I feel sick that Harvard destroyed the tradition of The Game. Now it will belong to Yale and Princeton. Just another example of Harvard trying to look good without doing good.
 

A very interesting article on Ivy League football. Some of the alums, and former coaches, clearly don’t get it. There is no way to return to the glory days.
It would be interesting to know what Harry Lewis thinks of all this. I happen to agree with much (but not all) of what he said in his chapter on college athletes, particularly how playing on a team can be an invaluable life experience and can teach myriad “life lessons” as President Bowen said in his book. Add to that the fun and exhilaration of competition and spectator enjoyment and it seems to be all good (as a college athlete I certainly thought so). What Lewis, unfortunately, didn’t say in the chapter, ties into what those who want to bring back big time Ivy League football would most need… recruited athletes. All that is good about Ivy League athletics could be done without the heavy recruitment that takes place in a few sports. Lewis talks about “extraordinarily high admissions standards” and says that “the Ivy League colleges most need to regulate the academic qualifications of their athletes in order to stay true to their mission.” He also speaks of how well Ivy League athletes do. All this is fair and reasonable… and honorable. All this could be achieved without admitting so many recruited athletes who are so far wide of the mark with regard to average academic admissions standards. This is not true, of course, of all recruited athletes, but as a whole, for some teams (football, ice hockey and basketball) it is certainly true. It is interesting that Lewis did not address this issue except for the “academic index” discussion.
Sam Spektor
 

Sam,

Athletes graduate at pretty much the same rate as everyone else, or did the last time I saw the data. And since I have never seen a shred of evidence that percentile rank in the Harvard graduating class is correlated with any measure of long-term success in life, I am basically unconcerned about graduation rank statistics. Based on what I know about the lifetime accomplishments of a number of people who were not at the top of their graduating class, I just can't get excited about class rank of athletes. I'd be just as worried about what a Harvard dean a hundred years ago called the "'mark-fiend' who never comes to anything in life." They still exist. Character and ambition and other intangibles matter to long term success more than graduation GPA does, provided you were smart enough to get into Harvard in the first place.

The reason I take up this subject up in my book in the context of the Academic Index is that intercollegiate athletics are not conducted in isolation. There is a league, and the league schools are both peers and competitors. It was one of the league's great achievements to get an academic standard that is shared and yet respects the differences between the general student populations of the various schools. So as other Ivy League schools get increasingly rarified in their academic standards, they become increasingly selective as to their athletes as well. And by the way, there is no such regulated admission standard in any school I know of in the country along any line except between athletes and non-athletes in the Ivies.

Athletic scholarships are merit scholarships, awarded independent of financial need. Really they are more like salaries than scholarships, except that there is a cartel, called the NCAA, that caps them. You couldn't award athletic scholarships without awarding academic scholarships, and once that started you would have money chasing students who don't need it, to the disadvantage of those who do. Becoming like Stanford athletically would entail a far more drastic change in the collegiate ethos than just in the athletic arena.

So I like the Ivy League. All in all, it's good to have really good athletes at Harvard, just as it's good to have excellence in other areas. The league could move up the AI if it wanted to, as I mention on page 247; I don't think that would be the end of the world if it happened. I certainly don't see the argument for going big-time. The corruption of money, as well as academic standards, is far too great. As long as we can get a few high-quality players every decade, it's a great thing to adhere to the Ivy model. We're never going to have five Shaquille O'Neals on our basketball team, but as long as we have an occasional Clifton Dawson, or Alison Feaster, or A. J. Mleczko playing one of our sports, we're in a pretty good place, it seems to me, with a lot to be proud of and little to be ashamed of.

And yes, I wish more students would turn out for the games, and that they would shut off Texas-Nebraska on their TVs and walk across the river to watch their fellow students represent them. But that is part of a different and bigger subject.

- Harry Lewis

PS. While we are talking about academic standards for athletes, perhaps we can wonder about our literacy standards for ourselves. This is from the web site on the tailgate: "Because of space limitations with this new location, approved student tailgates will be condensed and less vehicles will be allowed in the space." Oh dear. http://www.thetailgate2006.com/
 

Harry,
I agree with just about everything you said in your response to my post (i.e. graduation rank; character and ambition; athletic scholarships in the Ivies, etc.), and, as said before, agree with much of what you had to say in the chapter on athletes.
Unfortunately, while your response touched on many things, it didn’t address the question I posed. Why are the academic admission standards for recruited athletes at Harvard (and the other Ivies) so different from those standards that are used for the student body as a whole? Why are SAT scores for recruited athletes on certain teams so much lower than the SAT scores of the rest of the incoming class? I’m aware of the limitations of SAT scores and am not arguing that the scores have a high degree of correlation with, for example, lifetime accomplishments, to use your phrase. SAT scores are, however, one (very) important part of the academic side of the admissions process. Harvard recruits athletes with great potential. The University hopes these athletes will excel on the field, on the court or in the rink. These athletes, the Athletic Index notwithstanding, have significantly lower SAT scores than the rest of the incoming class. Why does Harvard seek out these athletes? Wouldn’t it be more fair (and honest?) to seek out athletes who might not be as good as others in terms of athletic skills, but who would be much more representative of their fellow classmates in terms of academic qualifications. After all, were that the norm, the only thing that would change would be that the women’s ice hockey team wouldn’t be as athletically gifted as it could be. Yale’s women’s ice hockey team also would not be as gifted.
Finally, I would like to comment on the most important point in your response (just kidding). Many of us who are very interested in the quality of the written word, are fighting a losing battle. Less rather than fewer on a web site… that is the tip of the iceberg. Over and over and over again, writers and editors of The New York Times, The New Yorker and (please say it isn’t so) The New York Review of Books, are abandoning all pretense of using proper written English (of course, many of these people are Harvard College graduates).On the other hand, who cares, when we can see a good game tomorrow between teams whose players know how to read, write and speak the English language quite well.
Sam Spektor
 

I can't speak for Harvard on this, but I suppose the basic answer is that if you're going be in an athletic league you do things the same way as the rest of the league does. For example, we might think it was better for our athletes if they practiced only 10 hours per week rather than 20, but we wouldn't disadvantage our teams by putting ourselves under greater restrictions than we have collectively imposed on ourselves and our competitors. If it were decided there was a problem here, the way to fix it is by collective, not individual, action. That might not be a bad thing, as I said; I don't think the world would end if the Ivies all got a bit tighter.

Harry
 

Harry,
Another example of the use of the English language, in this case, from today's Crimson.From the "Harvard's Gatekeeper" article: "even if that means confrontation with faculty who would much rather hire within their own departments and specialties unimpeded." Ah, yes... unimpeded specialties. Actually, Annie and I enjoy our specialties impeded.
Sam
 

I'm sorry, but if there's one thing more boring than Ivy sports, it's talking Ivy sports. Yawn.
 

I agree, and do we really need to know that Sam sez "Annie and I enjoy our specialties impeded"?
 

Not when Yale wins The Game!
 

Another sad example of the direction the inordinate power university administrators have gained in recent years is taking Harvard: a lower quality of performance, more regulation, and more power and money for the admininstrators.
 

Ughh -- you thought a conversation between these two old white men would be interesting to anyone? Why, exactly? Dull, dull, dull. Neither can get beyond their narrow obsessions, and both are utterly out of any loop that anyone cares about. Why am I reading this?!

Harry's trying to start a conversation about things he is passionate about, sort of sad he has to resort to this forum to do that. These issues just aren't the big cheese these days.

Hope all are enjoying their unimpeded specialties. Obviously I'm not, posting at this hour.
 

I, also, agree. Like listening to drunks argue about the weather--you think: On my deathbed, I'm gonna want that five minutes back.
 

Obviously, I disagree. And I'm appalled that anyone would make that "two old white men" remark. That is pathetic.
 

The truth is Harry R. Lewis has demonstrated a clarity of thought in analyzing what is wrong with Harvard that it is understandable his book Excellence Without a Soul is an important reference for members of the Corporation, for Overseers and for students, faculty and alumni alike.

He would be an ideal candidate to head an investigative committee to examine the uncontrolled growth of administrative expenditures in Harvard's budget, and the uncontrollowed increase in the power of administrators.

That committee, and stopping fundraising for 5 years to concentrate in fixing much that has gone awry at Harvard might help the university regain its soul.
 

The genius of Harvard was that it was organized, for most the XIX and XX century as a distributed network of semi-autonomous units, exactly the kind of organization that modern Artificial Intelligence recognizes as superior to centralized systems. It was this format, which AI has proved to be most effective to model compex and adaptive systems, which laid behind most of Harvard's achievements for centuries.

Towards the end of the XX century a fundamental change too place. One was the emergence of a Nomenklatura of administrators in the Development Office and in senior management in the college and graduate schools. The second was a significant centralization of decision making, brought to an extreme during the reign of Larry Summers.

The rest is history. The world's greatest university was thus corrupted by a soviet-style approach to centralized management by a ruling class accountable to no one but themselves.

While some professors recognized the damage this cancer-like growth of administration would cause to the university, it was too late.

Even popular magazines began then to ask 'Who Cares about Harvard?'
 

There is good reason to think that a more centralized Harvard, and in particular a Harvard more micromanaged by the Development Office and by senior managers, may be capable of less collective intelligence than the Harvard that rose as the premier american university during 4 centuries.

The problem is that once a centralized global control system has encroached itself into a network there is no way to dismantle it. This is the reason the Soviet Union collapsed, and it is the reason Russia is still hampered by the modern heris of the Zars.

Paradoxically, the rising Institutes of Technology in India and the best Chinese Universities are going the way that was so helplful to Harvard for most of it's history. Perhaps the best science in the XXI century will be done there and in Stanford, and no longer in the true Kremlin by the Charles.

A collective intelligence (COIN) is a system of interacting agents with no centralized communication and control, but where a definite overall behavior is achieved. This is to be done without hand tailoring of the agents, in a manner that is broadly applicable, scalable, and robust. Agents typically have limited communication with each other, but together they form a distributed, adaptive multi-agent systems (MAS). This research task will develop a mathematical theory of COIN design to achieve desired global behaviors, plus efficient ways of applying COIN theory to NASA applications. One application, in concert with JPL, will be an adaptive distributed optimization algorithm for dynamic rescheduling of instruments on a constellation of observation satellites.

http://is.arc.nasa.gov/AR/tasks/ColInt.html
 

YOU MAY BE CORRECT IN YOUR ANALYSIS OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF GREATER CENTRALIZATION AT HARVARD.

YOU ARE NOT CORRECT IN ASSUMING THAT THIS GREATER CENTRALIZATION WAS DESIGNED BY ANY PRESIDENT, OR THAT IT EMERGED DURING LARRY SUMMERS PRESIDENCY.

THERE IS INDEED A NETWORK OF VERY POWERFUL ADMINISTRATORS, A VERITABLE NOMENKLATURA AS STATED ABOVE, WHO RUN THE UNIVERSITY. THEY ARE MORE ORGANIZED AND ARE A MORE EFFECTIVE NETWORK THAN PROFESSORS, THE CORPORATION, THE OVERSEERS, ALUMNI OR STUDENTS. AS SUCH THEY HAVE BECOME INDEED VERY POWERFUL, MORE THAN THE PRESIDENT AND DEANS. TO A GREAT EXTENT THEY ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR KEY APPOINTMENTS, THEY CHOOSE THEIR DEANS, DEPARTMENT CHAIRS, DIRECTORS OF INSTITUTES AND CENTERS. PERHAPS THEY ARE ALSO RESPONSIBLE FOR DISMISSALS OF PRESIDENTS AND DEANS.

THEY CONTROL WHAT OVERSEERS AND CORPORATION MEMBERS GET TO SEE ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY, AND IN CONTROLLING THEIR PERCEPTIONS THEY INFLUENCE THEIR DECISIONS. THESE ARE THE TRUE RULERS OF HARVARD.
 

Why is this blog so successful and so juicy with information about life at Harvard? And why are most contributors anonymous?

What are the reasons so many people choose to share their views about Harvard in a blog and anonymously? Is there not academic freedom at Harvard? What are these people affraid of? Why can't they develop their thoughts in a paper and publish it? Is this reflective of a culture of fear in the university?
 

As you say, The Game is in trouble...this from the Crimson:


Both sides were chanting the name of Harvard’s 27th president at The Game today, but with two very different meanings.

The Yale student section decided that teasing us about Larry Summers’ departure was more hurtful than their traditional “school on Monday” chant. (They’re right.)

But what they didn’t see was Larry himself. Near the start of the third quarter of the game, the Harvard student section spotted the not-quite-president-anymore standing on the sidelines, chatting with an older gentleman and peering at the game in progress. The first few rows of students chanted “Larry Summers!” and “Larry, Larry!”

In past years, Summers acknowledged the calls with a smile and a quick wave. This year, he couldn’t seem to bring himself to even turn to face the crowd, but every time he moved his head even slightly in our direction, the chants turned to cheers.
 

To Poster 8:57 PM:

Good analysis. Wonder what your thoughts are regarding the nomenklatura and the success it may have as H 'tries' to expand across the Charles.

My guess is that the political power structure 'south of the Charles' will not be dictated to a bunch of Cambridge commune-types regardless how successful they have been 'north of the Charles'.

Your thoughts, please.
 

I'm afraid Anon 8:16 and 8:32 have grossly overestimated the effectiveness, even competency, of the individual School administrations. I'm no expert on the central admin, but I can't imagine it's worse than what I see locally.
 

Who said anything about effective and competent?

They plant all the landmines and you pay them to be your Sherpa guide-no different than government agencies only in government the 'adminstrators' are referred to as 'hacks'; at Harvard they are called 'Dean'.
 

They may be ineffective and incompetent and expert in bureaucratic survival and maneuvering. All contributing to the uncontrolled growth in administrative expenditures in the University and to the balooning costs of higher education.
 

Harry Lewis is a visionary leader. He should be asked to chair an investigative committee on the abuses and blunders of Harvard management.

A starting point would be to contact all those Deans and senior administrators who were fired or left during the last five years. They probably know much and have much to contribute to understand the worst abuses.

Next for examination should be those Deans and senior administrators appointed directly by Larry Summers or under his watch. They are his legacies to the University and their performance should be scrutinized carefully.

Much could be learned from a rapid survey to all students, faculty and staff to assess how well each of the main units at Harvard is managed and where the problems are.

This study would be one of the best investments Harvard could make to exorcise the demons that have captured its soul.
 

And where does the investigation/hearing take place-Nuremberg or the Hauge?

Get over yourself-it is a university. All who have moved on will keep their mouths shut - bad form to throw stones.

Effecting managerial change will happen quietly and behind the scenes. Nothing positive is gained by dredging up past grievances, airing them once again in public and pointing fingers. Again, really bad form.

So, go back to work and produce something useful-the future depends on it...hurry.
 

The problems that afflict Harvard are too deep to leave any stone unturned in trying to understand what caused them and how to change things for the better. Light comes at a cost.
 

I don't disagree-but be a grown-up about it.

Think about for a minute-did Watergate really help (in the long term) the American political system; did the Clinton impeachment fiasco or this past election cycle do anything to "fix" the problem-my guess is that you will agree-no they did not; the conversations are much more shrill.

Look no further than the largest corporation on earth-the Vatican-and see what aggioranamento accomplished there. (Btw, the Catholic Church has much more money and real estate than Harvard will ever have.)

Harvard has a tendancy to practice "gotcha" politics and your recommendation, although well intentioned, perhaps is not the best medicine for the institution for the long run.