with whatever is said to our face. It’s just easier. This phenomenon is well documented. In How We Know What Isn’t So, Cornell psychologist Thomas Gilovich describes the human tendency to surround ourselves with those people who are most likely to agree with...
...only available pesticide for such a threat is healthy debate. In his April 21 speech at Harvard, Bill Gates questioned why we are only willing to engage each other in genuine debate when the stakes are low. We will argue for hours about the merits of our March Madness brackets, but we rarely engage our friends in sustained debate about healthcare or education...
...have to learn to play devil’s advocate, to challenge the opinions of our friends, to debate for the sake of debate. Harvard has taught us well. We neglect this education through our continuous and unquestioning accession. Like all parting shots, the message can be neatly summed up with a one-sentence lesson I learned in third grade: Agree to disagree. And, like all parting shots, I will now make this moral seem much more brilliant than it actually is: Debate sows the seeds of democracy. See, the first two letters of each word are the same...