Shots In The Dark
Great Bird of Truth
Like me, Andrew Furman is psyched about the discovery of an ivory-billed woodpecker in the swamps of Arkansas. Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, he waxes eloquent about the ornithological implications. But he's most struck by the fact that a group of seven scientists, naturalists and researchers kept the bird's existence secret for almost a year until they published their news on April 28th. To him, such collegiality and self-selecting isolation from the capitalistic rat race are vanishing from university campuses.
He writes: " I fear that we are increasingly deaf to such wisdom, as academies of higher learning adhere more and more to corporate models of productivity and accountability, and as knowledge is reduced to a mere commodity. Students, the consumers in the equation, pay for knowledge, and professors are expected to provide it. My hope is that the childlike ebullience of certain oddball professors out and about on our campuses Thursday morning, April 28, might serve as a corrective to that unfortunate view. For at our best, we are all -- students and professors alike -- ardent seekers of knowledge, knowing all the while that the ivory-billed, though we may glimpse its splendor, will remain forever elusive."
The ivory-billed woodpecker as a metaphor for the quest for knowledge. Deep! I like it. Next, someone's going to find a white whale.
Showtime: Part of the Left-Wing Media Conspiracy
According to me, anyway. Here's my piece about why Showtime is the anti-Bush channel, written for the website TomPaine.com.
What Would Tom Friedman Say?*
In India, five of six winners of a prestigious scholarship are female scientists.
Telegraph of India columnist Ayswaria Venugop writes, "Not that the achievement would change either Summers’s opinion — although the gentleman did say sorry — or the “innate differences” between the sexes that he talks of, but it surely is indication that, like in several other areas, women are slowly breaking through the scientific glass ceiling."
The achievements of women in science in non-American cultures has always been one of the most obvious pieces of circumstantial evidence against Summers' women-in-science theory. Ironic that Summers, who is a great proponent of students traveling overseas, would not have noticed that female scientists are not always discriminated against elsewhere as they are in this country.
*New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, who has traveled to India many times, is a great friend of Larry Summers.
Darwin and Larry Summers
A curious piece in Canada's National Post argues that the attacks on Darwin and the criticism of Larry Summers are both religiously based, just from different ends of the political spectrum.
"Intelligent Design is linked with the 'fundamentalist right,' while Mr. Summers came under attack from the 'egalitarian' left. In fact, both are essentially religious positions," writes columnist John Foster.
How's that again?
Well, "the attack on Mr. Summers... seems to come from evangelical academics who are uneasy with the implications of neo-Darwinism for their socialist-inspired faith in an egalitarian society of equal results rather than equal opportunities."
Like many arguments in support of Summers, this one rests on a caricature of the Harvard faculty—its intellectual composition and its motives. I'd argue that this kind of caricature has been deeply damaging to Harvard.
It's certainly not Summers' fault (and, in fact, he may be sympathetic to it, particularly now). But as I've written before, a ringing defense of the faculty coming from the Harvard president would be more than appropriate—it would go a long way towards winning support from that constituency.
Plenty of Men are Morons, Too
Just so you know that I'm equal-opportunity cranky.
And By the Way
Don't you just love that line from Fields: "If gays were warmly embraced....."
I'm not sure if that's Freudian, but it's definitely some kind of slip.
Some Women are Morons, Part II
In today's Washington Times, Suzanne Fields writes what must be one of the stupidest Memorial Day columns to mar the pages of an American newspaper.
"War is hell," she begins.
(Apparently no one has ever said that before.)
After describing a trip she made to see wounded veterans—in the future, all trips by newspaper columnists to see wounded veterans should be off the record, so that they can't milk the experience of visiting those poor guys for a lousy newspaper column—Fields then goes on lambaste Ivy League colleges for denying ROTC the right to recruit on campus.
Those colleges don't like the military's discrimination against gays, she says. "But that's simply a smokescreen; if gays were warmly embraced other reasons would be quickly found."
Pardon my French, but that's just bullshit. If the military lifted its ban on gays, sure, you might have a few 1960s-stragglers who'd continue to protest the military's presence on campus. But the vast majority of students and professors would be happy to have ROTC back. Even if it's only because of the awkwardness of appearing anti-military at a time when everyone wants to "support our troops."
(Which we should do, of course...by doing things like providing them with the armored Hummers they need, paying them decently, and not letting them be ripped off by sleazy insurers preying on their fears before they go to Iraq.)
Discrimination against gays is something these universities take seriously, even if Fields doesn't.
But here's my favorite part of Fields' column:
"Patriotism remains a tough sell on some of our most 'prestigious' campuses. Yale and Brown, along with Harvard and Columbia, have no ROTC program. Perhaps it's tradition. Though New England took pride in its abolitionist sentiment, far fewer Harvard students rushed to enlist than their Confederate counterparts on Southern campuses when war broke out between the state...."
I certainly agree that Harvard students should do their part in wartime, and that it's important for Harvard that it feels the trauma of war just like any other part of America.
But to say that Southern slaveholders who rushed to war to fight for slavery were greater "patriots" than Harvard students were.... Well, that suggests that Fields' understanding of history is as silly as her interpretation of current events. After all, given that Harvard volunteers were fighting for the Union and Southern men were fighting to secede from it, then by definition, every Harvard soldier was a patriot, and every rebel was...not.
The Ethicist, As It Should Be
One of my favorite columns in the New York Times Magazine is "The Ethicist," by Randy Cohen. I don't know who Randy Cohen is and I've never really understood who made him Mr. Ethics—well, obviously, the Times did—but
why anyone made him Mr. Ethics is what I really mean.
Anyway, I love "The Ethicist" because it gets my blood boiling. Every week I read it and think what a complete drag life would be if everyone acted the way that Randy Cohen suggests. (Like Canada.) Sometimes he's just wrong. Other times he's probably right, but there's something so goody-goody about his advice—maybe it's the schoolmarm-ish way he delivers it—that you want to go out and do the exact opposite of what Cohen recommends.
With that in mind, herewith the first in a series: Providing alternative answers to the questions people write to the Ethicist. Because, after all, it's not like the Times has a monopoly on ethics.
Today Steven Tanzer from Bayside, New York, writes about his son, who wrote an essay for his school's essay contest, which had a $750 prize. "After the deadline, the school announced that because only one student had applied for the scholarship, it was extending the deadline." The guy's son protested, as one might. Tanzner asks: "Was it ethical to extend the deadline?"
Cohen's answer: Your son "doesn't have much of a case." He bases this conclusion on the premise that the school was awarding the prize to the "best" essay, which implies more than one—"good, better, best," Cohen says. So the school was right.
Wrong!
The student fulfilled the stated terms of the contest. His essay, relative to the other entries, was not only the best; it was good compared to all the others, and it was better than all the others. It's not his fault that the other kids were too busy checking out Internet porn to bother scratching a few hundred words on a sheet of notebook paper.
In denying him the money, the school is changing the terms of a contract after the fact. That's like scheduling an exam for Wednesday and then giving it on Tuesday.
If the school doesn't pay up pronto, the kid should sue, making the point that even school administrators ought to keep their word—a valuable lesson for school administrators. The suit would attract lots of national publicity, and the kid would one day become a great defender of the rights of the oppressed.
Now, isn't that a better outcome than Cohen's, in which the school's sleazy behavior goes unpunished and a little boy learns that you'll never make any money writing?
Surely We Have Women Who Are Idiots
Did you see this line blaring out from the cover of yesterday's New York Times Book Review?
"Surely we women have a gene—in addition to those saucy, but ill-mannered, hormones—for theatrics, so frequently do they puncture our inner lives and decorate our outer ones in operatic robes."
It's from a review by someone named Toni Bentley of a Mary Wollstonecraft biography.
Now, I know that Bentley is trying to write as pretentiously as she can—those saucy, but ill-mannered, hormones!—but still.....
Do women really need another woman saying that they have a gene for theatrics?
There are moments when I feel sorry for Larry Summers. Imagine if he—or any other man in a public position—had made such a remark?
Go Yanks!
I'll be out of town for a couple days over the holiday weekend, so posts may be scarce. But don't forget: the Report Card is coming soon! And there's still time to vote. Give your grade to President Summers at the end of his first four years by e-mailing me (on background) at
[email protected].
Meantime, the Yanks and the BoSox play three big games, staring with Randy Johnson vs. Tim Wakefield. The Yanks are now in second place, the Sox in 4th. My prediction: They will both move up one by the end of the season. Let's hope it starts tonight! (Sorry, Harvard readers....)
Perhaps He'd Already Had A Few
Don't you love it when corporate executives reveal just how out of touch they are?
At a media conference yesterday, Martin Nisholz, president of New York Times Digital, defended his company's decision to start charging $50 for online access to the Times' archives and its columnists.
"There comes a point at which you have to say, 'Where is the value equation?' when you are talking about online media," Nisenhold said. As I've suggested before, when people start using language like "value equation," you know they're trying to sugarcoat something they'd find hard to defend in plain language.
He then added: "For the cost of roughly two and a half martinis, you can have access to the entire archives."
Hmmm...I don't know about you, but I'm not throwing back $20 martinis. If Nisholz is, the Times is either a) paying him too much, or b) needs to start paying attention to his expense account.
But what the paper really needs to consider is how that kind of "let them drink martinis" attitude reflects a class-based view of the electronic world...and whether such a dismissive attitude towards the vast majority of Americans really serves the paper well.
United Gets Back to Me
Regular readers will remember that some weeks ago I traveled to Portland, Oregon, to talk about Harvard Rules, and subsequently bitched and moaned about the misery of flying on United Airlines. So great was my frustration over the appalling customer service that I actually took the trouble of e-mailing United, whose website promises a response to customer complaints within 24 hours.
Well...so United was off by about 400-500 hours. Perhaps they have a lot of complaints.
Anyway, I post below the response. The deconstructionists amongst you will note that it doesn't actually address any of the specific complaints I had; that, in fact, it appears to be a generic response similar to the ones politicians send out when you write them about your opinion on a particular issue. Which is to say, it's meaningless. It's even hard to tell whether this letter is in response to a complaint or a compliment.
As I said before, no wonder United is bankrupt.
Here goes:
<
Thank you for contacting us. I appreciate the opportunity to respond.
There is much about air travel that has changed. Airport and aircraft
security is one very visible change and while procedures can be frustrating at
times, they help keep us safe. So we value your patience and support.
Other less visible changes, from adjusted timing for passenger check-in and
flight departures to recent ticket and fare policy changes, focus on our being
a dependable airline for you. Because passenger safety and well being are our
first priority, some travel delays are unavoidable. But new procedures help
minimize other delays and make travel more reliable. For instance, lobby
check-in times were adjusted to allow passengers and their bags more time to
reach their gates. And flight connection times were expanded in many cases.
To do a better job communicating with our customers and focus on your needs
and expectations, we have improved our training processes and updated our
technologies. Employee service training elements and tools have also been
enhanced to best serve you.
To make your travel reliable and easy, laser-based bag scanning technology is
used to electronically match bags to passengers. Baggage delivery has
significantly improved as a result. United EasyCheck-In and EasyInfo speed
you through the airport. These services provide automated check-in
convenience and real-time flight detail.
We're striving to make air travel as smooth and comfortable as possible. I do
understand that there is more work to be done and I sincerely thank you for
your feedback. Please continue to send us your comments.
Sincerely,
Carol Spitelli
Customer Relations>>
What Women Apparently Don't Want
...is to be patronized by the New York Times. That column by John Tierney is getting blasted all over the Internet. It's not just the content of Tierney's column (see below). It's that there's something particularly irritating about having men draw conclusions about the nature of women on the New York Times op-ed page...when there are no women writing on that page.
For the same reason, Matt Miller's column all about his wife's theories on corporate America is annoying. If Miller's wife is so smart, how come she's not writing for the Times op-ed page?
How could the Times not have realized what a huge mistake it was making in hiring Miller as the replacement for Maureen Dowd, the sole female columnist at the Times op-ed page, while she's on book leave?
How, in this day and age, can you not have one—we're not talking a lot here, folks, just one—female columnist at the Times?
And this at the same time that the Times is asking its readers—male and female—to pony up $50 to read its columnists online....
The Government's Watch List
As the Chronicle of Higher Education reports, the House of Representatives has just voted to compile a list of colleges and universities which ban military recruiting.
There's only one possible reason for such a list: to intimidate those institutions. It's a prelude to cutting off whatever federal funding they may receive, should the Supreme Court rule that the government has the right to do so.
Republicans used to consider themselves the party of small government, even though that identity started to shift around 1994, when the GOP took control of the House. In the realm of education, it's remarkable just how much the Republican Party is using federal power to try to shape the content and diminish the autonomy of institutions of higher learning. Surely this would be an issue that the Harvard president should address? It doesn't have to be an attack on the GOP; picking such a fight wouldn't make much sense. But how about a ringing affirmation of the independence of the university from outside pressures?
Quoting Myself, Cont'd.
The Times reports that the heads of various journalism schools—and Alex Jones, from the Kennedy School at Harvard—are banding together to save journalism. (Well, kind of.) It's an interesting development, but one that may miss the larger problem: stupid people.
My thoughts about this here, from the Huffington Post.
Steroids? No, Couldn't Be Steroids
Detroit Tigers catcher Ivan Rodriguez, whom Jose Canseco has accused of using steroids, has dropped from 215 pounds last season to 187 this season. "He does a lot of sprints," explained one of his teammates. Rodriguez also said he's cut down on fattening foods and late-night meals.
Coincidentally, Rodriguez's batting average has dropped from about .330 to around .280.
It's pretty hard not to conclude that Rodriguez is another example of a player who's stopped taking steroids because of the league's new testing regimen. I mean, let's face it—anyone who's tried to lose weight knows that you don't lose 30 pounds by running a few windsprints and cutting back on the chicken wings.
To the best of my knowledge, Jason Giambi is the only player who's admitted to using steroids. And he's being pilloried for that admission. Where's the logic in that?
The Satire Problem, Cont'd.
Ben Atherton-Zeman, writing in the MetroWest Daily News, writes a humor column about what would happpen if the state of Massachusetts banned the letter "r." (Get it? It's a joke about Boston accents.)
Yes, you're right—it's not very funny.
I mention it only as continuing proof of how the women-in-science controversy continues to make Larry Summers an object of satire, even after his commitment to spend $50 million to address the issue.
Atherton-Zeman writes this: "We're losing both "R"s in Hahvahd," Summers complained during a recent interview. "What will we do with all those sweatshirts with the old spelling on them?" He was later heard to say, "Women in particular will have a hard time with the new spelling -- I think spelling's just a little harder for them."
Someone at the Kennedy School, or maybe the business school, really ought to do a case study
on how this incident has played out in the media and how one particular gaffe has had such a profound effect upon an individual's public image.
So That Would Be a No?
The Cincinnati Post doesn't think much of the $50 million, either.
In an editorial in today's paper, the Post says this:
"This farcical soap opera and shakedown sum up the tyranny that taints higher education today. Academic freedom to speak one's mind is limited, apparently, to views deemed acceptable by the self-anointed commissars of political correctness. Those who don't toe the party line must pay.
Owing to his beneficence and raised consciousness, Summers may yet hold onto his job - but academia, if it wastes money in a similar fashion as Harvard, will suffer."
I guess the Post doesn't think much of academia, women's lib,
or the $50 million, now that I think about it. Apparently living in Cincinnati makes you grumpy.
Grading the President! Part 2
Thanks for all the e-mails so far, and keep 'em coming to
[email protected]. (They're all on background, of course.)
This is going to be a very interesting report card....
Meanwhile, Down South at Columbia
Lee Bollinger undergoes a trip to the dentist's office, in the form of a New York Times profile that posits significant discontent with his leadership at Columbia.
"In one of many telling moments, Ann Douglas, an English professor, described a recent book party attended by many faculty members, where 'everyone was saying disparaging things about Bollinger and no one was rising to his defense.'"
Sound familiar?
In fact, much of the article does sound eerily similar to events at Harvard this past semester. Which makes me draw a few conclusions:
1) Academics are cranky and don't like change.
2) Presidents hired with a mandate to change will provoke friction, inevitably.
3) Professors in the humanities, whether they realize it or not, are experiencing a profound sense of alienation and, possibly, irrelevance, as new university presidents shift the focus of their universities to the sciences and to solving the problems of the world.
4) If Columbia professors have problems with Lee Bollinger, they'd have Larry Summers' head on a spike by now.
Because there are big differences between Bollinger and Summers, too. First, the level of discontent is not nearly as high at Columbia as at Harvard. Second, Bollinger had to deal with an extremely tricky controversy in the Middle Eastern studies department that was not of his own making, and he navigated through it reasonably well.
And perhaps most important is Bollinger's attitude towards dissent.
"'I'm just not troubled by the level of disagreement and debate,' he said recently, during an interview in his expansive office on the second floor of Low Library, adorned with bright geometric paintings by Josef Albers. 'It's debate and it's healthy.'"
He's also pretty self-deprecatory. "'It would be nice if I was smarter, and in 48 hours could have grasped everything,' added Mr. Bollinger, who was a clerk for Warren E. Burger, the chief justice of the United States. 'But I'm not. And I still don't grasp everything.'"
It's impossible to judge from outside just how sincere Bollinger is about these remarks, of course. But can one imagine Larry Summers saying something as modest as "It would be nice if I were smarter and could grasp everything"?
Part of what caused the women-in-science controversy is that Summers does believe that in 48 hours he can grasp everything....
A Crimson Columnist's Conclusions
Stephen W. Stromberg does a year-end wrap-up in his column today.
Stromberg discusses a political science class he's finishing that discusses transitions from feudalism to absolutism, and remarks, "The logic of absolutist state-building basically came down to this: put one guy in charge and generate a hierarchy of technocrats, each with his or her own specialized turf, below the leader. That’s basically what has been happening at Harvard over the last four years."
He also goes on to chastise Harvard students for complaining too much and faults the curricular review as vague and vision-less.
Quite an interesting column, actually, and more constructive than I'm making it sound.
The $50 Million, cont'd.
Rocky Mountain News columnist Vincent Carroll isn't too happy about Larry Summers' decision to spend $50 million on diversity, as he writes in this colum item, "As usual, make the students pay."
Key graf: "It's bad enough that Harvard President Lawrence Summers has spent most of this year backtracking and groveling, by turns, for musing about whether innate aptitude explains in part the ratio of men and women in math and science careers. Now he has embraced reforms that include punishing students who had nothing to do with his remarks and who might not agree with them."
Carroll particularly doesn't like the fact that graduate students in science will be compelled to undergo "sensitivity training" in gender bias.
"If the training is anything like the diversity programs favored by corporate America, it will be condescending and simple-minded, while ruled by the assumption that every participant is a closet Neanderthal."
All of this—the original controversy, the $50 million, the diversity provost, the sensitivity training, everything—is so unnecessary.
What Harvard simply needs is a president who consistently and strongly sends the message that diversity at every level of the university is essential—a "role model," if you will.
Larry Summers, who involves himself in the smallest details of university life in so many other areas, never played any role in this issue until his own ass was in a sling. Why?
I'm still waiting for Summers to hire a high-level woman or minority in his academic administration. How can anyone take Mass Hall seriously on the diversity issue when it has all the ethnic and gender diversity of the Porcellian?
Sadly, the first person Summers will hire to diversify his administration will inevitably be...yes...the diversity provost.
Where are the Women, Part 358
I've written elsewhere about the paucity of women on newspaper op-ed pages, and God knows I've written (probably way too much) here about the women in sciences issue.
But these gender deficits keep cropping up. Now the Project for Excellence in Journalism has released a study showing that women are dramatically under-represented as sources in journalism.
So women are under-represented in academia...business...journalism. The list goes on. It occurs to me that if women could unite across these fields to raise the issues these gender deficits have in common, there could be a real movement here—a second wave of feminism.
(Or has there already been a second wave? Maybe a third wave? Where's Naomi Wolf when you need her?)
What the Economists Say
The paper that Tierney refers to, "Do Women Shy Away from Competition," is actually quite interesting, if you have time to read it. (Go to the link in the item below and scroll to the end of Tierney's column, where you can download the paper as a PDF.)
If you can't read it, here's one conclusion from the authors, economists Muriel Niederle and Lise Vesterlund.
"The present paper is part of a research area that tries to understand why women are underrepresented in many high profile jobs and in whole professions," the authors write. "For example, women have a higher attrition rate from science and engineering, and it increases with academic rank.
"Standard explanations include different preferences (or household or biological constraints) of women in terms of time to be invested in a job. An explanation for the lack of women in science and engineering is also possible differences in ability. An alternative explanation is discrimination, namely that the glass ceiling effect is man made, such that women may not be equally promoted and nurtured in science and engineering.
"We studied an additional explanation, namely that women may be less “competitive,” less prone to select into competitions, but not because of differences in preferences over time invested in jobs, or differences in raw ability of performing in a task. "
"...There is indeed evidence that, for example, the decision of women to quit sciences and engineering is not primarily due to ability. ...It seems therefore that decisions of women to remain in male-dominated areas are not driven by actual ability only. In natural settings issues such as the amount of time devoted to the profession, and the desire of women to raise children may provide some explanations for the choices of women.
"In this paper we examined an environment where women and men perform equally well, and where issues of discrimination, or time spent on the job do not have any explanatory power. Nonetheless we find large gender differences in the propensity to choose competitive environments. We feel that the effects we discover in the lab are strong and puzzling enough to call for a greater attention of standard economics to explanations of gender differences that so far have mostly been left in the hands of psychologists and sociologists."
In other words, we don't know the answers, but they don't seem to have anything to do with innate differences in aptitude...and we certainly don't trust certain psychologists and sociologists (you know who you are, SP) to answer these questions.
Here We Go Again
Like a certain university president, New York Times columnist John Tierney has decided that he knows "what women want," as the title of his column today puts it.
Tierney wants to know whether, if you could eliminate all the social factors in the workplace and evaluate men and women based solely on merit, would women make as much as men?
For insight, he turns to a social science experiment that seems interesting but hardly definitive. (It's a little byzantine to explain here; if you're interested, go to the link.) The test aspired to determine each gender's appetite for competition.
The researchers' conclusion? "Even in tasks where they do well, women seem to shy away from competition, whereas men seem to enjoy it too much," Professor Niederle said.
Here's where Tierney gets into trouble, to my mind: "You can argue that this difference is due to social influences," Tierney says, "although I suspect it's largely innate, a byproduct of evolution and testosterone."
So far as I know, Tierney has no particular expertise in the field of biology, sociology, genetics, sociobiology, or any other field that might allow him to pronounce on why men seem more competitive in one experiment than women are.
So why does he jump to the conclusion that this apparent difference between the genders is genetically based?
Because, I think, the vogue of sociobiology in recent years has given people who like to dabble in this material just enough information to say dumb things that they think make them sound smart.
Also, it's just easier for some men to downplay the impact of socializing; genetics is a one-stop answer shop. If you really start to consider the impact of socialization on U.S. socioeconomic structure, the world as we know it starts to look very shaky, and just about everything we thought we could take for granted, we can't.....
Grade the President!
It's exam time at Harvard. It's also the end of the fourth year of Larry Summers' presidency—the moment when, if Summers was the U.S. president, he'd have to stand for reelection.
Of course, Summers doesn't have to worry about his job security, since the Harvard Corporation seems to have become a subsidiary adjunct of Mass Hall.
But in honor of the covergence of the two timelines, I'll be posting a Summers' report card after Memorial Day. (And don't worry—no grade inflation here!) The president's report card will grade his progress on several counts, focusing on the goals Summers emphasized when he became president: Allston, boosting the sciences, improving undergraduate education, internationalizing the university.
I'll also be throwing in a few other areas to be graded, such as: Is Harvard better off than it was four years ago? Has Summers restored the presidency to its pre-Rudenstine role of public intellectual?
And I'd love your help. Everyone can grade the president! Just send an e-mail to
[email protected] with your suggestions.....
God and god at Yale
After two hundred years, Yale has severed its official relationship with the Congregational Church, and yesterday that church held its last Sunday service at Yale's Battell Chapel.
This is a painful decision for everyone involved, but it seems an inevitable one. At a campus of increasing diversity, how could one denomination claim a monopoly on Yale's church?
I know that Larry Summers feels the same way about Harvard's Memorial Church, and that Peter Gomes, the minister at that church, adamantly disagrees. As campus life at Harvard has been quiet the past few weeks, I suggest that President Summers raise this issue at Commencement. Just to be provocative.
Kidding aside, it would be an interesting debate for the campus....
And Speaking of Corporatization
Mass Hall is taking two steps that will increase the level of bureacracy and corporate culture at Harvard.
First, provost Steve Hyman has announced the creation of three new vice-provosts to preside over international affairs, research policy, and diversity. (The latter was first announced last week, of course.) Though Hyman says the jobs will go to faculty members to ensure that there's a "faculty sensibility" there, they reflect a growing, power-centralizing central administration. For better or worse.
The second development is the announcement of a Harvard-branded credit card. As I wrote in Harvard Rules, Larry Summers has been considering the move for several years now. Lots of other universities do it, as a way to build alumni loyalty while creating an additional revenue stream. Harvard has held out largely out of a reluctance to commercialize its name. That reluctance is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.
Just listen to this language from the solicitation: "The Harvard Alumni Association World MasterCard offers a rewards program like no other, designed with distinguished Harvard graduates in mind. Only Crimson Rewards offers valuable perks with exclusive HAA rewards. You will receive one (1) Crimson Reward point for each $1 dollar you spend.* The more you use the card the faster your Crimson Rewards points add up."
Well, this is just bullshit, of course. This particular MasterCard offers a "rewards program" exactly like every other credit card—reward points, etc. And I love that phrase, "designed with distinguished Harvard graduates in mind." No, it's designed for any Harvard grad with a fair-to-middlin' credit history. But apparently a little sucking-up works.
I'm sure there are good arguments for this move, but there are good arguments against it, too. In a small way, such dishonest and insincere language is already a corruption of
veritas.
Interestingly, the proceeds from the card will go to a Summers' pet project: a "presidential scholars" program to fund graduate students. Summers is taking this step in order to fund a program near and dear to him....
Again, I raise this not to argue that it's a bad idea, simply to point out a theme.
Smarter Thoughts from the Left Coast
Writing in the Herald of Everett, Washington, economist James McCusker has perhaps the most thoughtful take on the $50 million payoff that I've seen—certainly more so than the Globe or Times.
"Is diversity worth the price?"McCusker asks.
"Clearly," he continues, "Harvard believes in a market-based solution; they plan to buy the diversity they want on the open market. This, however, implies a market-based value to diversity itself, otherwise there is no way to determine whether $50 million is too much, or too little, to spend. Right now, the precise value of diversity is not so important, for $5 million a year is a bargain price to quiet down the row touched off by Summers with his "women in math and science" ruminations. Eventually, however, like all budget items, diversity has to prove its worth in terms of value for the money."
The rest of McCusker's piece is well worth- reading, because he's right, of course. Just how did Larry Summers come up with that $50 million figure? How do you determine how much diversity is too much, if that's possible, and how much is not enough? And how much money does it take to get just the right amount?
Interestingly, McCusker suggests that in trying to answer these questions, Harvard will have to become more corporate, as American companies have been confronting these issues for decades.
Since that's something Summers has been trying to do all along—make Harvard more corporate—this outcome would be no small irony.
The Globe's Verdict
The Globe's Marcella Bomardieri weighs in with her take on the $50 million; she's slightly more positive than the Times. On the one hand, she writes, "it hasn't exactly convinced Summers' critics that he's a new man." On the other hand, "some female Harvard scientists are more optimistic than they've been in a while."
Bombardieri is a fine reporter, but this is a silly conclusion. Of course they're more optimistic. After a national controversy, the president of Harvard finds himself compelled to address a problem—partly of his own making—and throw money at it. He's going to have to hire more women and pay them better, and he has virtually no leverage in resisting the demands of female faculty members.
So whether or not Summers has changed, he's got to take steps to improve the lot of women at Harvard because he can't afford another media controversy and faculty rebellion.
What really matters is this: What happens in a year, when the spotlight is off? And what will be the next shoe to drop at Harvard?
Should the Groton Sub Base be Closed?
Naval expert Joe Buff doesn't think so, and he makes a pretty good argument against the closing.
Among his reasons: What if Newport News got blown up by terrorists? That would leave the eastern seaboard with no submarine bases?
Sad to think that every national security decision we now make has to consider the possibility of terrorists detonating a nuke. Sad, but realistic.
The Times' Verdict on Larry Summers
Today's Times mentions Summers in the Week in Review section—and like humorist Andy Borowitz, they lump him with Mexican president Vicente Fox in the "uh oh, time to apologize" category.
The Times' conclusion on the $50 million payoff?
"The latest offering is unlikely to quell unhappiness over his leadership among the faculty and students. The big unknown: What do the members of the Harvard Corporation, which governs the university, think?"
Note the implicit assumption in that question....
Bill O'Reilly: Hot Under the Collar
Yesterday Bill O'Reilly imagined (on the radio) how Michael Kinsley, LA Times op-ed editor, would feel about terrorism if terrorists cut his head off.
(Kinsley, a former boss of mine, and O'Reilly have clashed before, after Kinsley questioned O'Reilly's working-class authenticity.)
Does anyone else get the feeling that the hideousness of the war in Iraq is really taking a toll on the level of civility in this country? Emotions are running high....
A Small, Great Deed
Former commissioner of baseball Fay Vincent has resigned from the board of Jesuit-run Fairfield University (in my hometown) because of the ouster of dissenting editor Thomas Reese from the Catholic magazine
America.
He has also refused an honorary degree from Bridgeport's Sacred Heart University, also a Catholic institution.
Vincent, an honorable baseball commmissioner, has steadily and quietly shown himself as an honorable man. His protests may have no larger impact, and, as if he knows that, he has not publicized them. And yet, they reflect an individual act of conscience far more powerful than anything Benedict XVI has yet done.
My Visit with Bill O'Reilly
Don't know if you saw it, but I went on The O'Reilly Factor last night to discuss the Harvard students' production of a play about Abu Ghraib.
Here's the background: When O'Reilly heard about this production, he sent a camera crew to film it. The crew apparently got permission from the student producers, which is required. But when they got to Harvard's theater, they were turned away, per instruction of Robert Mitchell, the FAS press secretary. (In my experience, an officious and rude man, but never mind.)
So O'Reilly wanted to have a conversation about whether Harvard was "un-American." I told his producer that I could say that, yes, Harvard had a history of anti-Semitism.Yes, it had a history of discriminating against women. That it was so elitist, it sometimes thought itself better than the rest of America, yes.
But un-American, no. That's ridiculous. And as for the students involved, I would say that what they were doing—engaging in protest during wartime—was profoundly American. Whereas we'd like at least to think that the torture at Abu Ghraib was un-American.
Apparently, that worked; I'd be the token lefty. (I don't think of that position as liberal, just informed. But things are what they are these days.)
I'd been on the show once before, about six years ago, but O'Reilly didn't remember me. (Understandable—he's got a lot of guests coming through those doors.)
He's changed since then, become cooler and more self-important. I liked him on that first appearance way back when. I have no idea what we were talking about, but O'Reilly seemed like he enjoyed a good fight and respected you if you gave him one. Now he gives the impression that he wants you to disagree with him because it's good TV, but at the same time, how dare you?
Before the show, we were chatting about how the segment would go, and I said to O'Reilly, "You know I'm going to defend the students, right?"
His answer: "You can say whatever you want, just don't say anything looney. My audience won't like it if you say something looney, and you want to sell books, right? We know how to sell books here on the Factor."
Here's another way in which O'Reilly has changed: He uses the first-person plural to refer to himself.
I do want to sell books, so I agreed not to say anything looney.
As for the segment itself, I have no idea how it went; it's impossible to tell when you're going through it how you come across. The other participants were a Harvard undergrad named Matthew Downer, and a law student named Benjamin Shapiro, author of a book about how universities are corrupting young people whose title I can't remember. (Sorry, Ben! But I'm sure it's like nothing I've ever read before.)
Downer—the president of the Harvard Republican Club, but not identified as such—was the only person who'd seen the play, so he had a distinct advantage over the rest of us. He used that advantage to argue that the play was "sympathetic to the cause of the insurgents," something which I suspect is a load of crap. Sympathetic to the victims of torture, maybe. But to the cause of the insurgents? I seriously doubt it.
Anyway, O'Reilly was actually pretty reasonable, in his way, although I did try to call him out when he labeled "Abu Ghraib" (the play) as un-American. And he's great on TV, there's no question about that. The guy has total command in that studio. Moreover, he instructed us beforehand not to talk over each other, as we'd each get time to talk, and he was true to his word on that.
Most of all, I tried not to say anything looney. I knew his audience would never stand for that.
George Will—Time to Retire?
Apparently thinking that it is under attack, George Will defends the study of history in his column today. He went to a lecture at the White House by Yale historian Donald Kagan, and, well, he must have needed a column.
Here's his lede: "When Yale awarded President Kennedy an honorary degree, he said he had the ideal combination—a Yale degree and a Harvard education. Today, he might rethink that, given the Harvard faculty's tantrum that caused President Lawrence Summers' cringing crawl away from his suggestion of possible gender differences of cognition. At least the phrase 'Yale education' does not yet seem, as 'Harvard education' does, oxymoronic."
Where to begin?
First, JFK's quote has been dead wrong for decades anyway; everyone knows that the ideal combination would be a Yale education and a Harvard diploma. Yale has a better (undergraduate) education, and Harvard has a better-known brand.
Second, Summers didn't just talk about "possible differences" in cognition; he talked about possible inequities. There's a difference.
Third, Will's getting on his years now. Instead of becoming more thoughtful, he's becoming more bilious. Note the faculty "tantrum" and Summers' "cringing crawl".... George Will has become such a parody of his sniping, snobbish self that it's time for his editors to suggest a lengthy sabbatical.
Apparently Will would have liked Summers to stand with a mighty sword and slay the faculty dragon. Because he goes on to decry post-modernism in historiography, on the grounds that post-modernists deny that great men do great deeds for the right reasons.
Will says that "the defining characteristics of postmodernism [are] skepticism and cynicism."
On the other hand, the greatest critics of postmodernism, according to Kagan and Will, are religious true believers.
The true road to salvation (i.e., moral guidance) instead lies in history, which Kagan/Will seem to define as the study of great men who did great things for the right reasons.
At the risk of being post-modernist, might I suggest that Will and Kagan might hold this view of historiography because of their political beliefs? And that therefore we should take their words with a grain of salt, because their's is hardly an objective truth? That their view of history—history shows great men doing great things because we need it to—is tautological?
Meandering on, Will concludes thusly:
"Historian David McCullough says the study of history is 'an antidote to the hubris of the present— the idea that everything we have and everything we do and everything we think is the ultimate, the best.' Compare, for example, the heroic construction of the Panama Canal and the debacle of Boston's “Big Dig'' 100 years later."
History does indeed stand as an antidote to the hubris of the present...but the greatest example of hubris in our world today is the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq. Which Will supports.
Will continues: "Near the “Big Dig'' sits today's Harvard, another refutation of the theory of mankind's inevitable, steady ascent. From Yale, however, comes Kagan's temperate affirmation of the cumulative knowledge that comes from the study of history."
Harvard is "another refutation of the theory of mankind's steady, inevitable ascent"? Oh, please.
George Will, take a look in the mirror. Who's the cynical one here?
News Flash
I'll be appearing on The O'Reilly Factor tonight to talk about Harvard. Check local listings for times.
More on the Times
Tim Noah has an interesting suggestion about the Times' plan to charge $50 for online access to its columnists: What happens when certain columnists drive much more traffic than others?
Let us say, for example, that Maureen Dowd is much more widely read than John Tierney. Not a big deal when everything on the Times site is free; matters more when you're charging readers for content. Will columnists' salaries now rise or fall in proportion to how many paying readers click on their columns? And will columnists start changing their subject matter in order to attract those lucrative hits? (More Michael Jackson, less foreign affairs.)
I think there's another likely consequence: More women columnists.
Here's why. The overwhelming number of subscribers will be male. It is, after all, a male-dominated page. And so, in order to attract women subscribers, the Times will do something it has so far been reluctant to do: hire female columnists. (Now, there's only Dowd.)
As the book publishing world will tell you, women are much bigger readers than men. So the economic logic of this move should sooner or later compel the Times to have more female columnists than male ones...which would mean a profound transformation, in composition and subject matter, of the Times op-ed page. This is going to be interesting.
The Apology Shuffle
Steven Wynn in the San Francisco Chronicle writes about the recent spate of apologies in public life.
Key graf: "Whether it's a married New Jersey governor with a secret gay sex life, Yankee first baseman Jason Giambi juiced up on steroids or a scholar caught cribbing from someone else's research, the apology has become mandatory, well-scripted behavior. CBS newsman Dan Rather (for the botched Bush National Guard story), Harvard University President Lawrence Summers (for his remarks about women's aptitude for math and science) and just the other day Mexican President Vicente Fox (a comparison of the Mexican and black work ethic) have all performed their public rites recently.
Wynn is cynical about this; I'm not. Granted, the apologies aren't always quickly delivered, and sometimes they're less-than-sincere. Nevertheless, there's nothing wrong with apologizing. Even imperfect ones are better than nothing.
Showing Us the Money
Harvard has released its annual list of salaries, which it must disclose by law. Larry Summers is making $637, 824; Steven Hyman earns $371, 710; and v-p for government blah-blah-blah Alan Stone pulls down $313, 549. (No wonder Stone keeps such a low profile.)
A couple of points:
* The Harvard Management Company officials are making less than they did last year.
* Summers' compensation package is actually diminished because, apparently, of a lower tax burden on his Washington apartment (which, last time I checked, he was sharing with a roommate). Does Harvard really need to pay for Summers' Washington abode?
* The highest-paid people at Harvard are administrators, not professors.
* There are some high-paid female administrators, but the highest-paid administrators are men. Why does Alan Stone make 300k when v-p for finance Donna Rapier only makes $200k?
* Finally, though I can't prove anything, I can't help wondering if this report isn't cooked in some way. Summers' salary has gone up steadily since he took office (with the exception of his last year, Neil Rudenstine made less than $400,000); this is the first year that Summers' salary increase has been modest.
Since it would have looked terrible for Summers to have gotten a big raise this year, I can't help but wonder if the numbers were jiggered to avoid the appearance of rewarding Summers for what has been essentially a disastrous year.
But as I say, I have absolutely no proof of that. Just a sense of how much Harvard cares about appearances, and how sensitive the question of Summers' compensation is.
He Swings! He Hits! (He Throws! He Takes Steroids!)
Jason Giambi went 3-for-4 last night, with a homer and two singles, as the Yankees won their tenth straight.
I'm sure there's no connection, but ever since I wrote about him here, Giambi's been on a little bit of a hitting streak. (Which is to say, he's had some hits.) I'm delighted to see it—and delighted to see the Yankees playing the kind of baseball they're capable of.
Meanwhile, around the league, it appears that pitchers are the new steroid users....
And Speaking of Submarines
Remember the San Francisco, the nuclear sub that hit an undersea mountain a few months ago? Well, it came a lot closer to sinking than was realized at the time. (Actually, the people on board realized it, but the rest of us didn't.)
The Times has this story about what really happened in that terrifying incident. It's gripping reading.
The Great One Speaks
Norman Mailer wonders if the Newsweek fiasco wasn't a set-up. I do too, a bit. It feels too much like the Dan Rather/Bush memos story, and that always smacked of Karl Rove to me. Plus, the way the White House is jumping on this has a certain pre-planned quality. Talk about crocodile tears!
The question, of course, would be why? It seems farfetched to think that the White House and/or Pentagon would go to such lengths to discredit the media, even at the expense of U.S. standing in the Muslim world. (But then, they wouldn't have known that riots would be the result.....)
The Satire Problem, Cont'd.
This, from the Onion, speaks for itself.
Here's a question that Harvard folks might want to ask themselves as commencement rolls around: Is the Harvard brand better or worse off than it was four years ago?
He's Back!
Andy Borowitz has a column in which he talks about how American students are really, really good at Star Wars trivia. (It's a joke, kinda sorta.)
His closer:
"Elsewhere, Harvard president Lawrence Summers said he would spend $50 million to make Harvard's faculty more diverse, and an additional $10 million to send flowers and candy to female faculty members."
Not to kill the joke (but to kill the joke)... Borowitz's point—that this move feels a lot like a payoff—is sure to be picked up in the next news cycle. Right-wing women-bashers, here's your cue....
Quoting Myself, Cont'd.
The New York Times is about to start charging for "premium" content on its website. (Whenever people start using bogus words like "premium," you know you're about to get screwed.)
My thoughts on the move here at the Huffington Post.
All Hands on Deck
Connecticut governor M. Jodi Rell is calling upon the state legislature to provide $1.5 million to fund efforts to keep the naval submarine base in Groton. The state's representatives in Congress are united in their opposition to the base closing. Naturally, this is going to be a fight. Connecticut may have the arguments to win it; does it have the clout?
A Good Day for Larry Summers
I'm on deadline , so I haven't had the chance to read the reports of the two diversity committees. Which means that my impressions today will be kind of like most people's....
And my impression is that this is a good day for Larry Summers.
To start, the coverage of yesterday's announcement is significant. Front page of the Times, two stories in the Globe—here's one, here's the other—Reuters, the Boston Herald, the Financial Times, the New York Sun, InsideHigherEd.com, and a host of other, smaller outlets.
There'll be more to come.
Second, $50 million sounds like a lot. And academics are always susceptible to being bought off.
Third, Summers is saying the right things. For example: ''The objective is not just [to put forward] a set of recommendations, but to bring about a set of very important cultural changes," he said on a conference call with reporters. ''Universities like Harvard were designed a long time ago by men and for men. To fully succeed on these issues, we're going to have to address issues of culture. " (From Marcella Bomardieri's story in the Boston Globe)
There are still lots of questions, of course. Where will the money come from? Over how many years will it be spread out? Will the new diversity chief have any real power? Will the changes affect the autonomy of individual departments and schools? Will they add to the centralizing power of Mass Hall?
And most of all, does Larry Summers really believe what he's saying? Can a 50-year-old man change?
Some of this will become clear in time. Today, Larry Summers is probably feeling a lot better about his future than he was a couple months ago.
Well, That Was Expensive
Larry Summers announced today that Harvard will spend $50 million to recruit, pay and otherwise support women and minority faculty members.
Wow.
I guess this isn't surprising; as I reported in Harvard Rules, Summers indirectly paid Skip Gates about a million dollars to stay at Harvard. Expand that to departments across the university, and $50 million isn't a huge surprise.
I can't argue with the goals of this initiative; Harvard needs more women and minority faculty members.
I also can't help but wonder if there wasn't a better way to address this issue. And very possibly, for Harvard, a cheaper one. But that's what happens when you have the president over a barrel. Imagine if Summers had tried to say no to the requests of the two committees he appointed to investigate these issues....
Here's an interesting question, though: Whose budget will all this money come from? The president's? FAS's? Every school's?
I would suspect the latter...and also that not all the deans are going to be happy about this. But we'll see when the details emerge.
Quoting Myself
The submarine base at Groton, Connecticut, is now slated to be closed, something that hits close to home for me. I've blogged about it here, on the Huffington Post.
The Satire Problem, Cont'd.
Humorist (and Harvard grad) Andy Borowitz has a funny piece about Larry Summers on his site today.
It's headlined: "Presidents of Mexico and Harvard to Collaborate on Most Insulting Remark Ever."
Funny graf: "Mr. Fox, who insulted both Mexicans and American blacks in a comment made Friday, and Mr. Summers, who outraged women with remarks made earlier this year, appeared ebullient at the prospect of working together to offend everyone on the planet."
Funny line: “We have been big fans of each other’s work for a long, long time,” President Fox said.
Occasionally, I get some flak from Harvard folks for being tough on Larry Summers. Good or bad, I welcome the input, whether via comment posts or e-mail. But don't blame me for stuff like this. I'm just the messenger....
Take that, Larry Summers, Indeed
Kathy Paur, a Harvard graduate student in mathematics, spoke at Dartmouth on the subject of Larry Summers' remarks on women in science and math. Let's just say she's not a big fan of the Harvard president.
Among some of the things Paur mentioned:
—Harvard's math department has no tenured female professors
—Since Summers became president, the number of women teaching in the math department has steadily declined
—The math department has offered tenure to five women that Paur knows of, but all said no—evidence, she claims, of a department culture hostile to women, because people don't usually say no to Harvard
—according to research she conducted on men's and women's scores on math tests around the world, Summers' theory of intrinsic differences in aptitude is wrong
--out of 60 speakers at Harvard math colloquiums in the past six years, none were women
Sounds like the math department has some explaining to do....
The Limits of Tolerance
Newsweek is scrambling to explain its story on the alleged desecration of the Qu'ran by U.S. soldiers. The magazine is, understandably, freaked out that Afghan Muslims responded to the story by rioting, burning buildings, and killing 15 people.
As long as the magazine is right, Newsweek shouldn't apologize. It's a legitimate story. And as readers, our reaction should not be, "How could we have done anything to offend Muslims?"
Certainly as a practical matter, flushing the Qu'ran down the toilet is a very bad idea; the consequences are proof of that. It's not so good from a moral point of view either. We should be respectful of all faiths.
But does that act of disrespect really justify riots and murder? There's a difference between being respectful and sympathetic to the Muslim world, and being apologetic for some of the harder-to-justify behavior that goes on within it. Our cultural sensitivity shouldn't excuse inexcusable behavior. You burn a Bible and I'll be plenty upset, but I'm not going to go out and kill someone.
Defacing the Qu'ran is Americans' shame; the subsequent violence is not.
"Take that, Lawrence H. Summers!"
So begins an item from The Telegraph of Calcutta, India.
I reproduce it here to make a couple of points:
"Take that, Lawrence H. Summers! Four months after the Harvard University president started a debate on whether women had the right stuff for science, the National Academy of Science has chosen a record number of women scientists among the 72 invited to join the academy. The 19 female members account for 25 per cent of the new members. The number, however, isn't a reaction to Summers' speech. Members selected this year's class by secret ballot last September."
One, it's amazing the resonance the Summers controversy still has, and how far it has reached.
And two, this particular piece of journalism is actually quite unfair. It starts by referencing Summers...and ends by saying it has nothing to do with Summers. But now, whenever there's anything in the media having to do with women's accomplishments, Summers is the anti-reference point.
Sunday Morning Updates
....Jason Giambi singled again last night, as the Yanks trounced the As, 15-6, for their seventh straight. Then, late in the game, a fan threw a beer on him. "I was just walking down to the dugout, and all of a sudden I smelled like Budweiser," he said. Must have been a visitor from Boston.
...Guess who was paid the most in the airline biz last year? Yup—the CEO of United, Glenn F. Tilton, who received a compensation package totaling $1.1 million. By contrast, the CEO of profitable Southwest (as opposed to bankrupt United) received only $542,000.
Would the person who left the comment blaming United's troubles on its unions care to address that?
...On his blog, David Warsh follows up on Alex Beam's scoop that David McClintick is writing a book about the Harvard-HIID scandal. (This story may not be posted until Monday; if you subscribe to the e-mail version, you get it a day early.)
Warsh's take: "What makes Harvard's involvement so interesting is its human dimension. It is essentially the story of a friendship between two of the brightest among the rising generation of economists, Lawrence Summers and Andrei Shleifer. They met and became fast friends in 1979, when Summers was a Harvard teaching fellow and Shleifer was a sophomore student, having emigrated with his parents from the former Soviet Union only two years before...."
Today Summers is a controversy-dogged university president, and Shleifer is defending his reputation in court. But the two men remain close. (Was that Summers' girlfriend Lisa New I saw sitting next to Shleifer at the no-confidence faculty meeting?)
Jason Giambi Gets a Hit
The Yankees have won six straight, but more meaningful, in a way, was the fact that
Jason Giambi was one-for-four with a single last night.
Let me explain.
Giambi is the first baseman the Yankees signed as a free agent for a whopping amount of money—something like $120 million over eight years. He was, at the time, a slugger who hit for average and power. I liked the fact that he had a great eye; Giambi had the best sense of the strike zone of any Yankee since Don Mattingly, and he really made pitchers work. That seemed in keeping with the great Yankee teams of the late '90s.
Then it all fell apart. Giambi missed almost all of last season with mysterious illnesses. Over the off-season, it was revealed that he'd admitted steroid use to a San Francisco grand jury.
Strangely, Giambi was vilified in the New York papers. I say strangely because, to look at Giambi, it shouldn't have been a surprise that he was juiced; the man's body had transformed from his mid- to his late-twenties. The Yankees must have been aware that steroids were a serious possibility.
But more important, Giambi was hardly the only player to take steroids. Hello, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Bobby Bonds? None of them have suffered anything near the level of abuse directed at Giambi—which makes me think that Giambi's real crime was admitting it. Now when Giambi plays in opposing stadiums, opposing fans chant, "Ster-roids! Ster-roids!" (Particularly in Fenway Park, which amuses me; as if no Red Sox player ever took steroids...)
The thing about Giambi is, by all accounts, he's a very decent guy. He's really tried to come back from this debacle with patience, a good attitude, and a lot of hard work. So far, it's not working. He's struggling at the plate, barely swinging, and striking out a ton whether he swings or not. He's clearly having mental problems, and it's painful to watch, in the same way that second baseman Chuck Knoblauch's throwing problems were.
Last night he was 0-for-3 until an 8th-inning single, and as he rounded first base, you could feel his relief through the television screen.
Jason Giambi is trying to make up for his mistakes. Everyone with a heart—and an awareness that in his place, we might have committed the same sin—should be hoping he succeeds.
A Pat on the Head
Two days ago, Rush Limbaugh came to Larry Summers' defense. (I didn't post Limbaugh's words, as his site is subscriber-only.) But in discussing a Harvard play dramatizing Abu Ghraib, Limbaugh said something to the effect of, Larry Summers should play the part of one of the tortured prisoners, given what he's been through.
Today arch-conservative columnist Pat Buchanan weighs in on Summers' behalf with a column titled, "Summers Sinned Against Liberal Orthodoxy."
Here's the creepiest paragraph: "The reaction to Summers reveals something else: a fear in the heart of the establishment of where a debate the subject he pried open might lead. For is Summers is right, and gender does explain the difference in the test scores of women and men in math, what other differences might genetics explain?"
What exactly is Buchanan trying to suggest? What "other differences" does he have in mind?
One of the unfortunate aspects of the Summers' episode is how his conservative defenders have leveled scorn and derision directed against the Harvard faculty.
I continue to think that Summers would do well by standing up and defending them. (Bill Kirby should have, but never mind.)
Imagine these lines contained in, say, a Commencement mea culpa: "My own misstatements have prompted some who agreed with me to attack the faculty of this magnificent institution. Although part of me appreciates the support, I can not endorse these criticisms. Much as the faculty and I have disagreed on some issues—disagreements which will, I believe, prove constructive in the long run—make no mistake: this is the finest, most demanding, most accomplished collection of scholars in the world. The suggestion that they are dogmatic or politically correct or hysterical is unfair and untrue. Along with the students, the alumni, and all the other people who constitute this Harvard community, they are what makes Harvard the world's greatest university. And to anyone outside the university who may have the impression that I believe otherwise—I will not quietly stand by and allow that impression to go unchallenged."
Cue standing ovation.
President Summers, it's all yours. Run with it.
Women and Science in Congress
Some 6,000 men and women have sent a petition to Congress asking for its help increasing opportunities for women in science. The move was inspired in large part by the controversy over Larry Summers' remarks.
At first blush, this is a dumb idea. Congress may have some role enforcing Title IX protections. But should the federal government really be throwing money at this particular problem?
Universities need to defend their autonomy from the federal government, and asking for greater Congressional involvement in matters of gender is, sooner or later, asking for trouble.
Also, this petition does have a mau-mauing the flak-catchers aspect. One of the organizers is the president and founder of
MentorNet, "an advocacy group that helps women enter science and engineering fields." You have to wonder if MentorNet and groups like it wouldn't expect a funding windfall if Congress did get involved.
Perhaps that's too cynical, but one does grow suspicious of such pleas for federal help.
Stanley Fish on Ward Churchill and Larry Summers
A terrific piece by Stanley Fish in the Chronicle of Higher Education examines the differences and similarities in the Churchill/Summers brouhahas.
Key quote: "There is really not much to say about Summers except that he's a public-relations disaster, a walking time bomb likely to detonate at any moment, especially if his handlers let him out of their sight. One can say something about what issues the Summers brouhaha does
not raise. It does not raise issues of free speech or academic freedom."
Fish's essay is well worth reading.
Harvard Sends Chinese Packing
Harvard has dropped its plan to train Chinese government officials to prepare them for dealing with journalists at the 2008 summer Oympic games.
Apparently the alumni of the Nieman Fellows protested too much.
I'm not sure that Nieman director Bob Giles hasn't caved too soon. Yes, the training program was a bit of departure from the Nieman mission, which is basically to give journalists enough money to sit around and not do much for a year. (Thus ensuring that Harvard has many good and high-ranking friends in the media.)
But while it may seem odd for the Foundation to take on the challenge of training flacks for China, someone has to do it. And introducing Chinese officials to the traditions of American journalism can't be an entirely bad thing, right?
The real problem is that Harvard is hardly the place to teach transparency with the press. Its press people and those in Beijing have more in common than the Harvard folks would like to think.
The Nieman Foundation should train Harvard's press relations people first, then China's.
Martin Feldstein to Replace Alan Greenspan?
He's stepping down from teaching his famous class, Ec 10, and the Crimson says he's one of the top three candidates to take over the Fed when Alan Greenspan retires....
Feldstein is certainly qualified, his politics are conservative, and he has served as an informal adviser to President Bush.
Asked if he'd like the job, Feldstein issues a pretty weak non-denial denial: “I like teaching. I don’t see any reason to stop anytime in the foreseeable future."
The only possible downside: He's on the board of embattled AIG. But as long as he's not complicit in that company's troubles, I doubt that'd be an issue.
Symbolism: It's a Good Place to Start
With help from a $100,000 grant from Larry Summers, the Harvard Foundation Minority Portraiture Project has unveiled paintings of "six minority honorees, including two women," as the Crimson puts it.
This is a small but symbolically important move. Harvard's campus really is filled with pictures of old white men—the faculty room has something like 40 of them, and about three pictures of women.
Given Harvard's history, that's inevitable. But it does send a signal, and it certainly doesn't reflect the composition of the university today—not, at least, the student body.
Summers made the right decision to fund the project. Now if he'd only hire some minorities to work for him.
Boltin' Bolton
I've noted before the curious similarities between Larry Summers and John Bolton: how they deal with subordinates, their attitudes towards the '60s.
Now the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has moved Bolton's nomination to the Senate floor without a recommendation.
Which is not quite the same as saying that they lack confidence in Bolton...but it's pretty darn close.
Is the reaction to Summers, Bolton, et al, a sign that the time is past when the bullying leadership style can be effective in even a semi-transparent organization?
Another question: Even if Bolton passes the Senate, how effective can he be when he so clearly lacks the support of much of the government?
Ouch!
Greg Gutfeld just flamed me on the Huffington Post.
Rather than starting a pissing match there, I'll say only this here:
1) David Mamet
is a hero of mine. So what?
2) If this is the best the editor of Maxim UK can do, his magazine is in serious trouble.
Floyd Abrams—Over the Hill?
A couple weeks ago, I voiced my opinion that Floyd Abrams' best days as a First Amendment advocate were behind him. All right, there may have been a couple ad hominem remarks thrown in, based on my own unpleasant experience with Mr. Abrams.
Now, somewhat more articulately, Jack Shafer on Slate makes a similar argument. While arguing on behalf of Time reporter Matt Cooper, Abrams "appeared green and confused to even the legal laity in the courtroom audience," Shafer says....
What if Ann Coulter Gave A Speech...
...and someone asked her something really gross?
So there was she, giving a talk at the LBJ Library at UT-Austin, and the q-and-a period rolled around—Ann had been casting aspersions on gay marriage—and this happened:
<<"You say that you believe in the sanctity of marriage," said Ajai Raj, an English sophomore. "How do you feel about marriages where the man does nothing but fuck his wife up the ass?">>
Mr. Raj explains himself here.
I know I should be outraged about this, but this remark is just so over the top, there's something wonderfully subversive about it, in a scatological, South Park-kind of way.
Besides, Raj's explanation shows more intelligence than one might at first credit him.
"Standing in line awaiting my turn," he writes, "I watched her send a moderate Republican, who had questioned the sheer incendiary magnitude of her rhetoric, walk away in tears when she tore him apart for daring to question her."
So then Raj asked his question.
"The crowd," Raj says, "fell silent."
I'll bet.
"Did I give a shit?" he continues. "No. If I had a message, it's that the whole thing was a joke—hell, our whole political scene today is a fucking joke."
Raj then exited, making some "masturbatory gestures" on the way.
Raj may be crude, but he's got a point. The Democrats are pathetic, the Republicans are run by people who think all the species of the world disembarked from a wooden boat, our soldiers are dying almost daily in a war that was based on a mistake—oops!—and the weird thing is, no one seems to care very much.
I can understand Mr. Raj's frustration.
The funny/sad thing is, as Raj was leaving, campus police slammed him against a door, locked him in handcuffs, and dragged him off.
"I tried to ask them what for," Raj says. "Last time I checked, saying 'fuck her in the ass' at a college isn't a crime."
You know, for a closer, you just can't top that....
Some People Cross-Dress
I cross-post.
Wrote a couple things for the Huffington Post this morning, which you should be able to find here.
That site is getting better, but a lot of it is pompous, boring, and depressing. Come on, guys, lighten up! It's a blog, not your platform to save the world.
Also, you can tell those folks are novice posters; they don't really seem to understand the concept of the hyper-link. Actually, this deficit strikes me as telling symbolism. The point of a hyper-link is to reference some other authority, something that, Lilliputian-like, you are referencing, and occasionally trying to topple.
Problem is, a lot of the celebrities aren't used to deferring to anyone else. Why would they hyper-link—i.e., cite a higher authority—when they're used to everyone else deferring to them?
Also, I'm not quite sure who Greg Gutfeld is, but Greg—when your mother told you that you're funny, she was only being nice.
Great Minds Are United?
Apparently I'm not the only one thinking that the United Airlines default has huge implications for Social Security reform. Here's Norm Ornstein writing on the Huffington Post: "The United default on its pensions has huge implications for Social Security reform."
Ornstein goes on to argue, "Every American with a corporate pension plan will wonder if his or her plan is next on the chopping block. The backup pension plan safety net-- the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation-- will soon teeter under the weight of its assumption of these pension obligations. The whole issue of retirement security will explode-- and Social Security will only be a piece of shrapnel in the explosion."
This has the potential to be an enormous issue in the next presidential campaign. And if George Bush didn't realize it when he picked up the paper this morning—oh, wait, the president doesn't read the paper—Social Security privatization is DOA.
It's too bad, in a way; Bush deserves credit for raising such a politically volatile issue, and a serious discussion of how to fix Social Security would be a good thing.
Maybe there's a silver lining; maybe with privatization off the table—always a goal more related to ideology than sound economics—Washington
can have an honest discussion of how to shore up Social Security.
So sue me, I'm an optimist....
Columbia Takes A Stand
The Columbia faculty senate has voted against a proposal to bring ROTC back to campus.
Good for Columbia.
It may be unpopular now, with the war in Iraq and military recruiting failing to make its quotas, to say that it's wrong for the military to discriminate against gays. But it is wrong, and universities, part of whose mission is to promote enlightenment, should stand up and say so.
Incidentally, Columbia president Lee Bollinger—the runner-up to Larry Summers in Harvard's presidential race—voted against ROTC, despite the possibility of angering the Bush administration. Good for Bollinger.
Summers Exits Curricular Review
Larry Summers has stopped appearing at meetings of the General Education committee of the curricular review at Harvard.
Writing in the Crimson, William Marra suggests that this withdrawal is a consequence of the no-confidence vote; he calls it "the first significant transfer of power" from Summers to the faculty since that vote was taken.
I'm not so sure. Given the chaotic state of the review, doesn't this move have a jumping-off-a-sinking-ship quality?
Summers needs to give a show of ceding some power back to the faculty. But this move also distances him from an academic effort that, under his leadership, has gone badly wrong. Now, if it craters further, he can simply blame the faculty. "See what happens when I'm not around?" he can say, in so many words.
For the faculty, this may be a classic case of being careful what you wish for. They wanted Summers gone from the review; now he is. The pressure is on them to salvage what Summers has so far botched, or they will lose the spin game.
United in Disarray
The United Airlines situation is worse than I'd realized; the airline has successfully petitioned a federal judge to be relieved of its pension obligations for the next several years. They'll be taken over by the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.
This is a disaster for workers, some of whom will see their pensions drop by as much as fifty percent. It's also an alarming precedent. Expect the other troubled airlines to follow in United's path. And will General Motors, still churning out those environmental-nightmare SUVs that no one wants anymore, and burdened with the largest pension obligations of any American corporation, soon be driving down the same road?
Here's one inevitable consequence: There is no way that Americans are going to buy into the privatization of Social Security when their private pensions are, simply, vanishing.
Another Harvard Book?
Alex Beam reports in the Globe (scroll to the bottom of his column) that David McClintick may be working on a book about the Harvard-HIID scandal. That would be interesting...although I think that at this point, a book on the Harvard-AIDS scandal would be even better.
Pop quiz: What university president do these two scandals have in common?
Which is—honestly—not to imply that Larry Summers is inherently to blame. Just to point out that this man has got to be the most powerful magnet for controversy in the world of higher education....
The Huffington Post, Day 2 (Or, Blogging about Blogging)
Arianna's blog has now been live for two days, and I have to say, it's downright weird. Totally male-dominated, for one thing. And possibly not coincidentally, there's an awful lot of self-importance flying around. Joe Scarborough on "Sudan Suffering in Silence"? Or congressman John Conyers on "Creating Justifications to Go to War"? No thanks. Rob Reiner on "Where Have You Gone, Woodward and Berstein"? I'd sooner repeatedly jab myself in the throat with a ballpoint pen.
Here's something I wonder: How many of these blog entries are actually ghost-written? I have a hunch that Arianna might have inadvertently pioneered a web breakthrough: the ghost-blogger. Because I seriously doubt that Senator Jon Corzine, et al, are logging on to the web and writing a little entry for the Huffington Post....
Well, let's hope that these guys lighten up a little and stop taking themselves so seriously. Because right now, they are bloviating like mad, with no sign of slowing down.
They Must Be Kidding
"Chinese Officials to Get Press-Relations Training" at Harvard, according to this story in the New York Times.
That's kind of like getting lessons in diplomacy from John Bolton.
Since dealing with Harvard's press people is pretty much like dealing with a Communist state, the Chinese might as well stay home....
Verizon Is a Nightmare
Apologies for the silence so far today. Due to some inexplicable problem with Verizon, my phone went dead this morning, and took my DSL line along with it...
Eight hours without land line, Internet access, and e-mail: serious withdrawal.
Papal Bull
"
Pope Has Gained Insight To Address Abuse, Aides Say"
—New York Times, April 23, 2024
"
Vatican Is Said to Force Jesuit Off Magazine"
—New York Times, May 7, 2024
Well, that didn't take long. Apparently the new pope isn't so enamored of insight after all....
Summers Calls Faculty "Whiny"
Last week's New York Observer contained its annual write-up of the White House Correspondents Dinners after-party, thrown by Bloomberg media (not the mayor) across the street from the Washington Hilton.
Reporter Rebecca Dana encountered Harvard president Larry Summers late in the evening. Her portrayal of that encounter is so remarkable, I'm just going to quote the relevant paragraph here:
<<In the middle of the dance floor, embattled Harvard president Lawrence Summers stood by himself. Asked about his display of party stamina, Mr. Summers declared, "I’m a hip guy." He had endured financial troubles and family conundrums, he noted—"I’ve been through some real shit in my life"—and he could survive a bunch of "whiny" professors.>>
I was stunned to read this description, which seemed so improbable—would Summers really refer to the faculty as "whiny"?—that I called Dana to confirm the quotes. She did confirm them, and I believe her. She sounded like an entirely careful, cautious and thorough reporter.
I'm amazed that Summers could make a remark this impolitic after just having endured the worst professional crisis of his life for making impolitic remarks.
On second thought, I'm not really so amazed. This is probably how Summers honestly feels about the faculty (when he's not making apologies that he apparently doesn't believe). "Whiny" connotates obnoxious, immature, spoiled, juvenile, and un-serious. And Summers' leadership style would reinforce the idea that that's what he thinks of the Harvard professoriat—or at least those who voted that they lack confidence in him.
I tried to contact Summers' spokesman, John Longbrake, to see if he would confirm, deny or otherwise comment upon these remarks. But there is no listing in the Harvard directory or on the Harvard website for Longbrake. (Does he work at Harvard?)
Mr. Longbrake, if you're reading this...Click the "contact" button on the webpage to e-mail me. I'd be glad to run any response.
Pretentiousness Watch, Cont'd.
"In my cover story two weeks ago...."
—From the same article
Pretentiousness Watch
" If you agree with John Dewey (and Jürgen Habermas) that democracy depends on a series of institutional arrangements that enable the public to form its own values and judgments on a variety of questions--and I do...."
—The lede from Eric Alterman's column in this week's
Nation.
United in Misery
Apparently I'm not the only person to have a miserable experience flying United. Andrew Sullivan describes his United flight from Washington to LA as "one of the worst I can remember." He adds, "No wonder they're going bankrupt."
I e-mailed my post on United (see below) to the company via its website. Can't wait to see if they respond.
Meantime, here's another sign of a company which treats its customers badly. To get to the link on the United website where you can e-mail customer service requires, I think, six clicks. By which point, most people who are less anal than I will have given up....
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
They do now, thanks to a new law passed by Republicans in Congress which allows the slaughter of wild mustangs on public lands. Now the Bureau of Land Management has sold 1,000 horses into private hands and has 950 more on the verge of being sold. Some of them are being killed for their meat....
I've been working on a story about Republicans and the environment for a new environmental lifestyle magazine called Plenty, and I have to say, the picture of what the GOP is doing to the environment is absolutely horrific. And I'm no ideologue on this issue....
Topic A Goes Buh-Bye
Tina Brown is leaving her TV show to work on a Princess Di book, and everyone's being all snarky about it. I think that's a mistake. Yes, Tina wasn't the most natural on-air host. (To my mind, that's to her credit.) And yes, sometimes the show suffered from a certain incestuous quality. Enough Harvey Weinstein....
But on the other hand, Topic A was always smart, and the show featured guests talking about subjects you couldn't see anywhere else on television. And I'm not just saying that because Brown had me on talking about Harvard Rules. Tina Brown was interested in serious subjects and did her best to make them palatable to a widespread audience. That she failed says more about the culture than about her.
There's an element of today's media culture which is much more interested in tearing down people who take a chance than in supporting them. Like people in any other industry, media practitioners tear down their peers as a way of building themselves up—only when they do it, it's public and, some of the time, pretends to be objective.
To my mind, this is one of the least attractive qualities of the American media—and particularly its Manhattan-based epicenter.
Money On its Way Out
Harvard financial whiz David Scudder is leaving the Harvard Management Company to help set up a private investment firm.
Scudder joined HMC to work with now-departed Jack Meyer, the person who, probably more than any other, made Harvard the financial powerhouse it is.
When he left a few months back, Meyer put out that he wanted to work somewhere there wasn't quite so much press attention. But there were lots of rumors that this wasn't the real reason....
There's a very important story shaping up here. Globe? Crimson? Anyone?
Showing Larry the Money
I keep hearing bits and pieces about how much decisions at Harvard are now being driven by anxiety over fundraising, and more specifically, what I'll call the "Summers Effect"—which is to say, the extent to which Larry Summers' troubles will hurt Harvard's fundraising.
Back when I was finishing Harvard Rules, there were whispers that Harvard was on the verge of announcing its latest capital campaign, which several people mentioned might be in the $10 billion range.
You don't hear that figure anymore, and you only hear talk of the campaign being in the "quiet phase"—early fundraising so that when you announce the campaign, you can create the appearance of momentum by stating that you've already raised x dollars.
This campaign's quiet phase has been going on for a while now, and I suspect that because of the Summers Effect, it will last a while longer yet.
Here's something else I hear: That Summers is determined to increase the number of truly large gifts Harvard raises—sums in the eight- and nine-figure range. He wants to focus on the moguls. Meanwhile, there's talk of downsizing at the fundraising offices, which means that there'll inevitably be less emphasis on five-, six-, and even seven-figure donors.
Two points.
With his connections to the worlds of business and finance, Summers is well-positioned to solicit those massive donations.
But this strategy also seems designed to minimize his own fundraising weaknesses—arrogance, lack of charm, poor social skills—as well as the amount of time he has to spend raising money.
But here's the rub: Harvard's fundraising operation has always been a well-oiled machine. In Neil Rudenstine's time, it raised more money in a shorter period than any university had ever raised.
You couldn't say it was broken. Does it really need to be fixed? Or is it being corrupted to cover up the deficiencies of the university's president?
Moreover, part of the purpose of fundraising is to engage alumni in the work of the university. If Harvard is now going to focus on a much smaller fundraising base, what will the long-term implications be for alumni participation, financial and otherwise? And how will that change the nature and character of the university?
Double-Blogging
I feel like I'm cheating on myself. Today marks the debut of the Huffington Post, where I'll be blogging as well. You can find my first entry—about what John Bolton, Larry Summers, George W. Bush and Pope Benedict XVI have in common—here. Sigh—I didn't make the cut and get featured on the front page with Mike Nichols and David Mamet.
I like Arianna Huffington and I'm flattered to be asked to contribute, but I do wonder if this thing is going to work. A lot of the folks she's asked to blog are, um, kinda old. Will they really do it? And will the people who follow Mike Nichols really log on to read them? I'm just not sure that people past a certain point in their reading habits are going to get the whole blogosphere thing.
(And what a terrible word blogosphere is—can't we do better? "Blogorama?" So many Internet words catch on because they sound mellifluous—"Google," for example, and now "Grokker." Blogosphere sounds like a violent physical reaction to eating something past its prime.)
Anyway, as a certain university president likes to say, I hope I'm proved wrong and the Huffington Post is a huge hit. I've known Arianna a little bit for about a decade now, and I like her very much. She's never afraid to try something new, or make herself vulnerable (often the same thing). And she's living an interesting life....
Harvard Rules in Vanity Fair
James Wolcott has a terrific piece in the June Vanity Fair called "Caution: Women Seething." One guess who's a centerpiece of the story.
Wolcott's thesis about what happened at Harvard: "What exploded...was a protracted buildup of exasperation over the persistent under-representation of women in positions of prominence and authority, and the mulish inability of powerful men to recognize the scope of the problem, or their tendency instead to rationalize it with voodoo genetics and Victorian-parlor sociology."
Quite so. And as I've often written, the complete lack of women (and minorities) in high academic positions in the Summers administration is not just an embarrassment for Harvard—it's a volcano waiting to erupt. I keep hoping for someone (someone else, that is) to mention that it'd be nice if Harvard showed the world that it has at least one African-American person working for the university.... Or one Asian-American...or one Latino.
This is not about political correctness. Any university which claims to value diversity within its student body should make that diversity a reality within its administration.
As we all learned in kindergarten, it's so important to practice what you preach....
Oh, almost forgot: Thanks to Wolcott for mentioning
Harvard Rules. I'm a great fan of his, so it's nice to be on his radar screen.
Better Late Than Never
After bowing to "religious" pressure,
Microsoft has reversed itself and decided to support a Washington state gay rights bill. Since I criticized the company in the first instance, I mention this in the interests of fairness.
I'm glad Microsoft has come around. But why did it even have to be close?
See You in Court
The Supreme Court has decided to hear a case challenging the legitimacy of the Solomon Amendment, an issue about which I wrote extensively in
Harvard Rules.
Some background: The Solomon Amendment is the nasty handiwork of the late Gerald Solomon, a bilious congressman from upstate New York. It bans any university from receiving federal funding if that university prohibits military recruiting on campus, as many now do because of the military's discrimination against gays. The Clinton Administration didn't enforce the law. The Bush folks need the soldiers—and especially the military lawyers—and perhaps see it as a way to strike back against the liberal elite.
Enforcement of the Solomon Amendment has been a prickly situation at Harvard, which stood to lose more than $400 million in federal dollars annually. While students and professors recognized the import of that, they also wanted to challenge the amendment in court. On this, they received no support whatsoever from Larry Summers, who said essentially that the issue of anti-gay discrimination was not important enough to tangle with the Republicans.
Now, thanks to a group called the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (FAIR), the issue heads to the Supreme Court.
For Harvard, this feels like a lost opportunity to promote social justice, and another reminder of how utterly dependent the university has become on the largesse of the federal government.
The Satire Problem, Cont'd.
Writing in the MetroWest Daily News—and yes, I have no idea where that is—Julie Berry points out that, what with Larry Summers' troubles and the arrest of Martin Weitzman for the theft of horse excrement, "2005 has been an unsavory year for Harvard economists." (And she doesn't even mention Andres Shleifer.)
Like the rest of the world, Berry finds it hard to understand why one would steal manure. Has Weitzman fallen on hard times? "Or could it be that in order for his boss to continue to sling manure, his underlings must act as suppliers?"
Which brings me to a point that I'm not sure Harvard alums appreciate, judging from my recent encounters with them. Whether those alumni like Summers or not, they take him seriously. But as I've pointed out before on this blog, the Harvard president has become a widespread object of satire—a punch line.
This state of affairs, is, of course, unfair. But it exists, and since nothing Summers can do (well, nothing good, anyway) is going to attract the amount of attention that his women-in-science comments did, it's going to linger.
The Good News
Portland is a lovely city, and I am immensely grateful to my hosts, Anne-Marie Oliver and Paul Steinberg, for hosting me during my stay there. When people talk about how nice people are once you leave New England, Anne-Marie and Paul are who they're talking about. They put me up for several nights despite the fact that we'd never met before, and they were doing a favor for the head of the local Harvard club. For a complete stranger, they: picked me up at the airport...made me an outstanding home-cooked meal...drove me around town...and just generally made me feel welcome in every way.
This despite the fact that they are the very busy parents of two wonderful daughters and have, of course, demanding careers of their own. Paul and Anne-Marie are the authors of the just-published The Road to Marty's Square: A Journey Into the World of the Suicide Bomber, which I am just now starting to read. It is fascinating and disturbing and important, and anyone interested in Israeli-Palestinian issues specifically and, more generally, the origins of violence, should read it. Congratulations and many, many thanks to Paul and Anne-Marie.
Home
Or, to quote Sheryl Crow, "Home."
I'm back from Portland, about which I have a number of things to say.
First, United Airlines is the reason people hate flying.
The United experience begins at a check-in counter devoid of human beings. It is, literally, a counter with a row of computer terminals. In La Guardia, the only person helping customers was a man directing passengers to different terminals. When I asked him where the human beings were, he muttered something about them changing shifts—and here I thought that when employees change shifts, that meant that actual new ones start to work—and then reminded me that he'd been at the airport since four in the morning and couldn't wait to leave.
Eventually I made it through check-in and boarded the plane. Two rows in front of me sat a young man, his wife, and their
four young children, with another on the way. I know, I know—in our family-centric society, we are supposed to coo over the children and think how hard it is for the parents to travel with them. My suggestion: This is why they make mini-vans.
United's planes were cramped and dirty, its seats old and well-worn. Despite the trend toward non-stop flights, United insists that we change planes as often as possible. They serve no food. On my flight from LaGuardia to Denver, they actually sold something called a "Fun Pack"—a granola bar, basically, and they probably spell it "FunPak!"— for five dollars. Rather than Jet Blue's per-seat video screen system, United still uses antiquated drop-down video screens. When I actually tried to watch the movie, I discovered that the headset socket did not match the jack of the headset I was given.
I'm tall enough so that economy class poses issues, and arrived in Portland feeling like a bent coathanger. So on my way back, I found an actual United employee at the airport and asked if I could get an emergency row seat. She smiled vacantly and suggested that I use the computer to see if I could get an "upgrade."
"You sell the emergency row seats?" I asked.
"Oh, yes," she replied. "That's a product!"
I asked how much it was. She answered that she didn't know, it depended on the computer.
Here is my general rule of thumb for any company: When its employees start speaking like automatons, it's in serious trouble.
Now, to be fair to United, it did several things correctly. It sold me an inexpensive ticket; there is something remarkable about crossing the country for $125 each way. Its flights were on time and did not crash. And they didn't lose my bag.
Nonetheless, the experience was grim. In a few weeks, Jet Blue starts service—non-stop service—to from New York to Portland. United is going to get crushed, and it should.
And On Second Thought
I've been pondering the question put to me by a Harvard alum: If Larry Summers modeled himself after Bob Rubin at the Treasury department, who, if anyone, did he model himself after when he came to Harvard?
My initial answers were John Silber, former president of BU, and, um, Larry Summers at the Treasury Department.
But since then I've wondered if there isn't another figure who's a role model for Summers: Henry Kissinger....
Think about it. They're both celebrities of a sort, powerbrokers, pontificators, men who seem to revel in the power that accrues to them from their professional positions. They're both academics who've made it big in Washington. They both love to hobnob with the elite of media and politics—did anyone else notice that Larry Summers went to the White House Correspondents Dinner last weekend? (Why? There's nothing for Harvard in that.) And possibly they both think that the world of academia is too small for them...because they are figures of the world, period, and cannot be contained by Cambridge.
Speaking to Yale About Harvard
So I dined at Portland's University Club with about 15 members of the Yale Club of Portland who were very interested in the goings-on up at Cambridge. Very nice people, very smart questions, and a much more casual vibe than you get from the East Coast Ivy League alumns. (It must be said that Portland is a deeply pleasant place.)
One of the numerous interesting questions posed was this one: How would you compare Larry Summers' leadership style to that of Yale president Rick Levin?
The answer, of course, is that you couldn't have two more different kinds of leaders. Levin is low-key, modest, completely unpretentious, and a little dry. If he's ever been embroiled in a national controversy, I'm not aware of it. When I spoke to the group of Harvard/Stanford/MIT alums, only one of them could name the president of Yale.
For some folks, that may be good, for some bad. You certainly wouldn't say that Levin is a well-known "public intellectual," or "intellectual celebrity," as Larry Summers is, and some people want that from a university president.
On the other hand, Yale has done very well in Levin's 12 years at its helm—investing in the sciences, sprucing up New Haven, refurbishing the 12 residential colleges, conducting a successful curricular review. None of this is particularly headline-making, but there is a kind of quiet excellence about it.
Whereas regarding the situation at Harvard—is it better off than it was four years ago?—well, that is not an easy question to answer.
Harvard Rules in Beaverton Creek
I'm still in Portland, but before I head back east I want to thank everyone who came out for the "Ivyplus" meeting last night in Beaverton Creek. About 30 people came out to discuss Harvard Rules, most of them from Harvard, but also alumni of MIT, Stanford, and Yale. (Was I imagining it, or was there a little schadenfreude on their part?)
One of the real pleasures of writing this book has been talking about it with smart and thoughtful audiences; I know I'm supposed to give the reading, but truth is, I'm much more interested in the q-and-a parts of these talks, when I always learn something new.
Here was perhaps my favorite question from last night: If, while he was at the Treasury, Larry Summers modeled himself after Bob Rubin, who did he model himself after when he came to Harvard?
A great question, and I have to say, it hadn't previously occurred to me. My first answer was former BU president John Silber, but that was (mostly) a joke. My second answer...Larry Summers at the Treasury Department. Just because it's very hard to think of another Harvard president whom Summers sees as a role model. He is truly sui generis.
A Shot Across the Bow
Here's a headline in today's Crimson that says a lot: "Professors Doubt Truth of Summers' Remarks." (For the link, go to www.thecrimson.com -- while in Portland, I'm using a computer that is not, shall we say, blogger-friendly.)
The story is about Summers' remarks regarding whether he has plans to remove from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences its monopoly on the awarding of Ph.D.s. At a recent faculty meeting, he flat-out denied that he had discussed the idea. In fact, it appears that he has discussed it repeatedly.
Why does this matter? Several reasons.
1) In the past, it would have been unthinkable for Harvard professors to accuse the president of lying. No matter how much they disagreed with the president, the faculty would never have accused any Harvard president of outright falsity.
2) No Harvard president--that I know of, anyway--has actually given the faculty reason to believe him a liar.
3) The fact that the story is out in today's Crimson--and in the Boston Globe--shows that Summers' faculty opponents have no intention of easing off the pressure.
4) I can't really speak to the merits of the plan, since it's something I'm not an expert on...but it would surely be another way for Summers to diminish the power of the FAS.
5) Once again, the weakness of Bill Kirby's deanship is revealed. A strong FAS dean would be fighting such a plan tooth-and-nail. Summers won't even allow Kirby to discuss whether or not it's in play.
The Harvard AIDS Scandal, Cont'd.
Former
Boston Globe columnist and current blogger David Warsh has an excellent piece adding new information to the Harvard AIDS scandal.
One of the more unattractive suggestions put out by Mass Hall to explain its glacial handling of the emergency AIDS grant was that School of Public Health epidemiologist Phyllis Kanki somehow wasn't up to the job of handling the large ($107 million) grant.
Warsh challenges that notion head-on: In the public health world, he writes, "Phyllis Kanki is a star -- a research scientist who helped identify nimbler and more virulent strains of the HIV virus in Africa; a top performer in Gates Foundation prevention initiative grant competitions; the woman who, by some accounts, "saved Senegal," devising a novel and highly successful strategy of differential interventions among different groups."
Nonetheless, Harvard delayed implementation of the emergency grant money—intended to be used for purchasing drugs desperately needed by dying AIDS patients in Nigeria—so that Larry Summers could impose control over the money and its disposition. In the meantime, hundreds of AIDS patients who might have been saved died from their disease. But Summers had control.
As Warsh writes, "Five months after the PEPFAR grant was announced, Harvard accepted it, ordering Kanki to stop complaining about its history, to cease talking about the project directly with the government itself, and to report exclusively to a new executive director, who had been hired to work for Hyman and Summers -- long-time World Bank health and education specialist Richard Skolnik."
I've written before that what's happened with this grant is a scandal far more important than the women-in-science brouhaha. It was, after all, a matter of life and death.
The press covered the women-in-science controversy endlessly. Other than the Crimson, only the
Boston Globe has run anything about the Harvard AIDS scandal. That is a harsh indictment of the media. Are you listening, New York Times?
A Brazilian Story
Anyone interested in why the nomination of John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the UN is such a fiasco might want to watch a new documentary, "En Route to Baghdad," which I saw at the Tribeca Film Festival the other night. The film's about the life of Sergio Vieira de Mello, the Brazilian diplomat killed by a truck bombing in Baghdad in August 2003. Vieira de Mello was the paradigmatic public servant and diplomat; in places such as Mozambique, East Timor, and Cambodia, he devoted his life to trying to broker peace and improve living conditions for the world's worst-off. By all accounts, he had a remarkable impact. Bolstered by a Brazilian charm and good nature, Vieira de Mello worked tirelessly, often at the risk of his own safety. Most of all, he was humble about his work. Asked to explain what best characterized him, filmmaker Simone Duarte spoke of his willingness to listen. Regardless of whether you were important or not, Vieira de Mello would listen to what you had to say—and he'd remember it.
Could there be a man more different from John Bolton? Does Bolton listen to anyone? Or does he simply tell them what to think and what to say?
You only have to learn about this inspiring
Brasileiro to understand why the nomination of Bolton to the UN is so offensive. Diplomacy does matter, and in every fiber of his being, John Bolton is not a diplomat. Sergio Vieira de Mello was irreplaceable; John Bolton should quickly be replaced.
Back-Scratching
Since
Harvard Magazine plugged me, I will return the favor. In my book, I noted that the magazine seemed to become a less independent voice over the first years of Larry Summers' presidency and more an outgrowth of Mass Hall. But its story on the Summers' controversy is really impressive—lengthy, detailed, thoughtful, balanced but unflinching. There were several moments in reading it when I thought to myself, "I can't believe they said that."
Kudos to the editors and to the unnamed author (s). Writing about the controversy swirling around Larry Summers couldn't have been easy. It's hard to see how Harvard Magazine could have done a better job doing so.
Let us hope this
glasnost continues....
Harvard Rules in... Harvard Magazine?
It's true. The May-June issue of Harvard Magazine contains a lengthy article on the Summers controversy—more on that in a second—which includes this paragraph:
"A wider audience was invited to peer more deeply into the dynamics of the Summers administration with the publication of
Harvard Rules: The Struggle for the Soul of the World's Most Powerful University, by Richard Bradley, A.M. '90, a decidedly unauthorized portrait. Its critical retelling of the first three years of Summers's tenure—Cornel West; the controversy over Zayed Yasin's 2002 Commencement address...and other disputes about speech on campus; the talk on anti-Semitism; control of fundraising and appointments; the president's staffing and media relations—echoed some of FAS's debate and provided fresh grist for external reporting on the politics of contemporary Harvard."
Okay, HM could have mentioned what a great read Harvard Rules is. But on the whole, I can't complain with that write-up. It's straightforward and perfectly fair.
And then, in the "Off the Shelf" section of the magazine, there's
Harvard Rules again! Here's the one-sentence description: "An anecdotal and often negative assessment of Lawrence H. Summers and his Harvard presidency, as of Commencement 2004, by a former editor at
George magazine."
And did I mention it's a great read?
Portland, Here I Come
Posts may be scarcer over the next few days, as I'm flying out to Portland to give a couple of talks about Harvard Rules. On Tuesday night at 6:30, I'll be speaking to—let's see if I can get this right—the Ivyplus group, which consists of alumni from local graduates of the Ivy League, Stanford and MIT. And then on Wednesday I'll be speaking to the Yale Club of Oregon at the University Club. And Wednesday night, the red-eye to LaGuardia will bring me home, with a layover in Chicago at—gulp—4:57 AM.
Ah, the glamorous life of a writer!
But I'm very much looking forward to visiting Portland, a beautiful city with some great bookstores, and talking with what I'm sure will be smart and thoughtful audiences.
