Talk:Harvard University

Semi-protected edit request on 9 July 2014

Add Harvard Alumni - Joseph McGrath - Bachelor of Arts in Government Class of 1969, into notable alumni. He is the current president of Grantham University, a nationally accredited 100% online university based in Lenexa,KS.

http://www.grantham.edu/about-grantham/university-administration/governance/ If you need any further information, please contact vmorrow@grantham.edu

ReliableEdits (talk) 16:55, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

 Not done Given the number of notable alumni Harvard has had, you need to be really notable to make this short-list. We don't appear to have an article on that particular Joseph McGrath at all, so he is also ineligible for the long-list at List of Harvard University people, let alone this short-list. - Arjayay (talk) 17:06, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Name of the institution

In which year "Harvard College" became "Harvard University"? --RaphaelQS (talk) 20:09, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on the details but I can give you the general outlines of the answer to this a somewhat slippery question. Perhaps the first prominent, official reference to Harvard as a "University" is in Massachusetts Constitution of 1779/1780, which refers to the "University at Cambridge" and later to "Harvard College in Cambridge, in New England, or to the President and Fellows of Harvard College, or to the said College by any other description." This was before any of the graduate schools were founded, but as they were (beginning with Medicine, 1782; Divinity, 1816; and Law, 1817) the term Harvard College came more and more to mean the original undergraduate core around which the larger Harvard University, with its graduate and professional schools, was developing. Today Harvard College admits Harvard's undergraduates; feeds, houses, advises, and (I guess you might say) entertains them; and generally attends to their personal well-being and discipline. Closely allied to the College is the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which has primary responsibility for undergraduate instruction, as well as graduate instruction for students in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. There are complicated arrangements by which the various other graduate and professional schools contribute to undergraduate instruction as well.

So Harvard College didn't become Harvard University, rather Harvard University grew up around Harvard College, which retained, and retains, its original role as the school's undergraduate nucleus. I hope this makes sense. BTW, Harvard's fundamental governing body, The President and Fellows of Harvard College, retains the word College in its name for (I guess) reasons of tradition, even though it governs the entirety of Harvard University. Isn't all this fun to know? EEng (talk) 22:17, 26 February 2015 (UTC) Paging ElKevbo to check me on all this to the extent he can.

Mary 2015 discrimination complaint

[The following was transferred from User talk:EEng', and regards this [1] material]

Hi EEng,

This is Helen Yang and I am getting in touch with you regarding the controversies section on the Harvard University page. I don't agree with your statement due to the significance of this federal complaint in that it raises a major civil rights issue that impacts millions of people. Readers have the right to be informed and it is up to the readers to form an opinion either way or simply ignore it, but readers should not be deprived of the privilege of being informed.

Like many, I have tremendous respect for Harvard. I had the privilege of cross-registering at Harvard when I was at MIT and ended up taking classes at the Kennedy School and the law school.

This section will be put back. If you still disagree, we should raise it with Wikipedia to arbitration.

Thanks, Helen — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jianhelenyang (talk • contribs)

Thanks for taking the trouble to contact me. I suggest that, as a new contributor, you review WP:NOTNEWS, WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS, WP:UNDUE and (especially) WP:RECENTISM. It is not Wikipedia's mission to inform readers of breaking news, which they can easily get via a Google search. EEng (talk) 15:05, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

JHY Response - Thanks EEng for your response. As a long time user of wikipedia, I fully understand what wikipedia is and is not. The links your recommended were helpful and confirmed my understanding. To your specific points, the section was added due to its significance and high relevance. Google search would give you almost everything under the sun and if this criteria is used, I am not sure how much of Wikipedia would be left. While your many contributions to wikipedia is admirable, I hope the discussion focuses on the merit of the point itself. If it helps, I am happy to provide evidence to prove my credibility. Best regards, Helen Yang Jianhelenyang (talk) 19:52, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

I certainly wasn't saying that anything available via Google shouldn't be in Wikipedia; that would be nonsense. My point is that "readers have a right to be informed" is not a good argument for inclusion of material, because there are other ways for readers to be informed. Time will tell whether this becomes anything more than just another lawsuit -- I note that Google News suggests that after the predictable burst of publicity one month ago, coverage has dwindled to practically zero in the last ten days. This event may very well merit its own article, but for the moment it has zero importance in the 400-year history of Harvard. Questions like this are worked out by discussion among interested editors, never by arbitration. EEng (talk) 06:19, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

JHY - Since we can't seem to agree, I suggest to take it to the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard. By the way, it is a federal complaint, not a lawsuit (although there is a closely related lawsuit). The purpose of wikipedia is to provide the most accurate and relevant information, and it is not right for a particular editor to filter out what he or she doesn't want the users to see - this is what I meant by "readers have a right to be informed". If the significance is the point of discussion, we can continue and I am happy to give you some pointers for further study, but Google News coverage at a given point of time is not the only gauge - do you see media coverage everyday about how many presidents come from Harvard? I am going to give you some time to think about it before I put it back. Also wanted to give you the opportunity to initiate the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard if you wish; otherwise I will be happy to initiate the process.Jianhelenyang (talk) 16:38, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

(OK, complaint, sorry.) To see that the unusually large number of US presidents who attended Harvard is significant enough for mention in the article doesn't require ongoing news coverage, because there's been literally centuries of that already, not to mention extensive secondary commentary and even entire books. In contrast, this matter seems to have left the headlines, and it's not clear when if ever it will return, or whether anyone will take notice of it again.

When a new editor arrives out of nowhere with the specific (and apparently only) purpose of inserting a certain thing into a certain article, it almost always leads to that person's frustration. The urgency you exhibit seems to stem from a desire to "spread the word", and that's not what Wikipedia is about. See (along with everything else I've point you to) WP:SOAPBOX.

Two different editors have indicated that they don't believe this material belongs in the article, especially as a standalone criticism section, which is almost always a bad idea (WP:CSECTION). Anyway, this isn't the place to be discussing this. I indicated in one of my edit summaries that you should open a discussion on the article's talk page, and you haven't done that, so in a moment I'll transfer this material there. EEng (talk) 17:38, 16 June 2015 (UTC)