In 1986, the New York Times wrote of Harvard that it “has left a deep impress on American culture and society ever since it was founded in 1636,” and “as the university prepares to celebrate its 350th birthday with a tremendous convocation next September (the present Charles, Prince of Wales, will be among the guests), American education, scholarship, government, law, medicine, business and literature still find themselves somewhat under Harvard’s spell. Harvard has set standards in scholarship over the years, and underlying its scholarship there remains a seriousness about truth-seeking, along with a moral ambition, that other schools have strained to emulate. These deeper traits are probably traceable to Harvard’s Puritan origins.”

Only a decade earlier, Harvard’s student paper, the Crimson, demonstrated the school’s Puritan moral ambition by enthusiastically endorsing the Khmer Rouge.

Since the U.S. incursion into Cambodia in the spring of 1970, and the subsequent saturation-bombings The Crimson has supported the Khmer Rouge in its efforts to form a revolutionary government in that country. …

In the days following the mass exodus from Phnom Penh, reports in the western press of brutality and coercion put these assumptions into doubt. But there were other reports on the exodus. William Goodfellow in the New York Times and Richard Boyle, the last American to leave Phnom Penn in the Colorado Daily reported that the exodus from major cities had been planned since February, that unless the people were moved out of the capital city they would have starved and that there was a strong possibility of a cholera epidemic. The exodus, according to these reports, was orderly; there were regroupment centers on all of the major roads leading out of Phnom Penh and people were reassigned to rural areas, where the food supplies were more plentiful.

There is no way to assess the merits of these conflicting reports—and if there were instances of brutality and coercion, we condemn them—but the goals of the exodus itself were good, and we support them. …

The new government of Cambodia may have to resort to strong measures against a few to gain democratic socialism for all Cambodians. And we support the United Front [i.e. the Khmer Rouge] in the pursuit of its presently stated goals.

Another article, written in 1973 and titled “The Will of the People”, concludes:

Congress and the public have come to accept that the U.S. must stop interfering in Cambodia’s affairs, which will surely result in well-deserved victory of the revolutionary forces led by Prince Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge.

The paper was also concerned at the time with war crimes—specifically, of accusing Richard Nixon of them, raising loud concern with an obvious political motive against a war whose death toll was a small fraction of that of the Khmer Rouge’s ‘Democratic Kampuchea’.

American warplanes are hitting Cambodia heavily—that much is beyond dispute. The Administration can quibble over the number of screaming children and homeless villagers, but Nixon has not attempted to evade the central question. The extent of his war crimes awaits further documentation—the crimes themselves are indisputably becoming a part of Cambodia’s history.American warplanes are hitting Cambodia heavily–that much is beyond dispute. The Administration can quibble over the number of screaming children and homeless villagers, but Nixon has not attempted to evade the central question. The extent of his war crimes awaits further documentation—the crimes themselves are indisputably becoming a part of Cambodia’s history.

Three years later, the Crimson came the closest it ever had to denouncing the Khmer Rouge—but still not close at all.

I continue to support the Khmer Rouge in its principles and goals but I have to admit that I deplore the way they are going about it.

Apparently, this is what seriousness about truth-seeking along with moral ambition looks like for the New York Times.