Grade inflation in the Ivy League may have started innocently enough, with the emergence in post-World War II of the “gut,” the label given to courses in which the professors rarely, if ever, permitted students to flunk. The most famous of these was a course at Harvard on the French Revolution. It was taught by a particularly distinguished professor, Crane Brinton.

Brinton, who died in 1968, was rumored never to have handed out a grade lower than B+. His course was nicknamed “Brunch With Brinton.” When his test for the course included the question “Identify Robespierre,” one student, legend has it, wrote: “A rare French table wine.” Professor Brinton is said to have given him half credit.