Shots In The Dark

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....

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.

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.

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?

I'll be appearing on The O'Reilly Factor tonight to talk about Harvard. Check local listings for 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.

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.

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.

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....

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.

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.....)

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?

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....

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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....

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....

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.

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.

....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?)