The Times and the Shleifer Scandal
On the third page of today's New York Times business section, Sara Ivry weighs in with a piece about the influence of David McClintick's Institutional Investory story on the Shleifer scandal.
Ivry summarizes the article and quotes various people (myself included) on the extent of its influence. Surprisingly, I thought that it was quite influential, and Alan Dershowitz did not.
(That last line is to be read with a veneer of sarcasm.)
To my mind, McClintick's reporting both distilled the essence of the Shleifer scandal and provided a bevy of appalling specifics. Dershowitz, however, claims that "there weren't more than 20 or 30 people who read it" and that it was "full of leaps of logic."
Mr. Dershowitz has a remarkable facility for throwing out unsupported numbers that happen to support his personal opinions—the majority of professors and students at graduate schools are solidly behind Summers, only 20 or 30 people read the McClintick story. It is almost as if he had done research.
I would like to invite Mr. Dershowitz to name one or two leaps of logic. Because, after all, I'm sure that he would never smear a journalist's work without having something to back up his smear.
Professor, you are a great one for challenging people to debate, so I'd like to challenge you to share your criticisms of the McClintick story. You could either post something below, or, if you prefer, e-mail me at
[email protected]. I'll post whatever you write, unless it's your unpublished novel. As the kids would say, If you got it, bring it.
Meanwhile....Summers' spokesman John Longbrake, whose job must really be unpleasant these days—and by the way, there used to be "
Harvard spokespeople," and now we have "Summers' spokesman," a telling shift—declined to say whether Summers himself had read the piece and whether it had influenced his decision to resign.
Ivry probably couldn't have gotten an answer to this, but I wish she had put those questions to members of the Corporation.
Couple of points.
The existence of this article—particularly in the Times, particularly in the hard-news business section—is not good for Summers. There, in the title, you have "Expose"—sorry, don't know how to type the accent over the second "e" on this keyboard—followed by the words "Harvard's President."
Then, in the subhead, you have the phrase "Lack of Candor."
Such language makes powerful impressions. And there's more of it.
Readers of this blog may have noted that I continually refer to the Shleifer scandal as "the Shleifer scandal." That's because I believe it to be scandalous, and because I hope that the word "scandal" becomes firmly attached to any description of the episode. Not the "Shleifer case" or the "Shleifer affair," but the "Shleifer scandal."
So I'm delighted to see Ivry say that I have "written frequently about the scandal on [my] blog." Every time the word "scandal" is used in reference to the Shleifer, um, scandal, a little bit of history is shaped. (And, of course, it's nice to see some mention of this blog in print.)
Finally, I think Ivry did a nice job with this piece, and not just because she quoted me accurately. McClintick's article
was influential, and it was smart to point that out, and Ivry did so fairly. Sometimes, the Times reminds you of how good it can be.