Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/08/30
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]As one who's pay check comes from the President and Fellows of Harvard University, let me say that there are two Harvards: the "liberal" Harvard the news media - and some on this list - love to twit, and the very conservative institution that is Harvard. Yes, there are many, many 'liberal' professors at Harvard. But the institution is, as I just said, very conservative, tending to move forward with baby steps, often taking two steps back for every step forward. And of course that just may be why it's been around for going on 369 years. ;-) And just to lay to rest the idea that all Harvard students are the idle rich children of the idle rich - 77% of the students in Harvard College receive grants of one sort or another. On 8/30/06 4:59 PM, "Lawrence Zeitlin" <lrzeitlin@optonline.net> wrote: > > On Aug 30, 2006, at 2:06 PM, Scott wrote: > >>>> While the media seems to characterize Harvard as a "lefty" >>>> place, it's actually a wonderful place to meet bright young >>>> people who >>>> are so RICH that they will *NEVER* have to work a day in their lives >>>> (like most of their parents before them). >>>> I recall 18 to 21 year old boys crying in the Dunster House >>>> courtyard >>>> the day the market crashed in '87, including Robert Ziff (largest >>>> t-shirt >>>> collection I ever saw), one of the heirs to the magazine fortune >>>> (he and >>>> his brothers sold it off - why concern themselves with mere >>>> business?). > > > Your Harvard and mine were quite different places. I went in the > years just following WW2 when half of the student body was made up of > vets using the GI Bill education benefits. Rather than wanting to > revolutionize the system, they wanted to get their piece of it as > soon as possible. The school was almost conservative in its outlook. > Yale as well. That was the era of Bill Buckley at that lesser > institution. My professors had actively aided the WW2 war effort and > were proud of it. Chemistry Prof. Louis Fieser invented Napalm. > George Kistakowski and others took a leave of absence to work on the > atomic bomb. (They claimed it was a Sabbatical.) The room sized > mechanical digital computer in the Aiken Computer lab earned its keep > by calculating artillery trajectories. Harvard tuition at that time > was $8000 a year. A princely sum but one that was affordable even > under the GI Bill. I earned half my tuition taking pictures of the > burlesque cuties in Sculley Square. A tough job for an 18 year old > but someone had to do it. > > Larry Z (Harvard '51) > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information