In a world of universities serving ‘customers' instead of students, what, exactly, is a good education?
When you think of Harvard, what comes to mind? The verdant, inviting greenery of the Yard? The image of young, bookish students, backpacks slung over one shoulder, future leaders of the free world all, bustling between lecture halls? Graduates in crimson fringed gowns tossing their mortarboards into the sky, triumphantly? Good stuff, basically. Smart stuff. To wit: my alma mater sold sweatshirts advertising itself as 'Canada's Harvard.' It remains a pretty cringey designation. But the undergirding idea remains: 'You know Harvard? The good school that produces smart people? This is like that school. Just … you know, the Canadian version.' That's because, in America and across the world, rightly or wrongly, 'Harvard' is basically synonymous with 'intelligence,' or at least 'a good education.'
So, U.S. President Donald Trump's recent attacks on what is arguably America's, and the world's, most prestigious educational institution — slashing the University's federal funding, halting its ability to enrol international students, authoritarian demands that the school enforce 'viewpoint diversity' — are easy to read as an attack against the idea of education, and the very value of intelligence, itself.
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