[For this
year’s installment in my annual anti-favorites series, I wanted to complicate
things a bit, considering places from across my life with which I have
love/hate relationships. I’d love to hear your own complex (or simple!)
anti-favorites, whether places or anything else, for the crowd-sourced weekend
airing of grievances!]
I’ve
dedicated a number of prior posts to impressive individuals who contributed
meaningful moments to my undergraduate experience, including:
Peter
Gomes, the groundbreaking minister who sat down with us at lunch one day in
the freshman dining hall;
Alan
Heimert, the most demanding teacher I ever had and (despite all our differences
in style and tone) one of my clearest inspirations for my own teaching;
And Mark
Rennella, my senior thesis advisor who became a lifelong friend.
I always
say that the people were my favorite part of my time at Harvard, and those are
a few of the many reasons why. But my least favorite part was the institution’s
snottiness about its
own legacies and self-importance, and I have to admit that as a public
university professor who despairs at how many news stories focus on Harvard and
its Ivy League peers as if they are the norm for (or even vaguely representative
of) higher education in America, my frustrations with those aspects of Hahvahd has
only deepened over the quarter-century since my graduation.
Next
love/hate place tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Anti-favorites you’d share?
