A Man at Harvard

As his 80th birthday approaches, TWS contributor and friend (and my teacher) Harvey Mansfield is profiled in the Harvard Crimson. It's a perceptive and fair article, and provides further evidence for the hopeful view that today's students are surprisingly open-minded and intelligent despite—or because of—the fog of political correctness and intellectual vapidity that has descended on the faculties and administrations of our great universities.

Here's a taste of the piece:

To truly understand Harvey C. Mansfield—a man whose solution to grade inflation at Harvard is to give students one grade, the one they deserve, and then another, the ironic grade, which goes to the Registrar—you have to realize that he tries to think outside history. Or, at least, he likes to pay a bit more deference to the old ways than the rest of us.

His is an uncommon voice at Harvard, broadly opposing the notion that progress is for the better. “Society always takes things for granted,” he says. “If one looks at modernity from the outside, one is not so impressed by the latest thing or the newest thing.”

Read the whole thing.