Two interesting and connected pieces in the Crimson today. The first, by Sharon (no middle initial!) Wang details concern over the fact that international applications to GSAS haven’t reached pre-9/11 levels.

Theda Skocpol and others suggest that the shortfall is due to increased competition from other universities for international students.

And second is a thoughtful editorial by Joshua Patashnik (the middle initial monopoly is breaking up!) called “Is Harvard American Enough?“.

This is an issue that Harry Lewis first raised at a Morning Prayers talk early in the Summers era, and even though it’s not widely discussed, it’s a central question as Harvard prepares to take over the world. Even as Harvard searches for the best students from every country, should the university remain somehow fundamentally American? If so, why and how?

As Patashnik writes,

Harvard is indeed in peril of losing its American identity, but the problem is not one that can or should be fixed by a majority vote of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). At its root, this is a problem of emotion, rather than academics. The danger is not that future generations of Harvard students will lose the ability to study American labor markets, read Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” or write essays about the Atlanta Compromise. It is that they will no longer understand, on a gut level, why they are doing those things.

This is the kind of issue that Larry Summers would have raised, then squelched. Let’s hope that Drew Faust has both the time and the inclination to pursue the question of what is evolving and what should be constant about Harvard’s identity in a shrinking world.