Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) January 14, 2024: Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. (born in 1932; Harvard class of 1953; Ph.D. in political philosophy, Harvard University, 1961) stepped down from teaching at Harvard University in 2023 - where he began teaching political philosophy in 1962, when Harvard graduate John F. Kennedy (1917-1963; Harvard class of '40) was the president of the United States. See Rahem D. Hamid, "Harvey Mansfield '53, Stepping Down as One of Harvard's Longest Serving Professors, Looks Back on Career" in The Crimson (dated July 12, 2023): Click Here
In 1962, when Mansfield began teaching political philosophy at Harvard, I began my undergraduate studies at Rockhurst College (now Rockhurst University), the Jesuit institution of higher education in Kansas City, Missouri - about the time that the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) in the Roman Catholic Church began in Rome. I have delineated a profile of myself and my life in my OEN article "Thomas J. Farrell on Thomas J. Farrell" (dated November 17, 2023): Click Here
In any event, in Hamid's somewhat lengthy profile of Mansfield "through six Harvard presidential administrations," Mansfield identifies "'my two causes'" at Harvard: (1) affirmative action and (2) grade inflation. In Hamid's profile, Mansfield praises the recent Supreme Court ruling that "Harvard's race-conscious admissions are unconstitutional." However, despite Harvard's practice of race-conscious admissions, Hamid quotes Mansfield as saying, "'The students that I've seen in my courses, though they've changed in sex [i.e., gender] and in race, are pretty much the same in character the whole time. Harvard students have maintained their quality and their interest for the time I've been teaching.'"
Perhaps more notably, Mansfield also discusses Trump in Hamid's article. Hamid quotes Mansfield, "a Republican since the 1960s," as saying "'I voted for Trump with many misgivings. And then January 6, when he encouraged that insurrection against Congress, I crossed him off my list entirely.'"
For a discerning psychological analysis of Trump, see the American psychiatrist and psychotherapist Justin A. Frank's 2018 book Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President (Avery/ Penguin Random House). But also see my OEN article about his book, "His Majesty, Baby Donald!" (dated October 1, 2018): Click Here
Now, despite being formally retired from Harvard, the recent controversy surrounding now-former Harvard president Claudine Gay, the first black president of Harvard, prompted him to write the thought-provoking op-ed commentary "Who's Holding Up the Ivory Tower? Liberals want academia to reflect society, while conservatives know it has to rise above society" in the Wall Street Journal (dated January 11, 2024) - in which he operationally defines and explains progressives such as Claudine Gay as woke and favoring identity politics, liberals who are not woke, and conservatives.
Now, because I have long been impressed with the American Jesuit cultural historian Walter J. Ong's cogent studies of male agonism, I have been most positively impressed with Mansfield's 2006 book Manliness (Yale University Press) and his 2007 Jefferson Lecture "How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science" (available at the National Endowment for the Humanities' website).
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