On Killing the Ivy League: An IvyGate Recap and Exclusive Interview
As we've mentioned a couple of times, this past weekend's New Yorker Festival played host to a debate between staff writers Malcolm Gladwell and Adam Gopnik, entitled "Resolved: The Ivy League Should Be Abolished." Gladwell, arguing the pro to Gopnik's con, apparently had more input in the naming process.
The two -- Gladwell, the frisky Skeletor, and Gopnik, the gentle francophile -- dedicated an hour or so Saturday evening to this delightful repartee. They neared blows a few times, most notably when Gladwell suggested that the Ivy League wouldn't accept Gopnik for being "short with big ears." Hot-shit Columbia professor/raving British lunatic Simon Schama chaired the debate, however, and a few unhinged slams of his gavel usually kept the debaters at bay.
A brief recap of each participant's main points:
- Malcolm Gladwell: The author of Blink and The Tipping Point employed a strategy Gopnik best described as "grabbing numbers out of his ass." Gladwell started by criticizing the criteria Harvard, Yale and Princeton (HYP) -- importantly, he only discussed these three as they are "indicative" of the Ivy League he wants abolished -- use in admissions, focusing particularly on the "personal qualities" category that admissions officers developed in the '20s to keep out an excess of Jews. And, he asked, since the Ivy League "helps define what merit is," are we comfortable with their assumptions, or "are we better if we start over?" He then challenged the notion of the Ivy League as an engine of social mobility by throwing out statistics on HYP that suggest they do relatively little in the way of recruiting lower-class students. In his closing argument, he argued that class mobility in the United States is shamefully rigid these days, and the Ivy League's elitism embolizes how the country is "in the midst of building itself an aristocracy." Thus, the kicker: "We would be a better nation without Harvard, Princeton or Yale." Well, when you put it that way...
- Adam Gopnik: Stately, plump svelte Adam Gopnik leapt into the battlefield by noting how European countries do everything better than us except higher education. He then questioned the effectiveness of killing HYP as a panacea for America's woes with this well rehearsed lulu: "Wanting to abolish the Ivy League to solve the problem of American inequality is like wanting to abolish the NBA to solve the problem of American obesity." He repeatedly tried to score New York City approval points by comparing Gladwell's bent on university-destruction to George W. Bush's foreign policy, with HYP being the new "Axis of Evil" and a post-HYP world being, presumably, the academe's Sadr City. He praises Ivy League schools for pooling intellectually curious minds together and noted that Gladwell is "committed to destroying excellence wherever it's concentrated." The Gop also gave props to the excellent tradition of private American research facilities. Basically, the guy said that reforming class-restrictive aspects of the Ivy League is a better plan than doing away with it altogether.
At the end of the debate, Schama took a break from shouting inaudible British babble and held a quick audience poll to determine the winner. Gopnik won, according to Schama's rough hand count. It looked pretty even to me; then again, I was sitting in an upper right balcony corner after showing up 15 minutes late, like any responsible "reporter."
BUT NOW THE FUN PART! IvyGate was granted an exclusive post-game interview with Gladwell and Gopnik in the venue's green room, the transcript of which comes after the jump. Read up -- there's a good chance we came to fisticuffs!
IvyGate: Are either of you familiar with our blog, IvyGate?
Malcolm Gladwell & Adam Gopnik: Yes, yes. [Yay! - Ed.]
AG: You have to remember, though, that neither of us are Ivy Leaguers.
IG: You [Gladwell] mentioned during the debate that Harvard, Yale and Princeton are indicative of the Ivy League. How much do those schools depend on the "Ivy League" title to actually be Harvard, Yale or Princeton? Say you got rid of the Ivy League, or the Ivy League never existed, would that make any difference to Harvard, Princeton or Yale?
AG: Well, we were having fun with it, but the point Malcolm was making, and it's a good one -- I see it all too clearly in my children's school -- is that those three institutions have not simply excellence but an aura that defines the obnoxious side of the Ivy League.
IG: So schools like Penn, Dartmouth, et cetera, is a lot of their excellence or reputation defined by being in the Ivy League?
MG: I do think so. I think that it gets back to having a brand, it's really branding. It's a way of setting them apart from other schools vying for that same elite posiiton. So I think they all, particularly the so-called smaller, "less elite" Ivies get branding with it.
IG: One thing that I didn't hear a lot of during the debate is the actual quality of education at the Ivies now. Do you think that, on the whole, at Harvard, Yale or Princeton you are getting as good of an education as their names would suggest?
AG: Malcolm's making the argument that you can get as good of an education at 25 other places, and I think that's probably true. My own kids, I constantly try to defetishize it for them. There are thousands of wonderful schools in the United States, is the reality. Education depends more on your collision with a particular teacher than it does on some curriculum you follow. You know, I ended up (insanely) in Art History because I had a great Art History professor.... But the other point I was trying to make, which I did mean seriously, is that universities are in some ways only secondarily where undergraduates get educated. There are places where research gets done, where new ideas are made, and in that way I think that Harvard, Yale, Princeton actually have a pretty terrific record.
IG: You [Gladwell] were arguing the point that if you do get rid of those three [HYP], there would be more egalitarianism among higher institutions. Do you think there would be any fallout though?
AG: I think the reality is that we were having fun tonight, and I think Malcolm knew it's a debating maneuver; focusing on those three schools would waken the latent animus in all the people in the audience who had never been there, and who resented it very much. And if you broaden it out to include relatively pathetic places, like Penn, where my parents are alumni--
IG: Yeah, that's where I'm an alum too. It's one of the lesser Ivies.
AG: Well, pathetic is used with irony.... Then it would be harder to really stir up the audience into a state of Jacobin rage against the elite.
IG: That gets to the deeper question of how serious this debate was to begin with. How ardent are you [Gladwell] about abolishing the Ivy League?
AG: To be honest, tomorrow we could switch places and make each other's case; we were doing this as much for the joy of the intellectual exercise as because we feel passionately about either one of these sides. But, having said that, I do believe what I said tonight in that with all of their faults, America's elite research universities have played a terrific role in broadening opportunity in the country. And I think they are one of the things that we can be relatively proud of.
MG: We were playing with this idea, but I wasn't being... there was more than a little authenticity in my arguments. I don't think the world is a worse place if those schools [HYP] cease to exist, I could even make a case that we'd be better off. I'd much prefer a kind of Canadian notion of higher education where there is much less stratification among all of the universties.
AG: But you know.... We both went to universities, Malcolm in the '80s, and I went in the '70s to McGill, Malcolm to University of Toronto, and those were kind of ideal situations. They were very good schools, but with none of the [stuff] that's associated with kind of an "elite education" here. It was no big deal getting in, it was no big deal that you had gone there. It was just where you went if you had kind of an academic bent in Canada, and that was kind of ideal. I am told that that is changing, that McGill and U of T are becoming much more Ivy-ized, and that you [Gladwell] and I benefitted from something that no longer exists.
MG: That may be true. And if it is true, that saddens me a little bit, but maybe it's an inevitable function of the world we live in. It is getting just increasingly stratified on every level. Colleges are getting caught up in it, but that's a sad thing.
AG: I passionately agree with Malcolm about that -- the problem of inequality in America is horrific. To the degree that all of our institutions reflect that, that reflects something ugly about us.
Special thanks to Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Gopnik and Conde Nast publicity, as well as StarTraks for these photos.
21 Comments | 
| 
Print This Post
Read more: adam gopnik, exclusives!, Harvard, interview, malcolm gladwell, new yorker festival, Penn, Princeton, Yale
Email – 
Search
About
Follow us on Twitter
Report a bug
Archives
RSS Feed
October 10th, 2007 at 9:37 am
“embolize”?
October 10th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Psh, how does Princeton do more research than Penn?
October 10th, 2007 at 9:57 am
Why is it that every time you asked Gladwell a question, Gopnik answered it? :-p
October 10th, 2007 at 11:47 am
he’s the chattier in that relationship, i guess
October 10th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
Psh, how does Princeton do more research than Penn?
October 10th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
Why the constant mentioning of HYP? There’s more to the Ivy League than just three schools, ya know.
October 10th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Gopnik called us pathetic. So sad…and kind of true.
October 10th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
Didn’t you read the article? He said it was a rhetoric tactic. Everyone hates HYP (except HYP) alumni, whereas nobody hates Penn, except Ohio State when they’re confusing us with Penn State. Other than that, nobody hates Penn because nobody knows Penn.
Fuck my cock
October 10th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
I’m gonna drown this douchebaggotty fag in beer. “Less elte”! Psh, he should be shot in the face.
October 10th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
“Wanting to abolish the Ivy League to solve the problem of American inequality is like wanting to abolish the NBA to solve the problem of American obesity.”
I mean, I see the point (NBA not related to obesity, Ivy League not related to inequality) but could the Ivies not be doing more? And do they have a moral imperative to do so? (Like reduce the ridiculously high rate of legacy admissions. . .even by 5%?) That’s the question.
October 10th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
I really don’t know how to judge legacy admissions. If you’re a legacy (I wasn’t): you probably grew up in a home that highly valued education from early on; you probably had plenty of advantages in your schooling (e.g. parents wouldn’t live somewhere with crappy schools); and, at least one of your parents was probably fairly intelligent. (There is a strong statistical relation between a child’s intelligence and parental intelligence.)
The figure I’d like to see but won’t: How many legacy admits would have been denied were they non-legacies. Without that, I can’t totally condemn legacy admission. And I sure won’t condemn research universities: they are powerful forces for wealth creation and the betterment of life.
October 10th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
I work in an office that deals with admissions and legacies, legacy status really just means your app gets a closer look. How much closer depends on how much you’ve given–and you have to give a lot for it to make any difference at all.
Legacy status has more to do with how much your family has given to an institution. If you’re a legacy whose parents have given a couple of thousand, all you will have is a check mark under legacy. If you have donated over 5 million and are directly related to legacy, you will get 3 paragraphs telling the judge about your family’s legacy. That’s it. I’ve seen A students who are direct descendants of people with multiple buildings named after them get rejected.
Legacy status isn’t a big boost at an Ivy, only a couple of hundred donors are able to make a significant donation, and they don’t really need to worry about where they go to school.
October 11th, 2007 at 12:46 am
Lynah, definitely appreciate your input. But I found this under the Legacy Preferences entry for Wiki (I know, for shame, but I’m lazy):
In the 1998 book The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions, authors William Bowen, former Princeton University president, and Derek Bok, former Harvard University president, found “the overall admission rate for legacies was almost twice that for all other candidates.” Granted, ten years ago, but I doubt there’s been much of the way in internal directives to overhaul the system.
To your point, lots of people apply to Ivies, lots get rejected, even legacies. But the fact that the admit rate of legacies is twice as high as the general population suggests they are twice as likely to be qualified for admission. Do you think this is so? It’s a judgment call, but I’d want to know, if for no other reasons than educational ones, why these children are more qualified and whether the reasons are replicable to lower-income students. Think, for Harvard, instead of a 9% admissions rate, an 18% admissions rate. Odds your average, bright-but-not-brilliant, well-educated child can surmount.
October 11th, 2007 at 12:51 am
Lynah, definitely appreciate your input. But I found this under the Legacy Preferences entry for Wiki (I know, for shame, but I’m lazy): In the 1998 book The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions, authors William Bowen, former Princeton University president, and Derek Bok, former Harvard University president, found “the overall admission rate for legacies was almost twice that for all other candidates.” Granted, ten years ago, but I doubt there’s been much of the way in internal directives to overhaul the system. I’ve heard similar statistics. To your point, lots of people apply to Ivies, lots get rejected, even legacies. But the fact that the admit rate of legacies is twice as high as the general population suggests they are twice as likely to be qualified for admission. Do you think this is so? It’s a judgment call, but I’d want to know, if for no other reasons than educational ones, why these children are more qualified and whether the reasons are replicable to lower-income students. Think, for Harvard, instead of a 9% admissions rate, an 18% admissions rate. Odds your average, bright-but-not-brilliant, well-educated child can surmount.
October 11th, 2007 at 12:54 am
Lynah, definitely appreciate your input. But I found this under the Legacy Preferences entry for Wiki (I know, for shame, but I’m lazy): In the 1998 book The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions, authors William Bowen, former Princeton University president, and Derek Bok, former Harvard University president, found “the overall admission rate for legacies was almost twice that for all other candidates.” Granted, ten years ago, but I doubt there’s been much of the way in internal directives to overhaul the system.
To your point, lots of people apply to Ivies, lots get rejected, even legacies. But the fact that the admit rate of legacies is twice as high as the general population suggests they are twice as likely to be qualified for admission. Do you think this is so? It’s a judgment call, but I’d want to know, if for no other reasons than educational ones, why these children are more qualified and whether the reasons are replicable to lower-income students. Think, for Harvard, instead of a 9% admissions rate, an 18% admissions rate. Odds your average, bright-but-not-brilliant, well-educated child can surmount.
October 11th, 2007 at 1:01 am
Hey Lynah, thanks for the scoop. But I found this under the Legacy Preferences entry for Wiki (I know, for shame, but I’m lazy): In the 1998 book The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions, authors William Bowen, former Princeton University president, and Derek Bok, former Harvard University president, found “the overall admission rate for legacies was almost twice that for all other candidates.” Granted, ten years ago, but I doubt there’s been much of the way in internal directives to overhaul the system as it works in the U’s favor. To your point, lots of people apply to Ivies, lots get rejected, even legacies. But the fact that the admit rate of legacies is twice as high as the general population suggests they are twice as likely to be qualified for admission. Do you think this is so? It’s a judgment call (although I’d want to know what qualities these students have that are replicable for non-legacy, lower wealth admits). Think, for Harvard, instead of a 9% admissions rate, an 18% admissions rate. Odds your average, bright-but-not-brilliant, well-educated child can surmount.
October 11th, 2007 at 4:39 am
Legacy admits may yield a greater matriculation rate than non-legacy admits (though I have nothing but anecdotal evidence to back that up). I would’ve been fourth generation at Yale had I gone, and it was tremendously difficult to overcome the family pressure, despite the fact that I preferred Cornell. I almost certainly would’ve ended up at Yale if I could’ve done ROTC there, and I suspect other many legacy admits are under similar pressure without a specific program on which to build an excuse like mine.
October 11th, 2007 at 4:42 am
Legacy admits may yield a greater matriculation rate than non-legacy admits (though I have nothing but anecdotal evidence to back that up). I would’ve been fourth generation at Yale had I gone, and it was tremendously difficult to overcome the family pressure, despite the fact that I preferred Cornell. I almost certainly would’ve ended up at Yale if I could’ve done ROTC there, and I suspect many other legacy admits are under similar pressure without a specific program on which to build an excuse like mine.
(My apologies if this is a double post. I encountered an error.)
October 11th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
In general, even at the highest levels of family donation, an Ivy-plus (ivy plus MIT + Stanford) wont accept an unqualified student, ever. I think if you controlled for background and grades, legacy value would be diminished considerably.
Another consideration, 1998 was back before a lot of the endowment growth so maybe there was a bit more of an incentive to recruit money-laden ivy-leaguers.
October 12th, 2007 at 7:05 am
“We both went to universities, Malcolm in the ’80s, and I went in the ’70s to McGill, Malcolm to University of Toronto, and those were kind of ideal situations. They were very good schools, but with none of the [stuff] that’s associated with kind of an ‘elite education’ here. It was no big deal getting in, it was no big deal that you had gone there. It was just where you went if you had kind of an academic bent in Canada…”
I’m skeptical. Read “academic bent” for elitism. As a friend once said about a similar matter “these people are always full of shit about their home countries.”
October 13th, 2007 at 11:46 am
It strikes me that both sides missed the point entirely here. The Ivy League, in the most official sense, is an athletic league, no different than the Big Ten, ACC, or Pac-10. Abolishing it would do nothing to shake the reputations of the member schools that have already been cemented over the years. The country would still hold up HYP (and to a lesser extent, Dartmouth, Columbia, and…uh, the other ones) as the pinnacle of American education. That’s nothing that can be changed by taking Yale out of the Ivy League and making them compete in the Big East.
To the complaints about disproportionate legacy admissions: it happens at all private schools (even in high schools), not just at Ivy League schools. Private schools have a very strong financial incentive to keep alumni happy (and giving) by admitting their children. Again, this isn’t something that can be resolved by abolishing the Ivy League.