Higher Things

Food stuff in the form of an ethereal, but very real foam.

"And... we also make things. Create stuff. You know, physical objects."

That quip came out of a white-board enabled conversation about defining Harvard. In fact, I said it and my colleague at the design school immediately seconded the notion.

As mentioned in prior posts, institutions grounded in the liberal arts, even those with heavy research components, become addicted to high-minded gerunds like: educating leaders; creating the next generation of thinkers; pushing the boundaries; facilitating innovation; advancing knowledge; making the world a better place; empowering change.

All are aspirational and even inspirational ideals. All are also very abstract---and not the easiest to hone in on analytically.

In her baccalaureate address of 2011, Harvard President Drew Faust said:

The original mission of Harvard was to inculcate goodness. As I have said before, 'veritas' was not value-neutral. It came with ethical underpinning, designed to help you ask the questions 'What do I truly value? How do I want to live my life?' The world you face is daunting, and it is uncertain. Charting a course is hard. But you are well prepared — with the analytic spirit, the capacity for questioning and for judgment, and the habits of mind your education has given you these past four year.

Of course, Harvard does not have a lock on the categorical imperative---others too seek universal truths. 

• "Seeking solutions. Educating leaders. This is our mission." - Stanford
  
• "... teaching tomorrow's thought leaders to learn to think otherwise, care for others, and create and disseminate knowledge with a public purpose." - Cornell

• "... creating new knowledge and conveying the knowledge we have to the next generation" - Columbia

The above statements are all taken from campaign materials. Campaigns are the time when institutions dust off their missions and apply a bit of modern touch-up paint.

Alas, the 2.0 versions all end up sounding not all that dissimilar from the 17th and 18th century rhetoric: training and sending out an enlightened individuals [clergy, at that time] to espouse their teachings.

They don't call it the ivy league for nothing.

What's missing from these missions is the corporeal nature of knowledge.

Of course, you may predict that I will say engineering, is the missing link. (And I must happily admit my bias.)

At SEAS, after all, we have a dean who likes to say, "We build cool stuff!" 

Robots, cranial drills, novel materials, water filters, quantum dots, cancer vaccines, smart cities, nanowires, solid oxide fuel cells, and even social networks (oh my!).

The same "thing"-ness applies for the design school, as architects aren't just in the planning business, but in the building business.

Yep.That's a lot of engineering "stuff."

GSD Dean Dean Mohsen Mostafavi wrote, "Rethinking the conventions of design practice is, for us, an optimistic and essential project, undertaken with the knowledge that our efforts make a difference in the physical environment."

As much as I would enjoy having design and engineering at the heart of a future campaign, the 'physical environment' and 'cool stuff' applies equally across the Yard---and thus should be reflected in whatever bright-eyed messaging Harvard ends up using.

Here are a few examples:

• Campuses and structures matter (just ask those currently Occupying Harvard.) Ivy, after all, is the physical manifestation of elite education and of higher education in general. With the pending disruption of online, in-your-pajamas education, I think it is important that colleges and universities hold on to their enclaves, celebrate them as a distinct attribute.

• Books and collections are physical. Even now. Famed author John Updike, a Harvard alum, gave his collection to the archives. "Updike had wanted to know that the outward signs of his literary ardor—decades of handwritten drafts, typescripts, galleys, and research files—would survive him."

• The environment and sustainability---whether setting global policies or inspiring 'green' behaviors---are inextricably bound with the earth, sky, and ocean---and those seven billion people "consuming" the planet.

• Economics is the study of stuff (people's stuff). Adam's Smith's pin factory may know make iPods---but the theory remains the same. When we lose sight of the human nature of economics, things like the financial crisis happen, as abstraction replaces common sense (and well, decency).

• Educators, like those trained at the Ed School, end up in cities, towns, and in real live classrooms. The where of learning in such cases, matters almost as much as the what being taught.

Other examples abound.

Thus, even if we do not put engineering and design into the mix, we should not view education and knowledge as primarily ethereal.

Knowledge, even the most abstract, ends up landing somewhere and taking shape. Choices, even the well-educated ones of Harvard's alumni, eventually become manifest.

To build a better Harvard---and dare I say a better world---requires the stuff for dreams.