The Legacy of Legacy

For every student accepted to Harvard, nineteen others are rejected, making admissions a zero-sum game in which a set of criteria promoting a particular group will directly demote others. One such evaluation factor is legacy admissions: the practice of granting an admissions advantage to relatives of college alumni. A common defense for legacy admissions is … Read more

There Is No Excuse

On April 13, 2018, Harvard University Health Services received a call about a black male Harvard student who was intoxicated and in need of urgent medical care. The student’s intoxication likely occurred during Yardfest, a time when many student party and use illegal substances. About 30 minutes later, officers from the Cambridge Police Department arrived … Read more

Big Blue Dreams in Red California

For Democrats hoping that the 2018 midterm elections will deliver them a majority in the House of Representatives, the state of California represents a bastion of opportunities: several vulnerable GOP incumbents will face tough reelection fights in the year ahead. But while California is largely considered a haven for liberalism, seven of its 53 seats … Read more

Reconstructing the Canon

A college library bookshelf.  The Great Works “We absolutely never explicitly talked about race in my English classes. I do remember in my senior year class saying something to my classmates about what it’s like to be the only black person when we’re talking about slavery or racism, but I had a largely joking tone … Read more

Udaipur

We all define ourselves in part by where we are from. I, for example, was born in the winter of 1996 in Detroit, Michigan. But perhaps it’s not so simple. My parents had arrived here—via Minneapolis, Houston, Long Island, and small-town Kentucky—from Karachi, Pakistan, where they entered the world some 30 years before me. Uprooting … Read more