Read read read read read:

On its face, the IOP purports to support exactly what the misty-eyed memoirists of the activist Sixties want Harvard students to be doing. In the style of the civic-minded academy, it implores Harvard students to “examine critically and think creatively about politics and public issues.” The entire circus operates under the spiritual aegis of President John F. Kennedy ’40, who, one imagines, looks down with rolled-up sleeves and a winning smile upon the IOP’s noble young activists.

Marketing, however, can’t gloss over the truth forever. What transpires down at the end of JFK Street is not the catalysis of idealism but rather a sort of cotillion for political nerds. It absorbs every freshman looking to exercise their obligations as a citizen and churns out a mixture of political technicians, professional hand-shakers, and disillusioned burnouts.

[...] the IOP inculcates a worrisome catechism of centrism in its followers. The maxim of political involvement IOP-style is to mold yourself into just the right mixture of sensible sentiments and professional suavity. Of the nineteen members of the IOP’s Student Advisory Council, for example, only four choose to identify as “liberal” or “conservative” on their Facebook profiles. Nine, apparently, have no political views whatsoever.

And having a corral for the political set on JFK street means Harvard mirrors a problem endemic to the nation: the consigning of civic duties to a self-contained class of “political people.” This flies in the face of the very notion of democratic society: that we are all political people. Political mobility is a sentiment which needs to boil through everyone who comes to Harvard College, a trade school of citizenship.

Absolutely right. Plus Garrett is much more intellectual and pragmatic about it than I can ever bring myself to be -- my solution to this problem has never grown much past "burn the motherfucker down", which for the record is also how I feel about the Crimson, the final clubs, and the GODDAMN NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS -- so you should really just go read his piece.

Though I would add that the IOP is ultimately not a cause of our political inertia so much as a symptom; there is a whole social and economic order that demands just those centrist sycophants the IOP churns out. (Let's not pretend the Dems are innocent on that front either.) After all, the all-inclusive "democratic society" Garrett proposes does not coexist well with a capitalistic one...

...For a palate cleanser, make sure also to read Jarret's fun column comparing the GOP presidential race to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory -- though I do think Jarret seriously underestimates the impact of Ron Paul. He has a blimp, people! A BLIMP! HOW CAN HE LOSE??!?