The Harvard Campaign publicly launched a little less than two months ago, when the university announced that it would seek to raise $6.5 billion in what is primed to be the largest single fundraising effort in higher education to date. In addition to initiatives focused on financial aid, house renewal, and Harvard’s global impact, the campaign will see the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) relocate across the Charles River to Allston, allowing for a dramatic expansion.
At the launch event in September, the university invited Bill Gates back to speak about his life since leaving Harvard. He
was a fitting choice as the speaker for a capital campaign that is billed as Harvard’s bridge to the 21st century. By any account, Gates has been one of the most—if not the most—accomplished and influential engineers and entrepreneurs of our time, and perhaps of all time. Even more remarkable is the possibility that his technological legacy may still be dwarfed by the philanthropic work that has defined the last 15 years of his life.
As a computer science concentrator, I’m supposed to be thrilled with what is truly an ambitious plan for the expansion of SEAS across the river. Harvard is finally taking the discipline of engineering seriously! It’s saying to schools like Stanford, MIT, and Carnegie Mellon that Harvard will no longer be considered second to them in the engineering sciences, and that Harvard
is as much a university of the 21st century as the four preceding it. One thing I can’t help wonder, however, is how moving SEAS to Allston furthers the cause of “One Harvard,” a concept often emphasized by Drew Faust.
As technology becomes increasingly ubiquitous in our lives, the stakes around its use and pervasiveness grow exponentially. This past summer, I worked on privacy issues at a large technology company, and my work was informed as much by a sociology class I had taken about the intersection of law and science as my algorithms class. Schools like UC Berkeley even have a requirement specifically for computer science majors in which they must take a class that investigates the ethical or social implications of new technologies. Harvard has no equivalent (unless you count the Ethical Reasoning Gen Ed), though it is positioned exceptionally well to offer such courses.
Given the challenges that the spatial separation of SEAS
from the rest of campus will raise, Harvard must be ever mindful in emphasizing interdisciplinary academic work, especially between the engineering sciences and the humanities and social sciences. Students of SEAS must understand not just how their code compiles, but how their ideas are changing our social fabric. In the past decade, the Internet alone has altered the ways we discover information, participate in commercial transactions, and even socialize among own friends. Engaging critically with new technological possibilities is not simply a luxury of the academy; it is a necessary skill if the programmers shipping off to Silicon Valley are to impact our world in a positive way.
Indeed, I am excited for the next generation of engineers who will study at Harvard in the new Allston facilities. At the same time, it is my sincere hope that Harvard renews and even strengthens its commitment to “One Harvard.” The move will surely require effort on the part of students, faculty, and administrators so that we don’t feel pigeonholed within our concentrations. After all, many of us came to Harvard in the first place because it offered unparalleled opportunities not just in the field of our own academic interests, but in most others as well.