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Home , Benjamin Kunkel, The Harvard Advocate

policies on a nation’s income overall, while lic policy. They’re very interesting people to services. It’s central to the way the politi- ignoring questions of fairness and the dis- spend time with, and their support for the cal process works.” Citing one painful ex- tribution of income—the effects that matter work here is very gratifying. I don’t begrudge ample of government’s failure to appreci- to individuals. that time at all.” He chose to pursue the job ate this, he continues: “The initial failure of International trade, which has provoked in the first place, he recalls, because he “saw HealthCare.gov was damaging not just for populist ire on both sides of the aisle this elec- in Washington how important were good the particular program involved—because tion cycle, is perhaps the clearest example. ideas about public policy, and good people they fixed the website in a few months— Trade “generally raises the standard of living who put the ideas into practice.” but it was damaging for people’s perception for a country on average, but it does not neces- The most important piece of his agenda, of whether governments are good at doing sarily raise the standard of living for everyone Elmendorf says, will be replacing a wave the things they’re doing.” in the country,” Elmendorf explains. “That has of retiring faculty members: “We need to Fittingly, Elmendorf, who served as the been understood by economists for centuries, make sure we’re bringing in people at early head Economics 10 teacher while an assis- but many economists have put more weight stages of their careers who can be as effec- tant professor in the 1990s, closed the con- in their thinking and public comments on tive at teaching students and influencing versation with an earnest defense of his the gains to society as a whole.” Isn’t the an- policymakers.” Also on his list is modern- field. “If you want to expand health insur- swer, then, simply to redistribute resources to izing the school’s curriculum. Mirroring ance in this country, the basic tools of eco- those who are hurt by trade? Yes, he responds, the University-wide move to embrace ex- nomics are how you figure out how to do “but what if you don’t do the redistribution perimental learning methods, he says, “We that. Economists didn’t see the financial cri- part? Redistribution is hard, and we as a so- need to do less traditional lecturing and sis coming, but once it happened, it’s under- ciety have not pursued it with sufficient vig- more engaging students in the classroom, standable with the sorts of tools you learn or. Nonetheless, most economists say, ‘Well, and digital technology can be a big part of in Ec 10. And the people who were surprised that’s too bad, but we should still go ahead that.” And, he adds, “We don’t teach our were the ones who did not take Ec 10,” he and have more trade.’ And I think that’s the students much about digital technology, jokes. Despite its limitations, “Economics leap that isn’t so obvious.” but digital technology is central to national has been more right than wrong in the last Another example is the debate over en- security now and to delivering government 10 years.” vmarina bolotnikova titlements for the poor. Cutting benefits might raise national income by forcing low-income people to work more—but on Sesquicentennial Soirée a haze of excitement, she had complained balance, even for those who find jobs, earn- to Zadie Smith about an allergic reaction ings generally wouldn’t offset their loss in Harvard Advocate alumni to shoes bought at Urban Outfitters. (Jour- benefits. A lot of economists, says Elmen- take stock. nalistic ethics require me to identify that dorf, would focus on the benefit to society young woman as myself.) Other partygoers overall, but “you need to also look at whose On the first warm night in May, several grumbled about the lack of snacks. Perhaps income is going up and whose income is go- hundred literary New Yorkers gathered in they hadn’t noticed the cluster of grapes on ing down,” he argues. Economists today are a duplex apartment on Park Avenue. They a silver grape-shaped platter with a silver becoming more comfortable asking these were celebrating—not the publication of a grape cutter, or a small bowl of candies one kinds of questions. “More economists are recent book (despite the presence of authors can only describe as “European.” realizing that we need to focus on incomes like Louis Begley ’54 and Nell Freudenberg- How different it was from theAdvocate’ s for people at different levels of the income er ’97), nor the success of their publications small, white, clapboard house, with a door distribution, because the rising tide in this (though editors at The New Yorker and Farrar, that never quite shut, a toilet always about country over the last several decades has not Straus and Giroux were in attendance)—but to clog, drafty little rooms with stray pa- lifted all boats to nearly an equal degree.” the unexpected persistence of the magazine pers and misplaced sweaters. When the In moving from a public-policy role to that had introduced so many of them to writ- magazine moved in 1957 from its offices on university administration, Elmendorf has ing: , now 150 years old. Bow Street to the two-story building at 21 had to weigh tough trade-offs of his own. “I Excess reigned. Above the Willem de South Street where it remains, the opening miss the amount of engagement with analy- Kooning on the wall: a Jackson Pollack. Atop celebration featured a live stallion, with sis that I had in my previous jobs,” he admits. the piano in the sitting room: a sculpture cardboard wings, tied to a large diction- He’s spent his career working for some of of a piano. On a terrace overlooking Cen- ary. (The Advocate’s seal features Pegasus.) the most influential institutions in Washing- tral Park, Gay Talese was telling a group of Former editor ’51 read a poem. ton—the CBO, the Federal Reserve Board, women about the sartorial indulgences of Former editor T.S. Eliot ’10, A.M. ’11, Litt.D. the Brookings Institution. Much of his time, decades past. “I had 100 suits. They never ’47, sent his regards in a telegram. of course, has been spent raising funds to seemed to fall apart.” One undergraduate But almost immediately after its opening meet HKS’s $500-million capital-campaign was saying that she had heard that Lena the building seems to have lapsed into a state goal (the school has met the target, as of this Dunham would be attending. Another was of charming disrepair, in part because it is so summer, and plans to continue fundraising). apparently upset because she had met an ac- consistently used. At any moment you may Still, he’s quick to add, “The donors to the tor from Downton Abbey and had asked him find students analyzing poetry, finishing up Kennedy School are people who are smart, his class year. A former Advocate member papers, and or engaging in a host of other accomplished, and very interested in pub- was nervously confiding to a friend that, in activities, many of which I cannot mention

Harvard Magazine 23 Reprinted from . For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 's Journal here. “I so remember the smell of the stale, wasn’t talented enough to join. Years later, pages of the Advocate to comment on the mi- gin-soaked carpet….The locked offices were he conceded in a Paris Review interview, “I nutiae of Harvard life. “The present cheer, the settings for many romantic dramas,” says wasn’t a very good writer then, perhaps I with its first three breath-consuming ‘Har- Alexandra Jacobs ’94, a features writer and should have been turned down,” though he vards’ followed by nine enthusiastic ‘rahs,’ editor at . “It was the place also complained that the editor who rejected generally brings up with a gasp on the last you could go and talk about DeLillo,” says him was “out of touch.” ‘Harvard,’” he wrote. “It has to be coaxed; novelist ’96. The Advocate was founded in 1866. Its we need a cheer that would be irresistible.” The Sanctum, the large open second predecessor, the Collegian, lasted only a few Years later, he begged Donald Hall to give floor room with the names of past editors months before being shut down by the him final say on the selection of his student inscribed in gold lettering on the walls, fre- school for attacking writing included in an quently hosts readings from professional mandatory chapel at- Advocate anniversary writers. In the 1980s and 1990s, Seamus He- tendance. The editors anthology: “Some of aney (not yet a Nobel laureate or Litt.D. ’98) were told that they one’s early things give would visit occasionally. It was “one thing would be expelled if one the creeps.” For to study [his poetry] in English 10a, another they published a new decades, editors of the to be hearing it in that room,” says Anne Fu- issue. Instead, a stu- Advocate have debated lenwider ’94, editor-in-chief of Marie Claire. dent named F.P. Stea- whether Eliot’s early Several times a week, members of the rns started a new poetry published in different editorial boards gather to discuss magazine. “[I] cared the magazine was re- submissions. “We had to develop a vocabu- little whether I was ally all that good. In lary for what makes stories good,” recalls suspended or not,” 1986, editor James At- ’91, staff writer atTime and a he wrote. He gave it las (now on the board novelist. “That ended up becoming one-half two mottos: Dulce est of the magazine) wrote of my career as a book critic.” periculum (“Danger is that those poems he’d Then there are the parties that have left sweet”), and Veritas ni- found in the back issues

the floor permanently sticky and alumni still hil veretur (“Truth fears DADEROT “had the vaguely deriva- reminiscing in a tone of embarrassed excite- nothing”). The Harvard Advocate’s home on South tive feel of undergradu- ment years later. A 1956 re- The British critic Street, with Pegasus up above ate verse—derivative of port recalls the glory days of Advocate events: Frank Kermode once wrote that a position what, I couldn’t have said.” This past year “At parties for T.S. Eliot, of course, decorum on the Advocate “confers on its holder a good finally brought a clear stamp of professional has always prevailed, the atmosphere being chance of national eminence.” This is evi- approval: one of Eliot’s Advocate poems was more sentimental than sensual. But there dently overblown. Yet members of the maga- published in The New York Review of Books. was an entirely different air about the Eliza- zine often end up on the right side of literary beth Taylor party. And the Dylan Thomas history. As an undergraduate, James Laugh- Unlike the Crimson, which puts out a party was notable for the number of people lin ’36, later the founder of New Directions, daily paper and whose editors are quickly who were thrown downstairs.” More recent published a racy story by called hired by national newspapers, or the Lam- gatherings have perhaps been less illustri- “Glittering Pie.” The Cambridge police con- poon, with its strong network of West Coast ous. “There was an S&M party and some- fiscated issues, and the price of a copy went television writers, the Advocate has always one brought handcuffs and was handcuffing from 35 cents to a dollar on the black market. occupied a rare amateur space at a school people to people they didn’t like very much,” The assistant district attorney complained that rewards professionalism. “Lampoon edi- offersNew Yorker writer Elif Batuman ’99. that the Advocate was “the product of youths tors usually went to Time, ours to oblivion,” who have made up for a deficiency in experi- wrote former member ’43. A list of writers who published their ence…by too close a study of subjects which True, young members of the Advocate are early work in the Advocate reads like a were never prescribed by Harvard.” His col- very aware of the tradition that precedes condensed introduction to American leagues, Laughlin later wrote, were bought them—as with many things Harvard, the literature of the twentieth century: poets off with tickets to the Harvard-Yale game. introductory comp meeting involves a long ’49, Litt.D. ’01, , president of the Advocate in 1932, list of names of famous alums. But the at- ’51, Litt.D. ’90, Frank O’Hara ’50, Kenneth published a satire of Time, parodying the tone traction of the magazine also comes from the Koch ’48, ’57, translator of that magazine as it applied to historical fact that it allows for a kind of experimenta- ’33, composer Leonard events. (Elektra, he wrote, was Aeschylus’s tion that often isn’t given a place of its own, Bernstein ’39, D.Mus. ’90, novelists Sallie “latest nerve-shatterer,” a play “well worth whether on campus or beyond. The Advocate Bingham ’58 and ’68, journal- a trip to the new State Theater.”) The parody was “really about hanging around and talk- ist James Agee ’32, and editor ’71. so impressed Henry Luce that he hired the ing about things,” says Susan Morrison ’82, Even Advocate rejections have their own young man out of college to begin his jour- articles editor at The New Yorker and a board distinction. ’39 was forced nalism career at Fortune. member of the Advocate. “It wasn’t something to nail down a carpet in the Sanctum when Other undergraduate work did not obvi- that you did to get a job afterwards.” trying out for the magazine’s literary board ously herald new talent. , The Advocate is primarily devoted to po- as an undergraduate, only to be told that he president of the magazine in 1901, used the ems and fiction and other attempts at artis-

24 September - October 2016 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 tic inquiry, yet student members do make Clockwise from top right: sure that the publication comes out four the Advocate’s editors in 1869; the December 1967 times a year, despite the vagaries of under- cover, by Taite S. Walkonen graduate life and the magazine’s seemingly ’69; editors playing to the constant money problems. “It’s kind of an camera circa 1900-1910; organizational miracle the way people were the September 1950 cover, by Edward St. J. Gorey ’50 delegated to do things like tutor [other stu- dents through the comp process] and make students comping the fiction decisions,” says Jacobs. board had to read Hindsight may, of course, give student “They Ride Us,” work a polish it actually lacked. My friend a story written the writer and translator Jessica Sequeira ’11 “by a mythical fig- recently forwarded to me responses to the ure, , many query letters she sent as a features- which just seemed board editor seeking contributions from like a pseudonym.” established writers. “Dear Jessica, Do you When he moved mean November 19 2010? That is eleven days to New York lat- from now. It takes me months to think of er on, Greif said, things. All the best, Colm [Toibin].” “I went to a par- Yet ’97 found professional im- ty at The Nation, plications in the characteristic impractical- where there was a ity of fellow Advocate members. “The fact of bespectacled person sitting on a banquette. of debauchery.” Yet having other people around you who are Someone said, ‘Have you met Caleb?’ ” I said the 150th celebra- preparing for that particular life, with all of ‘Not Caleb Crain! Author of “They Ride Us!” ’ ” tion ended almost calmly, until in their or- its ups and downs and sacrifices and glories, (“For a while I worried that I had peaked ear- derly departure, too many guests crowded even while at other parts of Harvard peo- ly and that that [story] was going to be my into the elevator and broke it. Stragglers ple were really oriented to money or public most famous work,” says Crain ’89, author of left through the back exit. life—it was really important in giving me the critically acclaimed novel Necessary Errors.) vmadeleine schwartz the idea that you could go do it,” he said. In a corner, a young man was talking ARCHIVES HARVARD Greif is one of the ones who did “do it”— about undergraduate exorbitance. There’s Madeleine Schwartz ’12, a former Ledecky Under- about 10 years out of college, he founded the a reason, he was saying, that the event graduate Fellow at Harvard Magazine, was art literary magazine N+1 along with several other planner of the Advocate is called the “Dio- editor of the Advocate from 2010 to 2011. She is assis- Advocate graduates. (N+1 is the closest we have nysus.” “Every party reached new heights tant editor of The New York Review of Books. to the Advocate in the outside world, says New Yorker writer and Advocate board member D.T. Max ’83.) N+1 editor Ben Kunkel had read his News Briefs of Higher Education, Mark G. Yudof (former inspiring stories at the Advocate “to a rapt au- president of the University of and dience,” says Greif. Fellow editor Keith Ges- College Admissions Challenges the University of Minnesota, and chancel- sen ’97 was among those who heard Kunkel In late june, the U.S. Supreme Court up- lor of the University of Texas at Austin) and read, though he was not a member of the held the limited use of race in admissions Rachel F. Moran (dean emerita at UCLA magazine. “Arriving and finding theAdvocate decisions, ruling in its second pass at Fish- School of Law) observed that “the patch- to be incredibly pretentious was just one of er v. University of Texas at Austin that properly work of state approaches to affirmative ac- the disappointments that I experienced [at constrained processes for reviewing appli- tion will persist, and every program of col- Harvard],” he says now. (He did later pub- cants pass constitutional muster. Harvard lege admissions that treats race as a factor lish a story in the magazine as an upperclass- had filed a brief in support of upholding the will be judged on its particular facts. Like man, an imitation of Pale Fire, “which I’m sure Texas procedures. (Read an analysis at har- [Justice] Powell before him [in Bakke], Jus- if a freshman read it, it would have sounded vardmag.com/fishercase-16.) tice Kennedy has left the courthouse door very pretentious.”) N+1 also found one of its This is the third time the court has ruled open to future litigation, even at the Uni- first writers in the pages of the undergradu- on public institutions’ consideration of race versity of Texas” in his Fisher decision. Given ate magazine. “Keith said, ‘Wasn’t there that in admissions­­ (following the 1978 Bakke an Inside Higher Education-Gallup poll finding tall Turkish girl who wrote something amaz- and 2003 Grutter decisions). These rulings soon after that ruling (majorities opposed ing?’” Kunkel remembers. That is how Batu- would seem to establish, nationwide, the any consideration of gender, race or ethnic- man started contributing. principles underlying consideration of ap- ity, or legacy status in admissions)—such The Advocate honored N+1, as well as Louis plicants’ broad qualifications, going beyond challenges seem likely. Begley and John Ashbery, at the anniversary single metrics such as grade-point average At least one such action—the 2014 Proj- party. Alums described how the Advocate had or standardized-test scores. But some ana- ect on Fair Representation/Students for appeared in unexpected ways after they left lysts think the issues remain subject to fur- Fair Admissions (SFFA) lawsuit alleging college. For years, as Greif had recalled earlier, ther legal challenge. Writing for The Chronicle that Harvard discriminates against Asian

Harvard Magazine 27 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746