The Coddling of the Harvard Mind
From their shadowy lairs, they quietly prepare academic weaponry: They prepare fake study guides and prepare to block the numbers of those formerly-trusted problem set partners. These study guide saboteurs need only their cue from the faculty senate: the imminent passage of the 20 percent cap on A’s .
Or at least — that’s what you’d think watching the campus reaction to the recent proposal by a faculty committee to crack down on grade inflation.
Harvard students seem to be having a hard time parting with their A’s. The Harvard Undergraduate Association Academic Team’s recent survey makes that clear.
85 percent of the 831 student responses were “definitely” against the proposal. One response warns, “Students will die. Please read that again, we are begging you. You need to listen to us. Suicide rates will skyrocket. You do not want to see this happen on your campus. Why risk it even for the name of your university?”
Another portends the proposal will “create direct competition among the students, discouraging collaboration in class — to the extent that it may even lead to intentional sabotage.”
They’re not alone. In response to the proposal, there’s been a deluge of social media comments, culminating in not one, but two open letters and even a Change.org petition.
One such letter, a sprawling 2,653-word polemic, calls the proposal “personally insulting,” in addition to “actively adversarial” and “malicious,” and claims that it represents a “performative attempt to bolster the resumes of several administrators,” with “reckless disregard for our well-being.”
The second letter decries the policy as “blatantly racist” because it will “create segregation” by widening racial gaps in education, and criticizes the faculty committee for being excessively white and male.
In viral posts on Sidechat, a social media platform that allows Harvard students to post to each other anonymously, students discussed sinking Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh’s book reviews (only 20 percent of books ought to get five stars), joked about Claybaugh being in the Epstein files, and apparently suggested that her salary ought to be capped at 20 percent of its current level.
We’re skeptical that a proposal which will only change practices for a minority of courses (roughly 60 percent are already in compliance, according to chair of the faculty committee Stuart M. Sheiber ’81) will have such catastrophic consequences on campus. The proposed grade distribution aims for A’s or A-minuses for the top half of each course.
More than anything, however, this episode is illustrative of a broader problem on campus: a culture that increasingly treats academic discomfort as injury and disagreement as hostility, making it difficult to have sober conversations about standards at all. Call it the coddling of the Harvard mind.
At best, student rebuttals to the report have focused on consequential arguments as to what the proposal will do. The objections center not on what purpose grading ought to serve in the academy but rather concerns over campus competition, student mental health, or racial achievement gaps.
At worst, the student reaction has embodied the habits of mind associated with a culture of safetyism — where discomfort is interpreted as danger and institutional debates are recast as threats to personal wellbeing.
Much of the backlash has taken familiar forms: catastrophizing modest policy changes into existential threats, treating emotional discomfort as proof of material harm, and reducing disagreement to moral indictment rather than argument.
These reactions drown out a serious discussion about grading policy: Is grade inflation a problem? What is the purpose of grading? Should it serve as a signal to employers and graduate school admissions officers? These are the questions this campus ought to be engaged in.
We happen to think that grading should promote mastery, grade inflation is a problem because students are getting A’s without achieving them, and that the cap is a reasonable if not preferable remedy. Claybaugh seems to have a slightly different answer, putting more emphasis on distinction, hence the cap. All of this is open to disagreement.
But disagreement should be contained to the merits of these questions. Harvard students are above manichean thinking and accusations of grading as harm.
The apocalypse will not commence at the onset of a lower median grade.
Amelia F. Barnum ’28, an Associate Editorial editor, is a Social Studies concentrator in Winthrop House. Benjamin Isaac ’28, an Associate Editorial editor, is a Government and Economics concentrator in Quincy House.
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