Let’s focus on achievements, not diplomas
Harvard has successfully formed a government in Bulgaria. Um, let’s try again: Harvard – two Harvard graduates from Bulgaria, Kiril Petkov and Asen Vassilev, nicknamed for their alma mater – are on the verge of taking over the country after the political party they founded winner of the third parliamentary elections in the Balkan nation in 2021
After former Prime Minister Boyko Borissov – Bulgaria’s former prime minister in power for more than a decade – has been accused of corruption and months of anti-government protests, Petkov and Vassilev’s anti-corruption party “We Continue to Change” is expected to take power. . The new party emerges at a critical time in Bulgaria’s history, facing until recently a crisis of the rule of law, widespread distrust of the government and the lowest level of vaccine vaccination in the European Union during a booming COVID-19 epidemic.
We are glad to see that the protests in Bulgaria have led to the rise of political leaders who promise change, honesty and stability to the Bulgarian people. Their actions in the coming months – if they manage to form a coalition – will speak very loudly from the words they needed to get here, the party victory seems like the democratic response to activism in Bulgaria.
It seems that Kiril Petkov – a graduate of Harvard Business School and Asen Vassilev, a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School – are really on their way to becoming “civic leaders” that our university hopes to train behind its gates. It is encouraging to see how these pioneers apply skills acquired at Harvard that would be difficult to acquire elsewhere, in their native places – wherever they are. Perhaps even more encouraging is the fact that many Bulgarian immigrants followed the example of Petkov and Vassilev and returned to their country to help reform it.
However, there is one aspect of the election that bothered us a little, albeit our jokes, was the overexposure of these two people as Harvard graduates. In the end, Petkov and Vassilev were elected by Bulgarian President Rumen Radev as ministers in the country’s interim government – from where they launched their campaign – largely on the back of the Harvard name.
Using a university’s reputation as a qualification is strange and potentially dangerous in two ways: First, it creates the false notion that a Harvard degree immediately makes an individual better able to do anything than anyone else. is another – the idea existing as much in the United States as probably in Bulgaria. Secondly, it probably erases the much more significant achievements of these people, other than the approval they received in their youth when they were accepted.
To this end, we hope to see a future in which we give up throwing names – as much in our country as in distant Bulgaria – and instead focus on what our “civic leaders”, including Petkov and Vassilev, have done with your merits to earn our respect.
In the meantime, we wish these two men all the best – especially as they continue the difficult and crucial work of forming a government of warring parties and potentially the status quo party they oppose. Maybe in this process they will find their Harvard education useful. “
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/12/2/harvard-name-bulgaria-election/
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