A.J. Melnick – Harvard University has consistently ranked #1 in many global assessments of the world’s top universities.  For generations it has sought — with the aid of a massive endowment — to be ‘the best in the world’ in as many fields as possible.  Former Harvard College Dean Harry R. Lewis once noted that Harvard ”holds, in the public imagination, a distinctive pre-eminence.”  True, but Harvard today has lost its way.

When Lewis was dean he said he once had had some difficulty in finding a university mission statement.  He needed one in order to certify Harvard’s participation in the N.C.A.A. intercollegiate athletic program.  “It turned out,” he wrote at the time, “that for 360 years Harvard College had never had a mission statement.”  Lewis finally settled on Harvard’s Charter of 1650, a fundamental document in which Harvard committed itself “to the education of the English and Indian youth of this country, in knowledge and godliness….” Continue reading →