It’s always been unclear to me on what grounds those T-shirts labeling Harvard “America’s McGill” seek to compare the two universities. Clearly, they’re a response to people labeling McGill “Canada’s Harvard,” but that doesn’t answer my question. The implication is that the two universities are comparable in things such as quality of education, reputation, and prominence in each respective country’s moneyed and political elite. Only recently, however, did I realize that Harvard is similar to its northern counterpart in another way.
Earlier this month, 70 Harvard students walked out of an introductory economics course in protest of what they considered the professor’s conservative bias. In a sprawling defence of the walk-out published in the Harvard Crimson, two freshmen tried out a few possible justifications for their protest, such as, that their professor, N. Gregory Mankiw, worked in the Bush administration and thus “played a key role in creating the policies which have exacerbated economic inequality and led to financial instability and collapse.” Left implicit is the suggestion that universities should discriminate according to political affiliation. Apparently, all that money their parents spent on tutors to prepare for the AP World History exam wasn’t enough to disabuse them of that classically totalitarian idea.
Just two months into their academic careers, these students have the audacity to appoint themselves at once members of the tenure review board, peer reviewers of Professor Mankiw’s textbook, and respected dispensers of economic and political analysis in their own right. It’s almost impressive.
“Our professor believes that progressive taxation sacrifices economic efficiency (total wealth) for the benefit of more economic equality,” they complain in the Crimson piece. “However, mounting evidence suggests that ‘the trade-off between efficiency and equality may not exist’ and that excessive inequality leads to negative consequences in the economy over the long run in terms of economic efficiency.” Hang the man!
This is entitlement run amok. It escapes me how those students can be so confident in their own opinions only five months out of high school. Why would someone even go to university, much less America’s McGill, if they can’t stand to listen to an opposing view for a single semester? In a superb twist of irony, Mankiw lectured on income inequality the day of the walk-out.
The writers claim that Mankiw’s expression of conservative opinions “inhibits students’ intellectual growth.” I can’t think of a better way to inhibit intellectual growth than to announce that you’ve got it all figured out before the end of your first semester—thanks but no thanks, Harvard.
Many of the problems with the Harvard walk-out don’t apply to last week’s Quebec-wide students’ strike. The protesters from McGill and elsewhere were criticising the decision of a democratically-elected government, not academic freedom, and didn’t resort to the drastic measure of skipping class until more moderate tactics—protests on Saturdays—had already failed.
Yet there are some basic parallels that can’t be missed. Campus last Thursday—after the striking students left and before their noisy return—was somehow more pleasant, more collegiate than usual. There was a palpable focus and unity of purpose in the students’ strides, as if those who didn’t strike were in some way a purer distillation of the larger group usually in attendance. I imagine the students who stayed in Mankiw’s course felt the same way.
That doesn’t mean that the 600 students who didn’t walk out of the Harvard course necessarily support conservative economic views, or the professor’s allegedly biased presentation of them. Nor does it mean the remaining students at McGill last Thursday necessarily support higher tuition or applaud an administration that welcomes riot squads on campus. It just means that we didn’t come to McGill to go to war with it.
In the spirit of such a commitment, I was proud to sit in solidarity with my fellow students in class that day.
