Talk:Harvard University

Question: What's your source? This seems extremely unlikely to me — are you sure you didn't just see it referred to as "the New College at Cambridge" or something? My point is that it probably didn't have a name in our modern, precise sense.

Also, something about Harvard's relationship with Radcliffe really ought to be added.

The color crimson

It might be mentioned (I'm not quite sure how to do this) that the school colour "crimson," the shade of gules the field of the Harvard shield is almost invariably depicted in, is that fashionable for showing gules around the time of Harvard's founding, but that in this sense, the same shade is invariably referred to as "chocolate". --Daniel C. Boyer 19:11, 3 Aug 2003 (UTC)

It's indeed crimson. Please see http://www.news.harvard.edu/guide/lore/lore5.html . -- PFHLai 15:01, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC)

VES link

Should Visual and Environmental Studies really redirect to Art? --Daniel C. Boyer 19:03, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Yes. "Visual and Environmental Studies" is simply Harvard's term for its art program. See http://www.ves.fas.harvard.edu. --Lowellian 20:37, Dec 4, 2003 (UTC)

I know that; I was in it. Perhaps my question reveals too technical a mindframe. --Daniel C. Boyer 15:01, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Some questions

1. Is the image of Gore hall really the best use of space? And why is the file called colonial harvard 2? I mean, I know most people won't see the filename, but that building is clearly post-colonial. 2. Also, it might be nice to right-align those captions (instead of centering them). Is there a way to do this without building a whole table thingummy? 3. I changed the list of house namesakes. I'm certain about Lowell and Winthrop, but not quite so sure about Adams — somebody let me know if I'm wrong. Doops 20:57, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC) (P.S.: apologies for mislocating my question earlier)

Why some faculties, schools, etc. are listed with 'Harvard' in their names and some aren't

Each of the schools has a 3-letter (except for GSAS) acronym by which they're commonly referred to around Harvard. Some (HLS, HMS, HDS) include H; others (GSD, GSE, SPH) don't. I listed each school by the expaned version of their everyday acronym.

Alternatively, I suppose we could list them in a more consistent manner, but then include the acronyms in parentheses after each school.Doops 16:56, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Name of Winthrop House

Why not call John Winthrop House by its full name? Doops 21:09, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

For consistency with the other Houses, which we don't call by their full name. --Lowellian 18:10, Apr 18, 2004 (UTC)

What other houses have a first name? (I mean, it's not like some obscure forgotten thing; it actually says John Winthrop House on all documents, stationery, etc.) Doops 20:52, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether the other Houses officially have a first name or not, but certainly people usually say "Winthrop House" and not "John Winthrop House." Even Winthrop's website titles it "Winthrop House." I like the current revision, where it's called "Winthrop House" but has a note behind it that says it has a longer official name. --Lowellian 18:47, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)

I went to Harvard for 3 years and lived in Winthrop House for 2, and never once did I hear it referred to as John Winthrop House. I've just located a large beer stein from those days that has my nickname on it, a shield, the year, and the words "Harvard University" up around the top and the words "Winthrop House" down by the base. No "John".Hayford Peirce 00:43, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I grant you that people don't say it much in everyday speech; but it is on stationary, the plaque at the gate, etc. etc. Doops 06:08, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Name of Dudley House

I just added that Dudley House is named for Thomas Dudley. Is this actually true? AJD 12:18, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yes. See the little garden behind Lamont for more on the guy. Doops 12:41, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I knew that; I just wasn't 100% sure that the House and the garden were both named for the same Dudley. Thanks for clearing it up. AJD 15:56, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Need source for NIH statistic

I removed the following text from the document:

Harvard's funding from the National Institutes of Health annually exceeds $1 billion, making it by far the largest of NIH's beneficiaries.

User:Yanamad originally added the text [1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Harvard_University&diff=3303409&oldid=3302690):

Harvard's funding from the National Institutes of Health annually top $900 million, making it by far the largest of NIH's beneficiaries.

Yanamad then modified the text [2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Harvard_University&diff=3315888&oldid=3314101):

Harvard's funding from the National Institutes of Health annually reach upwards of $1 billion, making it by far the largest of NIH's beneficiaries.

User:Ajd then changed the text [3] (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Harvard_University&diff=3325469&oldid=3315888):

Harvard's funding from the National Institutes of Health annually exceeds of $1 billion, making it by far the largest of NIH's beneficiaries.

I then fixed the grammer, changing "exceeds of" to "exceeds" [4] (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Harvard_University&diff=3325469&oldid=3315888).

However, I am now removing the entire text because the sole source for this information seems to be Yanamad (on Ajd's edit, his edit comment was "wd choice"). I have searched and been unable to verify this statistic. Also, from what I know of NIH grants, the statistic seems a bit high. I would have asked Yanamad, except from his contributions history and his Talk page he seems to only have been active in Wikipedia for two days back in April 2004. If anyone can provide a citation/source for this information, then feel free to add it back to the page. --Lowellian 22:30, May 15, 2004 (UTC)

This page http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/award/trends/rnk03all1to100.html lists Harvard as 12th with just over $300K in 2003. If you count only academic institutions, Harvard is 11th. --Chinasaur 02:52, May 16, 2004 (UTC)

According to stats by The Crimson, Harvard receives about $400 million per year from all departments of the federal gov't, which would include the NIH. "If Harvard refuses, the bill threatens to strip the University of all funding from the Departments of Homeland Security, Energy, Transportation and the Central Intelligence Agency. According to Kevin Casey, the University’s Federal Relations chief, the cost would likely amount to over $400 million." http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=358688 User:140.247.75.103

Eliot and Crimson

Since somebody seems determined to have Eliot in there, here's a way it could be done:

The school color is a shade richer than red but brighter than burgundy, referred to as crimson, which is also the name of the Harvard sports teams and the daily newspaper, The Harvard Crimson. The color was unofficially adopted (in preference to magenta) by an 1875 vote of the student body, during the presidency of Charles William Eliot. (Curiously enough, it had been Eliot who, as a graduate student in 1858, first bought red bandanas for his crew so they could more easily be distinguished by spectators at a regatta.) Doops 13:34, 16 May 2004 (UTC)

I don't think the "curiously enough" is necessary. --Chinasaur 06:09, May 17, 2004 (UTC)

All right, "interestingly enough" or "coincidentally enough" if you prefer. Anything but "ironically," since it isn't ironic. Doops 14:35, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

I thought it would be good without any qualifier. And I would make the parenthetic statement part of the last sentence (i.e. before the period and without a period of its own). Actually if I wrote it I'd probably replace the parentheses with a semicolon, but some people don't like those. --Chinasaur 16:06, May 17, 2004 (UTC)

Well, I guess this was my thinking.

Somebody (anonymous, I think) keeps trying to mention that the color was adopted in Eliot's presidency.
This fact, while true, is pretty irrelevant...unless you want to point out the coincidence that it was Eliot who had first proposed a shade of red in the first place;
so I was just offerring a compromise to whomever it was that wanted Eliot in there.
But, if you feel like the coincidence is too minor to mention (and I can't say I disagree with you there), then how about leaving out the president in 1875 altogether thus:

The school color is a shade richer than red but brighter than burgundy, referred to as crimson, which is also the name of the Harvard sports teams and the daily newspaper, The Harvard Crimson. The color was unofficially adopted (in preference to magenta) by an 1875 vote of the student body, although the association with some form of red can be traced back to 1858, when Charles William Eliot, a young graduate student who would later become Harvard's president, bought red bandanas for his crew so they could more easily be distinguished by spectators at a regatta. Doops 13:34, 16 May 2004 (UTC)

P.S. Semicolons are certainly cool by me! In fact, I think I tend to overuse them. Doops 17:00, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

I see what you mean. I think the latest version is good. --Chinasaur 17:43, May 17, 2004 (UTC)

I like your 13:34, 16 May 2004 version too. Why don't you add it to the page? :) --Lowellian 20:16, May 17, 2004 (UTC)

Removal of Annenberg photo

Fuzheado just removed the Annenberg photo because it didn't look good. Didn't it used to look better before the last mediawiki change, or am I misremembering? --Chinasaur 05:27, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

And while we're at it, the photos of Mem. Church and the Science Center could stand to be removed. I don't object to photos of either building on the site (okay, so maybe I object to a pic of the Science Center), but I think we could find some photos that show the buildings better (aka a shot of Mem. Church from Tercentenary Theater and an angled shot of the Science Center). In the mean time, I vote for removal. --Guest, 8 Jun 2004

I uploaded a pic of annenberg and another of the science center. hope you like them better. --jacobolus, 9 Jan 2005

Constant battle over "most prestigious in the world"

It seems we are constantly reinserting the section "considered by many to be the world's most prestigious university". I always considered this sentence factual; it is certainly the opinion of many Americans, and my impression was the opinion was even stronger in Asian countries, if somewhat weaker in European ones. Am I mistaken? If it's a simple fact, it is by definition NPOV to state it as such; I don't think anyone is being misled. --Chinasaur 05:27, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, when I lived in Tahiti and frequently visited France for many years, it sure as hell impressed cultivated, highly educated Frenchpeople that I had attended the place. They were far more impressed by it than I was (or am). Many of these people had attended highly elitist French universities that I'm sure were far more difficult to get into and had a harder curriculum than Harvard had in those days. So, based on my own experiences, I would say that the statement is factual.Hayford Peirce 00:41, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

How would they have reacted if you had said Oxford or Cambridge? Many of the Asian countries have greater US influence than European influence, so it's unsurprising that they would be more aware of US institutions. Africa, the Indian sub-continent and the Commonwealth countries in general are perhaps more likely to be familiar with UK or other European institutions. There seems little doubt that the statement that it's one of the most prestigious is accurate, so that seems like a reasonable approach to take. Jamesday 01:24, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Boston Globe columnest Alex Beam constantly refers to Harvard as the World's Greatest University, sometimes just WGU for short. But of course, it is in contexts like this (July 1, 2004) where it is recognizable as subtle Missing image
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[[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk) ]] 13:30, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

As I explained two weeks ago, Kim wants to publish a grabbier alumni magazine, distributed free to the successnik graduates of the World's Greatest University. I can't resist quoting this example of a story he might pursue, from his website, 02138magazine.com: "Did you know that . . . Paul Bremer, MBA '66, and several of his key advisors in Iraq's Coalition Provisional Authority graduated from Harvard Business School?" First Enron, now Iraq! Another triumph for HBS!

Nicer arms

OK, who knows how to make an image have a clear background (instead of white)? I put up the nicer arms, and discovered that the white background shows up against the grey box. I guess I could edit the image to have a grey box; but that's just a patch. Does somebody have the software or knowhow to do it properly? Thanks. Also: I moved the motto down into the fact box because it really looked bad visually right under the arms -- the pointy bottom of the coat of arms was balancing precariously on one rather short word. That's the problem with coats of arms: the shield shape is gorgeous until you have to put something underneath it; then all you can think about is "why doesn't it topple over?" :) Doops 11:02, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Doops 11:29, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

JPEG images can't have a transparent background. Perhaps you should convert it to PNG. Acegikmo1 01:45, Jun 29, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. Acting on your advice, I've tried that, but without success. I guess AppleWorks just isn't a powerful graphics program. :) Later this summer, when I have access to PhotoShop, I'll try again. Doops 03:00, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Hopefully everyone's happy with the new veritas shield I uploaded? Apparently it was the only high-resolution Harvard seal the Lampoon could find for their recent course guide spoof. --Jacobolus 09:08, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Division of Continuing Education, Harvard Summer School

Should be listed in article. --Daniel C. Boyer 14:19, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Done Doops 23:57, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Alumni

I've adjusted the alumni section for the following reasons. Dictionaries indicate this requires having earned a degree. Poet Robert Frost and Microsoft Founder Bill Gates studied at Harvard but didn't graduate. Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a professor. Sources: Wikipedia articles on the individuals and:

Frost: "Frost's Life and Career" by William H. Pritchard, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [5] (http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/frost/life.htm) ; Columbia and Encarta encyclopedias. Sources indicate attending and leaving without graduating.

Gates: Personal knowledge of his fame as a non-graduate. "The Crimson", Feb 27, 2004 describing him as "Harvard's most famous dropout" [6] (http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=357844) . Bill Gates biography at Microsoft Corp. [7] (http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/bio.asp) . Sources indicate leaving but not graduating.

Longfellow: The Maine Historical Society biography indicates his graduating from Bowdoin College and being a professor at Harvard but not him graduating from Harvard., In view of the depth of the information presented it seems unlikely that a major event like graduating from Harvard would have been left out. [8] (http://www.mainehistory.org/house_henry.shtml) and PDF linked from there. Encarta has a similar unlikely lack of confirming information.

Jamesday 12:06, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think the use of "alumni" to mean "former students" rather than only "graduates" is quite common. People know that Bill Gates attended Harvard, and consider him an alum. Many organizations, especially consulting and law firms, quite often use the word alumni to indicate anyone who has worked there in the past.

Bill Gates is listed as a member of the class of 1977 by the Harvard Alumni Association (though with no degree).
If I remember correctly (I couldn't find it online), the Harvard University definition of alumnus is anyone who has completed one grading period (half a semester). Gates attended for over 3 years. He even did some of the work leading to his first product at Harvard, on Harvard computers.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines "alumnus" as "A male graduate or former student of a school, college, or university", thus explicitly including the possibility of a "former student" who is not a graduate.
Gates is certainly a very well-known and prominent person.

For all these reasons, I recommend that he be included in the list, possibly with some annotation, e.g. "Bill Gates (no degree)".

--Macrakis 16:28, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Another question was asked about why I changed "student-run" to "student". I think it just sounds better, and says the same thing. If people feel strongly, we should change it back.

As for why I removed Princeton Review's survey data, I think it's redundant -- the link to the Ivy League at the bottom places the school in the same context.

- Fenster 15:16, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks; I thought it was probably differing definitions and usage. When I saw Bill Gates my own reaction, knowing that he didn't graudate, was that it was obviously wrong, so being clear about the exact nature of the relationship seems best. Frost and Longfellow were awarded honorary degrees but Harvard doesn't count recipients of those as alumni. Apparently chooses not to claim Gates as one officially, though the directory does say that those who attended are considered alumni in that context when it's apparent that they won't re-register. Student and student-run have different meanings. One refers to the target audience the other to those who are producing it. The Crimson pitches itself as the university and sometimes the town daily newspaper, so student-run seems to better describe it, though I'll leave it to somene else to change it if they agree. Fair enough on the survey data. Jamesday 17:57, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

regional harvards

I removed the following from the main page — a lot of impressive research here; but I don't see how it's appropriate for an encyclopedia article about Harvard. (An amusing side note, however — Harvard's juggling club claims to be the "Harvard of university juggling clubs.") Doops 04:04, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Harvard's reputation is such that other prominent universities are often dubbed "regional Harvards":

"Harvard of the West": Stanford University [9] (http://www.top-law-schools.com/stanford-law-school.shtml) [10] (http://daily.stanford.edu/tempo?page=content&id=6334&repository=0001_article) (though there are a number of claims that the reverse is true, that Harvard is the "Stanford of the East" [11] (http://www.harvardindependent.com/global_user_elements/printpage.cfm?storyid=747111) [12] (http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/v42/n12/stateadm.html))
"Harvard of the South": Duke University [13] (http://www.ackland.org/visit/history.html) [14] (http://www.dukemagazine.duke.edu/alumni/dm13/hot.html) [15] (http://www.dukemagazine.duke.edu/dukemag/issues/070802/depbtw.html), Rice University [16] (http://www.houstonhistory.com/legacy/history6k.htm) [17] (http://csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/durableRedirect.pl?/durable/1997/12/22/feat/learning.1.html), Emory University, Vanderbilt University
"Harvard of the North": McGill University [18] (http://www.temple-news.com/news/2003/12/11/News/Students.Look.North.For.College.Options-576677.shtml) [19] (http://www.colubris.com/NewsItem.aspx?id=31&print=true) [20] (http://www.mcgillbc.ca/ANDGOALSINTOREALITY.html) and Queen's University [21] (http://www.queensjournal.ca/articlephp/point-vol129/issue35/news/story1) and the University of Toronto
"Harvard of the Midwest": Washington University in St. Louis [22] (http://www.studlife.com/news/2003/04/01/News/Wu.Addresses.crappy.Name.Recognition-404603.shtml) [23] (http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/columnists.nsf/fiveminuteswith/story/EE2876D32354F30B86256EFD0038D635?OpenDocument&Headline=Chancellor+reaffirms+his+faith+in+Washington+U) [24] (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40855)
"Harvard of the Middle East": American University in Beirut [25] (http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/uae/?id=7785) [26] (http://www.delta.tudelft.nl/archief/j35/1680), Baghdad University [27] (http://theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11053321%255E12332,00.html), and Cairo University [28] (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=7th&navby=case&no=973266)

This phenomenon is well-known enough that there have been several spoofs of it: one about Duke and Emory (http://www.students.emory.edu/SPOKE/subpages/past_issues/spare/harvard.html) and one about McGill and Queen's (http://www.mcgilltribune.com/news/2003/04/01/McgillWeekly/Mcgill.Renamed.Harvard.Of.The.North-404471.shtml).

The citations are a bit excessive, and I purposely gave as many citations as I did in anticipation that if I didn't, someone would claim that there was no such thing as "regional Harvards". Given that there clearly are "regional Harvards", I think we would be censoring information if we didn't include it. It's a common phenomenon, common enough that not only are there numerous serious mentions of it but also spoofs of the phenomenon. We might remove some citations for brevity or put it in a separate section (along with the information about Harvard appearances in film) possibly entitled "Harvard in pop culture", but this information definitely belongs in the article. —Lowellian (talk)[[]] 04:26, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps the subject should have its own separate page. If the point is "Harvard is really really famous" we only need to refer to the phenomenon without giving examples. If our point is "these schools ARE the Harvard of the wherever" (or, more professionally, "these schools are sometimes called..." etc.) — well, that plainly doesn't belong in an article on Harvard. Doops 05:21, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[P.S. Just to nitpick, all that evidence (impressive as it is) doesn't actually prove (as you suggest) that there are "regional Harvards", since it doesn't demonstrate that the claims you put forward are the only ones — if every university in the south claimed to be the "Harvard of the south" (or, if the Harvard name is a liability, not an asset, was accused by its rivals of being the "Harvard of the south"), then there plainly would be no Harvard of the south! (The old leprechaun and handkerchief trick.) But all this is just a witty postscript; my real objections are given above. Doops 05:21, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC) ]

I agree—I'm not claiming that there actually are "regional Harvards"; I'm saying that a significant number of schools—and it usually tends to be the same few schools—claim that they are the "Harvard of the whatever-region." —Lowellian (talk)[[]] 06:47, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)

Well, do the schools (or more precisely, the students there, since I'm sure it's nowhere official) actually claim that moniker, like it's something that they're proud of? I have to say that it I went to Duke or wherever I'd be insulted by the attempt to define my worth in relationship to some other institution, no matter how famous. It's like addressing an invitation to Mr. and Mrs. John Smith. Oh really? Is the wife's name John? Does she have no existence independent of her husband? (Again, this is on a tangential topic, not germane per se to the discussion of where the content is located.) Doops 07:21, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, notice that some of the citations above are in publications published by the school that claims to be the "regional Harvard". —Lowellian (talk)[[]] 05:56, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

By my previous comment, I meant I agree with the specific point in what you call your "witty postscript". However, I still think the information belongs in the article. It seems to me that the subject is not expandable enough to have its own page, and yet it is notable enough to be mentioned on the Harvard page. We might cut down on the number of examples, but we must at least give a few so that readers can understand what the article is discussing by seeing specific instances, and so that the reader can see that such claims actually are made. —Lowellian (talk)[[]] 06:51, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)

Well, I think the best example is that clown-training school in Florida that always gets called the "Harvard of Clown Colleges." :) Doops 07:12, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Comments on latest edits

The following edits were recently made:

"Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, composed mainly of undergraduates, was founded in 1808 as the Pierian Sodality and has been performing as a symphony orchestra since the 1950s."
"the University has not allowed any movies to be filmed on its campus since "Love Story" in the 1960s."

The first is a point of interest as it disputes the long standing claim of this article, and of the HRO generally, that HRO is the longest continually performing music group in the United States. I think this is open to debate; clearly if you read the Pieran Sodality history pages, it doesn't sound like the longest performing description is merited. But I always took those Pieran Sodality histories to be pretty farcical. Does someone have some other source of information bearing on this issue? The second I have no real beef with except I am curious whether anyone can confirm my recollection that the opening shots of Road Trip show aerial views of Eliot nad Kirkland. User:Chinasaur

Hasty Pudding edit

Is "burlesque" better than "drag musical" for the Hasty Pudding show? Burlesque seems to suggest striptease, which the Pudding show isn't; it's definitely a drag musical. User:Ajd

First, note that the article burlesque is incorrect if, as it seems, it asserts that, in modern usage contrasted with historical usage, burlesque is sexual entertainment and strip-tease, etc. Instead, such burlesque is a subset of the entire class of burlesque entertainment that is mock-heroic or mock-pathetic or humorous by caricature or mockery. In this case, as the About page on the Hasty Puddings website indicates (and which uses the word burlesque and not at all the word drag), the quality of their shows is such mockery and bombastic humor. That the show is "no-holds-barred" may proceed from that, but that men play all the parts is only a small part of the burlesqueness of the show. Because burlesque shows may be of such variety and may be "no-holds-barred" (and so might include strip-tease), they may be considered reserved for adults, but that adultness is rather incidental to the tenor of the show, which is burlesque. Drag, on the other hand, simply means that feminine attire is worn by the men in the show and is not as fully descriptive as burlesque for what the show is. Note also that, at least historically, these were not all musicals. - Centrx 23:07, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Immodest?

Someone (not me, though I was sympathetic) recently slapped an NPOV tag on the MIT article as a result of a lot of strutting cardinal-and-grey peacock plumage in the "About MIT" section. It has now been made more neutral.

In the discussion, one Wikipedian commented that I should "see Harvard University, Yale University, and Princeton University for examples of how the MIT article of the past wasn't out of line with other Wikipedia articles on these topics."

Well, I have.

I'm thinking the "About Harvard" section indeed goes on and on and on to excess about how great Harvard is. Wouldn't it be better to shorten and tone down some of the remarks about its lofty position on ranking lists, etc. and putting the buttressing data here in Talk? [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk) ]] 13:48, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I disagree. "goes on and on...to excess"? It's not really currently very long; it could be much, much longer, and it's really relatively short compared to what you could cite on the topic if you really wanted to do so. If an university has a few statistics to back up its prestige, then great, they belong on the article. This goes not just for Harvard, but for other schools as well; if the other schools, such as MIT, Princeton, Stanford, Yale, etc. have statistics to back up their prestige, I think those statistics belong on those pages. The questions to ask are, first, (1) are the statistics factual and (2) do people care about these statistics? If so on both counts, they're okay. The US News rankings, etc., are stuff that, even if you disapprove of this being the case, nevertheless does seem to attract a lot of press coverage and affect people's opinions toward universities. —Lowellian (talk)[[]] 01:08, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

Mascot is John Harvard?

What's the source of John Harvard being the mascot? I've never seen anyone dressed up as Johnnie H at a football game. I'm an undergrad here, and we basically don't have a mascot. 140.247.238.202 20:25, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

the institution section

Should "US News placed Harvard First" really be at the beginning of a section about the institution? Is it really the most important thing? Maybe we should add a section about "reputation" nearer the bottom of the page, after history, the institution, etc. that can list these statistics. They just don't seem that important to me, are the subjective opinion of US News, and also seem a bit boastful. Would any other encyclopedia list that info at the top of an article about a school?

Also, I think that some of the rest of this info (about the color crimson, john harvard, etc) probably belongs in some other section. This whole page needs massive cleanup and reorganization. --Jacobolus 13:48, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Although I'm not sure I agree with you about spinning off Harvard College info to that page, I wholeheartedly agree with you about the need for better organization. Every time I come to this page I am mortified to find that the ranking and admissions percentage are apparently the first thing people need to know about Harvard. But I just haven't felt up to the herculean task of rewriting. Doops 22:02, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Is this article really about Harvard University?

This has bothered me for a while. Much of this article (extracurriculars, athletics, houses, concentrations, etc.) is focused, really, on Harvard College rather than the wider university. As I see it, there are two options:

we could have separate full-scale pages for the university and college, dealing with everything on the appropriate page. (This has the virtue of accuracy and consistency.)
we could keep the bulk of the info on the Harvard University page, but add a disclaimer and create Harvard College as merely a little explainer page. (This has the virtue of making one page the main article, rather than splintering everything down to lots of little articles.)

As you can see, I've provisionally chosen the latter of the two options, because, as I see it, if we rob the Harvard University article of the Harvard College stuff, there's nothing interesting left -- all the good stuff would go! And where would the pictures belong? (With either method of arranging things, there will be a fair amount of housekeeping, I'm afraid, since people will inevitably put things in the wrong place.) Doops 10:21, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Jacobolus's Proposal

I also feel that the Harvard University page should be better arranged, perhaps with major headings and some detail about each of the schools, with Main Article: Blah links, as many other Wikipedia pages currently do. It would be possible to then migrate the majority of this article to the Harvard College page, especially about the houses, etc., while keeping some images and data on this page. I feel that this is the best way to truly make the article about Harvard University. There is no reason that the college gets 95% of the article, with many pictures and graphics and links while the med school or the kennedy school, etc., get one line and a link. I'm thinking that the organization could go something like:

Intro
The institution
- FAS
  - Harvard College (main article elsewhere)
    - Migrate "Campus" and "Concentrations" sections, add section about extra-curricular activities, etc.
  - Radcliffe College
  - GSAS
  - Continuing Education
- Harvard Law School
- Harvard Medical School
- Harvard Divinity School
- Harvard Business School
- etc.
History
Harvard People
External Links
Sources
Footer

I'd be willing to make veritas shield seals for the other schools, if someone was willing to try to help figure out what a modified harvard template should look like

Preferably, there would be some sort of footer, listing all of the schools of the university.

What do people think about this? I really think the article would be better for the reorganization, which would allow for better consistency between articles about the individual schools, as well as better supporting extending the information about the articles at a later date. This will take a good few hours of work, and should be discussed somewhere first.

Anyone know how to make those nifty templates that are used all over Wikipedia? I guess we could start copying some and play around a bit.

--Jacobolus 09:21, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I made up a little template thing. We might want this to be vertical on the right hand side though. I really think we should fill out the stubs about the professional schools, and move most of the info about the college into the college page. We of course should leave a hefty summary, and there should be some summary about the other schools as well. But the Harvard University article should I think be about Harvard University, not about Harvard College (with pictures of the yard and the science center only, not even upper-class houses) with a list of links to the other schools. --Jacobolus 13:24, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I disagree. Whether one thinks it should be so or not, within public perception, the name "Harvard" is often more associated with the College than any other part of the University. Indeed, the term "Harvard University" is often used (technically incorrectly, but this is nevertheless a very widespread usage) by the public to refer to "Harvard College." I don't see it as a problem that this page doesn't discuss the Kennedy School, the Law School, etc., in a great deal of detail, because if someone is linking to or looking for info on those graduate schools, they will likely link to those pages. If some do see it as a problem, then this page could be expanded to talk more about the rest of the university. However, I do not believe information about the College should be moved off this page. Also, compare this page to other university pages across Wikipedia. Most of them also show a similar focus on the undergraduate portions of the university. Furthermore, Harvard redirects to Harvard University. —Lowellian (talk) 19:37, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

Jacobolus's proposal strikes me as the most rational way to organize the page. Regarding Lowellian's comment -- I don't dispute that 'Harvard University' is often used as a synecdoche for 'Harvard College', but I doubt that any reasonable person searching for information on Harvard College by typing in Harvard University would be in any way inconvenienced by a few-paragraphs summary of the information on the College currently in the University article, accompanied by a link to the College article. Regarding Lowellian's other comment, that most university pages are undergrad-focused, I would observe that Harvard is unusually decentralized (see ETOB) in comparison to other universities, making a university-equals-college page especially confusing. jdb ❋ (talk) 02:15, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think a lot of people are not particularly clear on the distinction between a "college" and a "university" and just use the two interchangeably. Maybe Dartmouth has the right idea :-) Dpbsmith (talk) 02:33, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Lowellian: as jdb said, will someone really be inconvenienced by a link to Harvard College material? As I see it, currently the Harvard article suffers from poor organization and having information about the college on a page about the University in fact limits the amount that can be added to wikipedia about the subject. Making the article(s) more modular will allow writers to flesh out sections of the Harvard College article, and those of the other grad schools, without worrying about being too specific for a bloated article like that on this page. That is to say, right now, the article is a soup. Structure improves readability. --jacobolus (t) 15:38, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Re "having information about the college on a page about the University in fact limits the amount that can be added to wikipedia about the subject:" that shouldn't be a substitute for a discussion on the merits. The article is presently about 22K long. The firm limitation to precisely 32K is obsolete and the page size warning notice has been softened accordingly. By all means decide on what the best organization for the material on Harvard is, but the present article could double in size with no problems. Articles should not be multiplied beyond necessity. Dpbsmith (talk) 16:47, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

OK, the person who originally brought up the issue is finally weighing in again. Jacobolus's proposal is certainly appealing in its logic. It's great in theory — the only question is how would it work in practice? For example, although the university article would mention the various campuses, where would a description of the Yard belong? University? FAS? College? Likewise, what about history — until 1800 or so the university's history and the college's are interchangable.

Also, remember that if we start migrating things to the college page, where will it end? Think about the info boxes. The university doesn't really have sports teams; the university doesn't really belong to the ivy league; etc. Would there be anything of interest left?

Finally, part of me is reluctant to see the currently fairly brief and to-the-point Harvard College article get obscured. Right now it's easy for the confused person to find, there, a discussion of the distinction between the college and the university. Lengthen the page and it'll be less transparent.

But I'm not an advocate of closed-mindedness, so here's what I propose. I've set up a sandbok at talk:Harvard University/experiment to play with the idea. Let's see what a true Harvard University article would look like. Please help work on that page if you're interested in the question. Doops 21:41, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree that Harvard University and Harvard College need to be separated. The current article is confusing, mixing up not only the University and the College, but also the College and the FAS -- where it has a very undergraduate perspective, not even listing the academic departments, but only undergraduate concentrations! The faculty, the courses, the libraries (except Lamont/Hilles) -- they're all FAS, not College, and though graduate students do have an administrative connection to GSAS, they are really more attached to their departments, that is, to FAS directly. I am not sure, though, how best to organize all this. Thoughts? --Macrakis 00:39, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It's my opinion that the detailed lists of College-specific stuff—namely the House system and the concentrations—belong unambiguously on the College page. They interrupt this article with detail that is too specific for a "Harvard University" article. What I'd like to do is move those parts wholesale to the College article and replace them with a summary and a link. For instance, leave on the University page something like: "First-year students live in dormitories in or near Harvard Yard. Upperclass students live in twelve residential [[Harvard College#House system|Houses]]. Three Houses are located at the the Quadrangle, half a mile northwest of Harvard Yard; the other nine are south of the Yard, situated along or close to the banks of the Charles River." These facts are all relevant to a description of the campus of the University as a whole without going into unnecessary detail about the internal structure of the College. What do you think? I think this makes so much sense that if there isn't an immediate outcry I'll go ahead and move it. AJD 17:27, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, I went ahead and moved it. AJD 02:11, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

How about a source citation for "one of the world's most prestigious..."

Not that Harvard isn't, and not to make a big deal about it... but this seems like the sort of remark that would go over better if it could be put into the mouth of someone other than an individual Wikipedian contributor. Preferably someone recognized as reasonably authoritative or neutral.

This doesn't seem as if it should be hard to do.

If the context is world's most prestigious, of course it shouldn't be a U. S. source. If we could be satisfied with "one of the most prestigious universities in the U. S." then a U. S. source would do. But not, say, the Boston Globe! Dpbsmith (talk) 21:48, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I daresay this is one of those instances where pragmatism can trump principle. No reasonable person would disagree with that statement if it were inserted into the Harvard, Oxford, or Cambridge (and it doubtlessly is). jdb ❋ (talk) 00:28, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Admissions details redacted

This tidbit on the mechanics of the admissions process is too small a detail for the HU article. I was going to put it in the HC article, but HC is currently a grab-bag of things that were too College-ish for the HU article, and I didn't want to make it worse by dropping another random paragraph into it. So here it is:

Harvard recently returned from an unrestricted Early Action policy (where students can apply "early" to Harvard in addition to other schools) to a single-choice nonbinding Early Action policy (where you can apply "early" only to a single school), aligning it with the policies of Yale and Stanford, which had both recently moved from a binding single-choice Early Decision policy.

jdb ❋ (talk) 00:24, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The "prestige" comment

Watchers of this page should see this poll about whether this page should contain a phrase like "widely considered one of the most prestigious universities in the world". Nohat 15:47, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What I mean by a "source" for prestige claim

It should be obvious, but a "source" for the claim of prestige means a source which says, in so many words, that Harvard has "prestige."

We all know Harvard tops many lists, but unless it is a "list of universities ranked by prestige" it's irrelevant.

U. S. News and World Report not only does not measure "prestige," but I believe they would insist that they try very hard to evaluate only academic excellence. Dpbsmith (talk) 10:08, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

As others have stated on this page, "prestigious" is really rather obvious, to the point of common knowledge. Citations are easy, even avoiding the harvard.edu domain:

"Not even the world's most prestigious place of learning is immune..." [29] (http://www.gene-watch.org/genewatch/articles/16-5keimharvard.html)
"[Summers] runs the world's most prestigious university..." [30] (http://aging-disgracefully.com/blog/archives/2005/01/larry_summers_l.html)
Describes Harvard and Yale as "...two of the world's most prestigious universities..." [31] (http://www.buffalo.edu/UBT/UBT-archives/22_ubtw03/campaign/profile.html)
"As one of the world's most prestigious universities, Harvard's...." [32] (http://www.thejusticeonline.com/global_user_elements/printpage.cfm?storyid=629787)

—Lowellian (talk) 10:24, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

Fine. Use one of them, then. Don't do what a recent editor did, namely cite a U. S. News and World Report ranking with an edit comment giving his interpretation of why the ranking denotes prestige. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:29, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What are you talking about? Fenster cited the U.S. News reputation ranking. Strong positive reputation is equivalent to prestige because that's what the word prestige (http://www.bartleby.com/61/46/P0544600.html) means. AJD 15:52, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If "reputation" and "prestige" mean the same thing, then why not say Harvard "enjoys the highest reputation among U. S. schools" and cite U. S. news as the source on that? Why the coupled insistence on a) using the word "prestige" and b) either not backing it up at all, or backing it up by sources that use some other word?

My perception is that the insistence on insertion of deliberately vague statements about "prestige" has little to do with communicating the interesting and important nuances of Harvard's special role in American society, and a lot to do with boosterism and an informal policy of allowing only flattering statements to be made in this section. Dpbsmith (talk) 16:11, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Related thought if we say "Harvard is widely regarded as the most powerful university in the United States," or "one of the most powerful" if you prefer, we have another statement that probably falls in the category of generally accepted common knowledge. True, "powerful" isn't precisely defined, but neither is "prestige." So why is it that the statement that people are so insistent on is the one about "prestige?" Answer: because "prestige" is simply flattering, whereas "power" has some less flattering overtones is less congenial to boosters.

All right, I hope this settles it. I've created a page Talk:Harvard University/prestige whose purpose is to collect citations such as those Lowellian lists above. Then in the article, I describe Harvard as "widely regarded" as one of the most prestigious, and link to the list of citations. Can everybody be okay with that? AJD 16:12, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Short answer: yes.

Carping question: why shouldn't the citations be in the article itself? Dpbsmith (talk) 16:15, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Because listing all these quotes would break up the flow of the text; this is the very beginning of the article, where we still want the discussion to be engaging, readable, and not overly detailed. This is confirmatory material, not the actual content of the article. The typical encyclopedia reader, wanting to know something about Harvard, will be interested in learning that it's one of the most prestigious universities in the world, but doesn't care about the random selection of quotations from people saying so. And it is a random selection: none of these are authoritative sources for the prestige of a university; the point of these quotes is to demonstrate that Harvard's prestige is "common knowlege". For the same reason, I don't like Nohat's recent "contextualizing" edit. It overemphasizes minor points while underemphasizing the main point—it's not particularly important that writers characterize Harvard as prestigious, or that U.S. News does; what's relevant is that it's generally regarded as such, which is the point of having casual quotations from a variety of sources. But I'm not going to revert Nohat's changes immediately; I want to get some opinions here first. AJD 16:48, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Oh, sure. The remarks about prestige, etc. in the introductory section should be very short. Shorter than they are now. But I'm thinking the confirming material should in the main namespace rather than in the Talk namespace. An ancillary part of the article, but a part of it. I would think we would wanted it edited the same way, and with equal care, as an article, not in the style of loose discussion. Maybe this is a case where "subpages are evil" should not apply, and this should be a subpage in the main article space. If the editors of this page opt for that direction I'd just as soon see most of the content of the first two paragraphs of the institution section offloaded there.

I still think it would be desirable for the prestige statement itself to be a quotation, with a reference to a list of additional citations: "Harvard is, in the words of so-and-so, "the most prestigious blah blah," an opinion that is [[Harvard University/reputation|widely held]]." Dpbsmith (talk) 17:25, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think it's ~~ridiculous~~ questionable that we now have enough sentences for an entire paragraph about Harvard's prestige in the article. What was wrong with the original simple sentence "Harvard is one of the world's most prestigious universities..."? It flows much better within the prose of the article, and anyone who removes the claim can be reverted with an edit summary pointing to Talk:Harvard University/prestige. —Lowellian (talk) 22:51, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

What's wrong with it is that you can put that sentence in just about any college article, but if you hold to the standard of citing sources it will be easier to put them in colleges that are more prestigious and harder to put them in colleges that are less prestigious. And the source quotations are likely to provide important qualifications. "Among the most prestigious Catholic liberal arts colleges in the Southwest..." By all means, offload the boatload of material buttressing the claim to someplace offpage, but have the claim itself be stated as a sourced quotation rather than a flat, unattributed statement of fact. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:10, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

P. S. In fact, the "prestige" disease spreads, because when people see it made in a college that's only a bit more prestigious then theirs, they figure their college deserves it, too. It is literally the case that someone gave as a reason for including a "prestige" statement in the MIT article the fact that other college articles had it, too. If we insist on source citations, well, at least they won't all be exactly the same statement made with exactly the same wording! Dpbsmith (talk) 23:13, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

P. P. S. You know, the good old Wikipedia formula, "X said Y about Z," where Y = "prestigious," Z = "Harvard," and the problem is to find the value of X. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:17, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

A fresh start?

Hi. I've completely reworked the bone-of-contention ¶. Does it address all concerns? Doops 04:56, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It looks like there have been some more edits, all minor and some from you, but all in all it is a much more NPOV factual section.

Excellent! I would still like to see a one-general general statement in the form of a source quotation. What would people think about leading off the section with:

Measured in purely objective terms, Harvard is—as Baedeker's guidebook phrased it in 1893—"the oldest, richest, and most famous of American seats of learning?"

Virtues of the source citation approach: I don't believe any other college is likely to come across anything comparable in terms of being a simple, triple superlative from a source that carries some authority. Yale boosters seeking quotations from this particular source must settle for "second in dignity and importance to Harvard alone" while MIT advocates would have to be content with "the leading institution of the kind on the W. side of the Atlantic (1000 students; fine apparatus and collections)."

Dpbsmith (talk) 09:58, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Great quote, just show some sort of net reference to the book, or an ISBN. Baedekers is a book, isn't it?

Baedeker more or less invented travel guides in the era when the word "tourism" (referring to the Grand Tour of Europe) was coined. I don't think there's an online copy. However I do see that there's a 1975 reprint, Da Capo Press (October 1, 1975) ISBN 0306713411. Dpbsmith (talk) 12:25, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Go for it. Baedeker's is linkable and the quote is short and to-the-point; what's more important, your sentence is very well camouflaged (i.e. the quote looks like it's there for color, not as an attempt to source the obvious). Doops 14:40, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Political orientation

The article currently says "Harvard is known for its liberal left-wing politics." Some time ago, I edited this to clarify that this is the Right's position, while the Left often considers Harvard to be a bastion of conservatism, and the training ground for the "Establishment". This was reverted and I didn't discuss it at the time. Now, I'd like to find some more NPOV language which clarifies the situation. For one thing, an institution like Harvard--especially when one considers all the schools--reflects a wide variety of political positions. There are some very left-wing professors at the Law School, and some very conservative professors in the business school--and vice versa. Though most FAS professors seem pretty centrist, some are rather Left and others are rather Right. There are undergraduate liberal organizations, and undergraduate conservative organizations. That said, I agree that Harvard is used as a whipping-boy by the Right, and that is worth reporting. Any suggestions on how to approach this? --Macrakis 19:00, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

While Harvard might be on the right from the viewpoint of, for example, Communists, it is certainly on the left of the American political center. There are concrete statistics to back this up; take for example this poll [33] (http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=504151) by The Harvard Crimson in which Harvard students favored Kerry over Bush by 73% to 19%. —Lowellian (talk) 02:58, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. One quick note: we should note that the students and faculty may differ in political opinions --- although in the 2004 election, they did not: faculty, for instance, gave far more money to Sen. Kerry than Pres. Bush [34] (http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=504213). (We should also consider the other university units, but only FAS has a newspaper on par with the Crimson to keep track of this sort of thing.) jdb ❋ (talk) 04:10, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There are many problems with the current wording. One is the blanket description of an institution as having a political position, whereas there is a range of positions within it. Why not just cite the polls you mention? Another is limiting the info to FAS in general and undergraduates in particular (I would guess that HLS and especially HBS have significantly different politics). Then there's the characterization of that political position. The current wording is "liberal left-wing politics", and the proof you give for this is that 73% favored Kerry. Yes, Kerry is to the left of Bush, but it was a close contest, and it is wrong to characterize him as "left-wing" as opposed to "left of center". Next question is the point of comparison. I'll agree that a reasonable comparison is the U.S. median (even though that has moved to the right -- surely Ashcroft is radical right, for example). Another reasonable comparison would be other Ivy League schools or other elite universities. Perhaps (I really don't know) undergraduates at all elite universities are more liberal than elsewhere.

I am also distressed by the nastiness of the wording and of Lowellian's comments. Comparing Harvard to the Kremlin was a vicious slur; and of course it speaks to some people's perceptions of Harvard (and also to Nixon's treatment of his 'enemies'), which is what I emphasized in my rewording. I think there is a similar perception -- in fact it is discussed in one of the cited books -- that Harvard is the training-ground for the Establishment. Lowellian's pseudo-concession that Harvard is to the right of Communists is just gratuitous. --Macrakis 14:59, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Could you please take back that I am trying to "slur" Harvard? I think anyone who has followed this page's history can say that I have never tried to do anything of the sort. I added the Kremlin statement simply because it is a common characterization of Harvard—both by those criticizing Harvard and those who are proud of the characterization. Your wording of the Nixon statement was "Richard Nixon famously slandered it as the 'Kremlin on the Charles'..." I changed that to "Richard Nixon famously called it..." because "called" is a more neutral word than "slandered". In any case, I have now rewritten the beginning of the paragraph again. How does it look now? —Lowellian (talk) 23:19, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

I never said you tried to slur Harvard: Richard Nixon did. I do appreciate your good-faith work on the page, including your recent edits. I will make a few adjustments, I think; see how they look. --Macrakis 01:00, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism

217.44.98.244 (talk • contribs) is looking to continually revert previously decided links to quotes about Harvard's "prestige". I have added a vandalism-protect label and directed the user to discuss their edits on this talk page. So far, they have refused to do so. Harro5 01:02, Apr 24, 2005 (UTC)

Harvard/Harvard University Page Discrepancy; Broken Redirect?

I've noticed discrepancies between the Harvard University and older Harvard page; the latter doesn't seem to redirect to the updated Harvard University page (i.e., if you type in 'Harvard' alone, you get one un-updated page whereas 'Harvard University' brings you to the version with all recent revisions). It's somewhat confusing, but I haven't figured out how to correct it: changes to the Harvard page seem to take hold only temporarily before reverting to an older form, and without any recorded reverts on the history page. No doubt someone else here knows what to do! - 81.155.5.125 (talk • contribs) Apr 25, 2005

This sounds like a caching issue on your web browser. Try Wikipedia:Bypass your cache? --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 20:32, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you, whatever it was it seems to be working now! -- 81.155.5.125 (talk • contribs)

Apr 25, 2005

Most sports teams claim

The article claims "With 41 official sports teams, Harvard has the widest-ranging athletic program in the NCAA." However, MIT has 42 varsity level sports. So, perhaps some clarification is in order.Kime1R 13:20, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I just changed that. One (of many) of the things MIT is known for is for having the widest range of collegiate sports (intramural and NCAA-related) out of colleges in the country. Harvard has a lot, but it doesn't hold the title someone gave it above. 02:30, 1 June 2000 (EST)

Well, Harvard always claims to have the most. See, e.g., [35] (http://www.news.harvard.edu/guide/students/stu9.html). On the other hand, MIT also seems to have 41 teams (see [36] (http://web.mit.edu/facts/athletics.shtml)), so I guess it's a tie (not, of course, that bare number of teams is a particularly meaningful statistic). Doops 08:09, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

VFD of HYP

People interested in this page may be interested in Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/HYP (universities) 2. —Lowellian (talk) 23:55, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

Name of Harvard-Yale football article

People interested in this page may be interested in Talk:The Game (college football). So far it's just been a one-on-one debate on whether the article about the Harvard-Yale game should be called The Game or Harvard-Yale game, and I'd appreciate input from more people. AJD 21:06, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Arms rights

Hello. User: 217.44.61.126 has taken to removing the image of the Harvard arms from this article, making vague threats about its alleged illegality. Needless to say, it is mere politeness that somebody making such a major edit should at the very least give a little more explanation than those cryptic edit summary comments. Hence I am inviting him/her to post, here, his/her argument explaining why, precisely, he/she believes our use of this image to be illegal. Doops 21:41, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

In particular, he/she should make clear whether the objection is to a) Wikipedia's overall interpretation that fair use laws permit use of logos and coats-of-arms (see Wikipedia:Image_copyright_tags and so forth); or b) this particular image, in the belief that it somehow doesn't come under the permission. After all, the wikipedia currently has literally thousands of such logos. Doops 21:46, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Please contact the Office of General Counsel, Harvard University, if you wish to apply for permission to use the Harvard logo. If you already have explicit consent from the Counsel, please state this in your article. The office may be contacted through http://www.ogc.harvard.edu/ . Whether or not other pages include such 'logos' is not of concern to Harvard itself; the Office's interest is in direct copyright infringements of the Harvard University arms. The University supports not-for-profit endeavors such as Wikipedia but, as we cannot verify the information contained on the pages herein, we request you remove copyrighted University-affiliated images which suggest Harvard's validation of the page's content. Further postings of trademarked or copyrighted images will not be tolerated. Please direct any relevant questions to the Counsel.

Sorry, but it works the other way around. If you have problems with Wikipedia's fair use of logos, you will have to demonstrate ownership of the copyright and file a DMCA-compliant complaint with Wikipedia's designated agent. Until then, the logos stay. Nohat 00:16, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Although I am not an expert in these matters, the IP address 217.44.61.126 appears, so far from being an official Harvard University one, to be somehow associated with British Telecom. That, considered along with the unorthodox hour of day involved and the fact that the messages are left unsigned, suggests to me that we needn't take these threats as official. Furthermore, I suspect that if the general counsel's office were actually taking an interest in the wikipedia, they would do so through more formal channels rather than by using edit history comments and the talk page to bully mere writers like us. (Wikipedia:Copyvio would be a good place to start.) At any rate, I hope that, by the time I return to this page, somebody more experienced with Wikipedia copyright issues will have weighed in and put the matter to rest. Doops 07:28, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The address could have been dynamically rendered or shadowed and needn't tell us much anyway. Furthermore, I doubt a representive would have left his or her name and telephone number on the web (or go through the trouble of registering a Wiki account). It seems possible that the image was removed proactively. Before this turns into a ridiculous conspiracy theory, however, perhaps we could find a personal photograph of the arms off of a university building? That shouldn't risk any copyright issues and seems a fair solution. Angeledit

Well, the best set of arms for that purpose would be the ones over the door of the Fogg, since they're in color. But that would only deal with the artistic copyright of that particular rendering; while the wording of the threat above seems directed rather at the arms' trademark status, which is dicier. Where's a lawyer when we need one? At any rate, though, I repeat my skepticism; I don't think it's some silly conspiracy, mind you — just some practical joker pulling our legs. Doops 22:06, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

If Harvard really objects to the use of their logo in this way, then they have to go through the proper channels to get it removed. If they are going to insist on being assholes about it, then they will have to deal with all the bad press that will go along with it. I will not sit idly by and have our fair use rights scoffed at and shat upon by an anonymous user. If they truly believe this doesn't constitute fair use, the onus is on them to carry out the legal ugliness. We will not just roll over.

What is probably happening here is some anonymous Harvard apologist—possibly a former student or something—objects to something on this article, and rather than just deal with it or fix it, has decided to make trouble for Wikipedia by concocting some bogus legal brouhaha. If Harvard University's legal department were really upset about this, making anonymous comments in the edit history is not the way they would do it. One can be fairly sure that if there really were a problem we would be hearing about it through official channels. Nohat 00:56, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

As a former student, I was going to say that both possibilites seem feasible but would probably guess (tentatively) that it's a disgruntled apologist at work.Angeledit 19 Jun 2005

It looks like the person involved has now created an account, User:RGluckman, with some attempt at legal-sounding text I can't decipher on the user page. I restored the image, as there's no evidence that this person has any authority to speak for Harvard, and in that case there's no reason to give in to this kind of bluster.

Nohat correctly points out that a legitimate complaint would come through different channels. Having handled permission for Wikipedia to use the same kind of image involving another university, I expect that while Harvard might want to make sure the image is fully correct and not used inappropriately, they are unlikely to demand its removal here. --Michael Snow 22:42, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Just for the record, "the official channels" begin with a trip to Wikipedia:Copyvio, where any complaint will, I believe, be more likely to be seen by our resident experts in fair use. As for myself, I freely admit that I have no expertise in the matter— but that if anything makes me even more determined not to let myself get pushed around by those who have (or pretend to have) some. Doops 22:55, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Recent Developments

I added a few notes to the "Recent Developments" section. The information came from the 5/27 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education. The URL for the article is http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v51/i38/38a00801.htm. I'm still a bit new to Wikipedia so I don't know if this minor update merits its own footnote to note the source. If it does, I'm a bit unsure how exactly to go about adding it. --ElKevbo 05:01, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Arms rights revisted: message for RGluckman

Hi. User:RGluckman, you seem to be new to the Wikipedia and I know that it's pretty complicated and can be somewhat overwhelming. I left you some questions on your talk page; but you haven't answered them & so I thought I'd try you here.

In particular, you have never stated explicitly whether or not you are empowered to act in any official way for Harvard University. Are you employed by the General Counsel's office? A straight yes/no answer would be helpful.

If you are so empowered, the "proper channels" for addressing your fair use concerns can be found at Wikipedia:Request_for_immediate_removal_of_copyright_violation; this is preferable to harassing those of us who edit the Harvard article. If you are not so empowered, but merely acting on your own initiative, then you should be prepared to engage your fellow editors (i.e. us) in dialogue rather than simply acting unilaterally.

Please let us know one way or the other, both out of politeness to the rest of us and to protect your reputation here (lest you become known for a lack of respect for community standards). Thanks. Doops 23:13, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for this message. Perhaps you could tell me how I might remove the Harvard arms from the infobox which I did not intend to delete. RGluckman 23:41, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps first you could tell us what authority you have to demand removal of this image. The rest of the editors working on this page are all in agreement that there is no basis for removing it, barring an actual complaint from the university itself. --Michael Snow 00:01, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

A quorum of Wikipedia 'editors' has no bearing on the law, as you, Mr. Snow, should be aware. You have already been instructed to remove these images and replace them with others. 'Doops' suggestion of a Fogg photograph would, I find, be acceptable as has been indicated in the past to the appropriate Wikipedia overseers (or those whom I have been led to believe are in charge of such matters -- perhaps I have been intentionally misled). Your cooperation is much appreciated. Do not contact my talk pages; I am obviously not a regular user. You will notice I have left the aforementioned infobox untouched for the time being though expect the arms will likewise be replaced with something heretofore uncontravened. RGluckman 00:23, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've requested this article be protected. --ElKevbo 00:43, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

About time! Thanks. Hayford Peirce 00:47, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Mr Gluckman has been blocked. Protection is probably not necessary at this time. Nohat 00:49, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That will work, too. Thank you Nohat! --ElKevbo 00:54, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think Mr Gluckman's failure to identify exactly who he is and what relation he has to Harvard is telling, as is his unwillingness to explain why fair use doesn't apply here other than in obscure (and meaningless) pseudo-legalese. Dpbsmith has blocked him for 24 hours for vandalism. Let us hope he doesn't continue to vandalize when his block period is over.

Mr Gluckman, if you truly do represent Harvard's legal department and Harvard does not want their logo used in this way on Wikipedia, I highly recommend you cease trying to remove the image from this page, and instead follow the instructions set out in Wikipedia:Copyrights to begin the proper procedure for the takedown of copyrighted materials.

We do not believe that use of this image in this way is prohibited by copyright law, and your contrarian bluster is unpersuasive. Indeed, the only thing we would find persuasive is actual, verifiable action taken by the university's legal department, which is heretofore absent. Nohat 00:49, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

By the way, here's a link to the webpage of the Harvard General Counsel's site that specifically deals with University copyrights. I've glanced through it but dunno if there's anything that specifically refers to such a silly hoohah as this. http://www.techtransfer.harvard.edu/UseOfName.html Hayford Peirce 00:56, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This could be easily solved with a simple telephone call. --Alterego 00:59, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

I've blocked RGluckman for 24 hours for violation of the Wikipedia:Three Revert Rule:

18:45, 20 Jun 2005 RGluckman (Please find an alternative image. (memo 7))

(cur) (last) 17:56, 20 Jun 2005 RGluckman

((cur) (last) 17:46, 20 Jun 2005 RGluckman (Please use a non-copyrighted image)

(cur) (last) 15:56, 20 Jun 2005 RGluckman (These copyrighted images shall be removed)

By the way, I don't see how copyright could possibly apply here, since I'm pretty sure the Harvard University Veritas shield is more than ninety-five years old. The Harvard University VERITAS Shield is a registered trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College, but that doesn't affect us since Wikipedia is not claiming to be part of Harvard or affiliated with Harvard and there is no conceivable way anyone could interpret the article as making any such claim. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:01, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've blocked without commment RachelGluckman (talk • contribs) for being an obvious sockpuppet of RGluckman (talk • contribs). Nohat 01:02, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hayford, I looked over some of the same Harvard pages you did and I get the clear impression that Harvard's main concern is people or organizations with loose connections to Harvard giving the impression that they are an official part of Harvard. On the other hand, there is nothing to suggest they are worried about the Veritas therapeutic community (http://www.veritas-inc.org/) or Veritas! (http://www.catholic.org.sg/reflect.php), the official website of the Archdiocese of Singapore, or Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy (http://www.fsha.org/studentlife/veritasshield/)'s Veritas Shield or Veritas software (http://www.veritas.com) or the Veritas forum (http://www.veritas.org/Duke/) of Duke University... Dpbsmith (talk) 01:07, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, I should hope not. Veritas is simply a word and Harvard has no more monopoly on it than it does on "truth." (Ha! I'll be here all week, folks.)

Come to think of it, I seem to recall there's some school somewhere with the motto "Lux et Veritas" and some stuff written on a book on a shield... Dpbsmith (talk) 09:52, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That said, however, they do have certain rights over the specific coat of arms itself. If there ever was artistic copyright in the design, that is long since expired; the artistic copyright in this particular rendering of it might still be running, but if Harvard (or the original artist) objects to that we can simply draw our own version of the arms; it's the trademark issues which might cause concern — but dpbsmith's explanation above is much more convincing than RGluckman's; so I think we can continue in the assumption that we're OK.

As for RGluckman, I think it's pretty clear now that he/she doesn't have any standing in this matter. Doops 02:35, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Someone mentioned above that the image couldn't possibly be copyrighted based on it's age. I want to agree with that. The first sketch, according to the Harvard Gazette, was done on Jan. 6, 1644, and the version in use today is from 1885 [37] (http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/10.02/02-history.html) --Alterego 02:25, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I did a quick Google for it under various combinations of "history" and "Harvard" and "Veritas" and "shield" without luck. Harvard has soooooo much history, and all of the hits were about the history of something else Harvardian that happened to have a Veritas shield illustrating them... Dpbsmith (talk) 09:56, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Not really...the arms have been drawn and redrawn plenty of times since 1885; so this particular rendering could conceivably still be copyright. (But that doesn't necessarily mean that we can't claim a fair use exception for it...) I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know if the design can be copyrighted — but if it can, then you're right, that's certainly old enough. Doops 02:35, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, I guess my point is that if anyone from Harvard were to have a concern about the image I'll expect them phrase it as a trademark concern rather than a copyright concern. Dpbsmith (talk) 09:52, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

By the way, there is certainly no Gluckman, Rachel or otherwise, listed at the General Counsel's website (http://www.ogc.harvard.edu/listbook.php) right now; nor does his/her email address (as given on his/her user page) follow that office's standard format. And for whom, by the way, is that partial email address supplied? The rest of us don't know how to complete it, while a colleague presumably could look it up at work and wouldn't need to be given it again. Doops 02:44, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

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