Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations 223, 224

An English professor who had marked one of my papers with an "F" because I had proposed an unauthorized view of a 17th century divine. In the margin of the paper, the professor had written, "I don't care what you think; I'm only interested in knowing that you know what I think." The message pretty much defined the thesis of a Yale education at the time.
...The education offered at Yale, as at Harvard, Princeton, or the University of Michigan bears comparison to the commercial procedure for stunting caterpillars just prior to the moment of their transformation into butterflies. Silkworms can be made useful but butterflies blow around in the wind, and do nothing to add to the profits of the corporation, or the power of the state.
Lewis H. Lapham,
Editor of Harper's Magazine

In any case, the goal for MIT graduates was that we would unquestioningly perform any interesting tasks that the powers that be from Harvard, Princeton, and Yale proposed for us. If the masters of the universe wanted us to produce a mechanism of corporate control over workers, or a mechanism of government oversight over citizens, or a reentry system for multiple nuclear warheads delivered by one missile, or a stabilization system so that helicopter guns could more reliably shoot water buffalo and Vietnamese peasants, or, for that matter, if the masters of the universe unexpectedly asked us to design a handgun so that those same peasants could shoot down B52s, we tech tools from MIT should meet the master's challenge. We should leave calculating the social worth of the product to the masters, their having been propitiously prepared for that at Harvard finishing school. The masters would get the social calculation right. They would ask for smart bombs, not B52-threatening handguns. Our expertise was bordered by MIT's long, gray corridors. We would deliver the goods.
Michael Albert
Remembering Tomorrow