Word: sided
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Interestingly, the simplest interpretation seems based on inconsistent logic, and thus not so simple at all. On this reading, the inscription on the Mass Ave. side of the gate, "Enter to grow in wisdom," is read as a conditional statement. That is: "If you enter Harvard Yard, then you will grow in wisdom." It is as if Harvard is making us a promise: Come into my gate and you will learn...
...that is not how we are liable to read the inscription on the other side. Thinking of "Depart to better serve thy country and thy kind" as a conditional would make little sense. Instead, we read the second inscription as an imperative--as if Harvard is now imploring us to put the wisdom learned inside the Yard to practical effect. Put the two readings together, and you have a trap: Harvard beckons us in with the promise of learning and personal intellectual growth. We merely need to enter. But once inside, we find that there is a price...
Reading the inscriptions as a trap--an offer on one side, an obligation on the other--is not necessarily a reflection of the kind of directional transformation that should go on at college and at Harvard in particular. But what would happen if we instead read the inscriptions more consistently--if we read the entering inscription as an imperative, thinking of "Enter" as a command, and read the departing inscription as an offer and not an imperative...
...student received scratches on the left side of his face but refused medical treatment, McNamara said...
...wrong turnings goes right up to Rambouillet. Yet here is where you always have to start. Having recently studied the situation in Kosovo and Serbia at first hand, I reach a drastic conclusion. I hope against hope that the bombing will stop the murderous rampage and bring the Serbian side back to the negotiating table. But if, as I expect, it does not, then there is only one way for NATO not to be seen on its 50th anniversary as either impotent or complicit in a savage ethnic war. This is to assemble a large international force that will physically...