Rara Avis: Professor Finds Harvard’s Faults

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | May 6, 2026 | John Staddon

[karpov]

Harvey Mansfield is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard University. Still teaching at the age of 94, he has just published a collection of essays, Where Harvard Went Wrong: Fifty Years of Commentary that Fell on Deaf Ears. The book is a collection of his articles, speeches, and book reviews going as far back as 1975. He expounds on themes familiar to Martin Center readers, including grade inflation, the decline of merit and standards, the erosion of the curriculum, and the harms done by the obsession with affirmative action.

Mansfield is proud to be conservative, one of an almost extinct breed at Harvard and other elite universities. He has been arguing several positions that I, at least, consider perfectly reasonable but are evidently regarded as impossibly reactionary by Mansfield’s colleagues: opposition to racial affirmative action (given the current intellectual climate, he supports affirmative action that favors conservative faculty), the importance of rigorous grading (given widespread grade inflation) and restoring of the Ivory Tower (no, Harvard is not just another consumer product).

Apropos affirmative action, Mansfield provides this amusing anecdote: the case of an admitted student not known to be black whose financial aid was increased once he arrived and his race was revealed. (He refused the bonus. We don’t know if the DEI bureaucracy was embarrassed.)

One of Mansfield’s salient issues is grade inflation. The American grading system is a testament to the fundamental honesty that once characterized US society and surprised immigrants. But grading by the teacher, rather than by an independent source, is fertile ground for moral hazard. Grading your own students is basically marking your own homework.

[posterchild]

God bless him. He is still around and teaching me new words like fissiparousness!

[ComputerGuy]

Interesting

[kawhill]

“Rara Avis: Professor Finds Harvard’s Faults”. The most prestigious technical college in the world.

[BamaBelle]

I laughed when I saw “rara avis”...in my early net life that was one of my pseudonyms because I am a bit odd...lol

[LongWayHome]

I was a student of Harvey’s way back in the day.

Happy to see him still in the game.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Yes, it Hertz when I read about him finding the elite Rarus Avis.

[SunkenCiv]

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[Excellence]

Which is linked to an equally brilliant article!

[GOPJ]

The numerous “Studies” programs at Harvard (and elsewhere) are byproducts of the increasing fissiparousness of social science and humanities. Given the overarching importance given to research, fueled by the money to be made for the university (not so much by the individual researcher), most science-related faculty would prefer not to teach undergraduates at all, but if they must, they prefer to teach their specialties. Many historians, for example, would prefer to teach Gen-Ed courses like “Americans as Occupiers and Nation-Builders” or “Asian Americans as an American Paradox” than, say, “British-American history from 1066 to 1900.” That,

Letting stupid interns 'teach' these worthless classes opens the door to millions of unqualified 'students'( on the governments dime ) to attend 'elite' universities... It's GREED behind Harvard's choices NOT 'need'...