Strictures on Harvard University

This humorous work, published by William Austin when he was a senior at Harvard College in 1798, addresses what Austin saw as the misguided attempts of the "government" of Harvard to control the student body and to inspire productive scholarship. He bemoans the restraints on students' lives imposed by what he sees as unnecessary and restrictive laws and asserts that Harvard "is the death-bed of genius." Austin refers directly to Jean-Jacques Rousseau on numerous occasions, and the ideas he presents are clearly informed by Rousseau's Emile.