How did Harvard gain its reputation and prestige?

johnwesley
Wed, 04 Aug 2010 07:42:25 +0000

Columbia was becomming the most influential university at that time before its long fall came in the mid 1950s as Harvard out hustled, out fund raised and out-Kennedyed Columbia into the ground.



There may have been some earlier warning signs, but Columbia’s fall was pretty precipitous by university standards. The student takeover of Low Library in April, 1968 and subsequent pictures of bloodied students parading past television cameras, not to mention the very public humiliation of Clark Kerr, a higher education icon, even made the New York tabloids, something the Ivy League rarely did in those days. I agree that a more astute and nimble administration might have seen the danger signs. But, if it hadn’t happened at Columbia it would have happened somewhere else eventually; university heads became younger, hipper and a lot more “consumer” oriented as a result of the Columbia riots.