Gotta love the dust-up between Harvard and those regressive all-male “final’’ clubs (“Harvard puts new limits on all-male social clubs,’’ Page A1, May 7). Most delightful is the absence of Veritas on both sides.

A frustrated Harvard administration is throwing a lot of charges against the wall, hoping some will stick. Those wearing white hats assert the clubs are bastions of misogyny, sexual misconduct, and values alien to those who know better (and are accustomed to getting their way).

In response, the Clubbies treat Harvard’s behavior as a punitive assault on the right of free assembly at “unaffiliated, off-campus, private organizations.’’

It all sounds so principled.

Nonsense.

This is about class, caste, and cachet, plus the right to exclude those regarded as unsimpatico, but Harvard may lack the weapons to challenge the clubs head-on. Thus far, snobbery is not unlawful.

To improve the optics and take shelter beneath the shield of gender-neutrality, Harvard has outlawed all-women’s clubs as well. The members of these innocuous organizations must love becoming collateral damage in Harvard’s drone strikes on the bunkers of male privilege.

However, even if the right-thinkers prevail, they will perhaps have outsmarted themselves. Women who join the Porcellian Club and its ilk will, by definition, be the unenlightened ones. What then, Harvard?

Frank Porter

Cambridge