Opening Doors Congratulations to Nicole Parent, who has just become the first female president of the Harvard Club of New York.

I know Nicole slightly, and she is a really smart, impressive, formidable and likable woman. She'll be great.

“The Harvard Club has been ready for a female president for a long time, and in no way do I feel like a token,” she says. “I don’t look at Harvard, or at being affiliated with the Harvard Club, in any way as snooty; the challenge is to respect the club’s tradition while broadening the membership to make it resemble Harvard itself.” Which is? “Diversity at its best, racially, socioeconomically, gender-wise, you name it.”

I would add diversity of thought to that list; I resigned from the Harvard Club after its board refused to host a reading or discussion of Harvard Rules, because, they claimed, it was critical of Harvard.

(This was the second time this happened: the Harvard Book Store refused to host a reading because it feared jeopardizing its relationship with the university. So much for the virtue of independent bookstores.)

That was not, I thought, the behavior of a confident club associated with a confident university, but of a place anxious about its status and willing to act in ways contrary to the spirit of a university to try to preserve it.

But with Nicole as its president, the club is sure to change for the better....  ¶ 11:08 AM