Talk:President and Fellows of Harvard College

Comment

Perhaps some revision is due on this page because of the recent announcements by Harvard about the pending changes to the Harvard Corporation that resulted from its review of its governance. http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/12/governance-review-culminates-in-changes-to-harvard-corporation/ MaynardClark (talk) 17:51, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Someone done it. EEng (talk) 00:34, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Standardize the list of degrees held by current Corporation members? Some of the non-Harvard degrees are listed with the granting institution in parentheses (e.g. Gay's Stanford degree) while others are omitted (e.g. Chenault's Bowdoin degree). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 162.246.241.72 (talk) 21:42, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

This is a good call. Rather inconsistent as it leads to lots of degrees being excluded. Since the degrees are included in their own bio pages, I'm just going to include the Harvard degrees and leave it at that. Jjazz76 (talk) 02:16, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 26 December 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. Per consensus, we shall determine once again if the proposed title is the common name sometime in the future. – robertsky (talk) 13:22, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

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President and Fellows of Harvard College → Harvard Corporation – This seems like a WP:COMMONNAME situation. This entity refers to itself primarily as the Harvard Corporation, only noting in a subheading that it is Known formally as the President and Fellows of Harvard College. This recent NYT article takes a similar approach, The Harvard Corporation—formally known as the President and Fellows of Harvard College. A Google search shows other cases like that, and some citations of Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, but not anyone using the current name as the primary one for the entity. The closest is the Harvard Gazette (see citations in article), which does sometimes ([1] but not [2]) say "President and Fellows" on first reference... but still uses "Corporation" from then on. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|she) 23:12, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

• The full name feels appropriate to me - official documents and statements tend to come from the full name, as do some local papers. Websites use both; the footers and documents in print use the longer name. – SJ + 18:49, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
• Thanks for raising this question. Recently it seems that Harvard Corporation has been the preferred term in December 2023 discussions. That said, it does seem there are a number of historical cases that use the name that is currently here. I don't have a preference either way, but I don't think the change would substantively hurt. If we do make the change, the other name(s) need to be spelled out and bolded in the opening. Jjazz76 (talk) 18:39, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
• Weak oppose. I think the official name is actually more common. Here is a comparison on Google Ngrams (leaving off "College" so that it doesn't exceed the word limit). (I wouldn't give much weight to case names, which are generally based on official legal name and not common name (like the City and County of San Francisco, as seen in Arizona v. City and County of San Francisco).) SilverLocust 💬 23:44, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. This may change in the future, but as of now I don't think "Harvard Corporation" is as common as "President and Fellows of Harvard College" is, so I don't see this fitting easily into WP:COMMONNAME. That said, there is no question that the current usage is trending more toward "Harvard Corporation", perhaps because "President and Fellows" seems so elitist. But I don't believe that "Harvard Corporation" is widely recognized as a synonym for "President and Fellows", at least not at this time. Perhaps this will change in 2-5 years, but not yet. AyaK (talk) 02:05, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Deletion of Content Related to Handling Plagiarism allegations

In December 2023, the Harvard Corporation came under scrutiny by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce over its handling of "allegations of plagiarism against President Claudine Gay".[3]

I added the following a few days, double cited (with many other cites that could support that claim). @Sj reverted the edits calling them UNDUE. Instead of getting into an edit war, I'd like to build consensus for their inclusion, or not.

Frankly, this article received very few hits before December 2023, and even some of the history was completely wrong/uncited until I went back and looked at some good secondary sources. I'm somewhat skeptical that not including one of their most newsworthy events since the board's expansion after the relatively short presidency of Larry Summers. Jjazz76 (talk) 18:44, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

• INCLUDE. Geez, President Gay just resigned due to the plagiarism charges, making her the shortest-termed leader in Harvard history. What more do we need? The said, we don't need more than a sentence or, at most, two in this article, because that would be undue weight compared to the other almost 400 years of history. -AyaK (talk) 02:08, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

  thanks - just to clarify I am proposing the mention be short as above. Barring of course some sort of long drawn out Congressional hearing that seems to be the goal in some circles.

  Also realize some of their earlier controversies, some fight with the Mass legislature in the mid-1800s and the Unitarian controversy in the early 1800s don't even get a sentence. So I'll try to include something. The President and Fellows being dragged into "culture wars" is definitely not unique to this time. Jjazz76 (talk) 17:16, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

  Jjazz76, no desire to edit war, appreciative of your work. I agree that putting current conflict with Congress in historical context makes sense, and is worth some sort of mention. Thanks for noting some of the past fights that should rate a mention. The current paragraph seemed both too long and not on-point for the topic: this should cover the overall tension between university and legislature, not the specifics of any one event or any one individual. [the flavor of culture war might differ based on who was in office, but the same approach has been taken with the presidents and board chairs of other institutions.] And the actions of this committee are part of larger campaigns this political cycle to discredit, de-accredit, and tax the endowments of various institutions. I'll try an alternative, feel free to iterate. – SJ + 01:15, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

  yeah I think you got my broader point, that while this particular harvard president/corporation/US Congress situation is unique it sort of have a broader theme of "who controls a university" and particularly 'elite' universities that reoccurs. I'm sure you will be better at coming up with something as I try to leave anything that gets close to a SYNTH to others (though the more I edit wikipedia I find plenty, plenty of SYNTH - I only delete it when it is unsourced and likely completely incorrect.)

  I think some sort of mention of this current spat is warranted as it seems to really dominated headlines for a month, but in the long duree of history who knows?

  frankly I hadn't even given much thought to the dual boards thing until the past few weeks, and only because i am interested in the history of higher education.

  anyway looking forward to seeing what you come up with. Jjazz76 (talk) 01:24, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

  Posted a first pass; take a look. The Congressional claims have remained focused pretty firmly on antisemitism, as the broader campaign is targeting tax-exempt status, hinging on discrimination. The plagiarism investigation played a role in the public and social pressure for Gay to resign, but doesn't seem like as relevant a point for the Corporation. I tried to add the context that it's not just one committee, or one university, and de-emphasize the individuals (as we've seen with Penn, the same political groups keep targeting whoever's left). – SJ + 02:17, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

  That looks good to me for now. If in a year this becomes a bigger issue, makes sense to add more, but I think for now more than comprehensive. Jjazz76 (talk) 02:47, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

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