How Power Works
I've been meaning to write about Skip Gates' decision to step down as chairman of the African and African-American Studies department. I don't think there's any deep inner meaning; Gates has been chair for a long time, and he really doesn't need the job to maintain his exalted position in the world of academia. Plus, being a chair can be a huge drain on time and energy.
More telling is how widely Gates' decision was covered—from the New York Times to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Under normal circumstances, a decision to resign a department chair hardly merits newspaper coverage. Two factors are involved here. One, Gates' own celebrity status. And two, newspapers looking for any hint of instability at Harvard. Everything related to Summers is hot, hot, hot....
Here's a more important story: Gates is now becoming the chair of the Pulitzer Prize committee. The position conveys enormous cultural power. Just one example: Even more than usual, one must now read every mention of Gates in the New York Times with deep skepticism.
There's no way the paper can ever be objective about the chair of the Pulitzer board....
