“Interracial Roommates Can Reduce Prejudice,” the New York Times informs us today. That’s terrific. Who knew, when Alan Keyes (black), Steve Rosen (half-Korean), and I decided to live together for the 1973-1974 academic year that we would be contributing so much to the public good? We thought we’d just be the most right-wing group ever to share an apartment in Cambridge, Mass.

Now we learn from the Times that not only were we providing “natural field experiments” for social scientists that could “provide insights on race relations,” but that we were probably instrumental in reducing prejudice for years to come at Harvard. Just twenty-one years old, and doing our part for the progress of social science and society! I do think a letter of appreciation from the Harvard administration--but why not from the Obama administration too?--would be in order.