Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/08/30
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Glad to hear from a fellow grad!!! Harvard was pretty conservative on many fronts when I was there in the 80's (class of 89') as well. The Kennedy School of government had plenty of hawks. My g'friend and later wife studied Russian Hist and Lit, and the "Kremlin watchers" were there in force. I studied philosophy, and most of the dept was very staid philsophy of language, logic and mathematics. Robert Nozick was supposed to be a counterforce to Rawls, but the even Rawls' work stemmed from the fairly conservative Locke anglo-american tradition. I got permission to take some literary criticism and other non-departmental classes for philosophy credit, just to gain some exposure to Derrida, Foucault, the Frankfurt School, and so on. Some students may have been politically active. I was part of SASC, the South Africa Solidarity Comittee, but I don think efforts to end apartheid are particularly "left." But really, over 1/2 of the students then were in pre-med oriented majors and one never saw them leave the library basements - much less man the barricades :-) I know things have changed since then. I missed the whole "political correctness" thing by a year or two I'd estimate. Anyway, it really grinds my gears when I hear on the tube or read in the newspaper how Harvard is akin to some kind of haven for commie's. Nothing could be further from the truth. Along with several other fine institutions, it's basically a training ground for managers and leaders in our country's most elite business and governmental institutions. Hardly "left." Hmmm, I guess I skipped that last part of my education there :-) Scott Lawrence Zeitlin wrote: > > > > 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 -- Pics @ http://www.adrenaline.com/snaps Leica M6TTL, Bessa R, Nikon FM3a, Nikon D70, Rollei AFM35 (Jihad Sigint NSA FBI Patriot Act)