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BreakingHarvard’s with centuries-old tradition, Harvard is moving to eliminate its all-male Club final clubs, charging that the Porcellian, Brawl A.D., Fox, Fly, and other high-end frats are bastions of patriarchal privilege, fomenters of sexual assault, and antithetical to its values. Is any of that true? An alumnus who was “punched” by the Porcellian in 1972 (but didn’t join), JOHN SEDGWICK considers the legal, moral, and logical flaws in the college’s crusade—and the role played by a pornographic ice sculpture

224 VANITY FAIR www.vanityfair.com PHOTOGRAPHS BY TOM M. JOHNSON SEPTEMBER 2017 SEPTEMBER 2017 www.vanityfair.com VANITY FAIR 225 eccentricity, extravagance, and repressed prohibition at least has the virtue of clar- homosexuality in this bastion of Victorian ity. It doesn’t give you a choice. It throws masculinity tucked away over the old-line out the fnal clubs, and much else besides. clothier J. August, across from Harvard A MORAL STANCE Yard. Its street-side shades permanently Sanctionistas drawn, it offered a view to the outside et’s start by acknowledg- WOULD BE MORE GENUINE world only through an artfully positioned ing that it’s unclear exactly mirror, and it backed onto a garden dubbed what will happen. An- Mrs. Graham’s Hole, where one member is nouncing a “plan” in any IF HARVARD STUDENTS CAME TO IT buried under a rosebush. All very Poe-ish, academic setting is not but to me it evoked evenings reciting Ten- straightforward. There are ON THEIR OWN. nyson over absinthe with people who’d Lconstituencies to be heard from, notably be friends for life. Now, of course, such a the faculty, which at Harvard has a big say brotherhood is a bastion of the patriarchy, in disciplinary matters and on student life in stinking of privilege and sexual exploitation, general. The faculty is not expected to take mittee that issued a revised plan in July. best known for his business book debunk- members of female fnal clubs). However, and it must be crushed by those with higher up the new proposal until the fall. This last move took place at an ironic ing the desirability of the charismatic leader those two data points did not address an moral standards. That said, any form of prohibition poses time, for President Faust—who has since in- as a C.E.O.—even as he seemingly strives to essential question: how much of this con- And the means of achieving this are pret- a few obvious questions, starting with the dicated her intention to resign in 2018, after be such a person himself. He has been one tact stemmed directly from encounters at ty far along on the Draconian scale. Be- legal one. Doesn’t this violate the right to 11 years—was just then castigating President of the chief sponsors of something called fnal clubs or involved club members? That cause all the male clubs own their buildings, freedom of association that the Supreme Donald J. Trump for issuing the frst of his the MBA Oath, declaring adherence to remained anyone’s guess. support themselves, and rely on Harvard Court found in the First and 14th Amend- ill-fated executive orders restricting travel ethical principles of Khurana’s collabora- But there was also this: an astonishing 75 only for a steady supply of under graduate ments? And isn’t this all a little too reminis- from seven predominantly Muslim nations. tive design, and he sometimes opens faculty percent of all such behavior occurred not men, the university can’t legally stamp out cent of the McCarthy years, when Harvard Yet his orders seemed, in fact, oddly simi - meetings by rifng on the Harvard mission on club premises but in Harvard dorms. n Harvard’s these clubs for being single-gender, no mat- was expected to turn over the “pinkos” on lar to her own—drastically ideological, put statement, which has caused grumbling That led to the inescapable conclusion that, relentless campaign to rid itself of the last ter how ofensive that might be, any more the faculty? Or, before that, when President forward without regard to popular support, among professors who prefer to devise their if Harvard really was serious about eliminat- seven of its all-male fnal clubs—the Porcel- than it could abolish the Harvard Book A. Lawrence Lowell hunted down gays? Is and appearing to violate essential consti- own platitudes. ing unwanted contact, it would make dorms lian, the A.D., the Fly, and four other high- Store, likewise independent, for selling dirty being in a club really that bad? tutional principles. Substitute Faust for As the new dean, Khurana doubled single-sex, as they’d all been before the pre- end frats—most of what you need to know audiobooks. The original plan, frst foated And while we’re at it, how is it that Trump, and the seven all-male fnal clubs down on his indignation over U.S.G.S.O.’s vious wave of political correctness turned is encapsulated in the term the authorities by the administration in May of 2016, was Harvard is faying the fnal clubs for being for the seven nations, and you have what after a risqué account of fnal-club party an- them all coed back in my day. use to refer to them: Unrecognized Single- simply to assume it was self-evident that exclusionary but letting the Organization Silverglate calls a “very interesting analogy.” tics appeared in Elle magazine in November Besides, several of the fnal clubs, chiefy Gender Social Organizations, or U.S.G.S.O.’s. single-sex social clubs are abhorrent, and if of Asian American Sisters in Service and So, what gives? 2015, written by a female Harvard graduate the Porcellian and the A.D., resolutely for- IThree parts Orwell, two parts Lenin, those they don’t “transition” into a full acceptance the Black Men’s Forum go scot-free? As who had participated in them. The account bade the presence of guests of either gen- fve letters tell a lot about the mind-set of of “Harvard values of non-discrimination” it is, the campaign against all-male final The Ice Sculpture included salient details about the drippings der in the clubhouse, so it was safe to say the bureaucrats who are, in the view of their by going gender-neutral, any outed mem- clubs has now done a number on the other y most accounts, the whole from an ice sculpture of a lusty nude at one that the incidence of errant heterosexuality detractors, going jihadi on these quirky, old- bers would be banished from the good single-gender clubs that Harvard surely did business started with Khura- of the club’s weekend frolics, to which wom- on the premises was zero. As the Porcel- line places in frantic pursuit of “diversity” graces of the Harvard community like the not really want to wreck—the all-women na, a man who shoulders en were invited. “Her frozen breasts are lian Club’s graduate head, Charles Storey, and “inclusion,” two terms so ubiquitous unrepentant sinners of Puritan days. They clubs that have risen up to provide their many responsibilities. He enormous; her back is arched. And if you president of the Harpoon Brewery, pointed on campus, according to the Fly Club’s would be forbidden to represent Harvard as own routes to power, bypassing the hege- might be four people, since crouch beneath her thighs, you can guzzle a out to the Crimson, if the club were to ad- lawyer Harvey Silverglate, that they leave a captain of a sports team or an elected monic patriarchal culture. To get at 500 he is simultaneously the shot of Rubinof vodka that a hoarse-voiced mit women, the “sexual misconduct” there him feeling “murderous.” And he’s a card- leader of their class, and they would not re- male fnal-club members, Harvard would BDanof Dean of the college; a professor of senior will pour for you down her icy could only rise. As far as anyone knew, it carrying member of the A.C.L.U., a veter- ceive Harvard’s backing for a Rhodes schol- sacrifce 400 female ones, plus nearly 700 sociology and organizational behavior at the frame.” That may have done it for the clubs, was the frst time in recent memory that an of the Old Left who has had it with the arship or other postgraduate honors. One members of sororities and frats. university; a professor of leadership develop- right there. For it came on top of an earlier any club ofcial had spoken publicly about New Left thought police. “They want a drawback to this plan was that, the mem- The proposed actions against the fnal ment in the business school; and, with his incident, when Khurana found out that the the club’s doings in its 225-year history, campus where everybody looks different bership of the fnal clubs being mostly se- clubs (and other entities) have been pro- wife, a faculty dean of Cabot House, a posi- Spee Club had had the efrontery to send and the second time was not likely to come but thinks alike,” says Silverglate. “That is cret, no one knows exactly who the mem- moted by President Drew Faust and her tion that was called “master” until the term around an invitation to a “pajama party,” for another 225 years at least. Storey’s ob- their defnition of diversity.” bers are. Were they supposed to be ratted chief administrative backer, College Dean was dropped recently owing to a possible as- along with a link to a YouTube video show- servation was widely ridiculed—as if Pork- I need to say up front that, when it out by their friends? Rakesh Khurana (or “Minister Khurana,” sociation in people’s minds with slavery. ing scantily clad women. ers would be unable to stop themselves if comes to these relics of a former day, I’m The latest plan, presented in July, scraps as he is now known to the trolls who moni- Khurana rarely speaks to the press and Soon it was open season on the final they spotted a woman in the club—and Sto- about as ambivalent as the next person. the original plan altogether. It would ban tor The Harvard Crimson’s coverage), and neither he nor Faust agreed to speak to me, clubs as places of Rabelaisian debauchery, rey duly resigned. Many of the Harvard men in my fam- outright the participation by Harvard stu- they have yet to receive faculty consent. At and the university’s media-relations depart- where unsuspecting (or even suspecting) ily were “Brothers Porcellian,” a term that dents in “fnal clubs, fraternities or sorori- a faculty meeting last December, several ment did not respond to requests for com- women were defiled for male sport. The LinkedIn for the Rich conveys the full horror. As a Harvard fresh- ties, or other similar private, exclusionary irked professors raised the issue themselves ment. So some speculation is required. A early reports zeroed in on the sexual ele- nce the statisticians start- man I was “punched” for the club myself, social organizations.” The new plan, which in the form of a motion preventing the col- capable and afable fellow by all accounts, ment and seized on a bit of data with all ed scrutinizing the num- but declined. This was way back in 1972, would go into effect in the fall of 2018, lege from interfering with student member- Khurana is believed to have his eye on a the excitement of Hercule Poirot discov- bers, the sexual-assault when I was a member of a mildly socialist states that “the College will take disciplin- ship in any legal organizations. The sanc- college presidency of his own one day, ering a dropped handkerchief. It seemed angle disappeared, to be campus or gan i za tion, heavy on attractive ary action against students who are found tionistas, as club opponents are known, which may account for his tenacity in tak- that, while 31 percent of female Harvard replaced by a new argu- women, and I didn’t see how I could be to be participating in such organizations.” dodged that vote when Faust abruptly ing on clubs that seem both morally retro- seniors had experienced “nonconsensual ment: the all-male fnal in both the Porcellian and the New Ameri- The disciplinary action would be overseen concluded the meeting. The next month, grade and unpopular. (There is, however, sexual contact”—a term that was not de- Oclubs were reprehensible because they were can Movement. I kept my distance, but, by the Administrative Board, and could the administration promised to put togeth- the discordant fact that his wife was a lead- fned—since entering college, the fgure was unfair to the women they excluded—this be- when I wrote an article on the Porc later, include expulsion. There’s still the prob- er one of the world’s larger blue-ribbon ing light at her sorority at Cornell, which a full 47 percent for women who participat- cause they provided clear paths to money, I did enjoy hearing about the blend of wit, lem of identifying the members, but the committees to study the matter—the com- both attended.) Ironically, he is perhaps ed in fnal clubs (including women who are power, and fame via an all-boy network

226 VANITY FAIR www.vanityfair.com SEPTEMBER 2017 SEPTEMBER 2017 www.vanityfair.com VANITY FAIR 227 NO GIRLS ALLOWED Five of the historically all-male Harvard final clubs: (1) Owl, (2) Fox, (3) A.D., (4) Phoenix S.K., (5) Porcellian.

The P.C. culture has had a way of comman- deering the public discourse by shaming the daylights out of anyone who takes the wrong side in some culture war—gender, class, race—that is presumed to have a sin- gle right side. On this one, the fnal clubs tick all the wrong boxes—male, elite, pre- sumably white. Case closed.

The Scientist ut public declarations of approved virtue can be dif- ferent from actual feelings. And after Khurana and Faust floated the original plan, the story took an un- Bexpected turn when feelings were actually as- sessed. While notions of cultural hegemony rule humanities departments, the sciences have less politicized ways of classifying real- ity. It was probably inevitable that the uni- versity’s moralism would stop at the door of 1 2 3 Harry R. Lewis, a former dean of the college and now a professor of computer science at the university’s John A. Paulson School of that worked like a private LinkedIn for sion likewise shifted with the facts. None- Engineering and Applied Sciences. Lewis’s the rich. And, given that J.F.K. was in the theless, before Khurana announced his ofce is at the other end of the university Spee, everyone immediately believed that original sanctions idea, the Spee declared from the Barker Center, headquarters of the to be true. The membership being a state that it would go coed to conform to the humanities, which is in the old Freshman secret, it was impossible to know if this new morality, and the Fox followed suit a Union building, a grand, high-ceilinged, was actually true, and there are counter- few weeks later. wood-paneled dining hall and hangout examples. One current club officer—I’ve It was still hard to say what was so bad that was meant to offer a private-club sworn not to reveal whom—is the frst in about these clubs beyond the fact that they aura to all. Not anymore! At least one of his family to go to any college at all, let obviously were bad. The absence of hard the grand old club buildings, that of the alone Harvard, and his dues are paid by a information left critics to their worst imag- Iroquois, has been re-purposed for Harvard scholarship that his club quietly provides, inings. I might have pictured Tennyson and function rooms after the club went out of as several do, contrary to impressions. absinthe, but that was just me. Others saw business; the college seems to believe that it The anti-club campaign became remi- nothing but sex scandals and undeserved can blithely replace these atmospheric places niscent of the second Iraq war, whose mis- partnerships at Goldman Sachs. Who knows? with social areas like the Cambridge Queen’s

LIKE THE SECOND IRAQ WAR, THE MISSION OF THE ANTI-CLUB CAMPAIGN SHIFTED WITH THE FACTS. 4 5

228 VANITY FAIR www.vanityfair.com SEPTEMBER 2017 www.vanityfair.com VANITY FAIR 229 Head, an alcohol-limited pub run by Har- Harry Lewis is a patient and methodi- but it’s hard to know what vard’s Ofce of Student Life that has all the cal fellow, nearing retirement after a lifetime everyone was cheering for. charm of the Holiday Inn. The real problem at Harvard—he arrived as an undergradu- From John Locke through here may be that Harvard doesn’t ofer kids ate in 1964, almost a decade before I did. The Federalist Papers, that anything much better to do on a Saturday Once the battle was joined, Lewis was not actually is what liberal soci- night than get bombed at the Fly. one to give in. He clearly does not relish eties do not do. That stance the idea of being the fnal clubs’ savior, but also assumes that the world Humming he has been tireless in advancing the cause beyond Harvard will be tol- hen Lewis got through countless op-eds and blogs, and at erant of this intolerance. At wind of the move least one public debate. His basic idea was the same meeting, Henry to sanction club that maybe Harvard should take it down a Louis “Skip” Gates Jr., who members, he was notch. Don’t punish students for their pref- heads Harvard’s Hutchins reminded of the erences, but do what universities are sup- Center for African & Afri- “bad history” of posed to do: lay out the facts and let people can American Research, WMcCarthyism on campus, a notion that decide for themselves. When freshmen ar- was no less fervid as he certainly didn’t go away when he was rive in September, they’re hit by a barrage decried the final clubs’ slammed for being just like the cracker of information to help them make informed “unique status and power segregationists of the 50s. Lewis couldn’t choices—on everything from how to choose on campus and in the believe that students were nearly as rabid a major to how to avoid an S.T.D. Maybe a broader Harvard world.” as Khurana seemed to think. Absent some brochure on the perils of fnal clubs as well? As opinions, some of Gallup poll, how was anyone to know? the arguments against fnal By humming. Apparently, that’s how Extermination Campaign clubs are not unreason- computer engineers quickly determine the ensible as that may have able. They do discriminate disposition of a large group about some seemed, the anti-club fury con- and they do favor old boys. new Internet standard, say. They take a tinued, even among people They are without doubt a hum. They do it for efciency, but Lewis who should have known better. vestige of an ancien régime did it to maintain privacy on an issue po- Louis Menand—the New York- that is not the world we’re tentially too inflammatory for anyone to er writer, author of the Pulitzer heading into. But should feel safe going public. So after the sanctions SPrize–winning The Metaphysical Club, and a these arguments stand as idea was floated, he put the question to Harvard English professor—got caught up in the last word, leaving Har- about 150 students in his introductory com- the frenzy, decrying as “pure sophistry” Lew- vard students no choice puter course. What did they think of these is’s motion to allow undergrads to join any but to obey? The university sanctions? Did they like them or not like clubs they like as long as the clubs are legal. seems to be trying to force them? The not-like hums were a lot louder “It basically says, ‘We cannot discriminate a moral stance that would than the like hums. That was surprising, against people who discriminate because that be more genuine if Har- given all the talk, but it was, to him, reas- would be a form of discrimination,’ ” vard students came to it on suring. It was the sound of tolerance. Menand declared at the faculty meeting their own. The debate only “I’ve talked to various students; a lot of called to discuss the matter. “Seriously? This intensifed with the recent them just don’t want Harvard interfering.” is the kind of limits-of-tolerance hypothetical rescinding of admission to at least 10 ac- admitted students tried to outdo one an- spirit of a university whose gates are embla- That was the message Lewis took away: that you might be able to get away with in a cepted Harvard applicants for some errant other in ill-advised humor, and ended up zoned with ENTER TO GROW IN WISDOM. RIGHTS AND WRONGS “Just leave us alone.” He hadn’t meant freshman seminar, and it is unworthy of this attempts at humor on unfunny subjects violating about every norm of good taste. It In January, as faculty debate continued, Left, Harvey Silverglate, photographed at his home office, in Cambridge. Right, to start any kind of counter-crusade. He faculty.” He went on, his voice rising: “Of like the Holocaust, sexual assault, and the was indeed ofensive. But if Harvard is to Khurana formed his blue-ribbon “policy Harry Lewis at his Brookline home. merely sent of a letter to Khurana saying course we can be intolerant of intolerance, death of children. The admitted students police such online chat, what is to keep it review” committee to reconsider the whole there was another point of view. But the and of course we can discriminate against had posted them in a private chat group from demanding to see e-mails and dream matter, with himself as the co-chair. The Crimson got a copy, and, says Lewis, “it all people who discriminate. That’s what liberal ofering “Harvard memes for horny bour- diaries in order to peer inside the tortured new policy-review committee released its sort of blew up.” societies do.” It was quite an applause line, geois teens.” Naturally competitive, these souls of would-be Harvardians for signs of report in July, replacing the original sanc- tration than perhaps it is expecting.” One the evil therein? tions plan with a more drastic blanket pro- also has to wonder: if institutions are to be The moral presumption behind the anti- hibition against joining exclusionary groups closed down because they discriminate on club fervor is not so different from what of any sort. There’s a long list of them, some basis, or ofer advantages not avail- lies behind the loyalty oaths espoused by and it includes groups that have adopted able to everyone, does Harvard University despotic societies everywhere. There is no gender-neutral policies, such as the Hasty itself have something to worry about? IF DISCRIMINATION IS opting out. The assumption is that by re- Pudding Club. The issue is no longer ex- The image of those dripping breasts may quiring you to agree to some proposition, clusively about gender—which the report not be the best advertisement for freedom it will enter your heart as a true conviction. deemed “too narrow”—but rather about of association, but plenty of Harvard under- PROBLEMATIC, DOES Often, the opposite is true, which can breed discrimination more broadly. “It is possi- grads of both genders clustered around it suspicions about whether someone “really” ble,” Harvey Silverglate told me, “that this to join the fun. I suspect they’re not all bad HARVARD ITSELF HAVE SOMETHING believes what he’s afrmed, or is “just say- latest usurpation of faculty authority will people. I don’t regret skipping the Porcellian ing” it. Such an oath can also foster a cer- sufciently energize the faculty to begin to Club, but I can get behind its Latin motto. tain Maoist angst, if people don’t actually fght back.” And he went on: “If it turns Dum Vivimus Vivamus. While we live, let us TO WORRY ABOUT? believe something they’ve been obliged to out to be a legal battle, it will be more of live. No one asked me, but I’m with the Old proclaim. None of this captures the ideal a potent challenge to the Harvard adminis- Left on this one, and screw the New. %

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