Fight Fiercely, Harvard!

​In his song of this name, Tom (Thomas) Lehrer, whose surname means “teacher” in German, sent up his university—the country’s oldest, founded in Boston just 16 years after the Plymouth Rock landing as a seminary for future Congregational ministers in 1636. The first and last verses of the song go like this:

Fight fiercely, Harvard
Fight, fight, fight
Demonstrate to them our skill
Albeit they possess the might
Nonetheless we have the will…

Come on, chaps, fight for Harvard's glorious name
Won't it be peachy if we win the game?
(Oh, goody)
Let's try not to injure them, but
Fight, fight, fight…
​
(Oh do fight fiercely)
Fight, fight, fight.

As a thrice-over Yalie I always appreciated this ditty. For to us Yalies, Princeton was the social school of the Big Three Ivies, while Harvard was the effete intellectual one. Yale, in our not overly objective opinion, epitomized the proper balance between the two just as our university  was placed pretty much in the middle geographically between them.

As I write these words, four months into the second Trump Presidency, however, I see Harvard’s fight in a whole new way, with admiration and praise. Along with the lower courts, Costco, and perhaps Walmart, it is saying yes to in its case academic freedom and no to the Don of all dons, the Bully in Chief, or BIC. Harvard’s president and others there seem to know that this is the only way to deal with a bully, the consequences be damned. Bullying just can’t handle being stood up to.

As a retired professor, dean, and academic vice-president, I hope other American colleges and universities will follow suit, show their teeth, and make sure the Trump Administration knows that our country’s higher-education community, a major source of America’s and the world’s brighter future, won’t be pushed around by the anti-intellectual federal administration that happens to be in power in 2025. Coraggio!, as the Italians say.

May Harvard’s glowing example inspire all of us Americans to join the fight for a country as imagined by our Founding Fathers. If we fail to rise up as Harvard has done and is doing, the global future as well as our own may likely be ugly, brutish, and short.
​
Forward to victory! Fight, fight, fight!

Good, olde Hahvahd—keep fighting fiercely!