Why does Larry Summers feel compelled to share his views on what he considered important while President? Moreover, why does he feel inclined to do this on some topics but not others? Perhaps he could also offer his views on what was going through his mind when he called Professor Cornel West to his office to discusse Professor West's scholarship... This and other actions of President Summers are much more important to understand than which events he was able or unable to attend.
 

Earlier this year Elisa New, Professor of English at Harvard, published an excellent essary review of two books on Jewish-Black relations

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20070212&s;=new021207
 

And your point is...?
 

In fact one could say it was (unnec)essary.
 

Summers, along with a couple of other professors at Harvard, has repeatedly misrepresented the university's position toward ROTC. Harvard's concerns about ROTC have to do with the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which violates the university's commitment not to discriminate against individuals on grounds of race, religion, or sexual orientation. The university's position on ROTC has nothing to do with anti-militarism or lack of support for the troops. It skews the truth to claim otherwise.
Please don't forget, also, that it was Derek Bok who found the current solution, which permits students to take ROTC on the MIT campus.
 

Not to be unkind, but the comment from 10:14 is, let's say, optimistic at best; uniformed and misleading at worst. The Harvard ROTC dilemma is much older than the Clinton-era 'don't ask, don't tell' policy. Admittedly, this policy now provides a fig leaf to the anti-military types on the faculty, but even if the 'gays in the military' question could somehow be amicably resolved, no serious observer could possibly believe that ROTC would somehow be welcomed on campus again. For proof, you merely need to turn to the discussions in FAS Faculty Meetings in the pre-'don't ask, don't tell' era.
 

There are some pro-military faculty who speak against ROTC because of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Read the minutes of more recent FAS meetings as well.
 

Perhaps, although that was not exactly what I was saying. May we, then, should the 'don't ask, don't tell' issue be miraculously resolved, look forward to the support of such faculty for the reintegration of ROTC into the College again?
 

Possibly. The big question is whether the "fig-leaf" theory you propose is accurate (i.e. that the faculty's argument that ROTC is discriminatory is merely a cover for a continuity of anti-militarism that began in the Vietnam era), or whether there is now a new generation of faculty members who are more upset about "don't ask, don't tell" than about ROTC as such. It would be good to see these two theories tested by a repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
 

I think it would be embarrassing, and SHOULD be embarrassing, for faculty to oppose ROTC's presence on campus in the absence of the gay-equality issue. Military careers are eminently respectable things and it would be simply dumb to protest US foreign policy by snubbing the military. To protest the idea of students entering immoral institutions, the faculty needs to do something about the College's relationship with the IOP. Seriously.

I think hard-core pacifism has faded from academia -- not that it should have, but it has. And even a hard-core pacifist needs to respect soldiers as a category.

SE
 

Standing Eagle,

Your are absolutely right. There is no reason at all to oppose the military and I am not aware than anyone at Harvard does. As the nation increases confronts the possibility of finding itself in several military theaters of operations simultaneously it is essential that we all support this institution. That includes excellent relations with universities, and also more inclusive policies in the military so that all who want to, or are needed to, can serve without other barriers than their ability to do so.
 

"As the nation [increasingly] confronts the possibility of finding itself in several military theaters of operations simultaneously it is essential that we all support this institution."

Non sequitur: one clause does not follow from the other.

Both are true, but independently of each other, in my opinion.

And of course all readers of this blog are very much entitled to my opinion!

SE
 

5:45, would that include letting recruiters onto campus for indefinite Iraq surges? I myself would think not, and assume you don't mean that.

ROTC is a different matter, and aging peaceniks, such as there are in FAS are as aware as any of the human damage caused by confusing opposition to war with hostility to the warrior. Without "don't ask don't tell" restoring ROTC would (and should) sail through an FAS vote, as it would have when the Verba committee last looked into it all a decade or so years ago.
 

in 1995, after "don't ask, don't tell" was instituted, Al Carnesdale (who was acting president at the time) issued new policy about the University's arrangements with ROTC: there would be no direct funding from Harvard for the ROTC fees charged by MIT; the commissioning ceremonies could continue to take place in Harvard Yard, but in such a way to avoid "signaling official university endorsement of all aspects of the ROTC eligibility policy set by the federal government". I, other concerned FAS members, and the gay and lesbian alumni community were assured that this meant no Harvard administrator would attend those ceremonies. We were also assured that ROTC would not be treated like an approved extracurricular, and so would not be listed in the Yearbook entries.

Summers reneged on these agreements, by attending the ceremonies and by ordering the Yearbook to print ROTC status. (He did not change the funding status.)

Summers always recognized that the issue was the exclusion of gay and lesbian students, but felt that the importance of showing support for the military trumped Harvard's nondiscrimination policies. He frequently voiced support for having ROTC on campus, despite DADT.
 

It is probably time to help the military re-examine the exclusion of gays and lesbians. For an institution that is otherwise more inclusive than most the discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is a policy that few in the military and in the nation support. Furthermore, circumstances are such that even those who support the policy recognize the need to expand recruitments.

The way to do this is not to distance Harvard from ROTC, but to engage in public discussion of the specific discriminatory barriers which need to be abolished.

Professor Thomas, recruiters on campus will soon be a necessity at Harvard and elsewhere and most people, including faculty, students and parents, will understand why.

It is not just surges in Iraq that will cause this, but likely conflict with Iran, Pakistan and North Korea, and elsewhere in the Middle East.
 

SE, your comment at 3.46pm is raising a red herring. You are attempting to stirr up a controversy where none exists. The present circumstances that cause all at Harvard to be supportive of the military are too serious for you to be trying to drum up a controversy over anything related to the military. So drop the subject and choose someone else to try to play up Summers against Faust.

If, as I suspect, you are Larry Summers or someone associated with him, you should be ashamed to be doing this.
 

To 8:25 p.m.: I'm puzzled by your reading of Standing Eagle's comment at 3:46 p.m. The opinion expressed there doesn't sound to me at all like that of Larry Summers. SE is simply saying that it would be appropriate for the faculty to support ROTC if the DADT policy is repealed. Summers believed it was okay to look aside from the DADT policy and to act as if the faculty had quite different reasons for its decision about ROTC.

My recollection of the discussion following the report of Sid Verba's committee is as Richard Thomas depicts it: the obstacle an ROTC presence on campus was and is the military's posture toward gays. Warren Goldfarb's post gives an excellent account of the history behind Harvard's current (as opposed to 1970s) reasons for rejecting an ROTC program on campus. I agree with Richard T. that the faculty's position on this matter will change if the military revises its policy on gays serving in the armed forces.
 

Oops, my message just now was addressed to 8:52 p.m. Sorry about the slip of the fingers.
 

8:45, I think you are talking about a draft, which I support, along with Congressman Rangel, not as a reality but as a means of scaring our parental citizenry and their children into doing what they should be doing anyway, opposing optional wars such as the one Bush put us in.

Better, however, or just as good for now, would be getting an administration that actually believes in diplomacy and cooperation with other nations.
 

OK, SE is NOT Larry Summers, 8:52. If you're going to guess...

RB, I request a thread on the identity of Standing Eagle. Squatting Egret, what do you think? Totally worthwhile, right?

;) SE, I remain, as ever, a fan.

Best regards,

P.W.E.
 

Also, I feel like one of the other reasons for the MIT branch of ROTC is that there are not enough Harvard students for their own chapter. Correct? That is, even if don't-ask-don't-tell were not an issue, and Harvard said sure, the military can be on our campus, Harvard undergrads would still have to go to MIT until the group reached quorum. Someone tell me if I'm wrong. Back to nesting or whatever I do this time of year.

Best regards,

P.W.E.
 

Put the following into the category of unverified second-hand information: Through one of my non-Harvard sources of information I was told that sometime in the not-too-distant past, Harvard went to Washington to explore (re)opening an ROTC unit directly at Harvard, rather than dealing indirectly through MIT. Harvard was told "Thanks, but no thanks" or something less printable. Interest is a two-way street.
 

Professor Thomas,

Your idealism brings you quite a way from reality:

"Better, however, or just as good for now, would be getting an administration that actually believes in diplomacy and cooperation with other nations."

Of course this would be preferable, but effective diplomacy takes skills and knowledge, not just beliefs or interest. The stock of american politicians, or diplomats, equipped to effectively engage with the rest of the world these days is quite limited. Think Paul Wolfowitz, not just in Irak, but at the World Bank. How do you think his behavior represents American interests, or values, to the rest of the world?

Sadly Harvard is doing too little, in spite of all the Summers' rethoric to the contrary, to change the situation for future generations. How many Harvard graduates do you know who speak, fluently, languages such as Farsi, Dari, Pushto, Mandarin Korean or Arabic? How many have deep knowledge and interest in the history, culture and politics of other countries? How many have sophisticated interpersonal and social skills to negotiate productively in cross-cultural settings? What percentage do they represent of the student body?

Without deep knowledge and advanced skills, how can they contribute to more enlightened diplomacy? How can they even factor in, as they vote, the importance of diplomacy as a form of engagement?

If you believe Summers you'd think Harvard is well on it's way to addressing these challenges with all the study abroad and so on. If you look closely, however, you see that in this area too Harvard is trailing other Universities, not leading.
 

7:14,

I don't see how the existence of Paul Wolfowitz precludes the existence and ongoing development of a well-trained diplomatic corps (although the election of Dick Cheney could, of course, preclude their being appointed). In the same way, the existence of Bradley Schlozman does not nullify the existence of Patrick Fitzgerald. A simple point but it gives me pleasure to make it.

It's a big country. There are many realities within it, and Prof. Thomas's is bigger than yours.

It is only the voting behaviors of the underinformed (by which I don't mean yourself) that bring us away from geopolitical reality, to place in charge of the country an incredibly narrow sliver of ideologues who believe in doing things like staffing extremely important roles at the Coalition Provisional Authority with junior Heritage Foundation applicants (no kidding). This is why the tenor of the work at the IOP is so important: it has the capacity to nullify tons of the important work being done at the K-School.

I had a student quite recently, a Republican, go down to Washington for an interview after doing quite a lot of K-School work. The interviewer was interested only in the lack of campaign experience on her resume. She was told, "At the upper levels you might be able to get away with having no Bush-Cheney '04 experience, but for early-career jobs here...." She will (I hope) be an outstanding civil servant, but she was rejected.

And THAT, my friends, is why I'm so upset about media laziness. Voting can be a kind of jury nullification: the excellence of knowledge production can be trumped by ignorance in high places (cf., for example, Regent University Law School graduate Monica Goodling; cf., also, if you like, Paul Wolfowitz's befuddlement at the ver IDEA that an occupying force would need to be BIGGER than an invading force [duh]).


SE

PS. As to my identity: no one paying regular attention can think I'm a huge fan of Pres. Summers, much less the man himself -- though my view on him is more nuanced than that of certain cognoscentish outsiders.
Suffice it to say (and by that I mean, suffice it not at all to say) that those who have spent any time with me in my most recent worklife at Harvard, if they are reading, will have zero trouble identifying me. There are plenty of know-it-alls around but one believes oneself nonetheless to be rara avis.
 

7:14: Study abroad has no language requirement or expectation attached to it, though many of us would have liked to have seen that, and said as much. So it does nothing or next to nothing systemically to help.

With Wolfowitz you're getting us to the "A reason not to vote for Hillary" post, and this is a reason to vote for her (against McCain, that is). In real democracies (Athens 406 BC) they dealt with poor military strategists in very different ways, even when those won the actual battle (Arginusae). In this connection the answer to my response to SE's parlour game the other day (bad dates in US history) was Sept. 20, 1899, birth date of Leo Strauss.
 

Richard,

I don't think you're going to have to worry about a vote for McCain...the way things are going, he's not going to last long. Which, frankly, I find kind of sad, because though I disagree with McCain on many things, he's a more honorable man than some of his fellow GOP candidates.
 

Why should the defeat of a politician with whom one disagrees (I would guess, Richard, that you disagree with McCain on virtually every significant national issue -- but that's just a guess -- maybe you think '"'"Al Qaeda"'" will follow us home from Iraq') be "sad"?

McCain's honor (and indeed, let us not forget that he is a war hero of the highest order) has had no cash value for the country these last few years. He threw in his lot with Bush in 2004, and allowed even his signature anti-torture measures to be completely gutted in a fake 'compromise' with the White House. He's a classic Faust. Moreover, his current foreign policy views are nutso on everything except Guantanamo.

Finding McCain's failure to become a leading contender for the presidency of the United States 'sad' only makes sense if you think politics is about personalities.

Is that what you think, Richard? Do you think that's appropriate in times that, if words could be multiplied by themselves, should be described as (parlous)^6 ?

Standing Gad-Eagle
 

I don't see things as starkly as you do, SE. Yes, McCain has made his mistakes, and yes, it was a terrible mistake for him to decide to suck up to Bush. Nonetheless, I think he is an honorable if imperfect man, and though I disagree with him about the war, I think he believes what he is saying, which is more than one can say about the other Republicans. For all of McCain's failings, he has devoted almost his entire adult life to public service. And so for him to end his career sliding into irrelevance, losing to Romney, Giuliani, and (please) Fred Thompson—yes, I think it's kind of sad.

Need I remind you of your own point, that the people discussed in this blog are not mere abstractions, but flesh and blood?
 

You seem to be conceding that politics is in large measure for you about personalities. I disagree. (Sidebar: my comment about the 'actual' Hoxbys was meant to distinguish them from underinformed caricatures of them, not to distinguish them from their public intellectual selves, which are up for scrutiny by the curious, albeit not democratic evaluation, which was why I posted BH's mini-vita, and why he posted it at Yale to begin with.)

Politicians traffic, for good or ill, in the flesh and blood of others (sidebar: this is something else not often true of literary scholars). Their job is to represent the people and the people's best interests, not to have feelings or be sympathetic figures. (Clinton's tragedy was his residual flesh-and-blood houndness.)

By extension, it is the job of journalists not to have feelings about politicians (including, if you are Chris Matthews, feelings associated with how Mitt Romney smells; apparently Matthews believes, and I'm not making this up, that Romney smells like a daddy). But of course you, Richard, are not a political journalist and I am willing to join you outside the public sphere in finding McCain's Faustian bargain and descent into irrelevance tragic, without for a split second wishing that it would turn out otherwise.

I agree that McCain is a tragic figure. --But political relevance is not to be had for the presentation of a compelling personal story. Indeed, the compelling personal stories of Alberto Gonzales (child of immigrants), Condi Rice (grandchild of sharecroppers, or some such, and piano prodigy), and G.W. Bush (wastrel alcoholic born again), appealing stories though they be, have been catastrophically distracting to to the US.

The only substantive praise you seem to have for McCain is that he is sincere. But so is Kucinich, Lyndon LaRouche, Timothy McVeigh, or whoever. Sincerity in pursuit of immoral policies is no virtue. And it's faint praise indeed -- a laughably low bar, and sad that it's worth mentioning -- to say that someone has qualities that are "more than one can say about the other Republicans" in this presidential race. Talk about lowering your standards for leader of the free world! The GOP is choosing a nominee from among a crop of weasels, a crew that has people who dislike Democrats salivating at the prospect of a *Mayor Bloomberg* candidacy. Think about that.

The standard of 'better than the Republican presidential candidates' has me trying to visualize a moral yardstick of negative extension....

By the way, how come none of us is peppering Prof. Goldfarb with questions? The fact that he's a reader of the blog is quite a little opportunity for our resident advocates for the importance of Harvard's institutional memory.

This week's full time mau-mauer,

Standing Eagle
 

Someone has to be the Republican nominee, and McCain is the only grown-up, with conscience and capacity for self-reflection and -correction, in the bunch. Chuck Hagel would be another, but he's a no-hoper, as deep down he knows. It is quite possible the Democrats will nominate, as they usually do, a weak, polarizing or otherwise unsuitable candidate for a *national* election. I don't think Hillary can win, and as I said yesterday, it's easy for me to not vote for her purely based on my feeling that dynastic politics *needs to be stopped now*, before we have a 6th straight term of either a Bush or Clinton.

So if it's Hillary vs. McCain, I'll vote for McCain--for his intelligence, honor, compassion, principles (many of which, as an old-fashioned Euro-style social democrat, I disagree with), understanding of history and so on. I still don't know what Hillary's true convictions are, other than that she believes the best thing is for her to be in charge, and deal with problems then. Talk about personality politics!

Did RT say something the other day about John Edwards? Surely a hallucination on my part. Why not Obama? We should all be moving his way...
 

Nice swipe at the IOP on Saturday, Standing Eagle.

Did you just not get tickets to some big speaker, or do you really think that little corner of JFK-land puts undergrads' immortal souls in danger?
 

The latter.
 

Nice answer. My opinion of you has gone up, SE. As a recovering IOP-holic, I'd be interested in why you think it's so dangerous.
 

eadw,

Posts like these are to me like a red flag to a bull. I start this reply at 4:04.

I don't disagree that McCain is the only grownup in the GOP field. But recent events contradict your picture of him.

eadw says s/he will vote for "McCain--for his intelligence, honor, compassion, principles (many of which, as an old-fashioned Euro-style social democrat, I disagree with), understanding of history and so on"



Intelligence?

"McCain... went to a Baghdad market, surrounded himself with 100 soldiers, three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships, and then told reporters that he was able to walk freely in Iraq's capital.

Tim Russert asked him about this on Meet the Press this morning. McCain responded:

"I'll be glad to go back to that market -- with or without military protection and Humvees, etc."

It's hard to believe anyone will be impressed by this misplaced bravado, but it's worth remembering that the day after McCain took his heavily-protected stroll, 21 Shia market were ambushed, bound, and shot from the same market."

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/014108.php



Honor?

"McCain: Kerry Fair Game for Questioning"
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/8/30/85953.shtml
McCain said it was fair to criticize Kerry’s leadership of Vietnam veterans who opposed the war three decades ago. As he has before, he said on CBS’s “Early Show” that the ads were “dishonest and dishonorable.” But “what John Kerry did after the war is very legitimate political discussion,” he said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5876187/



"McCain aides disclosed on December 7 that he had tapped Nelson to serve as his campaign manager for his presumed bid for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008.... Most recently, Nelson was responsible for a television advertisement attacking Senate candidate Rep. Harold Ford Jr. that many criticized as racist. Last year, the indictments of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) on campaign finance-related charges alleged that Nelson was the conduit for money transferred through the Republican National Committee (RNC) between DeLay's political action committee and Republican Texas House of Representatives candidates. Questions have also been raised regarding his knowledge of the 2002 New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal. Moreover, Nelson's consulting firm employs a former adviser to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, whose 2004 campaign tactics McCain himself called "dishonest and dishonorable." "

http://mediamatters.org/items/200612130001
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/007973.php


"[McCain headed] the committee, Indian Affairs, with jurisdiction over the juiciest political finance scandal since Watergate [i.e., Abramoff]. ... At the very moment when McCain could have pulled the trigger, he let Norquist walk away. Some mildly damaging e-mails were released by McCain's committee, but the most tantalizing leads were never pursued. McCain gave up his fight for information about Norquist's donors, and Norquist himself was never called to testify.

McCain's balk fits into a broader pattern of forgiveness. Most of the grudges left over from the Bush-McCain wars have thawed, the mutual contempt gradually giving way to mutual self-interest. "

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20060320&s;=lizza032006


Compassion?

Notice the tone of never regretting anything:

"Today on MSNBC, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) claimed that he knew the Iraq war was “probably going to be long and hard and tough,” and that he was “sorry” for those who voted for the war believing it would be “some kind of an easy task.” “Maybe they didn’t know what they were voting for,” McCain said.

In fact, during the run-up to war in 2002 and 2003, McCain repeatedly described the prospects of war in the rosiest terms."
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/01/04/mccain-iraq-easy/

"Senator John McCain said that the buildup of American forces in Iraq represented the only viable option to avoid failure in Iraq and that he had yet to identify an effective fallback if the current strategy failed....
“I am not guaranteeing that this succeeds,” said Mr. McCain, who has long argued that additional troops were needed. “I am just saying that I think it can. I believe it has a good shot.” "
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/us/politics/15mccain.html?ex=1334376000&en;=ed267e1b6172cfe6&ei;=5124&partner;=digg&exprod;=digg

Understanding of history?

Look at the incoherence:


"“What I cannot do is ask (a U.S. soldier) to return to Iraq, to risk life and limb, so that we might delay our defeat for a few months or a year,” McCain said in a Nov. 16 address."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15933071/

"McCain claimed he has “bitterly disagreed” with the “failed strategy” for more than three years. In fact, here’s what he said approximately a year ago: “I think the situation on the ground is going to improve. I do think that progress is being made in a lot of Iraq. Overall, I think a year from now, we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course. If I thought we weren’t making progress, I’d be despondent.” "

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2007/02/post_29.php


" Mr. McCain says he rarely thinks about his time in Vietnam. “It’s just a part of my life that’s over,” he said recently.

But Mark Salter, Mr. McCain’s aide and co-author, said the senator’s year studying the war, his growing up in a military family and his 20 years on the Senate Armed Services Committee shaped his view that “when you go to war, you have to be fully committed to doing everything necessary to win it.”

“He very much believes you make decisions about force levels to support a strategy — and not the other way around,” Mr. Salter said of Mr. McCain, who voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq but criticized the war’s strategy and execution.

Mr. McCain’s beliefs about the responsibilities of those in command come in part from his sense that civilian and military leaders “failed to speak up when they knew their tactics and strategy were wrong” in Vietnam, Mr. Salter said.

Robert Timberg, a former marine who fought in Vietnam and has written two books about Mr. McCain, said the senator’s position on how to proceed in Iraq was simple: He believes that the United States cannot afford to lose; if it does, the damage will be felt for years.

In response to the criticism that a protracted war is “breaking the Army,” Mr. Salter said Mr. McCain “answers as an officer in the Vietnam era: He says the only thing worse than an exhausted or broken Army is a defeated Army.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/washington/18vietnam.html?ex=1182830400&en;=ce767ccc00e2aa12&ei;=5070

January:

" "There are two keys to any surge of U.S. troops," he said at a forum at the American Enterprise Institute. "To be of value, the surge must be substantial and it must be sustained."

Does the new policy meet those tests? McCain offers an equivocal answer. He said he has been assured by Army Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the president's choice to take over command in Iraq, that 20,000 additional troops should be enough, but that if they are not, Petraeus can ask Bush for more."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/12/AR2007011202220_2.html


"Mr. McCain embarked on a high-profile television tour announcing his support for Mr. Bush’s move. In an interview, he said he would have preferred that the White House send in even more troops..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/14/us/politics/14elect.html?pagewanted=1&ei;=5094&en;=5b6b8213a4753931&hp;&ex;=1168837200&partner;=homepage


Principles?

"These torture techniques will enjoy greater legal protection under the "compromise" legislation reached by the leaders of America's ruling party."
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/09/22/torture_compromise/index.html


"It only takes 30 seconds or so to see that the Senators have capitulated entirely, that the U.S. will hereafter violate the Geneva Conventions by engaging in Cold Cell, Long Time Standing, etc., and that there will be very little pretense about it. In addition to the elimination of habeas rights in section 6, the bill would delegate to *the President* [alone] the authority to interpret "the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions"
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/09/senators-snatch-defeat-from-jaws-of.html
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/09/three-of-most-significant-problems.html

And in general in term of policy steadfastness: here's a good compendium of "McCain flip-flops," documented Steve Benen.
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/9776.html


Google is my friend.....

And it will be a very sad scenario indeed in which I think one should vote for John McCain on the grounds that his personality shows more consistency and strength than that of his opponent. And an even bleaker one in which I find that I agree with him more than his opponent in a general election.

Okay, that did take rather a long time, I admit it. Football season can't come too soon to help my Sunday afternoons.

SE
 

05er,

After that last effort I'm sure you'll understand if I demur on the topic of the IOP for now. I'm going to go walk my dog(s), ferret(s), or lemur.

For now let it suffice to say that the IOP in some of its aspects encourages students to treat policy as a means to the end of social interaction, networking, and skill-set building, rather than as something about which many views are simply WRONG. It fears the appearance of 'partisanship' so much that it discourages students from trying to persuade each other to change their views. (Republican and Democrat tend to be considered baseline 'identities,' arbitrarily assigned and immutable, like teams in a camp Color War.) And it does far too little to teach students to detect and scorn statements that are simply LIES.

Examples available upon request. Perhaps midweek.

With the promise of having a leg to stand on, but without yet having produced even a femur,

SE

(did I miss any 'emur' words?)
 

SE,

Perhaps you should consider becoming a baseball fan.

I do want to take you up on one point at least. I think you are unfair to McCain when he says that Kerry's political activity on returning home from the war in Vietnam is a legitimate subject for debate. The two men took a very different tack after returning. McCain, who had been a POW for 5 1/2 years, tortured for three of them, came home feeling good about the United States.

"Now that I'm back, I find a lot of hand-wringing about this country," he said after his return. "I don't buy that. I think America today is a better country the one I left nearly six years ago.

"...I think America is a better country now because we have been through a sort of purging process, a reevaluation of ourselves. Now I see more of an appreciation of our way of life. ...I hear new values being stressed—the concern for environment is a case in point."

(The quote comes from the Library of America's collection of Vietnam reporting, which I've been reading.)

Now, you can disagree with McCain all you want, but he obviously disagreed with Kerry at the time and still does, and I'm not sure why it's inappropriate to point that out and say it's a legitimate issue for discussion. I don't see why questioning Kerry's protests—not his right to protest, but the views he expressed—is somehow dishonorable.
 

But Kerry wasn't 'wringing his hands' about the country, he was an activist working to end the war.

By the time McCain got back, in 1973, the war was basically over. Apples and oranges.

The game all the time in 2004 was to pretend Kerry was part of a "Blame America First" crowd. But he was focused on ending the war, and there was work to be done on that single matter. There's no colorable claim that that makes him less patriotic, although the quote you (revealingly) chose from McCain, about hand-wringing, seems to imply precisely that idea about Kerry.

There are arguments you can make that there should have been no public dissent from the effort of winning the Vietnam War. But no one is willing to make them out loud, and for good reason.

I don't disagree that public activities are legitimate topics, but McCain was kidding himself if he thought that that's what any of these Swift-Boat types wanted to talk about. They were interested in casting Kerry as a hippy (and a coward), when his actions both during and after his active duty pointed in the opposite direction.

What might be the substantive thing that the GOP might have wanted the nation in 2004 to discuss about Kerry's antiwar activism? There was none. McCain was sending a telegraph that he had done all he was going to do to oppose the Swift Boaters (which, to be fair, wasn't nothing).

Now there are deep currents here too, which I won't plumb except to point out that in late 2006 (or so), on visiting Vietnam, when Pres. Bush was asked about the lessons of that war, his answer was insane: "We'll win unless we quit."

Your President of the United States, ladies and gentlemen.

McCain supports *his* war policy. Nuff said.

SE
 

"he obviously disagreed with Kerry at the time"

I don't think your evidence supports this claim. McCain is saying in 1973 or 74 that the country can learn from Vietnam, not that it should never have left.

SE
 

Professor Thomas, I fully agree with your comment at 9.42am. Study abroad at Harvard is a sham, it has not language requirement and no intellectual requirement either. It is essentially academic tourism. You'd think a place like Harvard would have conducted an evaluation of what those who participate in study abroad have gained from it, no?
 

From the Gazette of Feb 2006

"Many more students are studying or working abroad during their undergraduate years. The number of students who study abroad as part of their college experience has more than doubled, from 164 in 2001-02 to 451 in 2004-05. A comparable number do research, internships, or volunteer work abroad - a total of 482 in the summer of 2005. Thus, over half of Harvard undergraduates are choosing to pursue a significant international experience as part of their Harvard education."

http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/daily/2006/02/21-summers.html
 

"...an evaluation of what those who participate in study abroad have gained from it, no?"

No.
 

SE is right, 9:24, and exit interviews are all too rare in such matters, but you are right on study abroad linkage with language study/expectation. Btw, I have a daughter who just got back from junior spring (fall actually, from RSA focalization) in Cape Town, and another earlier did same in Madrid, and I paid for both!

Here's what I wrote a few years ago, after phase I of the curricular review had imploded (that was the "Harvard College Course" absurdity). It used to be on a Harvard website (new Red Book I think it was called, but I can't locate it):

"Our students have eight semesters in college and many of them, even most in my view, may well continue to be best served by spending all eight in Cambridge (or Allston). If reason and wisdom, not location, are what matter, says the poet Horace, then “they change their climate and not their mind who go running across the sea” (caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt). The best resources for our students are to be found in the faculty, and in the libraries, labs and houses at Harvard. There should be no impediment to study abroad, and students should be given active encouragement, and, more importantly, financial support to pursue it. It should not in my view become anything like a requirement."

There was prevalent a couple of years ago a notion that dropping in for a J-term (from which God save us!), or mini-summer course, to Delhi or Beijing will educate our students on the intricacies of globalization, etc. Or else our students will see how hard it is to get into ANY university in India, how hard their workers work, etc., and will be terrified into working harder. Or something like that.

I'm not against study abroad, and am often for it, but agree with 9:24, that we need to explore a little more what we mean when we push it. My guess is the students who get most out of it go having acquired at least a smattering of the target language
 

"Our students have eight semesters in college and many of them, even most in my view, may well continue to be best served by spending all eight in Cambridge."

Hear, hear.
 

Standing Eagle said...
05er,

. . .

For now let it suffice to say that the IOP in some of its aspects encourages students to treat policy as a means to the end of social interaction, networking, and skill-set building, rather than as something about which many views are simply WRONG. It fears the appearance of 'partisanship' so much that it discourages students from trying to persuade each other to change their views. (Republican and Democrat tend to be considered baseline 'identities,' arbitrarily assigned and immutable, like teams in a camp Color War.) And it does far too little to teach students to detect and scorn statements that are simply LIES.

Examples available upon request. Perhaps midweek.

Very interesting, SE. I look forward to a few midweek examples.
 

professor wants to see exit interviews to evaluate study abroad. how about exit interviews to evaluate classes at harvard--the faculty has voted down mandatory evaluation of classes twice even while insisting it for their teaching fellows. Does anyone think study abroad will do as badly as the faculty does on student satisfaction surveys/