Dear Harvard,
In the previous post I asked if you might do something simple to change the world. Merely tweak your admissions a little and you would change life for everyone under eighteen. With that power, and with zero cost to yourself, you could influence the behavior of the world.
But if you really wanted a challenge worthy of your greatness, it would look more like this: Put tents up in Harvard Yard for your freshman class and give their dorm rooms to the homeless who overpopulate Harvard Square.
True, this will not look sexy on the alumni report, even if the high school seniors who knew this was gonna be the deal when they applied would be an especially resilient crop, might even help you churn out leaders who can serve the world from refugee camp-like conditions.
Still, to align all the brilliant adults in your employ, all the ultra-capable kids you can pick from each year, all the money at your disposal and take on a single problem—lowering the refugee population in the world by 5% in ten years, say,—would be worthy of you as "the best."
Or try this: Close up shop for five Cambridge minutes and then re-open as a school for girls from Kabul only. Let your world-class faculty and top-notch facilities and ocean of cash be put to use educating those whose empowerment is most obviously connected to a more peaceful world. Sure, the logistics, the visas, the vetting, and the risk would be staggering, to say nothing of how you stay afloat without keeping your brand what it is as the place that sends kids to Google and Goldman. But if you can't overcome such hurdles, who can?
Besides, what might such a shot in the dark mean when it is taken by an institution the whole world watches? Your flare sent into the night sky of a crumbling planet? What might that signal as a way to say: we must change?
Or is that the role of others who have less to risk? Whose buffer for failure is tiny when compared to yours? Yes, yes, let those on life support model risk. Your role is ensuring the status quo.
Real leadership? I wonder what Stanford is up to these days.