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Yesterday, it finally admitted a ‘lapse' in what it described as ‘our usual high editorial standards' for failing to challenge the prince on his claim that he is the victim of a ‘good old-fashioned establishment stitch up'. If only. These days the ‘establishment' couldn't be trusted to sew on a bloody button. Indicating the true purpose of education is not drilling, or teaching a lot of useless facts (which one can find on the Internet anyway), nor submission to established societal values, but leading out that which already is within.

An educator, then, is a person who helps one achieve the fullness of one's potential without trying to impose his own viewpoints. It's not just that the few remaining veterans of the Second World War are very much in the twilight of their years, or that the woman who led that generation through their darkest hours with her parents - Queen Elizabeth II - is gone. 'Harvard is engaging in a systemic (sic) pattern of violating federal law,' McMahon wrote in her letter, which both the university and others who edited the letter noted was likely meant to say 'systematic.' And don't get me wrong, it was wonderful to see so many people thronging the Mall, and all those street parties (in defiance of the gloomy weather).

But for me, at any rate, the official celebrations were just tinged with… well, an inescapable sense of melancholy. 'They have become monolithically leftist and that DEI ideology connects to the anti-Semitism problem because they're teaching young people to make snap judgments about each other based on identity and skin color,' the senior official said. And just as a reminder of the absolute agony he's suffering, his tin-eared idiot of a wife posted a picture of him and their two children with their backs to the camera, enjoying their not-so-hard-earned ‘freedom' in an idyllic garden.

I have no doubt that his experience was by no means unusual. We wave our little flags today, pile the cream and jam on our scones, chink our teacups. But what that generation endured is hard to fathom, decades on. No technology, no phones, relatively basic medicine, no touchy-feely therapy sessions. It was do or die; you had no choice but to get on with it. But for all the jollity, all the smiles and uplifting stories, I could not escape a nagging sense of sadness. A bitter feeling that it was all just a veneer, a performance rather than a true expression of solidarity.

'Where do many of these 'students' come from, who are they, how do they get into Harvard, or even into our country—and why is there so much HATE?' Secretary McMahon continued in the opening paragraph.  'For Harvard to become eligible for those competitions again, it would have to enter into a negotiation with the government to satisfy what the government says is in compliance with all federal laws,' the official said.