
SALIENT: Do you envision the creation of a joint US-Chinese Task Force?

RUGER: I don’t think a formal joint task force is necessary: China shares the burden of upholding international security. For instance, the Chinese have a great interest in making sure that shipping is not being molested as it goes through the Straits of Malacca. I don't think the United States should try to bear every burden in the world. Neoconservatives argue that unless a hegemon provides public goods for a system, the system will collapse. I'm not sure that statement is true. Scholars like Bob Gilpin argue that hegemonies eventually decline because bearing the cost of the public goods weighs them down. Other people take advantage of this weakness, and so the hegemon falls as part of a cycle. I don't want America to fall. We want to be the strongest and most successful country in the world. To achieve this, we need to make sure we don't overextend ourselves and allow others, particularly wealthy European nations, to freeride on the United States.

SALIENT: Are there any nations with which the United States should seek a closer partnership, either through a formalized alliance, like NATO, or a more informal relationship?

RUGER: I generally think that we should try to pivot out of some of our formal security commitments rather than pivoting in. That said, it is ridiculous to accuse me and other restrainers of isolationism. None of the so-called “isolationists” wants to stick his head in the sand or retreat from the world.

For instance, I believe that robust international trade is good for the United States. We should try to find ways to conclude bilateral and multilateral agreements to free some of our trade, particularly with countries with whom we have other good reasons to partner. For example, we should have a bilateral free trade agreement with the UK and Switzerland and should also continue to advance positive relationships with India.

Ultimately, I don’t think any restrainers oppose forming trading relationships or working on a case-by-case basis to deal with transnational challenges. For that reason, the charge of isolationism is merely pejorative slander. This term doesn't help us to understand the core of the debate; instead, it just narrows conversation. Restrainers should not be so easily dismissed. Even if we're wrong, it’s important that the foreign policy establishment wrestle with our perspective. Restrainers foreign force policymakers to ask questions about costs, about tradeoffs, about identifying and prioritizing real threats. We are a valuable part of the conversation.

Moreover, I'm not someone who believes we should follow restraint, period, no matter what the strategic environment. For instance, you could argue that restraint wasn't the most appropriate grand strategy from the late 1940s until about 1960, or even to 1989. On the other hand, restraint was the best approach from Washington's administration until World War Two, and restraint is the best strategy today. As a realist, I try to look at the world as it is, to understand the geostrategic facts, in order to assess whether or not restraint is the best approach. At this moment in time, particularly in light of the nuclear revolution, restraint is the best strategy for the American people to secure our vital national interests.

SALIENT: How would you suggest the United States decrease her entanglements without ensuring the strengthening or elevation to prominence of forces hostile to the United States? For instance, the Mujahideen, whom we funded back during the Cold War, became hostile to us right after we stopped helping them.

RUGER: Real challenges arise from rapid changes in the international system. We need to be careful of hasty withdrawal; at the same time, because of political dynamics, we aren’t always able to slowly retrench. Ultimately, prudence is going to have to dictate how quickly you would retrench or reload.

While I can’t give you an all-encompassing law, I do think we ought to be promoting greater burden sharing with our NATO allies in Europe with the goal that, eventually, Europe would take primary enforcement for its security and not rely on the United States to the extent it does today. As long as we're paying the bills, and as long as we can't credibly threaten to leave, it's no wonder that Europe passes the buck and free rides. Shifting this burden may require a more dramatic change in our strategic posture.

There's no reason why Europe shouldn't be able to successfully deter important security its most challenges. Europe’s southern borders are not a huge security threat except for the 11 challenge of terrorism. Then, the main threat to Europe is Russia. The combined GDP of the European Union countries alone, and their population, swamps that of Russia. Europe should be able to defend itself. This change would be very beneficial for the U.S. First, in spending far less on international defense, we could begin to address our own debt and deficit problems. Second, we could focus on issues more closely connected to our vital interests, like the rise of China.

It is ridiculous to accuse me and other restrainers of isolationism. None of the so called “isolationists” wants to stick his head in the sand or retreat from the world.

SALIENT: Do you think that American foreign policy would be strengthened if, instead of always insisting on boots-on-the-ground interventions, we worked to stop threats before they became big issues?

RUGER: Yes. I think, for instance, that President Trump was absolutely correct in agreeing to the Doha Accord and in withdrawing from Afghanistan. I think, too, that President Biden should get a little credit for actually fulfilling the accord, although implementation was his terrible. Really, though, this was Trump's initiative and should be counted as one of his successes. Leaving Afghanistan didn't mean surrendering our ability to protect ourselves against terrorist organizations. We can use special forces and over-the-horizon capabilities to meet our needs there, and we don't have to have permanent basing and large good order and 12 footprints in order to do that. The United States has largely been able to accomplish its counterterrorism goals in Afghanistan, after the withdrawal. And how many Americans have died in Afghanistan since we left? Zero. This outcome reveals the virtues of restraint in overseas interventions.

Of course, this doesn't mean that special operations are a silver bullet that will solve every problem. Sometimes, the use of covert forces or special operations forces can create problems. For example, I don't think that the United States should have forces in Syria. In general, I think we should be much more cautious about the use of American military power in the Middle East and Africa. We need to do a real cost-benefit analysis to determine whether we should have even small-footprint forces there, especially because we often get entwined in local conflicts that have little to do with the United States.

SALIENT: Can you speak to the prevalence of woke, leftist ideology in the US military today? How would we go about addressing this phenomenon?

RUGER: I'm not an expert on manpower issues, but I'm certainly concerned when I see the recruitment numbers that you're seeing, and in particular when I see which groups aren't signing up to the same extent as in the past. We don’t want to lose those potential recruiting bases unnecessary because of changes in the military, changes that actually undermine discipline. Allowing identity, wokeness, and politics to enter the military divides people who should be working together. They're Americans first, and everything else second. Promoting political agendas distracts from the mission first mentality and harms morale. Wokeness in the military, then, is a real concern.

At the same time, the whole country is embroiled in the wokeness debate, so it's not surprising that these ideas have entered into the military. We should respect the moral dignity of all Americans, no matter their views; as long as they're able to meet the requirements of their job, they should be allowed into the military. Respecting others’ views, however, does not mean we should allow wokeness to penetrate the military in a way that's deleterious to our mission as Americans in uniform.

When you engage in foreign policy activities, you have to think about what would actually be supported at home.

SALIENT: With respect to America's current political will, do you think it's possible to successfully defeat an insurgency?

RUGER: There are some examples of successful counterinsurgency, but it's very hard. The British networks were fairly successful in Malaya. The Sri Lankan government, after not doing very well initially, is pretty successful against the Tamils. While success is possible, we should consider the old saying from the Battle of Algiers: “If you will the ends, you will the means.” In some cases, I don't think that the means would be consistent with our political culture writ large. For example, we care a lot about the protection of innocent noncombatants, of certain rights that journalists might have in a war zone. Many of the measures that Sri Lanka took to be successful, for instance, are not easily replicable by the US. When you engage in foreign policy activities, you have to think about what would actually be supported at home.

For example, would the American public really support what it would take to fight China over Taiwan? It's a question we have to ask ourselves, because the decline of support for Vietnam certainly detracted from our ability to accomplish our mission there. Similarly, in the case of insurgency, are we willing to use force, or will we adhere to our liberal ideals?

We also must consider whether we are willing to suffer manpower costs. One reason why we left Afghanistan was that we were losing men and material but didn't see a clear path forward to success. Finally, we did a cost benefit analysis and made the correct decision: withdrawal. We need to do the same sort of analysis in the case of insurgents.

We must also remember that insurgents are playing on their home turf and often understand the culture and language better. As the old saying goes, “We have watches, and they have the time.” Insurgents are going to be in a place for a long time and have a much greater stake in it.

Nationalism is also an important factor. It's one thing for the Sri Lankan government to engage in counterinsurgency in Sri Lanka; it's quite a different matter when the United States engages in counterinsurgency abroad, even when we have a local partner. In Afghanistan, we had a local partner that did not command much respect and didn't have a lot of authority around the country as a whole, as we saw.

SALIENT: What distinction do you draw between the US occupation of Afghanistan and the post-WWII occupation of Germany and Japan? Was our strategy in Germany and Japan, where we spent a much longer time and, in part because of that, saw some great benefits, not feasible in Afghanistan?

RUGER: These situations are radically different. Germany and Japan were obviously illiberal, but they were still modern countries. Both were industrially culturally and advanced and had traditional ties, especially in the case of Germany, with the West. As a result, there was a much stronger foundation on which to build. Afghanistan, however, faces more and deeper challenges. Afghanistan is not a heavily industrialized country. In fact, it's one of the poorest countries on the planet. Afghanistan is not a Western country; liberalism and democracy are very foreign to it. It has a very difficult neighborhood. It has ethnic cleavages that create significant challenges, and its political culture is deeply corrupt. I think failure, in many ways, is overdetermined.

We should also remember that the specter of the Soviet Union heightened the United States’ interest in spending resources to reconstitute Japan and Germany. This was not in play in Afghanistan, right?

SALIENT: Is it fair to say that you don't see a real threat to the United States from the rise of BRICS?

RUGER: What do we mean when we say threat? Am I ready to build a bunker in the backyard? Is it going to be Red Dawn? No, I don't think that that's all we have to worry about. This is not to say that there aren't threats posed by the states. Again, though, I think you have to put these challenges in context and think about tradeoffs and prioritization. As Calvin Coolidge once said, “If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you.” You need to be prepared to deal with the one problem that does come to you. We need to avoid being overly aggressive so that we can harbor our strength and deal with the most salient threats. And so, for instance, I think that the Ukraine War has only proven how weak Russia is. Russia is hardly a 600-pound gorilla that will soon threaten to be in the Dover Straits. For one thing—even if it could defeat Ukraine, even if it could be a threat to Poland or to Germany—the French would nuke the shit out of it.

This interview originally appeared in Home Front, the February 2024 print issue of the Salient.

In November of next year, if all goes according to plan, an over fifty-year hiatus in spaceflight will end: Americans will once more leave this pale blue dot behind and enter lunar orbit. The mission, the second of NASA’s Artemis program, is the next step in creating a manned satellite for the Moon: the Lunar Gateway, which will provide a platform for scientific research and assist in future spaceflight operations beyond Earth’s orbit.

This mission offers a rare point of optimism for those of us concerned with the project of American civic renewal. Consider the circumstances under which America finally won the Space Race. The turmoil of the sixties, which gave occasion to the Sexual Revolution and the so-called Great Society, did serious damage to American civilization. Popular resistance to the Vietnam War prevented America from recognizing a new generation of heroes. Instead, Armstrong’s “one giant leap for mankind” was the last gasp of the culture we were so intent on leaving behind. Yet almost all appreciated it; almost all saw the glory in the accomplishment. The television, which has done its part to melt the American mind, is at least partially redeemed by the fact that it allowed proof that modernity had not made obsolete the very idea of greatness.

A century defined by the pyrrhic triumph of reason, which enabled man to engage in mass cruelties of which the ancient tyrants would have been jealous, was punctuated by this singular achievement. The Apollo rockets were functional and, visually at least, simple. Their beauty came not from immediate aesthetic considerations but because they symbolized the heights of the human spirit. Thumos, which had suffered a grievous blow in the trenches of the First World War, had not been dispatched by the Second. Men that crossed the seas to wage war returned home and set their gaze upon the stars; the technology that had rained hellfire upon Antwerp and London became the vessel for humanity’s grand entrance into the cosmos.

The Apollo missions were followed by the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. These remain engineering marvels, but they should only have been outposts on the way to something greater. Instead, having finally begun to explore our cosmic backyard, we now content ourselves with resting on the back porch.

But American identity has always been shaped by the desire to bring civilization to far-off lands. We were settled by men and women who sought to wrest from the wilderness a city on a hill. Among the colonial grievances against the Crown was the Proclamation of 1763 that attempted to prevent Americans from settling beyond the Appalachian Mountains. Much of the 19th century was defined by efforts to bring the West into the Republic under the framework of Manifest Destiny. Is it any surprise that, other than the mid-century annexation of a few uninhabited Pacific islands, American expansion outside the continent began in earnest almost as soon as the Census Bureau declared the frontier closed?

> Let us return to the frontier. If the Earth has been charted and its territory claimed, we must explore the stars.

Indeed, the history of the West has been marked by one nation or empire after another that took as its sacred task the establishment of order across the known world.1 Some survived longer than others, some were better attuned to the natural law than others, but from Macedon and Rome on down, all embraced this duty. America’s sphere of responsibility has grown from our continent to the hemisphere and then the globe. Global leadership now tires us, but there is no respite to be gained in surrendering it, only the pall that has always come over nations that lay down this mantle. America will grow, or it will die.

Now we have constructed (and justly so) an international system that denies us the ability simply to absorb new territory in the way we once did. Where we intervene, we do so to establish among the people we conquer republics of their own. Yet if we now deny the legitimacy of conquest, the American spirit has not yet quieted its restlessness. There are few that find themselves satisfied by the prospect of remaining home and tending to one’s roots. We run around the country seeking opportunity and self-discovery, but joining a pre-existing community is not quite the same as taming the wild or imposing order on manmade chaos. There have been worse reactions to this change than mere capitalist fervor, of course. Some now march forth into digital dreamlands, finally finding places that are infinitely malleable—but one recalls Achilles’ warning that it would be better to be an earthly slave than a king among shadows. We were shaped not merely by the availability of free land and the opportunity to build our futures upon it but also the struggles inherent in doing so. Others see a source of civic invigoration in wars with Russia, China, or one another, but all of these threaten to end the project of American civilization entirely.

Rather than trusting Oculus and Meta—or muddy battlefields and watery graves—to channel the pent-up energies of a continent, let us return to the frontier. If the Earth has been charted and its territory claimed, we must explore the stars. NASA’s Artemis missions propose to return us to the Moon. Good—but not good enough. We must push beyond that which has already been done; we should establish scientific bases and lay the groundwork for future settlement. Beyond that, Mars beckons.

Some argue that America is not prepared for such things; it cannot afford them. The spirit of the isolationists in foreign affairs also drives some to contend that we need to address problems on the home front before investing in extraterrestrial exploration. Similar objections were raised to the Apollo program. The then-popular spoken-word poem “Whitey’s on the Moon,” in addition to its critique of the astronaut corps as racially homogenous, suggested that the need for measures to alleviate poverty should have overridden our desire for a space program. Of course, the space program has spun off countless inventions, like new food safety protocols, that have improved the life of the average person,2 but leave the debate over NASA’s economic efficiency for another time. These kinds of arguments miss the fact that we most need great symbols of national unity and strength precisely when we are divided. Space exploration is not a distraction from terrestrial concerns—we need to believe we are capable of great things if we are to address kitchen-table issues.

Let our children wonder at the stars. Encourage them to make heroes once more of explorers and innovators and dedicate themselves to developing the skill and character necessary to tame the galaxy. Let every citizen see himself as a vital part of a common project worthy of our civilization’s attention. Awaken these dreams in the hearts of men and see if you aren’t proud to be their countryman.

These giant leaps start with small steps. When the time finally comes for Americans to slip the surly bonds of Earth once more, keep the names of Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and their Canadian crewmate Jeremy Hansen firmly in your prayers.

MARCUS PORCIUS CATO

A version of this article originally appeared in Prometheus Now, the September 2023 print issue of the Salient.

Most people implicitly recognize the correlation between the age and the beauty of a Harvard building. One can find which buildings are beautiful by sorting them by their construction date and drawing a line at 1950: Memorial Church – 1744; Memorial Hall – 1870; Sever Hall – 1878; Widener Library – 1915; Dunster House – 1930; Lowell House – 1930; Winthrop House – 1931; Adams House – 1931; “New” Quincy – 1959; Smith Center – 1960; the “F” and “G” towers of Leverett House – 1960s; the Science Center – 1968; Mather House – 1970; the Carpenter Center – 1972; Canaday Hall – 1974.

The beauty of the early buildings was only possible through the generosity of wealthy, aristocratic donors with longstanding connections to elite universities like Harvard. The construction of Widener Library in 1915, for instance, was entirely supported by the fortune of Peter A.B. Widener, an American industrialist who helped found US Steel and the American Tobacco Company. Similarly, the seven beautiful houses—Dunster, Lowell, Eliot, Winthrop, Kirkland, Leverett (just McKinlock Hall), and Adams (Russell Hall)—were constructed in the 1930s with a $10 million grant from Edward Harkness, a Yale graduate and the son of an oil baron. [^1] The men responsible for the beautiful Georgian architecture of the seven Harkness houses were their architect, Charles Coolidge, and by proxy President Lowell, who was close friends with Coolidge and chose him to design the buildings. [^2] Both Coolidge and Lowell were of the “Boston Brahmin” class: the aristocratic Bostonian families that trace their lineages back to the early colonists. These Brahmins built the better half of the College according to their tastes, which we all—rich and poor—enjoy today.

The Fogg Museum stands as another shining example of good taste. The museum was originally donated by William Hayes Fogg, a Brahmin who made his fortune trading goods from China.3 It expanded into its present location with an enormous donation from Edward Waldo Forbes, the grandson of Ralph Waldo Emerson.4 In The Boston Raphael, Belinda Rathborne describes the creation of the new Fogg building:

> “[Forbes] closely oversaw the architectural plans by Charles Coolidge – from the outside, a simple brick neocolonial; inside, a spacious, skylit courtyard modeled, down to the last detail, on a High Renaissance facade in Montepulciano, in Tuscany, creating a sanctuary from the day-to- day bustle of Cambridge. Forbes insisted that this be finished, like the original, in travertine, at the then- extraordinary cost of $56,085. Harvard president Abbott Lawrence Lowell balked. A simple plaster finish would cost about $8,500. The travertine was not only expensive, Lowell asserted, it was ostentatious. But Forbes was adamant. How can you educate people in the language of materials, he asked, if they are exposed only to cheap imitations?”

Armed with this new, self- righteous ideology, Conant’s successor Nathan Pusey continued this movement against the old order through wide admissions reform and the construction of nearly every architectural monstrosity on campus: Leverett Towers, Mather House, the Smith Center, the Science Center, the Countway Library of Medicine, GSD’s Gund Hall, and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts.8 It was also under his tenure that the Latin study requirement was removed and student dress codes relaxed. Despite these changes—or perhaps precisely because they sensed Pusey’s administration could be pressured—rioting students stormed University Hall.

Though the university had adopted egalitarian ideals, it mostly left the old traditions alone during this period. In the past forty years, however, the Harvard of old has been torn down brick by brick. Perhaps it was understood in Massachusetts Hall that people still preferred the products of Harvard’s older culture; Harvard would only fully embrace Conant’s vision when there was no alternative left to it. Perhaps one of the most atrocious instances of Harvard’s newfound revisionism was the death of the Harvard Union, today the Barker Center for the Humanities, in 1996.

Ironically, the Harvard Union had been a shining example of how the university’s legacy and vast resources could benefit all her students. Prior to the Harkness- sponsored construction of the housing system in 1930, social life was mostly restricted to clubs that were open only to the most wealthy. To address the socioeconomic divisions this created, Major Henry Lee Higginson donated $150,000 in 1900 to construct the Harvard Union, which was a more accessible social club. It had a picturesque library, billiards room, dining hall, and smoking room, all accessible for just a $10 yearly membership fee. His hope was for it to be somewhere that “pride for wealth, pride of poverty, and pride of class would find no place.”9

> Ultimately, the pursuit of egalitarianism has inherently made things less equal and everything more divided.

The redesign divided the main hall into what are now the Kresge and Thompson rooms. In vain, over 60 alumni formed the “Committee to Save the Great Hall of the Freshman Union.” One, H. A. Crosby Forbes '50, said that the renovation was “an act comparable to homicide.”10 Leland Roth, an architectural historian, wrote that the renovation was “well- intentioned, but [...] very much like what the Goths and the Vandals did to Rome.”11 For his part, Philip Parsons, who spearheaded the effort in favor of the remodeling, argued that the original dining hall, which according to Harvard Magazine was a “90-foot room with carved paneling and a 30-foot-high barrel-vaulted plaster ceiling adorned with rosettes and ‘H’s intertwined with garlands,” would serve no use after the freshmen dining hall moved to Annenberg.12 Parsons saw the room, which occupied a quarter of the building’s volume, as a waste of space which could be filled with offices and classrooms. The great Harvard alumni who donated the money to support the Union—and the many more who fondly remember patronizing the Union—were left to lament a Harvard that was no more.

Ultimately, the pursuit of egalitarianism has inherently made things less equal and everything more divided. Students bring to Harvard a hyper-competitive attitude left over from their high school pursuits; little effort is made to temper that impulse until they burn themselves out. Social life has similarly worsened, concentrated as it is in a few hyper-selective pre-professional clubs, many of them with physical off-campus spaces. The men that built this place are long gone, remaining only in the portraits adorning the walls of our beautiful dining halls. But we can strive to preserve their vision; we need not abandon our respect for the dignity of every student, rich or poor, in doing so.

Rather than fearing the rebirth of a “caste system,” as Conant warned against, and entrusting the preservation of Harvard’s culture to career- focused students and administrators that come and go, we should cultivate a sense of admiration for Harvard’s lost traditions. Student privileges, like the ability to easily provide alcohol at student organization events, might be restored, and marks of appreciation for the trappings of culture, like the long- gone policy requiring jackets and ties in the dining halls, might also return. Eventually, perhaps, we might once more build beautiful spaces like the Harvard Union. For the congenial culture of Harvard’s past to be restored, however, the university must renew its appreciation for the aristocrats, such as Harkness, Ford, and Higginson, who built these beautiful halls and traditions in the first place. Far from making Harvard unwelcome to those outside their social circles, these men gave Harvard’s middle-class and FGLI students the opportunity to partake in the same class and beauty as the most privileged.

MENGZI

[^1]: Craig Lambert, “Harkness and History,” Harvard Magazine, November-December 2013.
[^2]: Rose Lincoln and Stephanie Mitchell, “The House that will be Home,” The Harvard Gazette, Mar. 10, 2021.


Editor’s Note:

Many of our readers are likely aware that the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) recently ranked Harvard dead last in their annual campus free speech ratings. As part of those rankings, they also labeled Harvard’s free speech climate “abysmal.” This is unacceptable. The Salient is proud to add to the chorus of voices that have pointed out that valuable scholarship cannot be produced, nor can the education of “citizen-leaders” occur, when students and professors feel they cannot be frank with one another. 

We hope our work serves to start the conversations that members of our community are otherwise afraid to engage in. Healing Harvard’s damaged culture of expression will require administrators and students to become less censorious, but it will also require someone to sincerely promote and defend conservative views. The Salient remains an outlet for that expression, and we hope those dissatisfied with the ideas and beliefs of the campus mainstream will feel emboldened both within and outside our pages to offer alternative perspectives.

We remain committed to the same mission we defined when we first launched this Substack: to reinvigorate thoughtful political and cultural discussion at Harvard through the presentation of conservative and otherwise unorthodox opinions. To this end, we will continue publishing articles from our print issues that analyze important social issues, both in connection with prevailing campus attitudes and in their own right. We will also redouble our efforts to shine a light on otherwise unremarked-upon campus events, initiatives, and student activities. As always, we undertake this work in a constructive spirit in the belief that our love for this university and the nation whose students it educates requires us to hold it to its commitment to Veritas.

With the fall semester underway in Cambridge, it is high time for us to recommence publishing on this platform. While the core of our mission remains focused directly on campus, we know that the support of Harvard’s alumni will be crucial in changing its culture. We also believe that Harvard’s leading role within American politics, culture, and business entitles those outside the Yard to know what is happening within her halls. As such, we remain excited to share our writing with a far wider audience than our print issues allow.

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The study of engineering ethics has been on the rise since the Second World War. With the promulgation of codes of ethics and local and national boards to enforce them, as well as professional licensure, engineering is sometimes thought to be an entirely different animal than what it was in the 1940s. Engineering outside of research facilities was largely guided by heuristics and rules of thumb, and it was not until clearer expectations emerged as a product of the World Wars that engineering gained its current reputation as a particularly precise science. For example, manufacturing and construction were often flexible so long as a given job was effectively accomplished. Now, however, there are tolerances on everything from microchips to baby bottles; such standards, which define how much a product may deviate from its design, reflect the reality that imprecision can have catastrophic consequences.

Yet despite engineers’ apparent commitment to shaping new developments with clear ethical standards, ethical considerations are not much more impactful now than they were before the Second World War. We are continually reopening Pandora’s box; the speed of development is such that we barely sort out the mess left by one invention before the world is shaken up again. If the goal of engineering ethics is to curb ethical issues before they create scandal, it seems the field has failed. The attitude of most engineering fields is still one of ‘discover now, philosophize later’; scientists are still researching for the sake of research itself.

Countless examples illustrate the danger of this approach: the atomic bomb, napalm, domestic surveillance, bioweapons, miscellaneous methods of disseminating misinformation, and so on. The fruits of Progress are many, but so, too, are many of them rotten. Ever since the Manhattan Project, for instance, we have lived in a world which one mad leader or technical glitch can end. This kind of nihilistic predicament inspires hatred of both our past and our future. We see only one way out of the darkness: forward. We say, ‘Sure, there were days when things were simpler, but is simpler really better? Besides, how could we ever slow down? We would fall behind!’ But we were never in control. We are slaves to Progress, constantly playing catch-up with the latest breakthrough and with tomorrow’s new envy.

Of course, we usually dismiss this accusation and assert that we have control over our collective destiny. This is exactly what many institutions attempt to do, including Harvard’s SEAS1 through its mandatory hour-and-a-half engineering ethics session for all engineering students. The session is a two-part workshop; the first half is a rundown on some of history’s most egregious engineering failures that arose from falsified results and poor compliance with safety codes. Reviewing these mistakes was no different from the standard discussion of syllabi and honor codes at the beginning of every semester. The session leaders tried—but failed—to hammer home the point that cheating on your research paper can, instead of getting you expelled, kill people. The second part of the workshop involves practicing empathy by listening to other people’s opinions. This would have been a novel idea if we weren’t all accustomed to it from kindergarten.

Harvard and the rest of the Ivy League claim to empower students in their professional lives and to help them fulfill their unique potential, but I struggle to see how workshops telling us ‘don’t cheat’ and ‘be kind’ are changing anything. The Ivy League is empowering engineers, but to what end? I must ask whether Harvard’s efforts contribute to a restoration of technological development as a tool of humanity rather than a force we cannot control.

Simply offering more of Harvard’s current programming will not change the course of history, even if it successfully discourages students from using ‘oppressive’ language in their statistical reports—if indeed any would dare to do so anyway. I would not dismiss its efforts entirely, as there is something to be said for awareness of these topics, and admittedly my peers can often be concerningly oblivious to the effects of emerging technology. But this is all that engineering ethics covers, at Harvard and across much of the field: awareness.

The problem is not simply that we are unaware of the downsides of innovation but that we fail to anticipate them just as we fumble to address them in hindsight. No matter when an issue is discovered, we struggle to resolve it effectively because discovery itself is rarely unambiguously positive. Looking again at the Trinity Test that first successfully demonstrated an atomic weapon, we recognize that this experiment offered a much deeper understanding of nuclear physics and quantum mechanics. It was this very understanding, however, that enabled (even if it did not cause) great evil. This problem is not a unique byproduct of the desert sands of Los Alamos. It has plagued humanity for eternity: tools gave way to bludgeons, iron gave way to swords, machines gave way to catapults, cars gave way to tanks. As it turns out, the problem is not specific to engineering in the first place. The problem is perennial because it is the existence of evil.

Therefore, engineering ethics shouldn’t be about coping with engineering or trying somehow to ‘fix’ it; instead, ethical training should encourage engineers actively to address evil. Here is where awareness can become useful. What we need is an understanding of the challenges before us, one that makes us proactive in seeking ways to address them instead of avoiding them by arbitrarily hindering innovation or assuming that rules about honesty in data collection will suffice. The fact of the matter is that once the world’s next greatest weapon is within sight, it is only a matter of time before someone makes it a reality. The idea that we could undo the invention of the atomic bomb is naïve—but that should not preclude us from working to remedy its terrible effects.

While some students may find Harvard’s hour-and-a-half crash course through ethics useful, its effect is essentially negligible because Harvard does not invest in the personal moral development of its engineers. What’s needed is substantial advancements in that regard and a reconceptualization of invention as a moral act—to reshape engineering ethics in this way will be an extremely difficult task.

The moral compass of a technology will orient itself according to the field of social attitudes and assumptions it is placed in. If a society’s moral field is distorted, then its technological development will follow suit. Carrying the analogy further, a compass can be redirected if its immediate magnetic field is manipulated; so too can the engineers involved in a project make a conscious decision to break with convention and redirect its course. The strength of this influence is, ultimately, up to the innovators themselves. We need engineers to treat the power of creation with respect. While I would be wary of any program designed by Harvard to reshape its engineers’ moral intuitions, perhaps our university can at least remind them to listen to the ones they’ve got.

ARISTOPHANES

A version of this article originally appeared in Prometheus Now, the September 2023 print issue of the Salient.

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