Who knew that Hans Christian Andersen’s 19th-century fairytales would anticipate 20th- and 21st-century issues about groupthink, media, education and envy and mob rules, Harvard and Yale included? Alexander Gerschenkron (1904-78), a Russian-born Harvard economic historian, did. On April 11, 1968, Gerschenkron delivered a lecture at the university in which he quoted at length Andersen’s The […]
