May 11, 2010 

Hi there,

President Obama has just nominated Elena Kagan, his Administration’s Solicitor-General, to the Supreme Court. If she is successful, every single member of the Supreme Court will have attended law school at either Harvard or Yale. The incumbent president studied at Harvard; George W. Bush studied at Yale and Harvard; Bill Clinton studied at Yale; and George H.W. Bush studied at Yale.

Is there no talent outside Cambridge and New Haven? Is it healthy for the American political elite to be nurtured at two exclusive universities? Do we live in a democracy or an oligarchy?

Actually I went to Harvard, so I can claim some expertise here. To tell the truth, I felt rather like Peter Sellers’ "Birdie Num-Num" character in The Party – utterly out of place. How I scraped in, I don’t know. Harvard's selection process was rather opaque. Amongst my forebears was one Thomas Dudley, who had signed Harvard’s charter back in 1650, and I was eligible for a Dudley scholarship, so perhaps it was lingering nepotism. 

Anyhow, I recall an orientation week gathering with the guys across the hall. They had their faults but I mustn't malign them with accusations of diffidence or false modesty. After a couple of beers, they started to compare their smarts. The first fellow had been the top student in New York State; the second had a perfect SAT score; the third was embarrassed to reveal that he was a couple of points shy of a perfect… By that time I had slunk out.

However, subsequent events that year persuaded me that these were not the sort of guys who ought to be running countries, with the possible exception of uninhabited tax havens with like the Cayman Islands. IQ isn’t everything. Isn’t it time that the diversity mantra was intoned in the American judicial and executive branches?

By coincidence, three of our articles so far this week deal with higher education: Christopher O. Tollefsen asks if universities are really a bulwark against repression; Thomas C. Reeves asks whether everyone should aspire to go to college; and Jack Martin points out that a university education should hone one’s critical faculties. Finally, Helena Adeloju tackles lower education – the downward slide of reality TV -- and Michael Coren analyses the British election. 

Happy reading!
Michael Cook
Editor

PS – We have launched an editor’s blog called Conniptions (that’s American for spitting chips, or doing your block, or having a hissy fit, or losing it). This is where you can comment on the editor’s message, send random acts of congratulation, or just have a conniption. Click on the link below.