An “Energy Instititute” was somewhat of an inside joke on the Crimson editorial board. We loved the idea, and advocated for it in several staff editorials:

Given the profound impact the academy can have on defusing potentially cataclysmic situations involving the global use of energy, Harvard should bring these scholars under one roof by creating a center for energy studies.

Once hubs for the confluence of ideas, modern universities have evolved into institutions fragmented by the bureaucracy of school, departmental, and research affiliations. Enter the peculiar institution of the research center, which circumvents arbitrary divisions on the organizational chart.

Yet, as the above excerpt suggests, more than anything else we wrote about, we felt we were shouting in the wind. In the often archaic departmental structures of Harvard, there simply was no natural advocate for such an institute. If it ever were to happen, we believed, it would have to come straight from the top, from someone more concerned the university’s overall interest than protecting an individual silo. And at the time, Harvard’s top honcho was embroiled in controversy.

So, over at the Crimson ed board, during the rare times when we were at a loss for words, calls to advocate for an “Energy Institute” would always draw hopeless chuckles.

Kudos to Stanford for pulling it off.

Nota bene: Adam Guren, who more ably co-chaired the editorial board the year after I did and is now a Harvard economcis PhD student, sent this to me in an email with the subject “Stanford took our Idea.” He is on top of my list of people to draft into (tum)blogging. This is a good list to have (see: Correspondence is Making a Comeback). I’ll formalize it somewhere sometime soon.