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{shortcode-8c0dd475ea3269f67b1a4d37d27db5cc232a1fc2}hen Nina G. Howe-Goldstein ’25 transferred to Harvard in October 2023, she expected to find a staid, academically rigorous environment. Then she heard about the $30,000 Harvard Undergraduate Foreign Policy Initiative scandal. She didn’t know a club could even have that much money.
“I thought to myself, ‘Wait, this place is a complete freak show, but I’m gonna have so much fun here.’”
A month later, Howe-Goldstein published the first article — “A Modest Proposal (for the Public Execution of Electric Scooter Riders)” — on her Substack, “The Real Haters of Cambridge, Mass.” The website has since gained over 1,000 monthly views, with circulation growing via word of mouth. Her current subscribers are a mix of Harvard students, alumni, professors, and Cambridge residents.
Howe-Goldstein’s writing pokes fun at the absurdities inherent in prestigious institutions. The daughter of Amy Howe and Tom Goldstein — the founders of SCOTUSblog, a prominent source of Supreme Court commentary — she builds on her family’s legacy of examining the inner workings of major establishments.
Her Substack in particular riffs on the general public’s “leery and libidinous and anxious” obsession with Harvard. This approach comprises everything from fake newspaper articles to a treatise against the wild turkeys living on campus. “My Statement on the Resignation of Harvard President Claudine Gay” ridicules Harvard students’ attempts to worm their way into the New York Times, while articles such as “EXCLUSIVE: Crimson Leadership Leaked Audio” satirize newsroom dynamics at The Crimson.
According to Howe-Goldstein, this is all in good fun: She’s a self-proclaimed “proud armchair quarterback” and admires her own “celebrity reporters,” including Crimson News editors Tilly R. Robinson ’26, Sally E. Edwards ’26, and Asher J. Montgomery ’26.
“It’s with this real sort of sense of glee and self-awareness,” she says. “I have not put in the work. I have not spent 10 hours researching this story. I’m just sitting here drinking my cheap wine and writing some diatribe about how I could totally do that better.”
Arriving at Harvard after two years at Scripps College, Howe-Goldstein found it difficult to break into existing student organizations — she thought about comping the Crimson but quickly realized that she would only be a junior reporter by the time she graduated.
At Scripps, in contrast, most clubs required no application process — something that “the Harvard mind literally cannot comprehend,” she says. With no previous comedy writing experience, she was able develop her satirical voice by penning a biweekly satirical column in the campus paper.
Once at Harvard, Howe-Goldstein was compelled to forge her own comedic path. Apart from her role as president of the now-defunct Satire V Magazine, she currently focuses on the Gorilla Gazette — Mather House’s satirical weekly newsletter — her Substack, and long-form comedic writing.
As co-historian of Mather House, she prints weekly editions of the Gorilla Gazette with Ethan L. Jasny ’25, running three dozen copies of short-form articles and setting them up in table tents in the dining hall. The magazine, which has been around for a decade, has become a house fixture: There’s been a line of Gorilla Gazette hoodies, as well as Gorilla Gazette tote bags.
“The fact that Mather is the one running the comedy paper is kind of a testament to the scrappy, ‘we know we’re not that great, we know we’re not all that’ spirit,” she says.
(As for the pranks, Howe-Goldstein says there’s one involving Mather soda fountains in the works.)
While most of her literary pursuits are short-form, Howe-Goldstein has long admired lengthier comedy. Profoundly influenced by Andrew Sean Greer’s satirical novel “Less,” she’s recently completed her own unpublished book — entitled “The Arcaliens” — exploring a controversy within the Reagan White House.
Per Howe-Goldstein, the novel relates “what happens when a senior White House aide attempts to write an unapproved version of one of those memoirs and the fallout within an administration.” She is currently working to secure a literary agent to have it published.
The idea arose from her love of “bad political memoirs,” especially those from officials serving during the Obama and Trump administrations. “I found that their bad writing and general weird vibes were fascinating and kind of campy,” she says. This interest has also manifested in her History thesis on memoirs from the Nixon administration and how they portray the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
“History is very much about people doing weird shit, basically things that logically don’t make any sense and they shouldn’t have done,” she says.
Whether she’s satirizing the Crimson Editorial Board or fictionalizing the dramas of an American presidency, Howe-Goldstein aims to “punch up.” At the same time, she’s not expecting her humor to spur institutional change.
“I just like it,” she says of her comedy. “I’m pleased that other people like it, and I’ll ride this train up however long it lasts.”
