A Skip Gates Story Last week I attended a book party for "One Drop," a new book by Bliss Broyard about her family's hidden racial identity: her father, who died in 1990, was a light-skinned black man who "passed" for white for much of his life, and never told his children the truth about his ethnic identity.

Some of you may remember the story, which was originally publicized by Skip Gates in a New Yorker piece called "White Like Me—The Passing of Anatole Broyard." (I believe Gates has since reprinted it in a collection.)

In One Drop, Broyard recounts the story of how Gates came to write that profile, and, if you're interested in how Gates works, it is fascinating.

Broyard and Gates are originally introduced through a mutual friend, and Gates calls Broyard.

Broyard writes:

I started out the conversation pacing back and forth in front of the counter—I was anxious about sounding stupid or ill-informed—but his easygoing manner and a conversational style peppered with words like "dig," "brother," and "crazy motherfucker" soon relaxed me..... Skip asked me question after question..... After talking for almost an hour, Skip promised to put together a reading list for me and hung up.

Gates also encourages Broyard to write about her father, saying that it would make a wonderful and important story.

Before long, Gates calls and asks Broyard if she wants to have lunch. She agrees, but isn't sure of his motives.

I wondered briefly if his interest was romantic.....

Then Gates cancels because (this is so typical, it's a little funny), he has to go to Washington to receive an award. Then it turns out that he is interested in a different kind of seduction.

I've got some good news, he says. Tina Brown wanted him to write about Anatole Broyard for a New Yorker profile.

Bliss Broyard isn't happy—she wants to be the first to break the news of her father, and she isn't ready to write about him.

We hung up at a crossroads. As he continued to call throughout the fall, trying to win my cooperation—and by extension, my family's—my trash-talking buddy Skip rapidly disappeared. Messages from Henry Louis Gates, Professor Gates, Dr. Gates, and then finally Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. piled up on my answering machine. ...Eventually Skip realized he was barking up the wrong tree.

When the article is published, it is not unsympathetic—I read it at the time and found it moving and fascinating, especially because the Broyards grew up down the street from my childhood home, and Bliss' brother and I attended the same school—but it was still painful for the Broyards.

My family and I stood stiff with anger, blinded under the glare of this sudden spotlight. The characterization of my father as an obsessive seducer of women particularly upset my mother....

Some time later, Gates sent to Broyard a detailed genealogy, all the research that the New Yorker had done to establish the race of Anatole Broyard. A guilty conscience or the fulfillment of a promise to help Broyard write about her father?

As I read this, I don't particularly think Gates did anything wrong. It's arguable that he should have told Broyard in their first conversation that he was thinking of writing about Anatole Broyard, as he surely was, but on the other hand, lots of journalists troll for ideas in everyday conversations. (Pretty much all the time, in fact.)

But it's nonetheless a fascinating and not very attractive portrait of the way that an ambitious journalist goes about his business, and how a person's painful life story can be commodified both by an outsider and by a family member. (Because surely Bliss Broyard must have known what a fascinating book her father's story would make, just the kind of thing that the American literary intelligentsia would snap up, and how her father's life story could boost her own career.)

What makes this incident even more intriguing is that the New Yorker piece probably did help Bliss Broyard get her book contract, for more money than she would otherwise have gotten, I suspect.

So you see, journalism can be a pretty interesting business.  ¶ 8:26 AM 16 comments

  Yale Beats Harvard Yale reports that its endowment increased by 28% last year....beating Harvard's return by about five percent.

Yale's 28% return easily exceeded the 17.5% average for foundations and endowments over the period and beat all other endowments with at least $1 billion in assets that have reported year-end results so far, according to the Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service.

Of course, Yale's endowment of $22.5 billion is only about 2/3 of Harvard's $34.9 billion.

Yale's investment manager, David Swensen, has been in charge of the university's investments since 1988, and over the past decade he has beaten Harvard's return by an average annual 2.8%.

Among the other endowments which did better than Harvard's were Amherst, Notre Dame, the University of Virginia, Duke, Michigan, and Northwestern. No one did better than Yale....

Could this have anything to do with the departure of Mohammed El-Erian?  ¶ 7:23 AM 9 comments

  Lee Bollinger, Still on the Spot The New York Sun claims that there's a backlash on campus against Columbia president Lee Bollinger.

A backlash against the president of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, who on Monday delivered a harsh rebuke to President Ahmadinejad, is coming from faculty members and students who said he struck an "insulting tone" and that his remarks amounted to "schoolyard taunts." The fierceness of Mr. Bollinger's critique bought the Iranian some sympathy on campus that he didn't deserve, the critics said, and amounted to a squandered opportunity to provide a lesson in diplomacy.A backlash against the president of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, who on Monday delivered a harsh rebuke to President Ahmadinejad, is coming from faculty members and students who said he struck an "insulting tone" and that his remarks amounted to "schoolyard taunts." The fierceness of Mr. Bollinger's critique bought the Iranian some sympathy on campus that he didn't deserve, the critics said, and amounted to a squandered opportunity to provide a lesson in diplomacy.

The Times reports on the same thing.

Before Iran’s president took the stage at Columbia University on Monday, the university’s president, Lee C. Bollinger, sent out an early-morning e-mail message, calling on students and faculty “to live up to the best of Columbia’s traditions.” Yesterday, many critics questioned whether Mr. Bollinger had met that test himself.

On balance, did Bollinger come out ahead in the A-jad brouhaha?
  ¶ 8:47 AM 15 comments

  The Case Against Sushi Demand for bluefin tuna has the species on the verge of extinction...  ¶ 8:29 AM 4 comments

  The Coop Controversy The Globe covers the simmering battle between CrimsonReading.org and the Harvard Coop.

For the students, this is a fight about the cheapest access to information.

"We're not out to be at war with the Coop," said Jon Staff, director of crimsonreading.org, who passed out fliers advertising the site outside the Coop yesterday. "It's sad that students have to choose which classes they take based on the overall cost of the textbooks."

And for the Coop, it's about the value of information that it works to compile.

Coop president Jeremiah Murphy said the store's reading list is proprietary information. The staff spends considerable time compiling the list, collecting the names of books required by professors and sorting books by course, he said.

"The issue is, why should we give it out to anybody, particularly the competitors?" Murphy said.

It's really a classic fight of the Internet era, in which information wants to be cheap and old monopolies dig in their heels to try to maintain profit levels. Sorry, Coop—right or wrong, you know how this is going to go. Cut your prices or die.....  ¶ 8:14 AM 11 comments

  Is the Blogger Slacking Off? Sorry it's been quiet here today, folks. Turned in the book manuscript yesterday, and I suppose it's fair to say that I was a bit lazy today.  ¶ 9:02 PM 5 comments

  Quote of the Day “Mr President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.”

—Columbia president Lee Bollinger to Iranian president A-jad.  ¶ 3:02 PM 15 comments

  Lee Bollinger on the Spot I went to BAM yesterday to see Ian McKellen in King Lear—wow!—and before the play one of my friends spotted Lee Bollinger sitting down (fourth row, center). That takes some chutzpah, I thought. Going to Lear the day before Iranian president Ahmadinejad's controversial speech on your campus.

The Wall Street Journal blasts Bollinger today (surprise!) for inviting A-jad, as we will now call him, to Columbia, accusing Bollinger of hypocrisy for banning military recruiting at Columbia while inviting A-jad to speak.

Mr. Bollinger's position might at least be coherent were he not now invoking the same principles to justify his invitation to Mr. Ahmadinejad, whose offenses to gay rights and any other form of human dignity considerably exceed the Pentagon's. After promising that he would introduce the president "with a series of sharp challenges" -- including Iran's "reported support" for international terrorism -- he went on to say that "it is a critical premise of freedom of speech that we do not honor the dishonorable when we open the public forum to their expression."

I have a couple of thoughts about all this. One is that Bollinger really is an eloquent advocate for the First Amendment, and especially these days, I'm glad of that; the country seems to need reminding. Two, given that the White House seems determined to go to war against Iran, this speech actually seems useful. Might as well know all we can before the bombs drop, right? Three, Bollinger's got some guts—and an ego to boot. One thinks he's rather enjoying all this.

Finally, it's interesting to ponder this brouhaha in the context of the idea of the university president and the bully pulpit. Lee Bollinger has, since becoming president of Columbia, probably made himself the most prominent university president in the country. That's the role that Larry Summers was supposed to occupy, and one that Drew Faust so far shows no intention of competing for.

Would Harvard have been better off had it chosen Lee Bollinger instead of Larry Summers, as it almost did? I don't know. But it is fascinating to watch Bollinger and wonder what might have been.  ¶ 6:40 AM 18 comments

  Was Larry Summers Right? "Men are smartest and dumbest," according to the Times of London.

Psychologists have found a justification for the male strangehold on Nobel prizes – there are twice as many men as women in the brightest 2% of the population.

But although men may win the top prizes, they cannot claim a clear-cut victory in an intellectual battle of the sexes. The study shows that men also cluster at the opposite extreme, with twice as many men as women stuck in the least intelligent 2%.

I have suggested in the past that Harvard, in some form, apologize to Cornel West. I wonder if, in the interests of fairness, there is not also some apology owed to Lawrence Summers. Not for his eventual ouster, which I think was inevitable and, at that point, necessary, and as a result of general failings in leadership style—but for the vilification he took for making the women-in-science remarks. At the very least, reports such as the one above suggest that, right or wrong, Summers was hardly beyond the bounds of appropriate conversation in that NBER talk....  ¶ 9:32 AM 34 comments

  Where's Marcia When You Need Her? Nick Summers and Chris Beam, editors of Ivygate (and 02138 contributors) write in the Washington Post about college sex.

What can college kids expect—and parents fear?

...They'll be gettin' some. Literally -- some. As in, a medium amount.

...Improbably, it's a recent comedy -- a movie whose plot turns on vomit, penis art and a fake ID issued to one Mr. McLovin -- that gets it right. Next to "I Am Charlotte Simmons," "Superbad" is nothing less than a documentary of our time. The story of two best friends on the eve of college, it nails how our generation's culture really is based on drinking and hookups -- but also how at the end of the night, even with girls who are eager and boys who score booze, sex remains elusive.

Vomit also plays an important role, as it probably should, in college drinking, according to Daniela Deane in WashPo, who tells of how her college student son got drunk and puked on a nice chair she bought him. Whoops!

I've been doing a lot of soul-searching -- and the cushion incident only made matters worse. Have my husband and I been too permissive, hostages to our own upbringing? Did we give these boys too much credit for knowing when enough is enough?

Soul-searching turned into researching, though, and what I found actually quieted my anxious heart. Despite the headlines, the truth is that drinking among college students has decreased. And young people's attitudes about drinking and driving have changed, too, with many of them much more reluctant to get behind the wheel after imbibing.

Hmmmm. Has anyone considered the possibility that college students are having less sex because sometimes, when you're young and a bit nervous, it helps to be a little looped?  ¶ 8:49 AM 1 comments

  W&M; in the Times The Israel Lobby is reviewed by Leslie Gelb in the New York Times BR tomorrow.

Their book, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” is an extended version of their highly controversial article of a year ago, which appeared in The London Review of Books. Now, as then, they contend that the lobby has made United States policy so lopsidedly pro-Israel that it fuels Muslim terrorism against the United States, fosters the spread of nuclear weapons in Arab states and puts at added risk America’s critical energy supplies from the Persian Gulf.

This commentary could not be more serious, and I believe that the authors are mostly wrong, as well as dangerously misleading. But Mearsheimer and Walt are raising the very same fundamental, gut-check issues about American security and who controls policy that many Middle East experts talk about mostly in private...

...Why have two such serious students of United States foreign policy written so weak a book and added fuel, inadvertently, to the fires of anti-Semitism?

It's a funny thing: Someone who once reviewed one of my books e-mailed me out of the blue yesterday, and in the course of his e-mail suggested that I might not have been pleased with the review. I wrote back that I don't think much about reviews, yea or nay, because in my opinion they usually say more about the reviewer than the book—especially when the reviewer is male. These men, thrusting and parrying with their reviewers' swords, think that they're writing in some objective way...when really, they're generally just writing about themselves. Not always, of course, but often. Meanwhile, reviews by women can be more interesting—less competitive, more contemplative. It's a different style of discourse.

Gelb's review manifests this phenomenon.

Some sample lines:

Mearsheimer and Walt live in the same foreign policy world I inhabit....

But as my mother often said, “They asked for trouble”...

And my favorite:

Fidel Castro thundered at me in a private meeting a decade ago: “You don’t have a democracy...."

Note to NYTBR editors: Next time, try this: "'You don't have a democracy,' Fidel Castro told an American journalist in 1997...'"

Anyway, I don't think W&M will be very happy with the review.  ¶ 5:23 PM 2 comments

  This Is Going to Take Some Getting Used To Marcia Brady slept with Jan?

Marcia?


  ¶ 5:08 PM 4 comments

  As Predicted, the Conservative Backlash One wishes that the women who pushed for the invitation of Larry Summers to speak to the regents to be rescinded had thought of television commentary like this, on Fox, in re Columbia's invitation to Iranian president Ahmadinejab to speak....

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Let me give you an example of the double standard. This week there was a petition, in the last few weeks, at UC Davis by feminist professors protesting the appearance of Larry Summers at a dinner of the regents, which was supposed to happen last night.

The invitation was rescinded.

BRIT HUME: Former Harvard University President Summers, former Treasury Secretary Summers.

KRAUTHAMMER: In a Democratic administration, a great professor and a great American. His invitation is rescinded. These are elite institutions that speak about a welcoming a diversity opinion. Well, not if you are Larry Summers, and yet yes if you are the president of Iran, a sponsor of terrorism and a denier of the holocaust.

This is an example of the degradation of American academia. And the reason it has become so irrelevant in American public life — 40 years ago in the Kennedy days academia was a source of ideas. It no longer is. All of that now is in think tanks as a result of the incredibly hostile atmosphere in the university against real diversity of opinion.

Boy, you know things are rough when people are saying that think tanks are generating more diversity of opinion than academia.  ¶ 4:55 PM 2 comments

  Whole Lotta Campus Controversy Going On The Yale Daily News reports that the campus is under siege from conservative blogs.

When students were caught having sex in the shower last spring, the retaliation was swift....

What will it be like when the conservatives latch on to the story of Casper DesFeux, who filmed himself and his girlfriend having sex without her knowledge (the filming, that is, not the sex) and showed the video to his roommates?

(Interesting technology aside: He used his MacBook's iSight!)

(Interesting globalization aside: He's Danish!)

Meanwhile, on the left coast, at Stanford they're protesting the appointment of Donald Rumsfeld as a "distinguished visiting fellow" at the Hoover Institute.

And here in Crazytown, Columbia prez Lee Bollinger is getting all sorts of grief for inviting Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak on campus. Yesterday the New York Post basically called for someone to assassinate Ahmadinejad.... Ah, what a strong and secure nation we are!

And finally, over at Princeton, Shirley Tilghman has launched a $1.75 billion fundraising campaign.
  ¶ 7:30 AM 17 comments

  The Coop Throws the Book at Students Here's an interesting Crimson story: The Coop tries to have Harvard students arrested for copying down book ISBN numbers so that they could find the books online cheaper than the Coop sells them.

The year-old, student-run crimsonreading.org site allows Harvard students to find cheap textbooks at Internet booksellers by clicking on the courses they are taking. The Coop has argued that it owns intellectual property rights to the identification numbers for the books it stocks, which are organized by course on the third floor. Crimson Reading Director John T. Staff V ’10 insists the information is in the public domain.

...Jonathan L. Zittrain, the director of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, also said yesterday that Crimson Reading’s actions appeared to be legal.

“It’s hard to see [the ISBNs] as intellectual property,” Zittrain said in an interview. He said of the Coop’s policy: “It sort of takes the ‘co’ out of ‘Coop’ to do that. I’m sure the Coop isn’t interested in suing its patrons and it probably should just say that it welcomes the competition and welcomes students.”

I love the Coop, but they're just wrong on this one. Arresting students? What are you folks thinking?

Now, here is one point that Harvard might consider: ISBN's might not be intellectual property, but I'll bet there's an argument that course syllabi are...and CrimsonReading.org lists the books for a lot of courses, which isn't quite the same as publishing syllabi, but it's pretty close. Should the university worry that its students are publishing this stuff online?  ¶ 7:50 AM 17 comments

  Murray Chass on 1978 I know some of you folks out there don't like him, but he did incredible reporting that season.

Today he raises the specter of 1978, a prospect that strikes terror in the hearts of Red Sox fans.

“The mood is suicidal,” a fan from Maine said in an e-mail message yesterday. “The Yanks are going to win the division.”

...A Boston lawyer said he listened to Red Sox games and asked: “Why am I doing this? This is a waste of time. I know the Sox will blow it at the end and the Yanks will win. And every night lately that premonition comes true.”

He added, “There truly is a foreboding sense that this is the arrival of the inevitable collapse and that they are gagging like they did in ’78.”

Me, I still find it hard to believe that the Red Sox could lose the division—not with their pitching. (Although what's happened to the bullpen?) And, of course, even if the Yankees and Sox tied, there would be no one-game playoff. And even if the Red Sox were the wild card, wild cards can win World Series too.

No, what gives a Yankee fan the greatest pleasure is hearing the tone of desperation and futility in the voices of Sox fans—almost as if (please God, please God) 2004 never happened.

A small aside: These are fun days for Yankee fans, as not only are the Red Sox suddenly losing, but the Mets (ugh) are folding in a dramatic and exciting and wonderful way. I feel bad for Willie Randolph, but still...it's lots of fun to watch the Mets choke.  ¶ 7:38 AM 0 comments

  Mattel to China: We're Sorry Here's a curious story: the toy company Mattel has apologized to China for recalling toys made in that country.

The gesture by Thomas A. Debrowski, Mattel's executive vice president for worldwide operations, came in a meeting with Chinese product safety chief Li Changjiang, at which Li upbraided the company for maintaining weak safety controls.

...Mattel takes full responsibility for these recalls and apologizes personally to you, the Chinese people, and all of our customers who received the toys,'' Debrowski said."

...Li reminded Debrowski that ''a large part of your annual profit ... comes from your factories in China.'

'This shows that our cooperation is in the interests of Mattel, and both parties should value our cooperation....' Li said.

The whole apology has a kind of Orwellian quality, doesn't it?  ¶ 7:31 AM 2 comments

  Some Details of 2+2 A poster below defended Harvard Business School's new 2+2 program, in which college juniors are encouraged to apply to HBS, by saying that the program was only going to admit 12 applicants and that there was no penalty for dropping out.

Turns out that's not quite right.

In an interview with Business Week, HBS Assoc. Dir. for MBA Admissions Andrea Mitchell Kimmell explains that over time the school hopes to enlarge the program to 90 students and that students who are accepted, then change their minds, will likely lose a $1,000 deposit.....

Sadly, the Business Week interviewer does not ask if the program is a response to students who are simply abandoning b-school and going straight to hedge funds....

(By the way, HBS' Dee Leopold, Managing Dir. for Admissions and Financial Aid...has a blog! Any time, FAS.....)  ¶ 7:13 AM 3 comments

  Friday Morning Song   ¶ 11:44 PM 3 comments

  Gawker Agrees Here's their take on the subway-cell phone situation:

Good news for crazed narcissists who think the world should be able to reach them AT ALL TIMES because they're just that important: The MTA is set to announce a deal to wire all 277 subway stations over the next six years. Sadly, your cellphone will only work in the stations, but hey, at least that time you spend sweating on the platform waiting for a 6 train that never comes will now be scored to a soundtrack of, "So then I was all, 'Why won't you tell your friends we're dating?' and he was like, 'Let's not cheapen it with labels,' which kind of makes sense?" Even better, the terrorists will only be able to remote-detonate their bombs in the station, so you can kick back and relax while you're cruising through the tunnels at 3 miles per hour.  ¶ 2:33 PM 3 comments

  Apparently Alan Dershowitz Couldn't Get Him Off The New York Post reports that Harvard donor and secretive financier Jeffrey Epstein is likely going to jail, because he is also, apparently, slightly pervy and likes to get naked massages from underage girls.

Sources tell Page Six that Epstein's high-powered lawyers - including Alan Dershowitz, Gerald Lefcourt, Roy Black and Kenneth Starr - have been negotiating a deal with federal prosecutors who are probing, among other things, whether the gray-haired money manager paid West Palm Beach girls for sex or transported them across state lines. Epstein is currently charged by the State of Florida with soliciting young prostitutes for sex - but federal charges would be far more serious.

...Palm Beach police records show that on March 15, 2005, a 14-year-old girl alleged she had visited Epstein's estate, where she partially stripped and gave him a massage during which he "pulled out a purple vibrator" and used it on her in exchange for $300....  ¶ 12:51 PM 11 comments

  Welcome to the End of the World, Part II More and more young people are hiring photographers to take pictures of their marriage proposals...thus establishing that the power of narcissim is greater than the power of romance.  ¶ 12:49 PM 11 comments

  Welcome to the End of the World New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority has signed a deal to allow cell phone use in subway stations.

Because, apparently, waiting for a late, crowded train on a dirty, crowded platform isn't stressful enough.  ¶ 7:36 AM 8 comments

  1978 All Over Again? Life is full of hard questions. Such as....

Are the Sox going to blow the division? What the heck is going on with Papelbon? How many consecutive games can the Yankees win?  ¶ 7:30 AM 3 comments

  Quote of the Day “Harvard’s got a white supremacist legacy, it’s got a male supremacist legacy, it’s got an anti-Semitic legacy and a homophobic legacy. So you choose to be a part of the legacy that’s critical, and Harvard has much to offer.”

—Cornel West on the Tavis Smiley Show, 9/18  ¶ 6:54 AM 8 comments

  Are Harvard Students Ignorant? The New York Sun reignites the debate over curriculum and citizenship, reporting that students at Harvard and elsewhere can not pass a test on basic American history.

Students at many of the country's most prestigious colleges and universities are graduating with less knowledge of American history, government, and economics than they had as incoming freshmen, with Harvard University seniors scoring a "D+" average on a 60-question multiple-choice exam about civic literacy.

...At universities such as Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Duke, and Berkeley, seniors scored lower on the test, available here, than freshmen, living proof of the broadening relevancy of the old Harvard adage that the university is a storehouse of knowledge because "the freshmen bring so much and the seniors take away so little.

Just in case the above link doesn't work, here's the test. If Harvard students can't pass this thing, the university is really doing something wrong.....
  ¶ 6:40 AM 17 comments

  Leave Bill Belichick Alone!   ¶ 9:56 AM 8 comments

  We Miss Alex, the Talking Harvard Parrot In the Times, George Johnson writes quite a nice piece about just how intelligent Alex, the talking Harvard parrot, may have been.

Skeptics have long dismissed Dr. Pepperberg’s successes with Alex as a subtle form of conditioning — no deeper philosophically than teaching a pigeon to peck at a moving spot by bribing it with grain. But the radical behaviorists once said the same thing about people: that what we take for thinking, hoping, even theorizing, is all just stimulus and response.

Here's Alex on a PBS show. Not only smart, but cute!

  ¶ 6:13 AM 6 comments

  Drew Faust: She's No Anti-Semite The Harvard-obsessed New York Sun commends Drew Faust for opposing the British boycott of Israeli academics, then adds this:

The stance taken by Ms. Faust on the matter is closely watched, and is particularly welcome, because there was more than a whiff of anti- Israel — even anti-Jewish, some students sense — sentiment in the faculty rebellion that forced Ms. Faust's predecessor, Lawrence Summers, from Massachusetts Hall. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences motion in March 2005 expressing no confidence in Mr. Summers was made by a Harvard professor, J. Lorand Matory, who had signed a petition calling on Harvard to divest from Israel.

That petition, like the British boycott effort, singled out Israel for opprobrium among all the countries of the world, and Mr. Summers, showed the courage to reject it, more bluntly than other university presidents, as being anti-Semitic in effect, if not intent. That position earned Mr. Summers the enmity not only of Mr. Matory but no doubt others on the faculty who are hostile to Israel. With Mr. Summers gone, there is no doubt that the anti- Israel camp at Harvard will try to gain ground.

Note carefully that artfully worded insertion—"even anti-Jewish, some students sense." Huh. Would that be some students making that assertion, or some newspaper editors in New York attributing their own opinions to Harvard students?

What a Rorschach test the Summers ouster is!  ¶ 6:04 AM 6 comments

  Forward Progress Speaking of Larry Summers, remember how the former president used to be driven around in a Lincoln Town Car with the license plate 1636? (I wrote about this in Harvard Rules....)

Well, things do change. A correspondent sent me this photo of a Harvard Parking Service van. Note the license plate.....




  ¶ 5:28 AM 10 comments

  Summers: Still Banned in California, Again A day after the Crimson and three days after the story was posted on this blog, the Globe takes note of Larry Summers' dis-invitation.....

Meanwhile, the San Jose Mercury News notes that the decision by the UC Board of Regents to disinvite Summers is stirring up controversy.

The University of California Board of Regents is being accused of squashing academic debate for withdrawing its invitation to former Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers to address the board.

..."The fact that the university capitulated to this is appalling. The administration is intimidated by a minority of faculty," said David Horowitz, a conservative writer who founded the activist group Students For Academic Freedom. "Summers is a brilliant guy. I don't share his politics - but if you can't discuss ideas at a university, where can you discuss them?"

Because he was quoted in the Crimson yesterday, and because reporters are lazy, Greg Mankiw is quoted in both the Globe and the Mercury News.
  ¶ 5:15 AM 2 comments

  Larry Summers: Still Banned in California The Crimson updates the story of Summers being disinvited to speak by the UC Board of Regents, and is the first news outlet that I've seen to carry a statement from Summers.

...Summers called the University of California system a “national treasure.”

“I regret missing the chance to discuss issues facing universities with the regents,” he said. “I often participate in discussions of this kind, and find that I always learn a great deal from the exchange of views and am sorry that the regents do not feel the same way.”

This is what's known as a slam dunk. The PC cops in the UC system certainly made this easy for Summers. All he had to do was take the high road, and he makes them look like idiots....and of course Maureen Stanton, one of the petition organizers, did not answer the Crimson when it requested an interview. She should. Going underground now only makes her look like, having acted to squelch open discussion once, she is doing it again. And Stanton, who has a Harvard Ph.d. and is an accomplished scientist, should know better.....  ¶ 9:14 AM 11 comments

  The Case for a Carbon Tax In the Times, Harvard economist Gregory Mankiw joins Al Gore and calls for the implementation of a carbon tax, and using the revenue gained to cut payroll taxes.

Yet this natural aversion to carbon taxes can be overcome if the revenue from the tax is used to reduce other taxes. By itself, a carbon tax would raise the tax burden on anyone who drives a car or uses electricity produced with fossil fuels, which means just about everybody. Some might fear this would be particularly hard on the poor and middle class.

But Gilbert Metcalf, a professor of economics at Tufts, has shown how revenue from a carbon tax could be used to reduce payroll taxes in a way that would leave the distribution of total tax burden approximately unchanged. He proposes a tax of $15 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, together with a rebate of the federal payroll tax on the first $3,660 of earnings for each worker.

This is such a smart idea—and payroll taxes are regressive, anyway—that it will almost surely never happen. (Sorry, that was cynical.)

What's really interesting is that Mankiw is an adviser to Mitt Romney, who has been vociferous in his opposition to any new taxes....  ¶ 8:47 AM 5 comments

  Monday Morning Song   ¶ 8:43 AM 8 comments

  Holy Cow! What a Game Anyone else see that Yankee-Red Sox game last night? That is why baseball is the greatest game. Mariano Rivera against David Ortiz, bases loaded, two out, bottom of the ninth, Fenway practically shaking with noise, after terrific pitching performances by Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling? (Clemens' slightly better, but Schilling made it look easier—at least until the 8th.)

What an exciting, well-played game it had been, filled with baseball's typical imperfections (the umpires cost the Yankees a run, calling Johnny Damon out at first on a play on which he was clearly safe) as well as its glories, including sterling defense by the Yankees. (How about that Doug Mientkiewicz?) And you have to love the rookies, Joba Chamberlain (man, is he good) and that baby-faced kid, Jacob Ellsbury? You have to like the looks of him, too—great plays in the field, gutsy at the plate. (Hitless, last night, though, for the first time since he's been in the majors.)

And of course Derek Jeter...hitting .429 with men in scoring position and two out, coming through with a three-run home run that soared over the Monster.

I'm glad the Yankees won, of course. That makes it six of the last seven they've taken from the Sox, and if they see the Sox again in the playoffs, you'd have to say they have a slight psychological advantage. Everyone knows the Yankees have been a better team since the All-Star break.

As the Globe's Dan Shaughnessy writes,

The Yankees beat the Red Sox 10 times in 18 meetings this year and the Nation can't be comfortable with the prospect of facing the Bronx Bombers in the 2007 ALCS.

But as a fan of the rivalry and of the sport, I just love this kind of game. (I went to Giants Stadium yesterday to see the Giants get destroyed by the Packers, and boy, was that a crummy game. The Giants are awful.)

I should have been working last night, but instead I was sitting in front of the TV, on the edge of the seat, my heart pounding. In between innings, I'd jog back to the computer and try to work.

Could anyone (other than Sox fans) watch that game and not want the Yankees and the Red Sox to play each other again this season?  ¶ 6:10 AM 5 comments

  Now I Understand ...why the televisions in both bars I was in tonight were showing college football; the Red Sox win a blowout against the Yanks. Did Josh Beckett just win the Cy Young?

Of greater concern to the Yankees than the loss is the possibility that Jorge Posada, perhaps baseball's best catcher, got hurt in a collision at home plate....  ¶ 12:38 AM 4 comments

  Why HBS Launched 2+2? The Times reports that more and more college grads are skipping business school altogether and instead going straight into working at a hedge fund.

(Is this one reason why so few of today's college students care about the war? Because they've been paid off?)

As more Americans have become abundantly wealthy, young people are recalculating old assumptions about success. The flood of money into private equity and hedge funds over the last decade has made billionaires out of people like Kenneth Griffin, 38, chief executive of the Citadel Investment Group [blogger: Also, #25 on the 02138 Harvard 100], and Eddie Lampert, 45, the hedge fund king who bought Sears and Kmart. These men are icons for the fast buck set — particularly the mathematically gifted cohort of rising stars known as “quants.” Many college graduates who are bright enough to be top computer scientists or medical researchers are becoming traders instead, and they measure their status in dollars instead of titles.

...And top performers at the banks make so much money today that they don’t want to take two years off for business school, even if it’s a prestigious institution like the Wharton School or Harvard.

All of which puts HBS's new 2+2 program into a new light—instead of it being a good deal for undergrads, maybe it's actually an attempt to lock them in before they realize they can make much more money without going to business school.....  ¶ 7:07 PM 2 comments

  Larry Summers Symbolizes Prejudice? The Chronicle of Higher Ed follows up on the Larry Summers story.

The move followed a petition drive by female faculty members on the university’s nearby Davis campus, where the board is meeting.

The faculty members said it was inappropriate for the regents to have Mr. Summers as their guest at a time when the university is struggling to diversity its faculty ranks.

The petition, which drew 150 signatures, said, “Inviting a keynote speaker who has come to symbolize gender and racial prejudice in academia conveys the wrong message...

Do these people not realize that, in addition to being absurd, their actions will only have the effect of martyring Summers?

How many right-wing newspapers/columnists are taking pen to paper even now......  ¶ 4:09 PM 10 comments

  Larry Summers: Banned in California The University of California-Davis has rescinded a speaking invitation to Larry Summers.

After a group of UC Davis women faculty began circulating a petition, UC regents rescinded an invitation to Larry Summers, the controversial former president of Harvard University, to speak at a board dinner Wednesday night in Sacramento. The dinner comes during the regents' meeting at UCD next week.

...“The regents represent the leadership and public face of the University of California,” the petition states. “Inviting a keynote speaker who has come to symbolize gender and racial prejudice in academia conveys the wrong message to the university community and to the people of California. It is our fervent hope that the regents will rescind this invitation and seek advice elsewhere.”

As some of you know, I have written critically of Summers in the past, but this is ridiculous, the height of political correctness. The shame of it is not just that the UC system regents have caved on an important principle (free speech), but also that other universities might, in the future, simply choose not to invite Summers and other controversial speakers, lest the PC police get up in arms....  ¶ 8:19 AM 11 comments

  Mohamed El-Erian in the Times In the NYT, Jenny Anderson explores why Mohamed El-Erian has quit his job as head of the Harvard Management Company.

Clearly even the best-run endowments have trouble holding onto talent. Harvard produces presidents, chief executives, doctors, lawyers, politicians and money managers (the money managers that come from Harvard’s endowment are called the Crimson puppies). Brand Harvard is so hot that there is an independent magazine dedicated to it, whose title is simply the institution’s ZIP code. And yet it has lost two endowment managers in less than three years.

...Maybe Pimco gave him more love. Or maybe it was just more money.

Here is a suggestion for a concerned alum or FAS member: To convene a panel discussion in, say, Memorial Hall about how enormous wealth is changing (corrupting?) the identity and mission of Harvard, and what to do about it.  ¶ 8:01 AM 3 comments

  So I Stopped into a Bar Last Night... ...after seeing In the Valley of Elah, which is beautiful and moving, and has a final scene which reaches the depth of tragedy, and in the bar there happened to be a baseball game on the flat screens hanging from the walls, and the Yankees were coming to bat in the top of the 8th, losing 7-2, and I groaned in disappointment....  ¶ 7:44 AM 1 comments

  Larry Summers: Still Banned in California The Crimson updates the story of Summers being banned, and is the first news outlet that I've seen to carry a statement from Summers.

...Summers called the University of California system a “national treasure.”

“I regret missing the chance to discuss issues facing universities with the regents,” he said. “I often participate in discussions of this kind, and find that I always learn a great deal from the exchange of views and am sorry that the regents do not feel the same way.”

This is what's known as a slam dunk. The PC cops in the UC system certainly made this easy for Summers. All he had to do was take the high road, and he makes them look like idiots....and of course Maureen Stanton, one of the petition organizers, did not answer the Crimson when it requested an interview. She should. Going underground now only makes her look like, having acted to squelch open discussion once, she is doing it again. And Stanton, who has a Harvard Ph.d. and is an accomplished scientist, should know better.....  ¶ 3:49 PM 0 comments

  The National Review Trashes Howard Gardner There's an article about Howard Gardiner in the new issue of Harvard Magazine in which Gardner lashes out at the Bush administration...and here in National Review, Jay P. Greene blasts Gardner for his opinions.

In HM, Gardner says, “The right wing isn’t just taking over the country, it’s shanghaiing all our values. If there’s a Republican administration after the next election, I would join in efforts for some sort of secession. It’s not the same country anymore.”

Greene writes in response,

What would make him, and officials at Harvard, comfortable threatening secession in the alumni magazine?

One possibility is that they think these comments actually appeal to the alumni. They are probably mistaken. While President Bush is no more popular among Harvard alumni than among other groups of east-coast intellectuals, talk of secession is almost certainly a bridge too far. The current student body and key alumni show no signs of wishing Harvard to stray into fashionable radicalism.

We know this from their reaction to the forced resignation of University President Lawrence Summers. Summers attempted to rein in some of higher education’s more extreme nonsense...

Lawrence Summers tried to restore to Harvard the notion that patriotism and academia were not incompatible. Howard Gardner’s comments in the alumni magazine are an attempt to move the ball in the opposite direction. The newly appointed Harvard president, Drew Gilpin Faust, has not yet indicated the course she would like Harvard to take. Will Harvard once again stand for the Union?

The point, I suppose, is to put Drew Faust on guard: The conservatives are watching.
  ¶ 8:23 AM 66 comments

  Harvard's Big Bucks, Part II The Wall Street Journal reports that HBS is starting a program to lure undergrads to the business school.

Called 2+2, the initiative allows college students to lock in a spot in Harvard's M.B.A. program by the end of their junior year. Before they start classes, accepted students must work for two years. The school is providing free career counseling and other resources to help students secure these short-term positions.

I'm slightly puzzled by this. HBS doesn't get enough applicants from Harvard College as is?**

Because there is a downside here: this move adds to the pre-professionalization of the undergraduate experience, which is already pretty heavily slanted in that direction. Will it create a sort of unofficial business major? And if you've already gotten into business school in your junior year, won't that eliminate any motivation to work hard as a senior?

The greatest challenge that Harvard has, it seems to me, is how to be as rich as it is, while still trying to isolate the university from the values of the money culture, or at least not to be completely overwhelmed by them. The very point of an undergraduate education is a gray area right now (as the curricular review unintentionally demonstrated). Is it now simply a way to get into HBS?

Will other Harvard schools, such as GSAS, now feel the need to create similar programs? Should they?
______________________________________________________________

** A poster points out that the program is intended for all colleges, not just Harvard, something which would probably make its impact less profound than I suggest above. Worth noting. The poster, an undergrad, also points out that pre-professionalization also occurs with other professional schools, such as HMS.

No one's denying the reality of the fact that there are many encroachments of professional life into the undergraduate experience. The question is, Who will stand up to say that this might not be such a good thing?


  ¶ 7:36 AM 21 comments

  Harvard's Big Bucks In the Globe, Steven Syre asks, "How should Harvard spend its money?"

Apply the average annual investment return Harvard earned over the past 30 years to the decade ahead, and my compounding calculator says the endowment will grow to $133 billion. In 20 years, the same exercise comes up with an endowment of $506 billion. These are squirrelly numbers because they assume very strong investment returns while ignoring future distributions and fund-raising, but you get the idea.

...Should a school sitting on $75 billion or $100 billion in the future have any business charging students tuition at that point?  ¶ 7:32 AM 1 comments

  The Return of the Prodigal Couple The Crimson reports that Marcyliena Morgan and Lawrence Bobo are returning to Harvard after having decamped to Stanford in January 2005.

Af-Am Chair Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham said that the change of leadership in the University was one factor that made Morgan and Bobo’s return possible.

University President Drew G. Faust contacted the couple in person to urge them to return to Harvard, Gates said, and Higginbotham said that Af-Am faculty wooed the pair this summer over dinners in Cambridge and Martha’s Vineyard.

Morgan, you will recall, is the author of Language, Discourse and Power in African American Culture, as well as the forthcoming The Real Hiphop - Battling for Knowledge, Power, and Respect in the Underground.  ¶ 7:21 AM 5 comments

  Dershowitz Moves to Isolate W&M; In the New York Sun, Alan Dershowitz says it's not enough that Barack Obama pulled a campaign ad from the Amazon.com page for "The Israel Lobby."

Obama, Dershowitz says, should also distance himself from foreign policy adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, because Brezinski once wrote that W&M; "have rendered a public service by initiating a much-needed public debate on the role of the ‘ Israel lobby' in the shaping of U.S. foreign policy."

Tomorrow: Dershowitz calls on anyone who has ever waved to W&M in the street, or stood in line next to the authors, to demand their public execution.
  ¶ 2:57 PM 3 comments

  I'd Pay the Devil to Replace Him   ¶ 2:26 PM 1 comments

  Apparently Not That Transparent Mohammed El-Erian has repeatedly called for greater transparency in the management and operations of the Harvard Management Company.

So why is he now refusing to speak to the press about his decision to quit after less than two years at Harvard? (Other than a statement described by the New York Times as "cryptic"?)

Doesn't he have some responsibility to do more than just issue a statement and call it a day?  ¶ 2:23 PM 10 comments

  "A Huge Loss for Harvard" He's gone.

Mohamed El-Erian's decision to resign as head of the Harvard Management Company gets play all over the major papers (and lots of other places too).

Bloomberg: ``It's a huge loss for Harvard,'' said Ken Rogoff, a Harvard economics professor and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, where El-Erian worked 15 years, in an interview. ``He is just incredibly impressive and dynamic and a brilliant person. I'm sure it won't be easy to find a replacement.''

The Times: In a long, if cryptic, statement, Mr. El-Erian said that he was returning to Southern California at the end of the year to be “closer to our family.” His wife and young daughter moved to Boston with him when he joined Harvard. He declined to comment further yesterday.

The Crimson: Benjamin J. Heller ’94, a managing director at the hedge fund HBK Investments who has known El-Erian professionally for a decade, said yesterday that El-Erian’s legacy would be his rebuilding of HMC’s internal management team in the wake of Meyer’s departure.

“Because of his credibility, he was able to get a lot of strong people, and hopefully they’ll stay,” said Heller, who was a Crimson editorial editor.

The Wall Street Journal: The surprise move by Mr. El-Erian comes barely 1½ years after he started at Harvard. The departure leaves the $35 billion university endowment looking for a new leader during a turbulent period in the markets. (A longer article is available to subscribers.)

The Globe: "In returning to Southern California to be closer to our [sic] family, I will miss my daily interactions with this special Harvard community," El-Erian said.

...The laborious executive search that finally landed El-Erian showed how difficult it could be to find a new executive to run the university's endowment. Harvard had offered the job to Bain Capital executive Mark Nunnelly in the summer of 2005, but he eventually declined.

Portfolio.com:

• This has got to be a serious blow to Harvard, where his work of rebuilding the management team in the wake of Jack Meyer's departure is only, by his own admission, part done. ("HMC is still in a transition phase," he wrote in his John Harvard letter three weeks ago.)
• Given that El-Erian was clearly making a long-term commitment when he moved to Boston, does this prove that that Harvard is genuinely bad at retaining talent?
• Or is El-Erian just fickle? His tenure at Harvard was short, but not as short as his tenure at Salomon Smith Barney.... (Blogger: The rest of this is quite interesting.)

My take: Of all the appointments Drew Faust has had to make, this one will probably be the most closely watched, and either the most important or the second-most, after the FAS deanship. So...probably the most important. She's going to get a lot of advice on a subject that is way, way beyond her experience. Can she trust it? Will she know enough to make an informed judgment? Or will the Corporation handle this for her?

Replacing El-Erian is Drew Faust's first big test.  ¶ 10:13 AM 2 comments

  A Resignation at Harvard More turmoil in Cambridge: The Crimson reports that endowment head Mohamed A. El-Erian is calling it quits.

“My time at Harvard has exposed me to many wonderful and interesting issues and people,” El-Erian said in a statement. He added that he was returning to California to “be closer to our family.”

He may also be returning to California to make a boatload of money; his old firm, PIMCO, has posted a press release announcing that El-Erian is rejoining the company as co-CEO and co-CIO.

Anyone know the real story? And what will the consequences be?  ¶ 4:31 PM 27 comments

  Barack Disses W&M; Barack Obama has pulled a campaign ad that appeared on the Amazon.com webpage for Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's "The Israel Lobby," according to the New York Sun.

The placement on the " Israel Lobby" page was unintentional, a campaign spokeswoman said, and the ad was gone hours after a New York Sun reporter notified the campaign of its location. "The ad has been removed from the site because the views of the book do not reflect the views of Senator Obama on the U.S.- Israel relationship," the spokeswoman, Jennifer Psaki, said.

As with all criticisms of the book, W&M; can use this act to demonstrate the validity of their thesis that Jews are bad.

(Kidding!)

Meanwhile, in the Crimson, Paras Bhayani argues that the book version of "The Israel Lobby" is a kinder, gentler version of the original paper.

Perhaps as a result of the reaction to the essay, the authors take pains in the book to show that their criticisms of the Israel lobby can be applied to other lobbies, while also spending more time tracing the American-Israel relationship. The authors also clarify many of their criticisms, bringing a less inflammatory tone to the book as a whole.

Perhaps, but this is a lose-lose situation for W&M;: Toning down the thesis diminishes the amount of attention the book will generate, but won't diminish the amount of criticism.
  ¶ 9:54 AM 0 comments

  Tamara Rogers in the Chronicle of Higher Ed The magazine reports on her appointment as v-p for alumni affairs and development.

It’s been years since the rumors started circulating about just how much Harvard University will raise in its next major fund-raising campaign. Will it be $5-billion? Will it be more? It seems officials might be getting closer to revealing the answer....

Strangely, no word on whether she is a knockout or not.  ¶ 8:35 AM 0 comments

  From Boston to Britney Don't you just hate it when Curt Schilling pitches a great game against the Devil Rays and the Red Sox still lose, 1-0?

I know I do.

In other news, the Boston Globe wonders whether Britney Spears' performance at the VMAs will kill her comeback. (Hey, a poster below raised the issue.)

The answer: Not a chance. I think her performance was brilliant, though I have no idea whether she intended it that way. Spears was lackluster, a little large, and almost apathetic. She lip-synched with less attempt to appear that she was actually singing than I've ever seen. Her dancing was the kind of thing you see in a bar just before closing time on the part of someone who shouldn't be driving home.

Why was this so smart? Well, for one thing, it's the only thing about the whole show that anyone will remember, other than the fact that Tommy Lee and Kid Rock slapped each other over Pamela Anderson. (And why not?)

But it's also quite a subversive commentary, blurring the lines between the real and the artificial. MTV is a channel all about making the fake seem plausible (modern pop music) and the real hyper-real (reality shows).

Spears went on stage and, through her performance, announced that the whole shtick is BS; she proceeded to not sing a song that she didn't write and probably didn't sing even in its recorded version—even though if she had just lip-synched with a little more enthusiasm, and perhaps lost a few more pounds before her performance, she would have been hailed as making a great comeback.

And she did so displaying a great body, but one that looks like it's carried two kids, which is more of a reality show than the MTV audience is used to seeing. The reviews of that body were weirdly harsh. *(But isn't it fascinating that entire articles were devoted to Britney's body?)

So Britney Spears treated MTV and its audience with contempt. Isn't that exactly what we deserve?






Britney Spears' full-bodied commentary on American pop culture.

The funny thing is, the song's actually pretty good....How can you not like that, "It's Britney, bitch," and the little giggle that follows?  ¶ 8:03 AM 5 comments

  He Will Squawk No More Alex, the talking Harvard parrot, is dead.

(Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd write.)

Even up through last week, Alex was working with Dr. Pepperberg on compound words and hard-to-pronounce words. As she put him into his cage for the night last Thursday, Alex looked at her and said: “You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you.”

We loved you too, Alex.  ¶ 6:04 PM 10 comments

  Drew Faust in Forbes I'm a little late on this, but I should note that Forbes magazine has ranked Drew Faust #47 on its list of 100 most powerful women in the world. Here's the full list, which I wonder about: Oprah is not in the Top 10?  ¶ 9:12 AM 5 comments

  Drew Faust Turns to a Trusted Friend
The new president has appointed a new v-p for fundraising, Tamara Rogers, '74, who was formerly the fundraising head at the Radcliffe Institute.

Rogers has an excellent reputation and seems like a smart pick for this job. I gather from one of her college classmates that she was also considered quite the knockout in her HC days.  ¶ 10:02 AM 64 comments

  Harvard Gets Trashed ...in the Globe and Mail, Johanna Schneller writes about taking a tour of Harvard from a student named (yes) Yale, who appears to have been obsessed with emphasizing the more anti-intellectual side of Harvard.

He limited his discussion of the vast Science Center, built in 1972 by Josep Lluis Sert, to one essential fact: Its Cabot Library “is great for napping in.” He gestured toward a building where English classes are held. “Some day I'll have to go in there, I guess,” he said. “But I've avoided it so far.”

...In Memorial Hall (completed in 1878), the cathedral-like building whose wall plaques list 136 Harvard students who died fighting for the Union in the American Civil War, Yale told us more cool things. “Harvard has so many clubs and societies, name any club and we have it,” he said. “And if we don't, you can get money from Student Services and start your own. And they'll give you money to throw parties. We're about a lot more than just studying here.”

...He ended our tour at a bronze statue of John Harvard, dedicated in 1884 and posed for by a student, because no portraits exist. On its base is Harvard's crest, which depicts three open books – two face-up, one face-down. “No one knows why one book is face-down,” Yale said. “I like to think it's because we Harvard students are supposed to study a lot, but we're also supposed to put our books down and do other things.” One-quarter of the way through his $200,000 education, Yale was a fine example of that.

Ouch. Reminds me of when I took a tour of the University of Virginia, given by a guide who was drinking a Heineken the entire time.

[Anyone know who this Yale is? I'm guessing it's this student, whose Facebook page lists him as working at the "Harvard Info Office, (giving tours and such)." An econ concentrator, lacrosse player, and member of the Harvard Republican Club, Yale says that he is looking for "whatever I can get." Should Harvard consider the fact that anyone taking a tour could easily find the Facebook page of the tour guide?]

But this is, I think, an important article—unfair, perhaps, because maybe Yale was having an off-day and generally he's much more erudite, but important. It reminds one of what Harvard represents to the outside world, its well-earned status as a place of learning and accomplishment, indeed, of civilization.

You have to wonder if, in all the talk of Harvard's $35 billion endowment and its hot-shot graduates, this reputation isn't getting just a bit lost in the mix. Or is it just not what most people care about when they now think of Harvard?  ¶ 9:24 AM 18 comments

  Larry Summers and Used Cars I have a friend who always used to clean rental cars she was returning to the rental place, purging them of food wrappers, newspapers, empty bottles and the like. Since this was before rental companies threatened to fine you for leaving a rental car in a state of disarray, I always found it odd.

"We're paying for them to clean the car," I would say to her. "Why do their work for them?"

It made no difference; she just thought it was the right thing to do.

I've always thought of that whenever I hear Larry Summers' axiom, "In the history of the world, no one has ever washed a rented car," quoted by Tom Friedman about a bazillion times.

In fact, I thought, some people do clean their rental cars. They may not take them to a carwash, but the use of the term "wash" is a clever red herring, because while people might not go that far out of their way, the principle at hand is cleaning, and lots of people clearly do clean their rental cars—and that suggests an interesting and irrational kind of economic behavior worth considering.

Apparently I'm not alone in feeling this way, because Tod Lindberg in the Weekly Standard has a piece about this exact issue.

I got to thinking about it the other day when I got back from the carwash with my rented car.
Alas, I am quite confident from my subsequent research that I will not go down in history as the first person to wash a rental....

There's a converse that I wish someone would also study, which is why people trash things that, in theory, belong to them. I live near Harlem where, I think it's safe to say, there's not exactly a culture of environmentalism, and I see people throwing their garbage on the street—their street—all the time. Cigarettes, fast food wrappers, Red Bull cans, etc.

If the ostensible theory behind not washing a rental car is that people don't take care of things they don't have an investment in (the case for home ownership, right?), then why do people abuse things in which they do have ownership?

Or perhaps there is a false assumption there.  ¶ 8:59 AM 5 comments

  W&M; in the Times of London The Israel Lobby was reviewed a few days ago in the Times of London, and thanks to a poster, I'm just now seeing the review, by Max Hastings.....

Its argument is readily summarised. The authors support Israel’s right to exist. But they are dismayed by America’s unconditional support for its governments’ policies, including vast sums of cash aid for which there is no plausible accounting process. They reject the view articulated as a mantra by all modern American presidents (and 2008 presidential candidates) that Israel and America share common values, and their national interests march hand in hand.

For Europeans, all this adds up to a bleak picture. Only America might be capable of inducing the government of Israel to moderate its behaviour, and it will not try. Washington gives Jerusalem a blank cheque, and all of us in some degree pay a price for Israel’s abuses of it.

This is the first positive review I've seen...  ¶ 2:24 PM 6 comments

  02138 on Dealbreaker 02138's piece on Clifford Mason, Harvard alum and nephew of financial propheteer James J. Cramer, is written up here on DealBreaker. Quite funny!  ¶ 9:12 AM 0 comments

  Rotten Apple? Apple cuts the price of iPhones $200, then, after early adopters scream, announces a $100 store credit. Fair?

Meantime, Variety reports that Apple wants to cut the cost of downloaded TV shows by 50%, from $1.99 to 99 cents.

Apple's argument to studios and nets has been that they will end up making more money from digital downloads under the new proposal. Company believes the volume of sales for TV shows will rise dramatically, offsetting the impact of the price cut.

Among the concerns is that at 99¢, iTunes downloads could impact sales of DVD boxed sets, an important revenue source for TV congloms.

Case in point: NBC Universal just released "Heroes" on DVD, with most retail outlets charging about $40 for the set of 23 episodes. If Apple had its way, the same set of episodes would cost less than $23, potentially making the DVD -- despite its myriad bonus features -- less appealing to consumers.

There's someone out there willing to pay $40 for a DVD of Heroes?

Me, I'm waiting for the new 160-gig iPod I just ordered...  ¶ 9:05 AM 7 comments

  02138 in the Globe Today's Globe references 02138's excerpt of James D. Watson's new book....

Nobel laureate James Watson has some unkind things to say about Larry Summers in his memoir, "Avoid Boring People: Lessons From a Life in Science." In the book, excerpted in the new issue of 02138, the mighty molecular biologist says "nothing may have distinguished Summers' time in office like leaving it." Watson writes that it wasn't Summers' ill-advised women-in-science comment that cost him the top job at Harvard. "It was . . . hundreds of more private displays on his part of seemingly rude disregard for the social niceties that ordinarily permit human beings to work together for a common good." Nothing if not cranky, Watson, who's one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA, calls Harvard's Allston expansion a "Soviet-style fantasy."  ¶ 8:58 AM 7 comments

  Apple Takes on the Dinosaurs Anyone else watching the fight between Apple and NBC/Universal with interest? It's a great story. NBC wants to renegotiate its contracts with Apple to give NBC more control over the pricing of the tv shows, movies and music the iTunes store sells. Apple wants to keep its low, pro-consumer prices. NBC says Apple only wants to keep the price of content low to sell iPods. Apple responds that NBC is greedy, which it is. Consumers say that we'll start stealing stuff again if the greedheads at NBC win.

Why am I so skeptical of NBC's claims that their battle with Apple is not about charging more, but about pricing "flexibility"?

Well, first, it's just such obvious BS.

Once NBC gets the flexibility it wants, you can be sure it's not going to flexibly lower the prices of its products.

Reminds me of the time back when gas stations started converting from full-service to self-serve, with the promise that the self-serve pumps would sell gas for cheaper than the full-service ones. That lasted about a month.

So here's NBC saying a few days ago that it's not about raising prices. Now here's NBC about two days later, inking a deal with Amazon to sell its movies for $14.99—five bucks higher than Apple's $9.99. Whoops! NBC's integrity lasted about 48 hours.

NBC is making the same mistake that the record companies made for years and years—not realizing that the Internet wants content to be cheap. They'll alienate consumers just as fast as the record companies did. There may not be easy ways to steal video yet (though several people I spoke with yesterday told me of sites where I can download any tv show I want), but NBC is going to create a market for an easy-to-use video sharing/stealing site.

When will the content providers realize that it's not just the content consumers want, it's the pro-consumer ethos of the Internet?

That was the genius of iTunes, which created an easy-to-use store and sold things at prices consumers actually considered fair, rather than than trying to gauge every penny they could from consumers, as record companies had been doing for years, creating a reservoir of ill will that made people all around the world feel that theft was a legitimate form of empowerment.

With NBC and Fox's sure to be pathetic hulu.com, and Sony's new plans to create a video downloading site, it's clear that these massive media companies just don't get it.  ¶ 9:05 AM 2 comments

  Harry Lewis Writes for the Core In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Harvard's Harry Lewis makes the case for a core curriculum, doing his best to reinvigorate a discussion that Harvard is desperately trying to avoid.

Within academe it is hard to inspire support for a core for a simple reason. We have not come to agreement — indeed we have had little discussion — about the purpose of higher education. In the absence of any big concept about what college is supposed to do for students, both students and faculty members prefer the freedom of choice that comes with the elective curriculum. We would each rather do our own thing than embrace our collective responsibility for the common good. But the argument that students have nothing in common is false, and the conclusion that a college education should have no core is wrong.

...Harvard's 2006 report on general education, from which the new curriculum emerged, was a striking effort to define a core. The professors who produced the proposal labored under difficult and thankless conditions. They had to start from scratch in an atmosphere of administrative instability. With the faculty under interim leadership, their idealism fell victim to turf battles in a series of redrafts and amendments. In dubbing one required area of study "The United States and the World," they were accused of implying that the world was merely America's "backyard."

One wonders if Lewis' attempt to get people thinking about what it truly means to educate Americans will gain traction, or if everyone at Harvard just wants this nasty curricular business to go away.....  ¶ 8:33 AM 6 comments

  More on Larry Craig In the Nation, Harvard's Timothy Patrick McCarthy considers the Larry Craig affair.

[T]he real problem is not so much hypocrisy as hatred. The modern-day Republican Party hates homosexuals because so-called born-again Christians think homosexuality is a sin--more so than, say, poverty or war. But when it comes to people like Foley, Haggard and Craig, the tragedy is more personal than political: As gay men, they hate themselves even more than they hate the rest of us.

Meanwhile, Larry Craig has sent his children out to defend him. On Good Morning America, his daughter Shea Howell and son Michael Craig say that their father "was a victim of circumstance, in the wrong place at the wrong time."

The children asked their father if he had ever been unfaithful to their mother in any way.

He said no, and they believed him.

What's interesting is this line from the ABCnews.com story: "Howell and Craig, who maintain their father's heterosexuality, said that even if he were gay, they would still support him. 'Gay or straight, that part doesn't matter.'"

Which is sort of a wonderful thing to say, and good for them, even though they weirdly refuse to admit that their dad probably is gay. But if they believe that, one wonders if they ever asked their dad about his anti-gay voting record?

I guess it's encouraging that the children of anti-gay Republicans are more decent than their parents, but there is an ongoing GOP hypocrisy of being perfectly fine with gay people in their own lives but discriminating against them in public life, and it does get boring.  ¶ 7:52 AM 3 comments

  Department of Self-Parody, Vol. 2 Also from the New Yorker listings:

SATURDAY NIGHT SPECIAL
David Byrne Presents: How New Yorkers Ride Bikes
David Byrne will host an evening of music, discussion, film, readings, and surprises dedicated to the advancement of bicycling in New York City...  ¶ 5:21 PM 1 comments

  Department of Self-Parody This from the listings for the annual New Yorker literary festival:

THE NEW YORKER DEBATE
Resolved: The Ivy League Should Be Abolished
With Malcolm Gladwell and Adam Gopnik. Chaired by Simon Schama.
8 P.M. New York Society for Ethical Culture ($20)

Better yet, give your $20 to a homeless guy outside......  ¶ 5:19 PM 2 comments

  02138 in the News 02138's interview with Al Gore and 2nd annual list of the Harvard 100—the university's most influential alums—is making news. Here it is on the USA Today politics blog, and here it is on The Politico. Here it is in the Boston Herald, and here it is in the International Herald Tribune.

Why? Well, two reasons. One, we picked Gore over President Bush as Harvard's most influential alum. Two, Gore talks in the interview about whether he'll run for president and who he might endorse if he doesn't.  ¶ 5:14 PM 0 comments

  Monday Morning Song   ¶ 9:58 AM 4 comments

  Quote of the Day I made a decision to lead. One, it makes you unpopular; two, it makes people accuse you of unilateral arrogance, and that may be true. But the fundamental question is, is the world better off as a result of your leadership?

—George Bush, speaking to author Robert Draper  ¶ 5:54 PM 0 comments

  He's Gone Speaking for about five minutes and taking no questions, Larry Craig resigned around 3:30 today. Craig refused to say exactly why he was resigning.

Idaho congressman Bill Sali asked the press to lay off Craig for a while.

“Senator Craig, Suzanne, their children and grandchildren need, and I suggest are due, a measure of grace, dignity and Idaho-style decency that has been missing in their life recently," he said.

Mmmm-hmmm—blame the press. Never mind that the disgrace, indignity, and indecency the Craig family has endured come from the fact that the head of the household was cruising for sex in an airport men's room.

So much for Republicans and personal responsibility......  ¶ 5:45 PM 19 comments