It’s awesome to see Brian Harvey get recognition. He’s an incredible educator - the finest I’ve encountered - and I’ll be forever grateful that I got to experience that at Berkeley before he retired.
I have mixed feelings. Learning Lisp was extremely eye-opening, and I was amazed at how much could be done with such a simple language. It inspired me to learn way more about theoretical CS, knowledge which continues to serve me to this day, even though I wound up in a different field. I definitely came away a believer in Greenspun's tenth rule.
OTOH, for most 61a students, this course (indeed the entire major) amounts to a very expensive form of vocational training. Developing an aesthetic appreciation for finely crafted code seems somewhat orthogonal to their end goal, which in 99% of cases is getting a high-paying job writing Python, C++, or some other A-list language. I can't really see the benefit of a formative semester spent on honing their Lisp chops. As educators, we want to believe that the latter leads to the former, but I'm a bit skeptical.