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Citing the need to be inclusive, Harvard University has decided to scrub the Puritans from its alma mater song, Fair Harvard. The Puritans, who fled Britain over religious persecution, were among the first Europeans to arrive in what is now Massachusetts.
As The College Fix reports, Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging is taking suggestions for someone else to replace the section of the song that the Puritans once occupied.
The song’s final verse is currently sung:
Let not moss-covered Error moor thee at its side,
As the world on Truth’s current glides by;
Be the herald of Light, and the bearer of Love,
Till the stock of the Puritans die.
Or till excised by the task force, whose members see this reference to the Puritans as someone that “suggests that the commitment to truth, and to being the bearer of its light, is the special province of those of Puritan stock. This is false.”
So the time has come to find another “herald of Light” who represent everyone, “regardless of background, identity, religious affiliation, or viewpoint.”
Professor Carol Oja, who is actively seeking a replacement group by assessing all suggestions, explained that her objective is to compose a stanza that utilizes “inclusive language, delivered with literary flair.”
Lest anyone think that the task force is up to some Stalinist airbrushing of history, they say on their website that their goal is not to completely obliterate the memory of the Puritans.
Everyone is not content with Puritan departure from the storied university’s song. Harvard government professor Harvey Mansfield informed The College Fix that he thinks the change is “a gross instance of political correctness” that seeks “to deny Harvard’s origin.”
Mansfield called Harvard “America’s trendiest university,” and not because it’s leading the way to anything positive. Rather, the professor flatly accused the academic institution of rolling over “to groups who want to use the university to gain their own political ends and who do not understand or care for the search for truth regardless of party.”
According to the Harvard university newspaper, there wasn’t even any student agitation to change the lyrics of the song.
The task force has other musical revisionism on its agenda. After changing the lyrics, they want to arrange Fair Harvard in a variety of variations, such as “choral, spoken word, electronic, hip-hop, etc.,” with the objective of “re-inventing the past to meet and speak to the present moment.”
The deadline for new lyrics is September.