Harvard Newstalk

The Harvard Crimson

Newstalk is The Harvard Crimson's flagship news podcast series. Join our reporters each week to hear the most important stories from the Harvard community and beyond. Streamed in all 50 states. Heard in 100+ countries. 2024 Associated Collegiate Press National Podcast of the Year.

  1. 01/10/2024

    Is Harvard Doing Discourse Wrong?

    If you've been a student at Harvard at any point over the past three years, there’s one thing you’ve probably heard over and over again: intellectual vitality.  You’ll see it in emails, in videos, from students, from our deans — it’s everywhere.  And, overwhelmingly, you’ll get the sense that Harvard’s concerned about the state of discourse on campus. So what is intellectual vitality? A Harvard website says it’s about the college’s attempts to “establish a culture in which all members speak, listen, and ask questions of each other and ourselves with curiosity and respect.” The implication here is that the college isn’t quite hitting the mark.  That there isn’t as much curiosity and respect as there should be. That Harvard’s civil discourse isn’t intellectually vital. And that’s meant that the college has rolled out measure after measure to try to change that. Hiring new people, putting on speaking events, getting students to talk about it with each other. And one of the newest phases of that came this fall, when intellectual vitality was included for the first time in mandatory training for freshmen entering the college and getting to know what Harvard is all about.  But some people think that Harvard’s approach to all of this is wrong. That its attempts at intellectual vitality aren't helping. That it’s missing the real point — and the real problem. One of them, Matteo Diaz, is a student who was asked by a Harvard administrator to record a video for that training. He didn’t see what came of it until this fall, when he and one of his peers, Saul Arnow, saw that intellectual vitality training before it was shown to freshmen. Matteo and Saul are on The Crimson’s editorial board, and they join host Frank S. Zhou to talk about why they think Harvard is falling short. This week on Newstalk: is Harvard doing discourse wrong? Audio excerpted in this episode from the Harvard College YouTube channel and Harvard College Dean of Students YouTube channel.

    26 min
  2. 16/09/2024

    Behind Harvard's Post-Affirmative Action Demographics Numbers

    Harvard released its admissions demographic data for the Class of 2028 last week. This year more so than many years past, those numbers were a big deal. Few things at Harvard are as tightly kept a secret as its admissions process. Every year, tens of thousands of applicants around the world hit submit, hope for the best. And then… it’s sort of a black box. The applications get sent off through the portal. Harvard’s admissions officers do their thing. And then on decision day, people get a yes, a maybe, or a no.  At least, that’s how it used to be. For the past decade, Harvard’s admissions processes have been under the microscope. Its details scrutinized again, and again, and again — in the public eye, in a public controversy that made its way all the way up to the Supreme Court.  It hinged on how Harvard thinks about race in its admission process, and whether its practices give preference to some racial groups more than others. On one end, we had SFFA: Students for Fair Admissions, led by a man named Ed Blum, alleging that Harvard’s admissions affirmative action practices did unfairly advantage some racial groups more than others. That they did break the law. On the other, we had Harvard insisting that affirmative action was absolutely essential to creating a more diverse Harvard. That there’d be no way to maintain its diversity without it.  In June of last year, after nearly a decade of lawsuits, the Supreme Court weighed in.  In a decision that made waves around the world, the Supreme Court ruled SFFA’s way. It said that Harvard would have to end all of its racial preferences in admissions. And Harvard said it would comply. So all eyes turned to Harvard’s demographic numbers for the Class of 2028: the first class applied and admitted after the ruling. The first chance to see the ruling’s true impact on the University.  Last week, after being delayed for months, those numbers came out.  If people thought those numbers would tell the whole story, they were disappointed. Because they didn’t. But, if you looked closely, there was still a lot to see. And that’s exactly what our reporters did. This week on Newstalk, Harvard’s demographics for the class of 2028. Newstalk is co-hosted and co-produced by Frank S. Zhou and Yael S. Goldstein.

    18 min

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Newstalk is The Harvard Crimson's flagship news podcast series. Join our reporters each week to hear the most important stories from the Harvard community and beyond. Streamed in all 50 states. Heard in 100+ countries. 2024 Associated Collegiate Press National Podcast of the Year.