Any college, through a standard of technique necessary for academic success, must inevitably impose some measure of intellectual uniformity on its students. At Harvard, this technique involves an ever-increasing awareness of subjectivity in approaching academic problems. This is paralleled and reinforced by the Eastern tendency to evaluate people in psychological and economic terms, with less emphasis on appearance and immediate impressions. The underlying tone of circumspection and distrust, intensified by the double thrust of college and community, can but impose an extreme self-consciousness on the student. This creates a kind of intellectual narcissism, as well as a false identification of self-consciousness with self-knowledge that produces the familar know-it-all pose for which Harvard is so famous.

Intellectual Snobbery

When Harvard is accused of snobbery, thought immediately focuses on money, clothes, manners, and social status. But with regard to these peripheral considerations, the accusation is probably not well founded. This becomes telling when it is directed toward the intellectual sphere. At Harvard, a wrong conclusion is bad indeed, and the wrong outlook is contemptible. The Harvard student will accept a new idea if he agrees with it; but it commands little attention merely because it is new, or different. The intolerance of this aspect of Harvard's provincialism is demonstrated by the refusal to discuss matters on any but one's own terms, on the theory that they are the only possible ones in which the subject in question can be considered. This superiority accounts for the scorn with which the naivete of many a Freshman has been greeted, to be transformed soon into a smooth scepticism, or perhaps an even more knowing cynicism.

Scepticism, as an attitude of the college student, is an artificial technique to help him examine his academic problems. As a frame of mind, however, it is less likely to be the result of experience or disillusionment than it is the position taken by one who wants to give the the impression that he has been around. It is ideal for the student who is less anxious to be right than he is to avoid being wrong, whose desire for truth subserves his dread of being thought foolish. In his efforts to elude being caught in a ridiculous posture, he avoids positive commitment if possible. Religous zeal and patriotism are examples of attitudes missing or rare at Harvard, the epithet "pious" provokes dension, and the term "all-American" would only be used in a perjorative sense.

Eastern Casualness

The basic cause of this position is the characteristic Eastern antipathy toward enthusiasm. The current Ivy ideal is the casual man who pursues a line of conduct corresponding to a preconceived code, directed by an unalterable mental outlook in which spontaneous emotions play a miniscule role. If enthusiasm is allowed to creep in, it is carefully controlled and channelled toward "safe" objects such as Humphrey Bogart or the Kingston Trio; it is never casual to display enthusiasm or emotion toward anything more serious than these.

Negative Responses

Without judging casualness as a standard of action, one can notice its effects when applied with rigor as an intellectual guide. The resolute determination to avoid enthusiasm in criticism can easily turn into a consistent refusal to be pleased. While the student avoids a potentially embarassing epousal of a cause, he is amply protected when on the attack, being free to concentrate on the weaknesses which can be found even in geniuses. The technique of isolating certain elements for criticism is never used to praise an author or defend a position, but is common when breaking down a work of art. Many students are more delighted to discover error than beauty, and find it difficult to counteract this when they have to sustain a long thesis that is something other than adverse criticism. Even the moderate position removes emotional response as a criterion for evaluation, relying solely on theoretically objective tests that are often based on standards more arbitrary and less reliable than the emotions themselves. This withdrawal of feeling can explain the anti-sentimentalism--which may be repressed sentimentalism--that rejects all Romantic music, rococco art, and Victorian literature while it lavishes its pent-up critical enthusiasm on movies whose artistic worth is patently nil.

Ingenuousness Shunned

Education, or any progressive experience, necessarily involves the subject in a sophisticating process. But sophistication, so far from being regarded as an artificial by-product, is revered at Harvard as a goal in itself, and as a guarantor of good taste. To the contrary, it is the quality of ingenuousness which is condemned and shunned as being only one step removed from gulibility, and two from stupidity. The mistrust of naturalness, of sincerity, and of humility, all of which are connected in the Harvard mind with ingenuousness, follows logically. The seasoned Harvardman is guarded and suspicious without provocation; if this is an unavoidable transformation which every student must under-go, then Harvard cannot claim to be a truly liberal intellectual community.

Warmth Lacking

What is lacking so conspicuously is a prevalence of warmth, or any real concern for kindness. Warmth seemingly goes against every Harvard grain: it is not characteristic of the East; it appears incompatible with scepticism; and it is ultimately blocked by self-consciousness. It is essentially an enthusiastic attitude. Kindness finds even stronger opposition at Harvard: even taken in its deepest sense, not as a wish to avoid causing pain, but as a constant consideration and valuation of feelings, it contradicts the most sacred critical canons. It is thought to be a sign of the rankest tender-mindedness and most erroneous subjectivity, a barrier to any sort of harsh truth.

There are those, however, who believe that kindness, rather than interfering with the search for truth, can greatly help in this search; that emotions and sensitivity do have a legitimate role in scholarly activity; and that, in any intellectual conversation, whether with writings or with other people, kindness can only lend depth and humanity. The gap in time and traditions, the obstructions to communication can be over-come by the desire to understand. The ability to be convinced depends in great measure on warm and generous feelings toward other ideas and aspirations.

College may not be the proper time for this kind of sympathetic attitude; it is the time for scepticism. But scepticism need not be hostile; nor must selfconscious awareness of subjectivity prevent emotional involvement. Nothing would be more absurd than to strive for an artificial warmth or some sort of reinfused provincialism. Kindness and enthusiasm are natural qualities; the problem is to preserve them through college. Harvard offers a challenge to the student to maintain his intellectual intergrity in the face of the fashionable consensus, and to observe, while at college, the standards by which he intends to lead the rest of his life