精英统治是否正在削弱民主？与迈克尔·桑德尔的对话

哈佛拉德克利夫学院 2025年11月5日

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkL158pAEv0

精英统治的概念，尽管具有吸引力，是否却产生了意想不到的后果，加剧了“赢家”和“输家”之间的鸿沟，并侵蚀了美国的民主？迈克尔·桑德尔以其著作《精英的暴政：我们能否找到共同利益？》为基础，提出了一个引人深思的论点，并展开对话，探讨这些以及其他与知识多样性、学历差距和公众对高等教育的看法相关的具有挑战性且往往高度政治化的问题。

本次活动是哈佛拉德克利夫学院“学术自由与跨文化交流”系列公共活动的首场讲座。

哈佛拉德克利夫学院衷心感谢苏珊·费尔斯-希尔和亚伦·希尔公民对话基金对本次活动的支持。演讲嘉宾

迈克尔·桑德尔，哈佛大学文理学院安妮·T·和罗伯特·M·巴斯政府学教授

评论员

戴维·J·德明，哈佛学院丹诺夫院长；哈佛肯尼迪学院伊莎贝尔和斯科特·布莱克政治经济学教授；哈佛大学文理学院经济学教授

兰德尔·L·肯尼迪，哈佛法学院迈克尔·R·克莱因法学教授

主持人

托米科·布朗-纳金，哈佛拉德克利夫学院院长；哈佛法学院丹尼尔·P·S·保罗宪法学教授；哈佛大学文理学院历史学教授

简介

迈克尔·桑德尔是哈佛大学安妮·T·和罗伯特·M·巴斯政府学教授。他的著作——关于正义、伦理、民主、精英统治和市场——已被翻译成30多种语言。他开设的传奇课程“正义”是哈佛大学首个免费在线课程，已被全球数千万人观看。

桑德尔的著作包括《精英的暴政：我们能否找到共同利益？》、《民主的不满：危难时代的全新版本》、《金钱买不到的东西：市场的道德局限》、《正义：什么是正确的事？》以及《反对完美：基因工程时代的伦理》。

桑德尔曾任索邦大学客座教授，并在牛津大学发表过坦纳人文价值讲座，在BBC发表过里斯讲座，并在美国国会图书馆发表过凯洛格法理学讲座。他荣获2025年贝格鲁恩哲学与文化奖，并获得西班牙阿斯图里亚斯公主社会科学奖。桑德尔在学术界内外就当今最棘手的道德和公民问题展开了对话。

有关哈佛拉德克利夫学院及其众多公共项目的更多信息，请访问 https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/。

Does Meritocracy Undermine Democracy? A Conversation with Michael Sandel

Harvard Radcliffe Institute    2025年11月5日
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkL158pAEv0

Has the concept of meritocracy, despite its appeal, had the unintended consequence of deepening the divide between “winners” and “losers” and become corrosive of American democracy? Drawing on his book, The Tyranny of Merit: Can We Find the Common Good?, Michael Sandel presents a provocative argument and engages in conversation to explore these and other challenging, often highly politicized, questions connected with intellectual diversity, the diploma divide, and public perception of higher education.

This program is the inaugural lecture in Harvard Radcliffe Institute’s series of public events highlighting issues of Academic Freedom and Connecting Across Difference.

Harvard Radcliffe Institute gratefully acknowledges the Susan Fales-Hill and Aaron Hill Fund for Civil Discourse, which is supporting this event.

Speaker
Michael Sandel, Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Discussants
David J. Deming, Danoff Dean of Harvard College; Isabelle and Scott Black Professor of Political Economy, Harvard Kennedy School; professor of economics, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Randall L. Kennedy, Michael R. Klein Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Moderator

Tomiko Brown-Nagin, dean, Harvard Radcliffe Institute; Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law, Harvard Law School; professor of history, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Biography
Michael Sandel is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard. His writings—on justice, ethics, democracy, meritocracy, and markets—have been translated into more than 30 languages. His legendary course “Justice” was the first Harvard course to be made freely available online and has been viewed by tens of millions of people around the world.

Sandel’s books include The Tyranny of Merit: Can We Find the Common Good?; Democracy's Discontent: A New Edition for Our Perilous Times; What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets; Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?; and The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering.

Sandel has been a visiting professor at the Sorbonne and delivered the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Oxford, the Reith Lectures of the BBC, and the Kellogg Lecture on Jurisprudence at the US Library of Congress. Winner of the 2025 Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture and a recipient of Spain's Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences, Sandel has shaped dialogue within and beyond the academy on the most vexing moral and civic questions of our time.

For information about Harvard Radcliffe Institute and its many public programs, visit https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/.   

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Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you. Thank you.
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I'm Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Dean of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and it is my pleasure to welcome you to today's program, which
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is the first in the institute's new academic freedom lecture series. Before I introduce our speakers, let
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me acknowledge Susan Fales Hill and Aaron Hill, who generously-- yes. [applause]
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Who generously established a fund for civil discourse that is supporting this event.
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I'd also like to thank members of the Radcliffe Institute Leadership Society and all our annual donors, whose generosity
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keeps Radcliffe events and exhibitions free and open to the public. We Thank you.
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Today's program is part of Radcliffe's initiative on academic freedom and connecting across difference,
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which we launched last fall. This five-year effort aims to elevate
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open inquiry and constructive dialogue and to critically engage both the concept of and threats
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against academic freedom that is, the freedoms to teach, learn and conduct research without censorship or retaliation.
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We also aim to examine the ways in which American institutions of higher education, of course, Harvard among them,
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have at times fallen short of our ideals. Powerful critiques of colleges and universities
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have emerged from across the political spectrum And from both within and beyond the Academy.
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Yale Law School Professor Daniel Markovits, for instance, sees highly selective colleges and universities
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as perpetuating rather than countering ring inequality.
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Meritocratic education, he argues, now predominantly serves an elite caste rather than
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the general public. Philip Hamburger, a Columbia Law School professor
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and nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute levels a wide ranging critique,
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spanning universities' funding structures, as well as what he sees as a troubling dearth of intellectual diversity
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on campus. He calls for, quote, "thorough reconsideration of higher
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education," not only to fix it but to reconstitute it. Meanwhile, public trust has also waned.
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The proportion of Americans expressing confidence in higher education fell from 57% in 2015 to 42% in 2025,
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and in a recent Pew Survey, 7 in 10 Americans said higher education is going in the wrong direction.
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We're at a crossroads, and the path forward depends upon not only our capacity to guard and uphold
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our foundational commitments, but also our willingness to engage thoughtfully with good-faith criticisms.
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Today's program will consider one such critique. In his lecture this afternoon, my esteemed colleague Michael
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Sandel will explore whether meritocracy is corrosive of democracy.
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And in the process, he'll raise difficult questions about inequality. The diploma divide and the role of higher education
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in perpetuating political partisanship. After Michael's remarks, he'll join me
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and two of our other esteemed colleagues, David Deming and Randall Kennedy in conversation.
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Now, I can't do justice in this brief introduction to Michael's or indeed any of today's distinguished speakers'
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scholarly work and impact. So I'll provide only brief highlights of their many accomplishments, and you'll
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find links to their full biographies on Radcliffe's webpage.
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Michael Sandel is the Anne T, and Robert M. Bass, Professor of Government at Harvard, and his scholarship
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has informed dialogue within and beyond the academy on some of the most pressing moral and civic questions
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of our time. His writings on justice, ethics, democracy, meritocracy,
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and markets have been translated into more than 30 languages,
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and his many books include The Tyranny of Merit, Can We Find Common Ground?
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Discontent, A New Edition for Our Perilous Times.
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Michael's legendary course, Justice, was the first Harvard class to be made freely available online,
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and has been viewed by tens of millions of people around the world.
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His numerous awards and honors include the 2025 Berggruen Prize
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for philosophy and culture and Spain's Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences.
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David Deming is Danoff Dean of Harvard College. An economist, his research focuses on higher education,
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economic inequality, technology, and the future of the labor market.
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David holds appointments in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Graduate School of Education,
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and the Kennedy School of Government, where he serves as the Isabel and Scott Black
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Professor of Political Economy. David is the author of numerous publications,
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and his honors include the Sherwin Rosen Prize and the David N. Kershaw Prize.
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Finally, Randall Kennedy is the Michael R. Klein Professor at the Harvard Law School, where he teaches courses
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on contracts, criminal law, and the regulation of race relations.
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Prior to joining Harvard, he served as a law clerk for Judge Skelly Wright of the US Court of Appeals
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and for justice Thurgood Marshall of the US Supreme Court. Randall is the award winning author
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of numerous works for scholarly and popular audiences, and his many books include, Say It Loud!
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On race, History, and Culture, and For Discrimination Race,
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Affirmative Action, and the La. I am so grateful to Michael, David, and Randall
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for joining us today and for sharing your perspectives and expertise.
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We also welcome your questions. Whether you're joining us in person or online, you can submit your questions using the Slido link that's
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provided on the screen behind me and posted in the chat feature of the Zoom webinar.
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Also note this program is being recorded and will be posted on Radcliffe's website
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in about a week. If you'd like to refer to it or refer others to it.
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Now, please join me in warmly welcoming Michael Sandel to the stage.
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[applause]
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- Thank you. Thank you, Dean Brown-Nagin, for that introduction and for convening us.
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And I'm bracing myself for the discussion to follow with the three of you, including David Deming, who
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just, Thanks to all of us, has taken up his role as the new dean of Harvard College.
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I'm deeply grateful for that. And also, my friend Randall Kennedy, We've been friends only
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for about 50 years, and I still can't predict quite
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what he's going to say. So I'm in perpetual suspense, including now.
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My short answer to the question, is meritocracy
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undermining democracy is yes. It's also doing harm to higher education.
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And the reasons are connected, connected to what I describe as the tyranny of merit.
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Now, it may seem paradoxical to describe merit
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as a kind of tyranny. We commonly think of it as a good thing, something we should seek and aspire to.
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If I need surgery, I want a well-qualified surgeon to perform it, that's merit, being well qualified
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for the social role. So how can merit become a kind of tyranny?
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To answer this question, we need-- well, to begin by noticing that our civic life isn't
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going very well. It's beset by polarization and rancor.
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And as Tomiko pointed out, higher education
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is not terribly popular these days. The public confidence in higher education
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has plummeted in recent decades, and it seems to me
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there's a connection between these two alarming features of our social and political life.
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We might begin to consider what connects them and how merit can become a kind of tyranny
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by looking back over the past five decades. During this time, the divide between winners and losers
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has been deepening-- poisoning our politics, setting us apart.
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This has partly to do with the widening inequalities of income
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and wealth during this period, but it has also to do with the changing attitudes toward success that
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have accompanied the widening inequalities. Those who have landed on top during the age of globalization
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have come to believe that their success is their own doing.
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The measure of their merit, and that they therefore deserve the full market bestows upon them, and by implication,
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that those who struggle, those left behind must deserve their fate too.
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Now, this way of thinking about success arises from a seemingly attractive ideal--
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The principle of meritocracy. The principle that says, simply put, that insofar as chances are equal,
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the winners deserve their winnings. Now, of course, chances are not truly equal.
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We all know that. Children born poor tend to stay poor as adults.
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For all we console ourselves about mobility being an answer to inequality, it isn't easy to rise.
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A study was made comparing intergenerational mobility rates
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among well-off countries, and the question
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that the survey asked was, at current rates of intergenerational mobility, how many generations would it
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take for someone born poor to rise not to the top
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but to the median income in their society? There are some countries that have
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pretty good upward mobility. In Denmark, it takes two generations.
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In the US, what would you guess? - Five. - Five.
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- Five, yes, five generations. So from this, we could conclude that the American dream
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is alive and well and living in Copenhagen. [laughing]
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We see it in the universities. We see it in the universities. We don't live up fully to the meritocratic principles
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we profess, despite generous financial aid policies
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at many of the top most selective universities,
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the Ivy League and the like, it remains the fact that there are more students in these places
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from families in the top 1% than there are students from families in the bottom half
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of the country combined. Now, you might conclude from this
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isn't an argument against meritocracy. It's simply an argument that we haven't fully
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realized a meritocracy. We need to double down on the project of creating genuinely
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fair equality of opportunity. So that everyone not only starts from the same starting point
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but also arrives at that starting point with the same basic access and advantages
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to compete effectively. But even a perfect meritocracy would be flawed.
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It would not amount to just society for the following reason.
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Meritocracy has a dark side, even a fully realized one.
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In the dark side is that meritocracy is corrosive of the common good.
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It leads the winners. It leads to hubris among the winners,
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leads them to think, well, to inhale too deeply of their own success, to forget
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the luck and good fortune that helped them on their way, to forget their indebtedness to those who made
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their achievements possible. And it leads to humiliation to those left behind,
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those less fortunate than themselves, which brings us to our current political moment.
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One of the most potent sources of the populist backlash
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against elites is the sense among many working people that credentialed elites look down on them.
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And this, it seems to me, is a legitimate complaint because
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even as globalization brought deepening inequality and outsourced jobs and hollowed out industrial communities
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and stagnant wages, even as all of this was happening, its proponents--
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and here I'm talking about Democrats and Republicans alike-- its proponents offered workers some bracing advice.
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If you want to compete and win in the global economy, they said, go to college.
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What you earn will depend on what you learn. You can make it if you try.
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This rhetoric of rising, as I call it, was so-- became so familiar that it
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became a kind of mantra almost. And it seemed almost uncontroversial.
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Who could object? Even though it had the effect of deflecting responsibility
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for the widening inequality in those hollowed out communities from the policymakers
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who enacted those economic arrangements to the individual working people who suffered allegedly
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because they failed to improve themselves as they had been told to do.
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In short, the elites who intoned the rhetoric of rising
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missed the insult implicit in it. The insult was this.
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If you're struggling in the new economy, and you didn't get a college degree,
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your failure is your fault, not ours.
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Elites so valorized a college degree, both as an avenue for advancement and as the basis
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for social esteem that they have difficulty understanding
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the hubris a meritocracy can generate and the harsh judgment it imposes on those
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who haven't gone to college. Those of us who spend our days in the company
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of the credentialed can easily forget a simple fact. Most of our fellow citizens don't have a four-year college
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degree. About 62% do not. So it was folly to create an economy that
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sets as a necessary condition on dignified work and a decent life, a four-year degree
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that most people don't have.
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So what should we do if meritocratic attitudes
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toward success have deepened the divide between winners and losers? If individual mobility through higher education
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is too feeble a response to the inequalities of income and wealth that now prevail.
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If the rhetoric of rising has become for many, less a promise than a taunt, what should we do?
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What is the alternative? Well, we should begin by acknowledging that mobility
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cannot compensate for inequality. Any serious response to the gap between the rich and the rest
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must reckon directly with inequalities of power and wealth rather than rest content with the project of helping
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people scramble up a ladder, even as the rungs on the ladder grow further and further apart.
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This means shifting the terms of public discourse, focusing less on arming people for meritocratic competition,
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and focusing more on affirming the dignity of work. We should ask, what policies would
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ensure that Americans who do not inhabit the privileged ranks of the professional credential classes?
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To ensure that they can find work that enables them to support a family
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to contribute to their community and, most important of all,
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to win social recognition and esteem for doing so.
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Now, part of the solution that's broadly speaking, a suggestion that we change
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the terms of public discourse. But part of the solution also requires rethinking
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the role of higher education. Colleges and universities Now preside over the system
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that they, we, have become the arbiters of opportunity
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in a market-driven meritocratic society.
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Colleges and universities confer the credentials and define the merits that determine who lands where.
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This is the role into which we have, in a way, been conscripted during the age of meritocratic inequality
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and in some ways making us, those
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of us in higher education, the animating heart of meritocratic aspiration confers on higher education an enormous cultural authority and prestige.
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It's made admission to elite colleges the object of fevered ambition.
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It's enabled many American universities to amass enormous endowments.
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But converting these institutions into the bulwark of a meritocratic order
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may not be good for democracy or for the students who
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compete to attend or even for the colleges
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and universities themselves.
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Here's why. Notwithstanding our role as the arbiter of opportunity
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and the engine of upward mobility, higher education has not provided
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a significant counterweight to the rising inequality of recent times.
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Most students at selective colleges and universities are from affluent families, very few from low-income backgrounds.
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More than 70% of those who attend the 100 or so most competitive colleges in the United States
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come from the top quarter of the income scale. What proportion come from the bottom quarter?
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About 3%.
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If you come from a rich family, the top 1%, your chances of attending an Ivy League school
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are 77 times greater than if you come from a poor family, bottom 20% And most young people from the bottom half
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of the income scale attend a two-year college or none at all.
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Now, an economist colleague, Raj Chetty, who's a close colleague,
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also of Professor Deming, recently did a study of 1,800
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colleges and universities in the United States to see just how potent an engine of upward mobility higher education is.
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These included public and private, selective, and not selective colleges and universities.
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And they asked what percentage of students in these places
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arrive poor from low-income families and rise as adults
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to upper income, top 20%, The answer--
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2%, 2%. So it's a mistake to think, as we often assume,
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that higher education is a powerful engine of upward mobility. Now, this isn't because attending college or university
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doesn't help one get a good job and make a good living. The?
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Reason it's only 2% is that there are so few students
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in these places, from low-income families to begin with. Higher education is like an elevator,
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but it's like an elevator in a building that most people enter on the top floor.
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Now, there's another-- so I've spoken,
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and we're familiar with the way in which
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the extent to which higher education reinforces
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inequalities and patterns of privilege rather than offers a significant challenge to them.
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But there's another reason, another reason to resist our role as sorting machines, which
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is what we've become, sorting machines for a market-driven meritocratic society.
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And that has to do not with the unfairness to those who lose out
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but to the damage this role, this system
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inflicts on the winners on those who get in.
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Prosperous parents have figured out how to give their kids a powerful boost in the competition for admission,
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and that's why there is the persisting inequality
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and pattern of privilege, but the cost of passing of affluent parents passing their privilege
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on to their kids. The cost is in transforming the high school years and sometimes
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even the earlier years into high-stress, anxiety-ridden, sleep-deprived passage,
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a tournament of AP courses, test prep, tutoring, sports training, dance and music lessons,
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internships to do good works in distant places, and a myriad of extracurricular and public service activities,
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often under the advice and tutelage of private admissions consultants whose fees can sometimes cost even more
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than the four years in tuition. Now, this is a problem for two reasons.
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For those who lack the apparatus of advantage, it's unfair. For the young people entangled in the apparatus,
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it's oppressive. The meritocratic struggle gives rise
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to a culture of invasive, achievement-driven pushy parenting that does not serve young people well.
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In fact, the use of the word "parent" as a verb only became common in the 1970s.
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Before that, it was just a noun, when the need, as it is now, the need to prepare children
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for academic success came to be seen as suppressing parental responsibility.
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And this has taken a harsh toll on the emotional well-being and the mental health of young people in this category,
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and we've seen much writing and discussion of this.
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Not only that, it changes young people's attitudes
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toward their own education, even when they arrive.
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The instinct for sorting and competing invades college life, where students
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come to re-enact the ritual of accepting and rejecting.
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Here's an example close to home-- Harvard College has more than 400 extracurricular clubs
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and organizations. Now, some like the orchestra and the varsity football team
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do require certain abilities. And so they legitimately hold tryouts.
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But today, comping. You know what comping is?
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Comping competing for admission to student organizations. Whether or not those organizations
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demand special skills, this is commonplace. It's rife.
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The student like the colleges themselves, and this is what's interesting. The student organizations boast about their low acceptance
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rates. The Harvard College Consulting Group declares itself, quote,
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the "most selective pre-professional student group on Harvard's campus with an acceptance rate below 12%."
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The Crimson Key Society, they organize freshman orientation week, and they run campus tours.
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They also advertise their selectivity. Only 11.5% of applicants are accepted.
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They were asked about this, and the director said, we don't want to put just anyone in front of tourists.
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[laughing] I'm a little dubious about this explanation.
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The need for talent seems less compelling than the impulse
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to re-enact the trauma and the rush of meritocratic competition, the habit of hoop jumping
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is hard to break. But it's damaging to the purpose and mission of a liberal arts
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education. It distorts education, higher education
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into basic training for a competitive meritocracy,
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into an education in packaging oneself and applying for stuff,
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and this reflects a broader shift in the role of colleges and universities.
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Our credentialing function, our sorting function,
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now looms so large that it overwhelms our educational function.
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The sorting and the striving begin, sooner or later, to crowd out teaching and learning.
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And I worry about that, and I see it in my students.
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And so here is a reason beyond the question of fairness,
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beyond the angry populist backlash against elites looking down, a reason to reconsider our
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having been conscripted. by our, I mean higher education into this role.
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Now, I have a number of proposals, and perhaps we can discuss more in the discussion
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about, which is about to follow, about what to do about this. But here's one modest proposal for a start.
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In my book, The Tyranny of Merit. I suggest that highly competitive places
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with lots of applicants change their admission policy.
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Harvard and Stanford, for example, get roughly 50,000 applicants a year for about 2,000 places.
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And the admissions officers tell us that a great many
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of the 50,000 are well qualified to do the work and to do it well and to flourish and to contribute to the education
32:04
of their classmates. So my proposal is for a lottery of the qualified,
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let the admissions office cull out those who are not well qualified.
32:16
And among the rest, whether it be 20,000 or 30,000 or 12,000,
32:25
whatever the number turns out to be, with a strong threshold of qualification, among those,
32:34
do a lottery. And the reason for doing the lottery, well, first of all,
32:44
it's absurd to think that it's possible, really, to assess at age 19 the future promise, except maybe in math,
32:54
the future promise of a young person from among a great many well-qualified ones.
33:02
I mean, Nolan Ryan, take baseball, one of the greatest pictures in the history of baseball,
33:08
first round Hall of Famer, when he was 18 years old. He wasn't signed in the Major League draft until the 12th
33:15
round. That means teams chose 294 other seemingly more promising players
33:21
before. He was chosen Tom Brady, who was the greatest
33:28
quarterback in NFL history. He was the 199th draft pick.
33:36
Now, if so circumscribed a talent as the ability to throw a baseball or a football
33:43
is hard to predict with much certainty at age 19, 18, or 19. It's folly to think that the ability to have
33:50
a broad and significant impact on society or some field of endeavor or of scholarship
33:55
can be predicted well enough to justify fine-grained rankings of promising high school seniors.
34:04
But there's a more compelling reason for the lottery, which is to relieve,
34:10
at least to some extent, the soul killing, résumé stuffing,
34:16
perfection seeking experience that the high school years have
34:22
become. And it might also deflate, to some extent, meritocratic hubris
34:29
by making clear what is true in any case, those who land on top
34:36
don't make it on their own but owe their good fortune to family
34:42
circumstance and native gifts and all sorts of contingencies
34:47
morally akin to the luck of the draw. Now, I made this proposal.
34:52
The book came out in 2020, and I didn't have many takers.
34:59
And I was discouraged. But then a few years later, I read a blog
35:10
posting by a distinguished economist whom I very much admired, who made a similar proposal.
35:20
I found that encouraging. And then, two years after, I read that blog post in 2023.
35:30
That economist was named Dean of Harvard College, David Deming.
35:40
[applause]| So this gives me hope, which we can all explore
35:49
in the discussion to follow. But the lottery would not be enough.
35:58
We need to do a number of other broader things
36:03
in our social life. We need to dismantle the steep hierarchy of esteem
36:13
that accords greater honor and prestige to students enrolled in name brand colleges and universities
36:20
than to those in community colleges or in technical and vocational training programs. We need to increase our quite paltry public investment
36:30
in those technical and vocational training programs. Learning to become a plumber or an electrician
36:38
or a dental hygienist should be respected as a valuable contribution to the common good, not regarded
36:46
hearted as a consolation prize for those who lack the SAT scores or financial means
36:53
to make it to the Ivy League. Finally, higher education derives much of its prestige
37:03
from its avowedly higher purpose, not only to equip students for the world of work
37:11
but also to prepare them to be morally reflective human beings and effective democratic citizens.
37:19
Now, I don't think we're doing very well at that job right now.
37:26
But even if we could do better, why should we assume that colleges and universities must have
37:37
a monopoly on this mission? A more capacious notion of educating citizens for democracy
37:45
would resist what we've done, which is to sequester civic education in universities
37:51
and then hold a tournament to see who can win admission to the citadel, where civic education and moral education
38:02
are made possible. There is no reason why four-year colleges should
38:10
be the sole setting for courses in moral reasoning and civic argument. Civic education out of doors a broadly diffused civic education
38:21
has a long tradition. Here's one example-- in the late 19th century,
38:28
the Knights of Labor, one of America's first major labor unions, demanded, along with better pay and better working
38:37
hours, they demanded reading rooms in factories so that
38:42
workers could inform themselves about public affairs and be effective citizens.
38:48
This demand grew out of a civic tradition that viewed civic learning is embedded, at least in part,
38:56
in the world of work. So this is connected this way of thinking about education,
39:05
is connected to the dignity of work. It depends on the idea that civic education can flourish--
39:17
should flourish not only within elite colleges and universities
39:23
but also in community colleges, job training sites and union halls.
39:29
There's no reason to suppose that aspiring nurses and plumbers are less suited to the art of democratic government
39:37
than aspiring management consultants.
39:42
Now, some of you may think that to speak of the tyranny of merit
39:49
in this way is to give up on the project of equality
39:55
of opportunity, not at all. Equality of opportunity is an important principle.
40:03
No one should be held back by poverty or prejudice. But it's important to remember that equality of opportunity
40:11
is a remedial principle. It's not an adequate ideal for a good society.
40:21
What more do we need? A broader democratic equality of condition
40:29
by which I don't mean a state of affairs, where everyone has to have the same income and wealth, but a broad equality
40:39
of condition that enables those who don't achieve great wealth or prestigious positions to live lives of decency and dignity,
40:48
developing and exercising their abilities in work that wins social esteem, sharing in a widely
40:55
diffused culture of learning, and deliberating with their fellow citizens about public affairs.
41:04
The American dream was not always only or mainly
41:11
about individual mobility through higher education.
41:16
The term was coined in 1931 by a man called James Truslow Adams,
41:23
and he had in mind something like what I've called the broad democratic equality of condition.
41:31
He gave an example. The US Library of Congress, here's
41:36
how he put it is one looks down on the general reading room.
41:41
One sees the seats filled, filled with silent readers, old and young, rich and poor,
41:50
Black and white, the executive and the laborer, the general and the private, the noted scholar, and the schoolboy,
41:59
all reading at their own library provided by their own democracy.
42:05
Adams considered this scene to be the perfect working out in a concrete example of the American dream.
42:13
And if this example could be carried out throughout our national life, he said,
42:18
the American dream would become an abiding reality.
42:23
We do not have much democratic equality of condition
42:30
these days. One of the most corrosive effects of the inequality of the last five decades
42:37
is that those who were affluent and those of modest means increasingly live separate lives.
42:43
We live and work and shop and play in separate places. We send our kids to different schools.
42:51
This isn't good for democracy because democracy doesn't require perfect equality.
42:58
But it does require that people from different backgrounds, different walks of life, encounter one another,
43:05
bump up against one another in the course of their everyday lives because this is how we learn to negotiate and to abide our differences,
43:16
and this is how we come to care for the common good.
43:21
So the alternative to the tyranny of merit is not to go back to aristocracy or nepotism or favoritism.
43:32
The alternative to meritocracy, and
43:38
to the meritocratic inequality with which we live today, is to build and to nurture the public spaces and common places
43:52
that bring people together from different backgrounds and walks of life.
43:57
Only in this way, can we invigorate our democracy,
44:03
begin to ease the rancor and polarization that sets us apart
44:08
and find our way, perhaps to a less rancorous, more generous
44:14
public life. Thank you very much. [applause]
44:31
- So I'm going to sit in the first chair. OK. All right.
44:43
Well, that was fantastic. Thank you so much for exploring your many ideas with us,
44:51
and we're going to try to unpack those in a set of questions
44:56
that I have, and also, there are many questions coming from the audience. Thank you so much for your contributions.
45:03
We'll try to get to as many of those as we can, but I'd like to begin the conversation by drawing out
45:11
the different perspectives that David and Randy bring to the ideas that you have shared
45:21
with us, Michael, here today. Why don't you first we'll start with David
45:27
and then turn to Randy? Offers some initial reactions to Michael's thoughts,
45:34
and then we'll have a more detailed conversation. - Happy to do that.
45:40
Thanks, everybody, for being here. I'm looking forward to the discussion. It is true I did write this blog post that Michael mentions.
45:47
I guess I do the opposite of disavowed. I avow it, so I do.
45:52
I did write that. I think it would be healthy for the culture around elite college
45:58
admissions to have some kind of transparent admissions process, a lottery of the qualified, something like what Michael said.
46:04
So I wrote that before I became dean of Harvard College. But I mean, I stand by the principle of it,
46:09
and I think that it's especially important the cultural impacts that he brings up, which is that the truth is that once you get
46:17
down to a list of people who are all incredibly qualified to attend a place like this, you are throwing darts
46:24
at a board at some level, whether you realize it or not. And so rather than having this corrosive idea that somebody
46:29
peered deeply into the soul of a 17-year-old and figured out whether they're worthy, that you would transparently know that
46:34
some people got lucky and some didn't, and that's the reality of our lives anyway, and I support that. I think that's the right sentiment.
46:41
The main thing I want to say about that is that I think it's a little bit of-- the way I would say this is it's a little bit of a bait
46:46
and switch about the argument of whether meritocracy undermines democracy because the other piece of that post, which you
46:53
did not, quote, was about the quantitative impacts of what something like this would do for inequality
46:58
in any real sense. So just to put some numbers to it, the Ivy Plus universities, meaning the Ivy League plus Stanford, Duke, the University of Chicago,
47:06
and MIT, so 12 of the most selective universities in the country, collectively enroll 0.9% of all students.
47:13
OK. So if all of those colleges tripled the share of low-income students that attended or quadrupled it,
47:18
or did a lottery of the qualified? The truth is that it wouldn't actually make a dent in any of the rising inequality
47:23
that Professor Sandel mentions. So it may have cultural significance. But the real answer to me for rising inequality in America
47:32
and how it's corroded our democracy if it has, doesn't have to do with what happens on elite college campuses.
47:38
It's kind of fun to talk about the culture of comping, and I deplored as much as the next person. I've spent a lot of time in Annenberg talking to first year
47:43
students about this. It's one of these things, like meritocracy that Professor Sandel talks about that everybody
47:48
kind of deplores but doesn't really know how to fix because it's a difficult collective action problem, I think. I'd like for us to be healthier about that.
47:55
But I don't actually think that's the fundamental source of inequality in this country. And I think it's a bit of a misattribution,
48:01
the way I would put it as somebody who attended a state school. Harvard is the first private school I ever attended.
48:07
I went to the Ohio State University. Go, Bucks. And the distinguishing feature of being at a place
48:12
like that for me was that it is a great university for people who know how to who are equipped either by virtue of their family
48:18
background or by virtue of their personal qualities or whatever it is to take advantage of the opportunities in front of them, but it is also a place where you can get lost
48:26
and nobody knows it. And so I had a lot of friends, either in high school or in college, who were very talented people,
48:32
but who were just not ready at the ripe old age of 18 to take advantage of the opportunities in front of them who missed class, who got distracted
48:39
by parties or whatever else it was, and nobody knew that they fell through the cracks. And what a place like this buys you is a safety net.
48:47
It doesn't. That's not the only thing it does, but it's a floor underneath you. And to me, the fundamental source of inequality is that so many young people, who have talent but are not
48:54
ready to take full advantage of those talents, are not able to achieve their potential because they do not have the resources devoted to them
49:00
that a place like Harvard or other universities provide. And the answer to me, paradoxically, is that actually you might want to invest
49:07
more in higher education, not to think about higher education as the engine. I don't actually think it's correct to say
49:12
that higher education undermines meritocracy. I would say it's the opposite that the lack of access to high quality higher education perpetuates some of the issues
49:21
that Professor Sandel discusses and certainly perpetuates inequality. So my solution would look much less
49:27
talking in negatively about what happens on elite college
49:32
campuses and much more about predistribution. People sometimes call it, which is
49:38
to make sure that as many people as possible, at the age of 18, are qualified to attend good universities, and on the supply side, making sure
49:45
that public universities are adequately funded and that they are in a place where they can take on more
49:50
students because actually the college wage premium, meaning the difference between what you earn if you have a college degree and what you don't is determined.
49:56
It's not some law of nature. It's actually a function of how scarce the degree is. And so if 70% of the American public
50:02
had a college degree rather than 40%, the college wage premium would be lower, and the difference in wages between people
50:08
who had a degree and those who don't would be smaller, because the degree isn't as scarce. And so actually, what you want is more college, not less.
50:14
And what you need is to provide it to more people. So my narrative about what has happened in America over the past 40 to 50 years
50:21
is that we went from a society where only about 10% to 20% of people really needed to have a college degree.
50:27
That is, they needed to have the kind of exposure to an education to prepare you for information-intensive knowledge work, the kinds of things learning,
50:33
critical thinking and conversations across difference and all the things we do here. That was not necessary in very many jobs in 1940,
50:41
but it's necessary in many jobs today. And so we've gone from a world where probably only one in 10 or one in eight people
50:47
need to go to college, to a world where almost everyone does. And yet, we don't spend enough money as a society
50:52
on providing the resources to make that possible. And so those resources are distributed highly unevenly. Yes, that's true.
50:58
They're distributed at elite colleges like this. But actually, it's these colleges that do more for talented low income students
51:03
than many others. So many of you may not know this, but actually the class of 2029, we just announced it,
51:09
yesterday, I think half of the class of 2029 is paying no tuition. So half of the class that means, and anybody who is admitted
51:19
to Harvard who makes less than their family, earns less than $200,000 a year, attends without paying tuition.
51:24
And that's because Harvard, unlike most universities in the country, is fortunate enough to be able to provide financial aid.
51:29
We provide financial aid to something like 70% of the class. And so most schools don't have the resources to do that,
51:35
and most states have increased tuition at public universities much faster than the cost of Inflation,
51:40
not because they're trying to create inequality, but rather because they don't have the resources to make tuition low enough to allow people
51:45
to attend or to give scholarships to people based on need. And financial aid hasn't kept pace. So to me, the story is much more about
51:52
what's happening in broader society, and it's also-- I'll just conclude by saying it's also much more about the post-tax-and-transfer system.
51:59
So the post-tax system so it's interesting to me that we think about American universities
52:04
as a kind of paragon of meritocracy, but because if you know anything about how European universities, for example, select students that it's
52:11
a relatively ruthless competition where people who have the highest test scores get sorted deterministically
52:16
to the most selective universities that have the most resources, and that sorting often happens at a relatively early age.
52:22
But we don't think about that as creating tons of inequality. Why? Because countries like Denmark have top marginal tax rates
52:28
that are 75% or above. They have collective wage bargaining to make sure that wages are much more compressed relative
52:33
to the US. And so they have a whole system of social spending and a safety net that compresses inequality
52:38
relative to the distribution of educational resources. And that is the reason why those countries don't
52:43
look like this one, not so much because of access differences and access to elite education. So my diagnosis of the problem.
52:50
I agree it's a problem. I would actually say in some ways that democracy is undermining democracy because we've had things like the tax revolt across states,
52:57
where states, state governments basically said, OK, we have to balance our budgets every year. We're not going to fully fund state universities. We're not going to spend the resources required
53:04
to invest in people broadly, in education broadly. And so I think the problems Professor Sandel identifies
53:10
are real problems, but I think the diagnosis is a bit misattributed. Thank you. - Thank you.
53:15
And Randy. [applause]
53:21
- Well, thank you very much. I agree with much of what Professor Sandel says.
53:28
I especially agree with his plea for more provision for the uncolleged working class.
53:36
And when I say provision, I mean, material provision, as well as the provision of status goods--
53:44
respect. I also agree with him about meritocratic hubris,
53:50
the arrogance of the winners, the belief that they did it all on their own and that they therefore
53:57
deserve their good fortune. So I agree with all of that.
54:03
But-- and let me try to get at the but by bringing in two features of your talk and of your wonderful book.
54:18
You are a sportsman. You love sports.
54:25
The conclusion of your book begins with an anecdote involving Hank Aaron, I believe.
54:32
And in your talk mentioned Tom Brady, but then you went to really your first love, Nolan Ryan, baseball.
54:41
You mentioned that, and you also mentioned the idea of a tournament.
54:46
And I want to get into that a little bit through my favorite sport.
54:53
My favorite sport is tennis, and I'm going to use a person, Coco Gauff.
55:02
Now, I want Coco Gauff to know that luck
55:09
had a lot to do with her superiority as a tennis professional.
55:15
She is blessed with a wonderful physique.
55:20
She had parents who were able to support her and teach her. She has had a community that has been supportive.
55:29
All of those were really a matter of luck. She didn't create that. She was lucky enough to benefit from it.
55:37
And here's where-- so we're in accord there.
55:45
Here's my question to you, and here's what the tournament.
55:51
I don't want her to be big-headed. I don't want the stars to be big-headed and suffer
55:58
from meritocratic hubris. I do want to keep the tournament, however.
56:06
And when you think about a tournament, the United States open two weeks.
56:13
Every day, there's somebody who wins and there's somebody who loses. And at the end of that two weeks,
56:21
there's going to be one person who holds up the trophy,
56:26
and that person is going to feel a tremendous sense of exaltation.
56:32
They are going to feel they won the tournament.
56:37
There are going to be two weeks of people who lose.
56:43
Now, we could do it differently. We could do it differently.
56:50
You could have a couple of rounds, first round, second round, third round, and then we stopped the tournament
56:59
at the round of 16. Maybe you stopped the tournament at the quarterfinals. Maybe you stopped the tournament at the finals.
57:06
You could do that. Now, I don't want that.
57:14
I want it played out. I want to see the champion.
57:20
Now, Professor Sandel derides, quote,
57:27
"the meritocratic tournament that college admissions has become."
57:34
And he would replace, as you heard, the tournament with a lottery of the qualified.
57:43
Note that he is not a thoroughgoing egalitarian. He's not a thoroughgoing egalitarian.
57:51
He excuse what he calls in his book, quote, "a sterile,
57:57
oppressive equality of results." He excuse that he doesn't want a total lottery.
58:03
He wants a lottery of the well qualified. Now, of course, in a way, he wants a kinder, gentler regime.
58:15
But that kinder, gentler regime will still produce losers. They will still produce people who don't get in.
58:23
And there are these other people who got in. I'm worried about meritocratic hubris,
58:30
and I applaud you for criticizing it. But I'm also worried about something else
58:37
that you don't talk about, as far as I'm concerned, don't talk about enough.
58:43
And that is the aggressive anti-meritocratic envy
58:49
and resentment and proud ignorance
58:57
of that is so currently threatening to our enterprise.
59:04
The subtext of some of your remarks was that we have brought it on ourselves
59:11
and deserve to be brought low. I don't think so. I think at this moment, we face the perennial adversaries
59:21
of excellence, and we need to be willing to protect
59:26
legitimate meritocracy. Thank you. - Wonderful, thank you. [applause]
59:38
- Those were terrific comments. Michael, can you take a few minutes to respond?
59:43
- I'll try. [laughing]
59:48
On the culture of comping--
59:54
Dean Deming doesn't like it as I don't-- why not establish a presumption, need not be a hard and fast once
1:00:06
and for all rule, but a presumption that once you get into Harvard College, you can participate in any student, Club or organization
1:00:15
without having to compete, except in those handful of cases
1:00:21
where they can make a legitimate claim for it? - Do you want me to answer that? OK, so these are largely student organizations
1:00:28
that operate on their own. So this is student-on-student activities. So what you're asking me to do is
1:00:34
intervene in the lives of students and tell them on which activities they're permitted to compete and on which they're not. No, that's-- and I just want to make sure.
1:00:41
Yeah, I don't think I should be doing that. - OK. - And I don't intend to do it, and the reason is because these students are adults.
1:00:47
And while I may deplore the culture of copying, I would rather try to persuade them that it's not in their interests rather than be the policeman
1:00:57
and tell them that they can't do it. And I think that's actually in some ways consistent with a healthier culture that you are trying
1:01:04
to describe, which is that we want to teach our students that they need to win a war of ideas and persuasion and not tell them what they must and must not
1:01:11
do as part of an educational mission. So that would be my answer. - But would you go so far as to try to talk them out of it?
1:01:17
- I already have, yes. - OK, all right. - But that's very different. That's very different than using my powers as dean to try to tell them what they can and can't do.
1:01:23
- OK, all right, well, I wish I wish you well in that effort to persuasion, but I do-- and just-- well, I'm on David's points.
1:01:33
Of course, it's true that the lottery for admissions
1:01:38
or tamping down the culture of comping, even if successful
1:01:46
in making for a more wholesome high school and college
1:01:51
experience would not solve the broader social and political the problems.
1:01:57
But the reason I mentioned the culture of comping is not only as a local idiosyncrasy.
1:02:05
But it's characteristic of a broader
1:02:14
way of thinking about access where we define quality
1:02:22
or excellence through a cult of selectivity, and this occurred to me when I was listening
1:02:30
to the radio the other night, driving home and heard an ad for a company called California Psychics.
1:02:39
They provide psychics for those who need one or want one,
1:02:45
and they were explaining how they provide the best psychics.
1:02:53
And they said, and I saw it. Then, I checked their website and the headline on the website of California Psychics
1:03:00
is we reject 98% of the psychics who apply. [laughing]
1:03:07
Only the top 20% make the cut. And that's why you can trust us to bring the joy of certainty
1:03:13
to you. I never thought that psychics trafficked in certainty, but that. So I thought that was curious.
1:03:20
And then I thought back to another example that struck me when I was teaching a course on bioethics and eugenics and so
1:03:28
on, commercial sperm banks. The most successful commercial sperm bank
1:03:33
locates its offices, its collection centers, if you can call them that, in Palo Alto,
1:03:41
near Stanford and in Cambridge, halfway between Harvard and MIT. And they play up the prestigious source of the donor sperm
1:03:50
that they sell. And in their online ad, they say we actively recruit donors
1:03:56
from top US universities, and one of the requirements is currently attending or have graduated from college.
1:04:04
So if you're not, if you're in that 62%, don't try to sell your sperm to this sperm bank.
1:04:12
But they add that they have such high standards that only 1%
1:04:23
of the applicants are accepted into their sperm donor program, which enables them and listened to this rhetoric
1:04:31
to maintain our standards of excellence so that we can offer our members the best of the best of all times meritocratic sperm.
1:04:40
Now, these may seem eccentric extensions,
1:04:46
but it's connected, what it suggests is that the cult of selectivity as a way of defining excellence
1:04:55
or merit or quality is not restricted to the copying
1:05:00
culture, that it's a broader cultural phenomenon that's worth noticing and maybe attending to.
1:05:08
Then, as to Randy's point, yeah, a tournament,
1:05:15
I don't think that they should stop the tennis match or the Major League Baseball playoffs
1:05:24
after the first round or the second. I agree with you about that. And you're that if you play it till the end,
1:05:33
there will be winners, and there will be losers. But the difference with the winners and losers in a sports
1:05:42
tournament is that in one tournament,
1:05:47
Alcaraz will prevail. And in another, Sinner will prevail in the world of tennis.
1:05:53
And part of what draws us to the next tournament is to see who will wind up on top and who not.
1:06:03
But when we're talking about winners and losers that have resulted from the past five decades of inequality, abetted
1:06:16
by and rationalize the inequality, I mean, by meritocratic ways of justifying
1:06:26
who lands on top, that has a way of more
1:06:31
or less freezing in place, who's a winner and who's a loser. So if we want the tournament analogy,
1:06:38
we would have to imagine a system of valuation and of judgment and patterns of advancement
1:06:46
that were heavily skewed in favor of once a winner,
1:06:53
always a winner. That would wreck sports not only a society and a democracy.
1:07:01
- There's a debate about that. And I actually want to turn to Randy, again, to talk about.
1:07:06
He's a scholar of racial inequality, to bring-- a scholar of racial inequality, to bring race into this conversation.
1:07:14
I wonder how you think questions about racial inequality
1:07:20
and the push to level the playing field in education
1:07:25
intersect with the kinds of arguments that Michael is making about meritocratic,
1:07:31
sorting, generating resentments, and being corrosive to democracy.
1:07:36
- Yeah. Well, I mean, you're invoking the affirmative action
1:07:44
debate, and one of the most--
1:07:51
a feature in American history and American life
1:07:56
has to do with the way in which merit stinks
1:08:08
so much in the nostrils of people
1:08:13
from groups that have been disadvantaged. So from my comments, you can see I'm deeply drawn to meritocracy.
1:08:27
I mean, I'm just-- - Real meritocracy, fair. - Just merit.
1:08:33
I'm a competitive sort, was a competitive tennis this player,
1:08:40
and I am drawn to it. But I also know that until very recently, it
1:08:59
did not matter how brilliant a scholar was, if that scholar was
1:09:06
Black need not apply, including to Harvard University. - Absolutely.
1:09:12
- Harvard University had its first Black tenured member
1:09:17
of the faculty in 1950 who never taught here. It was Ralph Bunche.
1:09:23
It was the year he won the Nobel Prize. But he didn't teach here.
1:09:31
And one could go on and on and on. And this has really made the idea of meritocracy stink.
1:09:39
What's so what's so striking, actually, is the extent to which people who have been marginalized,
1:09:46
I would say racial minorities. I'd also say women. The extent to which people who've
1:09:53
been marginalized so terribly and until so recently,
1:09:59
have actually still have such faith in meritocracy. So this issue of meritocracy, and I'll
1:10:07
just say one more last thing.
1:10:12
Right now, we have a federal government
1:10:18
that says that it is all in favor of meritocracy.
1:10:25
And one of the reasons why it's attacking Harvard University is because in its view, it's not sufficiently committed
1:10:33
to meritocracy.
1:10:38
Take a look at the cabinet of the United States of America. [applause]
1:10:44
- Thank you. Thank you so much for-- Yeah. - To that, Professor Kennedy, you may not know this,
1:10:52
but Harvard College students won eight Rhodes scholarships last year, which is twice as many as the next highest college, and we
1:10:58
had 13 medalists, Olympic medalists, at the Paris games. And our students were in the top three
1:11:03
of the Putnam International Math competitions 10 years in a row. So not only are our students excellent and meritocratic,
1:11:09
they're more excellent and meritocratic than ever. That's a public service announcement. [applause]
1:11:15
- Very good. We have so many questions coming in. And so I want to make sure that we get to a few audience
1:11:22
questions, including questions from students. The first goes to my introductory comments
1:11:29
about declining public trust in higher education.
1:11:35
There's a question about whether universities should lean into alternative media outlets and ecosystems,
1:11:44
like podcasts and social media, in order to push back against some of the unfair criticisms of higher
1:11:53
education, or even the fair criticisms of higher education. And the students point is that the mainstream media
1:12:00
seems to thrive on undermining higher education.
1:12:07
And the student is asking if you, Michael, you, Randy
1:12:12
and David, need to be a part of that alternative media environment where so much conversation is happening
1:12:20
that is detrimental to us. - I'm waiting for my invitation from Joe Rogan.
1:12:25
Any time, I'm ready to go. [laughing] - I think that the student makes an excellent point.
1:12:34
My view, people are talking about the declining public trust.
1:12:40
It's completely understandable, since there has been a concerted campaign to vilify the universities
1:12:50
and to undercut the public's trust so that to the extent that there is less public trust,
1:12:58
it's not surprising that has been attempted
1:13:03
and very effectively so. And to be to counteract that. Yes I think that people in higher education,
1:13:11
particularly the people who are the leaders of higher education,
1:13:19
need to get out more and spread the gospel.
1:13:26
- I see it a little bit differently. I of course, I think that leaders
1:13:31
of colleges and universities should be effective public spokespeople for their mission
1:13:42
and the achievements of their colleges and universities.
1:13:47
But I do think that-- well, higher education now, including Harvard,
1:13:55
is under attack from this administration. And that gives rise to a challenge
1:14:04
for the leaders of these institutions, which
1:14:10
is, on the one hand, to stand, stand up to the attack, to resist it, and to insist on all the resources-- with all
1:14:20
the resources at our command to protect the autonomy and the independence
1:14:26
that higher education needs to flourish, on the one hand,
1:14:32
and at the same time, not to neglect or ignore that some of the criticisms.
1:14:45
And here, I'm not referring to the attacks by the Trump administration, but some of the American public's
1:14:51
loss of confidence in higher education is not just the result of Donald Trump and MAGA politics.
1:15:02
Some of it, we have brought upon ourselves. And here, I may differ from what Randy was just saying.
1:15:11
Others can speak for themselves. But I think that in order to preserve and to be
1:15:21
worthy of public trust, higher education needs to show that we are not just sorting machines that
1:15:33
equip young people who are lucky enough or privileged enough or gifted enough to win admission to get
1:15:42
good jobs and good careers. That's not enough for us to vindicate our public purpose.
1:15:49
We have to show that in addition to launching our students on successful careers,
1:15:57
we are institutions who serve the public good, and I think we've strayed from that mission.
1:16:04
And to that extent, I think we have made ourselves vulnerable to the kinds of indefensible attacks
1:16:14
launched by the Trump administration. We have opened ourselves to those attacks because public confidence has eroded in part because we
1:16:22
are no longer seen to some extent rightly as promoting the public good.
1:16:28
And I don't just mean by doing biomedical research. That's important, an important contribution to the public good.
1:16:36
But I mean, in equipping our students, but beyond our students, young people to engage
1:16:44
in effective democratic deliberation argument, reasoning together as democratic citizens.
1:16:52
I think we can and should do more to show that our mission is
1:16:58
not to promote private privilege but to contribute
1:17:04
to the public good. - Thank you for that. I want to have you respond, Michael, in particular,
1:17:09
to a student's question. The student comes from a low-income country
1:17:15
and is interested to hear how your view of meritocracy translates to contexts in which there
1:17:25
is a lot of corruption and poverty widespread, both in meritocratic systems, have
1:17:32
been seen as critical to social transformation and development. What do you have to say to that?
1:17:38
- Yeah, and I encounter this question often when I travel to countries, especially developed
1:17:44
but not only developing countries, where meritocracy seems a breath of fresh air
1:17:52
compared to systems of nepotism and cronyism and favoritism and patronage and corruption.
1:18:01
Isn't meritocracy a liberating alternative to those ways of allocating jobs and opportunities and income
1:18:10
and wealth? Yes, it does represent an improvement
1:18:16
over those forms of corruption, but up to a point.
1:18:24
And it's like the argument that some make who say, well, if meritocracy, meritocracy
1:18:34
entrenches privilege, isn't it still better than an aristocracy, a hereditary aristocracy?
1:18:40
It's analogous to that, that rejoinder to which I would say,
1:18:45
yes. But the real alternative to meritocracy,
1:18:51
the best alternative, is obviously not a caste system or aristocratic hierarchy,
1:18:59
hereditary, hierarchy. The real alternative to meritocracy is democracy.
1:19:08
That's what I would say to the young people from countries struggling with cronyism and corruption and to those who say,
1:19:16
is aristocracy the only alternative? No, I certainly hope not. - Although democracy can produce its own set of problems,
1:19:26
as David suggested. - Yeah, yeah. - I want to-- we're running out of time.
1:19:31
And I want to give each of you the opportunity to answer this question, and it's
1:19:39
a question about what our objectives should be, the ideal role of higher education.
1:19:45
What should we be trying to achieve, and for whom should college be for?
1:19:56
Who should? Who should we invite onto our campus? And I ask this question because it's
1:20:02
hard to effectively talk about education reform without first clarifying what our objectives are.
1:20:10
So let me start with David, then go to Randy, and we'll end with you, Michael.
1:20:16
- Well, OK, I'll answer that question. I kind of wanted to respond to what Professor Sandel said
1:20:22
earlier, but I'll answer this question instead. I think actually, the course of this conversation has convinced me to believe a little bit more in meritocracy
1:20:29
than it did before. And I think I feel about it the way Winston Churchill felt
1:20:36
about democracy, which it is the worst form of assignment of spoils in society, except for all the others,
1:20:42
and I'm not convinced that there's a better way to allocate scarce resources for society, as
1:20:47
long as the meritocracy is fair and open to all. Pursuant to some of Professor Kennedy's comments, of course, we want it to truly be a meritocracy and not
1:20:54
a meritocracy in disguise. And the way I would put it is that meritocracy
1:21:00
does create inequality, and inequality is a big problem, and it's an especially big problem in education, but it is also a problem of plenty.
1:21:07
And I taught a class for many years before I became dean about economic inequality. And I always started off teaching the class
1:21:13
from an historical perspective, and that's because 99.9% of human civilization
1:21:20
is a struggle for survival. And the thing that really allowed us to escape the struggle for survival and subsistence
1:21:26
farming, and the Malthusian trap, where every time population increased, the pie was fixed. And so therefore, there were fewer resources to go around
1:21:33
and people starved. And then when there were fewer people around, they could exist again. The only thing that allows us to escape that trap is progress
1:21:40
is new technologies, new inventions that allow us to do more with less
1:21:46
to redeploy resources in creative ways to, for example, go from farming using draft animals to farming using steam
1:21:55
power and electricity, and enabling us to be much more capital-intensive and machine-intensive with farming,
1:22:01
which means now only 2% of the US economy has to work in farming instead of essentially 80%, which frees people up to do all sorts of things.
1:22:07
And you can think about that as a system of meritocracy, because the spoils in those cases to new inventions,
1:22:14
go to the people who create them, and that is a capitalist, meritocratic, inequality generating process.
1:22:19
And it generates all sorts of bad things, which Professor Sandel has pointed out and, which I largely agree with.
1:22:25
Those are problems that need to be solved. But that doesn't mean the solution is to get rid of meritocracy altogether,
1:22:30
but rather, to make sure it's fairer and to make sure that it's not a caste system, that it actually is accessible to more people.
1:22:35
I would love to have-- my alternative is some in a loose way-- some system
1:22:42
that is socialism for children and capitalism for adults. So I would like to see that resources are provided fairly
1:22:50
to children in a way that allows them to achieve their potential, and we all recognize that some people have the capacity
1:22:55
to do great things, win tennis tournaments, invent vaccines that cure terrible disease,
1:23:01
start companies that create jobs, and we want to allow that meritocracy to flourish. We just want to make sure that anybody
1:23:07
who has that kind of talent can achieve their potential. That's my vision for a meritocracy that actually works for people.
1:23:13
And I think higher education has a lot to do with that. If you look at a place that has this characteristic of talented people, being around each other,
1:23:21
admitted to an institution without regard to need, but diverse in all kinds of beautiful ways,
1:23:28
working together to learn how to operate in society, that looks an awful lot like Harvard University.
1:23:33
And so even though I'm the dean, and so you might expect me to do so, I would defend this institution as actually essential to democracy despite all its warts.
1:23:40
- Thank you. Randy. - One thing, first, we have lots of institutions of higher
1:23:49
education in the United States, and they serve different missions, and we're here at a big research--
1:23:58
private research university. But we ought not forget that there
1:24:04
are other institutions that serve a wide variety of other needs and other very essential needs.
1:24:12
Now, for us, if the question is, what do I think that this university should be doing?
1:24:19
I think that this university, the three things that are absolutely essential, the protection of the knowledge that
1:24:29
has been so hard won over the millennia, the expansion
1:24:34
of knowledge, hence research, and then third, the dissemination of knowledge.
1:24:40
Those are the three things that at the end of the day, Harvard University should be dedicated to.
1:24:48
The third thing I'd like to say is I'd like to underline again the importance of Professor Sandel's
1:24:58
plea to us to be more attentive to the unacknowledged working
1:25:06
class, and I agree with him that our inattentiveness
1:25:17
has come back to harm us.
1:25:23
I'm still not quite satisfied, however, with your response
1:25:32
to my challenge about the problem of envy, the problem of resentment.
1:25:40
I think that we definitely need to be attentive to the arrogance of the winners,
1:25:48
but we also have to be attentive to the envy and resentment of people who perceive themselves
1:25:59
to be on the losing end of the street-- of the stick, even in a society, even
1:26:06
in a society that has a high floor and that
1:26:11
attempts to provide people with a decent mode of living
1:26:17
and respect. Even under those circumstances, there are going to be some people who are going
1:26:22
to be resentful of those who they see as above them, and we need to figure out some way to cool that out
1:26:30
because that is a very corrosive sentiment. - Thank you.
1:26:36
And Michael, in two minutes, can you respond? - What is higher education for?
1:26:44
To promote the public good, but to do so through teaching and learning.
1:26:52
Teaching and learning what? Well, equipping students with skills,
1:27:00
the opportunity to develop their talents and capacities. But not only that.
1:27:05
That's the technocratic part of teaching and learning.
1:27:10
But beyond developing their talents and capacities,
1:27:18
providing a soulcraft, a moral and civic education
1:27:25
that will inspire students to deploy those cultivated talents
1:27:33
and skills for the common good. That's what connects what we do, the way we
1:27:39
teach our students and the way we contribute to the public good.
1:27:44
And I worry that the technocratic side
1:27:50
of what we provide our students has come to swamp in emphasis and proportion.
1:27:59
The soul craft, the moral and civic education, the cultivation of character, the cultivation
1:28:06
of the capacity for judgment, for deliberation as a citizen--
1:28:11
as citizens of our students. So that, I think, is how higher education
1:28:21
has a distinctive mission in promoting the public good through the way we enroll and teach the students we admit.
1:28:36
And if I could just say a little bit in reply to Randy's last point, I don't think
1:28:46
that the grievances abroad in the land that have fueled the populist backlash against elites
1:28:53
and against universities, I don't think they are mainly about envy.
1:29:00
That's not how I understand them. They are certainly entangled with some very ugly sentiments,
1:29:06
including racism and misogyny and xenophobia. But I don't think they are only or essentially
1:29:12
about those ugly sentiments. I think that what has made this backlash potent
1:29:22
is that it has tapped into legitimate grievances, having to do not only with economic inequality
1:29:32
but also with the inequalities of social recognition, of honor,
1:29:38
of dignity, of respect and esteem that have accompanied the economic inequalities,
1:29:44
and those inequalities of social recognition and esteem
1:29:50
arise from what I take to be the tyranny of merit.
1:29:56
Another way of putting it is, neoliberal economic policies-- call them what you will--
1:30:03
created the gap between rich and poor. Meritocratic ways of rationalizing those inequalities
1:30:10
created the divide between winners and losers, and it's that divide we need to attend to above all.
1:30:18
- Very good. Well, thank you so much to Michael, Randy, and David.
1:30:34
Wonderfully thought provoking conversation. And thank you all for being here and for your questions.
1:30:41
I hope to see you again soon, and I hope you have a very good night. Thank you.