In 1984, when I began my doctoral studies at Harvard, a professor confided about an unusual problem: This classics department had more money than it knew what to do with, far and away the largest endowment in the university’s Arts and Sciences division. Classics (Latin, Greek, and — before the Divinity School hived off — Classical Hebrew, the three languages that formed the time-honored routes to scripture scholarship) had more or less been the original Harvard curriculum, whose funding was now a nearly 350-year-old investment.
Clearly, the professor wanted me — a middle-class, midwestern, very young woman — to contemplate what …
Something to Consider
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