Word: wisdoms
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Kosovar population over a number of months. Analysts knew Milosevic would intensify his purge if bombing started. But they believed his intent was to crush the K.L.A. and then gradually drive out the entire ethnic Albanian population. Among political decision makers at NATO and at the White House, conventional wisdom also said Milosevic would cave after a few days of bombing. That scenario seemed so convincing that they settled on an air campaign of gradual escalation, beginning with limited attacks and building in sufficient pauses for Belgrade to capitulate. U.S. intelligence had no qualms about the military plan: even...
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...
...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 to the privilege of intellectual growth: the responsibility...
...telling us what to do and what kind of people to be once we leave, but is offering a suggestion that can comfort us as we make the difficult transition to the world outside. That is, the inscription can be read to say that just as "to grow in wisdom" gave us a reason to enter, "to better serve thy country and thy kind" can give us a reason to leave. As much as we may want to stay in the Ivory Tower, the gate can give us the motivation to say farewell to Harvard and to move...
...conventional wisdom is that the inscriptions refer to the Harvard experience as a whole. But there is no reason this kind of contemplation should be limited to seniors. Whenever we leave the Yard, whether for the evening, for the summer or for good, it is the right time to think about what the inscriptions mean--about the relationship between wisdom and service, between offers and obligations. However you read the inscriptions, they can reflect, if not shape, your lasting impressions of your days in and around the Yard. Geoffrey C. Upton '99 is a social studies concentrator in Leverett House...