Silicon Valley Has a Harvard Problem

Elite culture in the U.S. and the West punishes public conviction, leaving leaders cautious and hollow, and the essay argues that Silicon Valley shares this problem. It cites the congressional testimony in late 2023 by the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT, two of whom resigned, as an example of clinical answers without feeling. It contrasts this with Yale president Kingman Brewster Jr., who in 1970 said he was skeptical of black revolutionaries' ability to get a fair trial in the U.S.