Excellent example of Occam's razor.
It makes them feel smart. I'm going to put my head through a wall next time I see someone type 'fallacy.'
Sigh.
The implied question is "Why do Harvard students take this class?"
Rather than resort to philosophical mumbo-jumbo (as the article does) about Harvard students feeling a yearning to improve their overprivileged existence, the simplest explanation is that students take the class because it offers an easy A.
QED
Most people don't like thinking. Even the people who do like thinking only have a finite capacity for it, and don't like spending their/our thought-power on things they/we don't really care about.