Todayís Harvard is a much more peaceful place. The burning questions of the ë60s have been settled, and students can concern themselves, by and large, with more mundane matters. The Rally for Justice, with its incessant drum-pounding, meaningless slogans (ìNo Justice, No Peaceî?), and post-event games of Twister, more closely resembled a final club ìDecades Danceî than the 1969 University Hall takeover. In truth, we give about as much thought to fomenting campus revolution as the radicals of our parents' generation might have given to declaring celibacy and joining the priesthood. And this, undoubtedly, is a good thing.

Nonetheless, the current generation of Harvard students has not entirely broken with the past. The ë60s radicals tried to tear down the moral values ó discipline, self-restraint, respect for elders, etc. ó which had traditionally held society together. They succeeded, instead practicing what Allan Bloom has termed a self-righteous ìhistrionic moralityî of drugs, feel-good protests, and anguished cries for personal liberation. But now these are gone as well. The legacy of 1960s lives on, not in the restless passion for social upheaval, but rather in the emptiness that remains once traditions have been destroyed and histrionics abandoned for the peace and calm of middle age. 

Our generationís rejection of clear moral standards can no doubt be traced, at least in part, to the culture of the modern university. In his 1952 classic God and Man at Yale, William F. Buckley Jr. proposed that universities teach moral truths to their students; at the height of the Cold War, he advocated that they take sides in the world struggle between individualism and collectivism. ìIf and when the menace of Communism is gone,î Buckley warned, ìother vital battles, at present subordinated, will emerge to the foreground. And the winner must have help from the classroom.î

Well, the battle for truth is on, and alas, the classrooms have been but little help. The humanities and social sciences are infused with postmodernists, ready to deconstruct anyone and anything. Whether itís the queer theorists reading books such as English 193ís Macho Sluts or anthropology classes studying the tortured ó and entirely fabricated ó accounts of Rigoberta Menchu, the idea of objective truth to pursued by reason has lost favor in academic circles. Moral judgments, it seems, are only acceptable when they condemn acts of Western European oppression, racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.

The natural sciences, however, are a different story. Virtually no Harvard student has a problem accepting the notion of scientific truth. After all, unlike moral truths, scientific truths are based entirely on empirical evidence. Yet the sciences, perhaps unintentionally, also provide students with the illusion that all truths are empirical, that outside the material realm, truths ó moral ones, in particular ó do not exist.

Consider Harvardís most popular science class, Human Behavioral Biology. Nicknamed ìSexî by students, the course seeks to provide a scientific understanding of human behavior through an approach mixing biological evolution, anthropology, neuroscience, psychology, and linguistics. The first lecture of the class began with a slide of President  Bill Clinton, provoking titters from the crowd. Clintonís adultery was offered as an example of behavior, soon to be explained as a product of various developmental, functional, mechanistic, and evolutionary causes. 

The course was judicious in discounting both strict biological and environmental determinism. But the notion of free will ó with its attendant moral responsibilities ó was given short shrift. Morality itself was presented as a mere product of evolution, not unlike manís upright posture or enhanced capacity for speech. And what of God? As one ìSexî professor put it half-jokingly, ìThe fossil record isnít much help on that one.î

The professors describe their class as ìa value-free assessment of human behavior.î And so it is ó students ultimately learn that conduct such as Clintonís stems from a combination of biological and environmental influences. The ìvalue-freeî approach is also applied to the anthropological sections of the course, where no real condemnation was made of the violence and rape prevalent in the hunter-gatherer and middle-range societies studied. To the contrary, these cultures were presented not as primitive or backwards, but merely different. Weaned on a steady ìvalue-freeî diet of science and cultural relativism, Harvard students naturally reject the idea of universal truths.

Itís no wonder, then, Harvard students have turned their contempt and scorn to the few fans of truth who remain ó religious believers. Consider recent events in campus politics. In last Decemberís Undergraduate Council presidential election, candidate Christopher King, a fundamentalist Christian, was falsely alleged by an anonymous opponent to favor converting non-believers to Christianity. Even after reporting the inaccuracy of the charge, the Crimson ran an editorial opposing him, noting that although King wants ìto unify the campus, [his] ties to religious groups have raised concerns among many students.î That heran an entirely secular campaign was beside the point: in the Crimsonís eyes, Kingís faith was apparently enough to do him in. 

While religion is denigrated, vulgarity and tastelessness have become par for the course. For evidence one needs only to look at campus publications. The campus humor magazine Demon regularly publishes explicit cartoons; one last year even depicted a young man copulating with his grandmother. In one recent issue of the Advocate were printed grotesque pictures of a woman lying on a bed, evidently having just been raped. Another humor magazineís tastelessness needs to be explored no further than its name, the Tampoon. Itís almost as if right and wrong have been replaced by a menu of moral values from which we can choose at will, not unlike the way courses are selected during the ìshopping periodî at the beginning of each semester. And just as no one likes Harvardís required Core Curriculum, students reject the existence of independent standards to which they must conform.

As a symbol of the 1960s, the Univer- sity Hall takeover looms large in Harvard history. It represents a time and place far different from our own, and yet intimately tied to the present. One wonders whether, to paraphrase a civil rights hymn of that earlier time, our present generation shall overcome the unfortunate moral legacy we have inherited.