Time capsule

One of the most remarkable elements of President Faust's speech yesterday was her allusion to a letter that had been left in the University archives by James Conant, then the president of Harvard, with the instruction that it be opened by the first Harvard president of the 21st century. (According to the Crimson blog, this letter was lost until recently, which is why previous president Larry Summers was not the one to open it, although he was the president who should have done so under Conant's stipulation. The fact that the salutation read,"My dear sir...", was a source of some mirth, but it appears that it would have been technically correct.) Written in the aftermath of World War II, the letter was apparently filled with concern as to whether the existing political and economic order would even survive the century. The full text has yet to be made publicly available, although it should provide a very interesting glimpse into the prevailing mindset of an earlier era. The unfulfilled predications it contains may be interesting, but I suspect it will be more remarkable for just how much of it still applies today.