I taught in the Social Studies program with John for four years. He is a good guy. I didn't take as dim a view of the students as he seemed to, though I saw some of what he described. I mostly ignored it, partly because I didn't think having contempt for my students was a good position from which to influence them politically (though admittedly, many were unreachable).
The Social Studies program has a reputation at Harvard for attracting leftish students, and in my experience it also attracted more disaffected working-class (or at least middle-class) students than other majors, and it also attracted lots of students interested in a range of political engagement, ranging from liberal "service" to real left activism.
John seems to have had a different experience of the students: "Harvard students may be divided into three types. The first two are those who infer from their presence on campus that they have already made it and those who infer that they are on their way to making it. … Members of the third type, the ironists and the scoffers, have their degree and eat it too, since their anti-Harvard posturing carries no real risks."
I think maybe many of the students I liked the best were the ones that John put in the last category, or maybe he didn't notice the students who had good intentions. Sometimes it seemed as if the institution was all too adept at channeling those good intentions to ruling-class purposes. An anecdote might help illustrate this. A good friend of mine, a left economist, taught a tutorial in Social Studies as a visiting instructor; the tutorial was entitled "Globalization from Underneath." The class attracted leftish students who saw themselves working in "development" eventually, probably in Africa (which is all the rage at Harvard lately). One of the books on the syllabus was Empire, and my friend was surprised at what a distaste the students took to the book, and she was puzzled in particular about one recurring criticism several students made: that the authors left no room for "agency." What did they mean by this, she asked me? Why would they say this about Empire? I rolled my eyes, since I recognized this kind of criticism from tutorials on Marx and Foucault--they were getting this term and basis for critique from somewhere, I never bothered to find out where. My friend later told me that she had finally figured out what had prompted that criticism. The problem is not that there is no role for agency in Empire, which certainly sees such a role for the international working class. What bothered the students (though maybe they didn't recognize it) was that there was no role for their agency. They were hoping to "help" the Third World by going into Development, but Hart and Negri close off this avenue as not really being helpful. I thought her solution to the puzzle was right on.
Still, some students get something out of the Social Studies curriculum (or survive Harvard, at any rate), and end up doing good things. A former student of mine, Aaron Tanaka, just made it into Boston's scrappy weekly newspaper, the Weekly Dig, as one of nine "Good Bostonians," for his organizing work with the Boston Workers' Alliance, a terrific grassroots group for the unemployed that has focused on reforming Massachusetts' Criminal Offender Record Information system (CORI), and on economic development projects involving worker-owned co-ops. He got started by working with Boston city councilor Chuck Turner, who is a pillar of left activism in the city. (Here is a link to the bit about Aaron from the Dig: http://www.weeklydig.com/news-opinions/feature/200807/boston-workers-alliance-organizer.) Several other former students of mine have been doing left activism since they left Harvard.
Another former student of mine who is on the Dollars & Sense collective member is more on the social democratic side; he works for a firm doing research on socially responsible investment, and the experience has been radicalizing him (by disgusting him, I mean). He wrote what I think is a terrific article for the most recent issue of Dollars & Sense on the global food crisis, with a focus on the rush of index investors into unregulated over-the-counter markets for commodity futures.
Yet another former student of mine who is from a middle-class background but who, like many Harvard students (including the leftish ones), worked in the financial industry for a few years after he graduated, wrote an article on private equity for us. It is not radical, but it is highly critical of the industry, and pretty damning.
I haven't posted either of these articles to our website, but I may soon, and I can send them along to anyone who's interested (or you can order a copy of the magazine through our website, dollarsandsense.org). (Apologies in advance to Doug, who has told me that he can't tell whether D&S and LBO are in competition. I don't think we are--we have different niches, at any rate. Anyone from lbo-talk who wants to write for D&S, definitely shoot me an email.)
Anyhow, I think Harvard students (and I would imagine, students from other elite schools in the United States) are more of a mixed bag than John Summers suggests. (I was still floored by his story about his student who purchased the New York Observer while in college.)
-- -- Chris Sturr Co-editor, Dollars & Sense 29 Winter St. Boston, Mass. 02108 phone: 617-447-2177, ext. 205 fax: 617-447-2179 email: sturr at dollarsandsense.org