Why the Closing of Harvard’s Writing Center Matters

Students, faculty members, and alumni are asking how seriously the school is taking human learning in the age of AI.

Excerpt: "College and university bureaucracies tend to have a strong mimetic streak. Institutions with lower academic rankings often emulate the initiatives and priorities of their higher-ranked peers. Harvard is the apex predator in America’s higher-ed ecosystem, and it has substantial power to influence what counts as essential to a good education.

The decisions that Harvard makes create a permission structure for other institutions to follow suit—after all, if one of the most venerable schools in the country doesn’t need a writing center in order to be “elite,” why would a public university, or a regional liberal-arts college, or a community college need one? Why does Montana State need one? Administrators, boards of trustees, and state legislatures will almost certainly be asking these questions.

Harvard has made it easier for them to decide that original writing—and, by extension, original thought—isn’t worth the cost."

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