Trump’s worst toadies hold degrees from Harvard and Yale. Did they learn anything?

[BidenPresident]

The original justification for elite higher education in the United States was to train the future leaders of American democracy. As Charles W Eliot, who became president of Harvard in 1869, noted, Harvard existed to inculcate the ideals of “service and stewardship”.

Republicans elected to the Senate over the last decade are more likely than their Democratic counterparts to have attended Harvard, Yale, Princeton or Stanford.

So how to explain Elise Stefanik, Harvard class of 2006, now the third-ranking House Republican, who recently called the January 6 hearings a “partisan witch-hunt”, voted to invalidate the 2020 election, and has repeated Trump’s big lie of election fraud?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/07/trump-republicans-harvard-yale

 

[BidenPresident]

The core of a good liberal arts education is ethics. The central question is the meaning of a good society. This has been the case since the 18th century, when most of America’s prestigious institutions of higher education were founded.

Adam Smith, the progenitor of modern economics, didn’t call his field economics. He called it “moral philosophy”, and thought his book The Theory of Moral Sentiments more important than his The Wealth of Nations.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/07/trump-republicans-harvard-yale