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Wednesday, January 17, 2024
  What about Alison Richard?
The Yale Daily News profiles Cambridge vice-chancellor Alison Richard, formerly Yale provost and professor. (Prince Phillip is technically the chancellor.)

Richard is, according to the Crimson, on the short list for Harvard's top job.

Several Yale provosts have left New Haven to run other leading universities in recent years. Richard’s predecessor, Judith Rodin, served as president of the University of Pennsylvania from 1994 until 2004. Susan Hockfield, Richard’s successor, now heads the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition, Richard Brodhead ’68 became president of Duke University in 2004 after 11 years as dean of Yale College.

But here's more suggestion that many top candidates don't want the Harvard job.

Friends say she is having more fun at Cambridge than she ever would at Harvard. Anthropology professor Richard Burger said he thinks Richard is enjoying leading her alma mater and the near-celebrity status that goes with the job. After a minor collision with a cow while biking to work one day, Richard was surprised to see an article about the incident in The Times of London, Burger said.

Richard might just be too good for Harvard, Burger said.

“They don’t really deserve Alison,” he said.

More fun at Cambridge than she ever would at Harvard...that's a hard thing to quantify, of course, but I think there's something to that idea. People still want to have fun in their jobs, at least some of the time, and Harvard's been a pretty joyless place lately. Moreover, its campus culture is resistant to fun, from top to bottom.

Whoever Harvard's next president is, she or he should try to change that.

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P.S. By the way, I have no idea if Elena Kagan's decision to sign a letter of protest against the Bush administration will help or hurt her presidential chances, or neither, but good for her for signing it. (Though to be sure, it's something of a no-brainer, and would have been more news if she hadn't signed it than if she did.)
 
Comments:
Does Alison have experience and credentials to deal with problems of this sort?

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=516639

The long legacy of a Presidency...
 
Why is it relevant to know whether Alison has dealt with lawsuits of Harvard faculty alleging discrimination?

Do candidates Kagan or Faust have such experience?
 
If she runs into a cow in the Enlgish countryside on her bicycle, perhaps Harvard Square isn't the best place for her anyway, as she might run into something much more damaging...

... and I'll let everyone here have fun with the punchline.
 
GSD Prof Alleges Gender Discrimination in Department...

What a mess Larry left behind at Harvard. It will take Alison or whoever else is appointed a decade to clean this up.

More lawsuits to come?
 
From an article in today's Crimson:

"Despite Harvard professors’ reputation for prioritizing their academic output over their teaching, a new national ranking of faculty productivity suggests that not all in Harvard’s Faculty are as prolific as otherwise presumed."

So, what did Larry and Steve do exactly all these years?
 
The headlines of the Crimson suggest that much is rotten at Harvard:

Students getting undressed in Lamont

Students running naked through the yard

Students admitted to Harvard because their parents give a lot of money

Professors no longer the most productive in the academy

Professors suing Harvard because of discrimination

Janitors complaining about Harvard as an employer

Staff complaining of discrimination

Did Larry Summers caused all of this or did things just take a turn for the worse...
 
The tradition of undergraduates engaging in the "Primal Scream" ritual predates Larry Summers, going back as far as the 1970's from what I understand. As for the escapades in Lamont, the issues of students being admitted admitted based on parental contributions, janitors complaining about Harvard, etc... these are all issues that predate Larry Summers, and will likely remain issues for whomever the next head of the University is.
 
Indeed, Larry's unique contribution was to institutionalize a culture of racism in the University.
 
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