In Progress

At first, Conant’s record did not match his rhetoric. He couldn’t afford to offend the rich families who supplied Harvard with its endowment. In 1951, 18 years into his presidency, the university was still accepting 94 percent of its legacy applicants. When Jews with high grades and test scores began to flood in, Harvard limited the number of applicants it would consider from New Jersey and parts of New York—places that had a lot of Jews.

But eventually Conant’s vision triumphed and helped comprehensively refashion American life.

You have to build less, you cannot build worse.

“Code smells”

Impacts future decisions.

You don’t want to go back to that part of the code becuase it smells.