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Tehran Tom showing off for his Harvard buddies
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1998/5/6/coda-pin-my-years-at-harvard/In my years at Harvard, I have been called many things, few of them pleasant. If you think I have elicited rather harsh epithets in the "Letters" section of this page, you should see the letters my editors forbore to print. But I do not mean to repine over unrequited love or unjust persecution. Far form it, since I never sought to be loved or to be treated justly.
How could I? I wrote against sacred cows, such as the cult of diversity, affirmative action, conspicuous compassion and radical participatory democracy. I wrote in favor of taboo notions, such as a Promise Keepers, student apathy, honor and (most unforgivably) conservativism. Moreover, I wrote these things in the flagship publication of what not too long ago was known commonly as "Kremlin on the Charles." No, I could not have sought or expected popularity and its absence concerns me not at all....
Despite common parlance today, prejudice is not restricted to the ignorant or dim-witted. Prejudice pervades the human condition and we all have our prejudices. Some have more idiosyncratic and invidious prejudices, for which we rightly condemn them. But as we condemn the most noxious forms of prejudice, we blithely overlook subtler forms of prejudice for the very reason that we all share them. And we all share them because they do in fact appear as conventional wisdom. The prescient Tocqueville called it the omnipotence of the majority.
Few persons have the good fortune to escape their prejudices. That is to say, few persons have the opportunity to receive an education, which understood precisely is the freeing of one from the grips of prejudice. Harvard used to provide such education to its students as a matter of fact, but no longer. It now leaves them ignorant and adrift to choose courses from a sea of boring and impoverished prejudices.
How could I? I wrote against sacred cows, such as the cult of diversity, affirmative action, conspicuous compassion and radical participatory democracy. I wrote in favor of taboo notions, such as a Promise Keepers, student apathy, honor and (most unforgivably) conservativism. Moreover, I wrote these things in the flagship publication of what not too long ago was known commonly as "Kremlin on the Charles." No, I could not have sought or expected popularity and its absence concerns me not at all....
Despite common parlance today, prejudice is not restricted to the ignorant or dim-witted. Prejudice pervades the human condition and we all have our prejudices. Some have more idiosyncratic and invidious prejudices, for which we rightly condemn them. But as we condemn the most noxious forms of prejudice, we blithely overlook subtler forms of prejudice for the very reason that we all share them. And we all share them because they do in fact appear as conventional wisdom. The prescient Tocqueville called it the omnipotence of the majority.
Few persons have the good fortune to escape their prejudices. That is to say, few persons have the opportunity to receive an education, which understood precisely is the freeing of one from the grips of prejudice. Harvard used to provide such education to its students as a matter of fact, but no longer. It now leaves them ignorant and adrift to choose courses from a sea of boring and impoverished prejudices.
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