Seventy years ago today, Winston Churchill received an honorary degree from Harvard University and addressed its faculty and students in the university’s largest room, Sanders Theater.

I was back in that theater in June, for my 35th college reunion. Harvard’s current president, Drew Gilpin Faust, was being interviewed by Hobart and William Smith College President Mark Gearan about the pressing issues in the university’s life today: a cheating scandal that had wracked the college earlier that year; the soaring coast of tuition and accumulating debt; the “rack rate” for attending the college versus the “real rate” once financial aid was factored in; “MOOCs,” or massive online open courses.