Shots In The Dark

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....)

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.

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>>

Posted by: richard / 9:41 AM   

...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....

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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....

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....

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.

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.

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?)

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.

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.....

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.....

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....

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.

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 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?

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.

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....