Bring Back Day Games In the Bangor Daily News, columnist Ron Brown writes about an issue that I think everyone agrees with but I haven't seen much written about: The fact that the World Series games went so late, they were almost impossible to watch.

Seemed to me that the first pitch generally started around 8:40, and so the games pretty much went past midnight.

Because it was such a dull World Series, I didn't stay up for any last outs, but there are a lot of people wandering around Boston this week who need to catch up on their sleep.

(Also, get a life, but that's a separate issue.)

More important, these late games make it impossible for children to watch...so how will baseball cultivate its fans this way?

The game I'm writing about, the 1978 Yankee-Red Sox playoff, started at 2:30 PM. And the starting time was one reason why it became such a memorable event for so many people roughly my age—it marked a break in their schedule. Schools let out early, some kids watched in their school auditoriums....

But as Bucky Dent said to me when I interviewed him (take that, Sox fans), how different would it have been if that had been a night game?

If not day games, how about at least a 7:30 start time next year?  ¶ 7:48 AM 19 comments   

  Please Stop Singing IvyGate's "Worst Ivy League A Capella Tournament" rolls on; apparently there is no shortage of candidates.

Featured today are the Brown Jabberwocks, the Princeton Roaring 20, Cornell's Absolute A Capella, and Yale's Living Water. Listen as the Cornel group takes a classic Oasis song...and makes you never, ever want to hear it again!

(Plus, what are they doing with their bodies? It's as if they all have some sort of contagious nervous tic syndrome.)

Even the names are excruciating....  ¶ 7:36 AM 29 comments   

  Why Yale Is More Fun Yale Dean Amerigo Fabbri has apologized for mistakenly calling the cops and breaking up a university-sanctioned party, the Pierson Inferno.

(Ah, yes, I remember it well....)

(Actually, I remember parts of it well.....)

“Had I known about the nature and occasion of the event, by no means, I assure you, would I have called the police!” Fabbri wrote.

That's the spirit.....
  ¶ 7:31 AM 0 comments   

  The Hoxbys in California The San Jose Mercury-News takes note of Caroline and Blair Hoxby's arrival in California.

"I think that Stanford is on the top of its game as regards outreach," said Hoxby, "and this means better recruiting, better faculty, and - in the end - greater success all around."  ¶ 7:28 AM 1 comments   

  You Know Apple is Surging When... A Windows user tries to make the case that Macs aren't good computers.

The Macintosh computer is the emasculated plaything of the effete, limp-wristed parlor liberals who have too much money and too little sense. Hopefully, when reality hits, it will go the way of POG caps, Beanie Babies, and Pokémon. Sure, it’s cute. It is, after all, just a very expensive paperweight.

The author, Harvard sophomore Eugene Kim, argues that Macs are too expensive, insufficiently powerful, don't have enough games made for them, and break easily. (Huh?)

Hmmmm. Try telling that to my friend whose couple-months-old Dell just died on her. She spent four hours on the phone with a guy in India. His advice—which, gasp, she followed—was to erase her hard drive and everything on it.

And she wasn't even using Vista!

Now, Mr. Kim is comping the Crimson, so he must be forgiven a little hyperbole. But do we really need a little gay-baiting ("effete, limp-wristed...) in there?

And, oh, by the way, Mr. Kim—I just installed Leopard on both my Macs, and it's running beautifully. How's that Vista thing working for you? (Whichever version you shelled out for....)  ¶ 7:17 AM 8 comments   

  It's Going to be to an Interesting Off-Season Will Joe Torre and Don Mattingly coach together again in Los Angeles?

The Yankees hire Joe Girardi. (I think it's the right choice.)

Will the Mets sign A-Rod? (Hilarious. Just what a jinxed organization needs—a jinxed player.)

Will the Yankees sign Mike Lowell? (I hope not. Too old, and he'll never have a better season than he just did.)

Are the Red Sox the new Yankees?

Everyone blasts A-Rod and Scott Boras:

Murray Chass:

So goes the sincerity of a player whose personality at first blush is so engaging that he can dupe experienced reporters, as he did me 10 years ago. I have since learned that he is not what he appears to be on the surface, and whether he allows Boras to manipulate him or agrees with his strategy, he comes across as disingenuous.  ¶ 10:01 AM 9 comments   

  Pushing Your Luck I don't mean to joke about this, because it's actually kind of a touchy issue for me, but should a player whose number is 13 and who is said to bring bad luck to every team he plays for really be buying a jet?  ¶ 6:05 PM 6 comments   

  Down with A Capella IvyGate is having a competition to determine the worst a capella group in the Ivy League.

One is tempted to answer all of them....

Given that Harvard apparently has too many student groups, and that no one likes a capella groups except for the people who are in them...perhaps there's a natural solution here?  ¶ 7:13 AM 12 comments   

  Boatloads of Babes? Your latest Jeffrey Epstein news (it never seems to end):

Epstein - soon to cop a plea to soliciting sex from teen hookers at his Palm Beach estate - is being sued by a drug-addicted, transgender model who claims he/she was pressured into having sex with Epstein at the age of 16.

Sources say the former math teacher, who owns the lush, tropical island of Little St. James, off the coast of St. Thomas, regularly ferried boatloads of young women there.

Epstein's spokesman, Howard Rubenstein, wouldn't comment on whether Epstein has imported platoons of young babes.  ¶ 7:07 AM 1 comments   

  Congrats to Red Sox fans You have now caught up to the Florida Marlins.  ¶ 6:47 AM 16 comments   

  Rockies Rolled? Will it end tonight? Please?

I'm sure that this is satisfying for Sox fans, but this World Series is frigging boring.....
An ALCS between the Yanks and the Sox would have been much more fun—and much more competitive. The Yankees seem to be the only team that's not intimidated by Boston's lineup....
  ¶ 12:42 PM 7 comments   

  Rockies in a Hard Place They're down, 2-0, having lost a slugfest and a pitching duel. Will the thin air of Coors Field help them? Will David Ortiz playing first base help them? Will the collective will of millions upon millions who agree that the Red Sox are the new evil empire help them? (Let us not forget that the Red Sox resurgence has coincided with the presidency of George W. Bush.)

Go Rockies!

(If only to make this a more interesting World Series....)  ¶ 11:37 AM 4 comments   

  The Proliferation of Clubs In the Globe, Linda Wertheimer writes that the number of student groups at Harvard has soared.

Harvard now recognizes nearly 400 clubs, up from 240 a decade ago, while the number at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has doubled to 508 over that period. Dartmouth College has more than 200 groups, a 25 percent jump.

Sounds like a good thing, right? Not necessarily. It's possible that some kids are starting groups just because they'd rather run something than be just one member of a group. Some of the organizations are redundant, and they all put pressure on the finite amount of funding for student groups.

"The high-achieving students come here and want to run something," said Judith Kidd, Harvard College's associate dean of student life. "What I try to tell students is: 'Most of you will not be Bill Gates. You need to learn how to work within an organization.' "

That is just a fascinating quote. I would have thought that a college dean might be sending the message, "You can be whatever you want to be, you're a Harvard student." Which is, after all, pretty much the way the college markets itself.

I'm not saying that Kidd is wrong, but it's curious to hear a dean tell students that not all of them were meant to be leaders, some are supposed to be followers.

Not sure if that argument would really work on your Harvard application essay....

Wertheimer fails to note one stunningly obvious reason for the growth in clubs: the Internet, and, in particular, Facebook, which allows for much easier student communication and cohesion than was possible in the pre- e-mail, pre-social networking days.  ¶ 8:54 AM 24 comments   

  John Tierney Goes Nuts In the Times yesterday, John Tierney attacked the Harvard School of Public Health for giving an award to Michael Bloomberg due to Bloomberg's fight against the use of trans-fats in New York City restaurant food.

How much good Mr. Bloomberg has done for New Yorkers’ health is debatable. But there’s no question he’s been good for the Harvard School of Public Health by promoting the trans-fat notions of its researchers, notably Walter Willett, the epidemiologist who has been the leading critic of trans fat.

Tierney goes on to say that maybe trans fats aren't so bad for you after all, and he quotes at length—it's actually a block quote—Elizabeth Whelan, the head of a group called the American Council on Science and Public Health.

How many deaths from heart disease will be prevented by the restaurant ban on trans fat? Our best guess is zero.
What Tierney doesn't bother to mention, though, is that both Whelan and her group are generally considered less than credible sources.

For one thing, it receives some of its funding from the fast food industry, which heavily fought the trans fat ban.

Some of the commenters point this out, and Tierney responds to them quite disdainfully—until Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation, also chimes in, and Tierney doesn't bother to respond to him.

Here is a rule about journalism: If you make a mistake, it's better to admit it than to stonewall, whether you work for the New York Times or Podunk Weekly. And definitely don't compound it by mocking the people who point out your mistake. (Tierney actually asks readers to discuss whether he should delete a comment which criticizes him.)

Tierney should admit his mistake. And even better, the Times should hire Eric Schlosser as a columnist.
_______________________________________________________________

P.S. A footnote: I've just read through all the comments, which are pretty lengthy. They absolutely destroy Tierney's argument—to the point where his column now seems not just wrong, but irresponsible.

That New York Times has some pretty sharp readers.  ¶ 8:27 AM 2 comments   

  Whose Intelligence is Worse to Insult? ...women's or African-Americans'?

That James Watson has just resigned as chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory within days of making remarks skeptical of Africans, while Lawrence Summers lingered at Harvard for over a year after his comments, suggests that the answer is the latter...

In the roster of offensive remarks, race apparently still trumps gender....

Why, I wonder?  ¶ 12:40 PM 19 comments   

  K Finally figured it out—my old friend, Karin, who was in London at the time; hence the 1:35 AM text. Sweet of her to remember! Also, someone at the K School should give her a job. She's brilliant.  ¶ 9:25 AM 2 comments   

  Friday Sorry about the light posting lately, folks, especially because there's lots to talk about—James Watson, Jeffrey Epstein, the Princeton lawsuit.

But I am, at the moment, deathly ill, and my head feels like someone bored a(nother) hole in it and filled it with Corning fiberglass insulation. Plus, the Red Sox aren't helping things.

So I will post as health permits....  ¶ 9:23 AM 11 comments   

  Thanks! Many thanks to those who wished me a happy birthday yesterday; much appreciated.

Also, would "k" who texted me at 1:35 AM please tell me who she is?  ¶ 11:01 AM 10 comments   

  Giuliani's Mistake I think Rudy Giuliani has just made a major mistake in saying that he would root for the Red Sox.

As a poster below points out, New Hampshire-based Sox fans will smell a/the rat.

And the New York media is playing this big.

CNN, for example, headlines, "Giuliani Stuns New York." (And CNN is New York media, these days.)

The Post calls him a "Red Coat," and the Daily News calls him a traitor and—I like this one!—"the Yankee flipper."

He really is an awful human being.  ¶ 12:03 PM 3 comments   

  Rudy Giuliani, Traitor Rudy Giuliani yesterday proved what an untrustworthy little rat he is: He announced, "I'm rooting for the Red Sox."

Nonononnonono, Rudy.

I know you say that you're rooting for the American League, and if it were any other team involved, that would be fine.

But this is different; this is the Red Sox. As any real Yankee fan will tell you, one's antipathy to the Red Sox vastly outweighs one's allegiance to the American League. (I mean, please. Who really cares that much about the AL versus the NL anymore?) And if the places were reversed, Sox fans would say the same, I have no doubt.

Rudy, you are a snake.

I mean, we already knew that, but this provides the damning photo evidence.....



Rudy Giuliani: snake, rat, and traitor.  ¶ 7:35 AM 5 comments   

  Meet the New Sox Has winning taken all the fun out of rooting for the Red Sox? Are they a more boring team than they used to be? Wouldn't it be better to go back to the old ways?

Brian McGrory asks these very important questions in today's Globe.

The first order of business is to admit it to ourselves: 2004 was more meaningful. Back then, and in the 86 years that preceded it, we knew who we were. We were hapless, though never hopeless. We were the ones that always had something to overcome - a curse, a seemingly in surmountable deficit, a little-brother syndrome.

... what have we become?

And here's the answer we know but dread: Another free-spending, big market team that buys its way into the postseason with every expectation that it will win.

Is it possible that the Yankees have become the likeable underdogs while the Sox have become the soulless machine?

It is!  ¶ 7:31 AM 9 comments   

  An October Gem? Tim Marchman in the Sun thinks this World Series has all the makings of a baseball classic.

Meanwhile, two depressed Yankee fans I know think the Sox will sweep.... As one put it, Josh Beckett=two automatic wins, meaning that the Rockies would have to win four of five otherwise.....

The same depressed Yankee fans also think that the Sox might have the makings of a dynasty here......

arghargharghargharghargharghargh, etc.  ¶ 12:09 PM 7 comments   

  Jeffrey Epstein Is Having a Bad Year Here is my favorite lede in recent memory (and don't pretend it wasn't on purpose, you crafty Crimson folks):

For billionaire investor Jeffrey Epstein, charges of illicit sex practices just keep coming.

Let me go on record as saying that I'm now starting to feel sorry for Jeffrey Epstein. The guy clearly has a problem. But he never forced anyone to do anything, and the lawsuit that the Crimson article describes sounds like a complete crock to me. And Crimson, are you sure it wasn't first reported in the New York Post, not by ABC News?

After all, the Post has been doing top-notch reporting on the Epstein case. Today, for example, it reports that ...

The stunning model wannabe who says she was pressured into a hush- hush affair with billionaire Jeffrey Epstein when she was only 16 has an even bigger secret - she's a man.

The young woman used to be a young boy, then went under the knife.

"I'm a spoiled bitch and really mean," her MySpace page says.

Now, I'm just guessing, but given that it was Alan Dershowitz who dug up dirt on some of the other accusers by checking out their MySpace pages, could Professor Dershowitz have possibly fed this delicious little item to the Post?


Maximiliana (nee Maximilian) Cordero.  ¶ 9:58 AM 7 comments   

  A Woman on Women in Science In the Globe, Cathy Young updates the discussion on women, science and gender.

THE DEBATE over women's place in science, which proved to be the downfall of Harvard President Lawrence Summers after he suggested that male preeminence in the field could be due at least partly to biological traits and personal choices, remains a lightning rod for controversy. Earlier this month, the subject was tackled in two different symposiums - one at Harvard, the other at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based right-of-center think tank.

(Can we trust a writer who makes an egregious mistake in the very first sentence of her story?)

Young, who is a libertarian, is most concerned about government intervention in the debate.

The discussion of gender and science is not mere theory. It has to do with practical plans to remake the scientific establishment in a woman-friendly image. Many proposals are innocuous enough, and some are being implemented at many schools: extending the tenure clock for new parents and other measures to help combine scientific careers with family responsibilities. But there is also talk of programs to eradicate subtle and unconscious biases (which sounds like a prescription for politically correct witch hunts) and of invoking Title IX of the Civil Rights Act to bring down the wrath of the federal government on institutions that are purportedly too slow to correct inequalities in science.

Invoking Title IX? I haven't heard of this, but I'll take Young's word for it. Nothing could be more damaging to women scientists, of course, than affirmative action not of socioeconomic status, but of the mind.....  ¶ 7:59 AM 19 comments   

  Monday Morning Song   ¶ 7:58 AM 10 comments   

  Maybe It Wouldn't Have Made a Difference ...but can I just point out that Kenny Lofton was clearly safe?

So who has the advantage here, Boston or Colorado? And what will they do if it keeps snowing in Colorado?  ¶ 7:39 AM 12 comments   

  Monday Morning Karma Remember Richard Mellon Scaife, the conservative billionaire who's spent hundreds of millions of dollars bankrolling moralistic conservative thinktanks and newspapers? The one who couldn't spent enough money trying to prove that Bill Clinton was an adulterer?

Well, turns out he's...an adulterer!

And not only that, but his choice of consort is, well, a former consort. Or, as the Washington Post puts it, Social Register material she is not.

The two usually met each other twice a week, for months, at the motel, says an employee of the motel. Scaife would show up in a chauffeured car, dressed in a suit, wearing cuff links, always bearing flowers. Vasco would be waiting in same room every time, Room 5 on the ground floor, facing the parking lot, said the employee. Mr. Dick, as he was known at the motel, would stay for two hours or so, then get back in the car, which had been waiting, and leave.

Now Scaife's wife, Ritchie, is suing for divorce. And—ooops—they don't have a pre-nup. Even before the case has been ruled on, she's getting $725,000 a month from her husband by court order.

All of this, by the way, comes from documents which were supposed to be sealed, but a court clerk mistakenly posted to a public section of the court's website. Whoops!

What will happen to the Heritage Foundation, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and others if Scaife loses half his money?  ¶ 7:23 AM 1 comments   

  Sunday Morning Zen

Four-year-old Yang Yang swims with a five-year-old beluga whale in a Qingdao aquarium.  ¶ 9:39 AM 3 comments   

  Hilariously Bad Journalism Remember Socks, the Clinton's cat? Well, at the end of the Clinton presidency, they gave Socks away to presidential assistant Betty Currie.

Now the Times of London reports that the Clintons' treatment of Socks could hurt Hillary's chances of winning the presidency.

Some believe the abandoned pet could now come between Hillary Clinton and her ambition to return to the White House as America’s first woman president.

... Clinton’s treatment of Socks cuts to the heart of the questions about her candidacy. Is she too cold and calculating to win the presidency? Or does it signify political invincibility by showing she is willing to deploy every weapon to get what she wants?

Hmm.....

Who are these "some" who believe that Sox could doom Hillary?

Well, other than an idiotic article by Caitlin Flanagan in the November Atlantic, nobody.

And how exactly does giving a cat to a friend who can presumably take better care of it mean that you "abandoned" your pet?  ¶ 9:30 AM 2 comments   

  The Great Bathroom Debate American University is changing its men's and women's bathrooms to gender-neutral bathrooms, so that transgender students won't have to face "an anxiety-ridden decision," according to the LA Times.

At least 17 schools, including Ohio State University and the University of Vermont, have pledged to include gender-neutral bathrooms in new buildings, said Stephanie Gordon, director of educational programs for NASPA, an association of student affairs administrators.

Who are the losers here? Well, Larry Craig, of course, because gender-neutral bathrooms are generally designed for one person.

More seriously, women—because we all know that men are slobs.....  ¶ 9:04 AM 2 comments   

  Yale Wins Again The Bulldogs trounced Penn yesterday, winning 26-20. In three overtimes. After Penn couldn't score from first and goal on the 1. Yale is now 6-0, 3-0 in the Ivy League.

Oh, and thanks to some execrable pitching by Cleveland, a baseball team from a small New England town narrowly eked out a victory last night.  ¶ 7:38 AM 1 comments   

  Joe Torre: The Contract Was an "Insult" Appearing relaxed and good humored at a press conference in Westchester this afternoon, outgoing Yankees manager Joe Torre said he rejected the team's one-year contract offer yesterday because he considered the length of the contract and the incentives an "insult."

Up to $8 million for one season?  ¶ 4:30 PM 6 comments   

  Yale's Top Model
Ivygate has an interview with Victoria Marsham, a Yale '09 history major who apparently just got booted off the reality show "America's Next Top Model."

Turns out..she's incredibly charming!

...[Do] you think your elimination was based on television, not modeling?

VM: No. I mean, my cactus picture wasn't very good. I don't consider myself very pretty. Most high fashion or editorial models aren't that pretty in real life, anyway. I'm too pale, too gangly, and have too weird a face to ever be considered sexy. But the show's definitely geared toward a certain kind of girl, and at the end of the day, I did go on as a joke.

Reality still trumps "reality"!


  ¶ 9:05 AM 3 comments   

  Does James Watson Have Nobel Syndrome? Isn't it sort of fascinating how James Watson, who in his book, Avoid Boring People, defends Larry Summers for his women-in-science remarks, now finds himself on a similar hot seat for remarks impugning the intelligence of black people?

And (sort of) just as Summers would lose his job in the extended aftermath of those remarks, so has Watson been suspended from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory?

Now a clever article in the Telegraph (those Brits! nothing if not clever) suggests that Watson is afflicted with Nobel Syndrome, an ailment that comes to the very intelligent who become so infatuated with their intelligence that they abandon the intellectual rigor which won them the Nobel in the first place.

Nobel Syndrome often emerges after retirement. ...Remove a great mind from this ultra-sceptical environment, then replace it with friends, family and colleagues who are happy to nod and smile when you go old coot, and it is easy to see how a pop star of science ends up talking drivel.

And did you know that winning a Nobel has been found to add two years to your life? I suspect that Watson just gave those two years back....  ¶ 6:37 AM 9 comments   

  Creepy I'll bet that the 13,000 people who sold their Patriots tickets on Stubhub never realized that Stubhub could be legally forced to turn their names over to the team, which may now revoke their season tickets...

Patriots, this is a very, very, very bad move. Keep people from reselling their tickets, fine. But gathering names? Creepy, creepy, creepy. (Cue fascistic music in background.)

The Patriots even collected the names of people who merely bid on the tickets.....  ¶ 6:28 AM 3 comments   

  HBSC Ponies Up The Harvard Business School Club of New York has given $1 million to five area charities, its largest gift ever....  ¶ 6:22 AM 0 comments   

  The Sox Are Alive How about that Josh Beckett? I think maybe he should win the Cy Young....

Meanwhile, after 12 years and 12 post-seasons, the Joe Torre era with the Yankees is over. I will blaspheme, but I don't think this is the end of the world. Torre is a lovely guy who's obviously great with his players, management, and the media. The lack of controversy during his tenure has been a joy and a relief to Yankee fans.

But he has never been the most skilled tactician, and—I know Sox fans will find this hard to believe—he was a better manager when Don Zimmer was his bench coach.

Also, I think Torre looks petty turning down a one-year, $5-million deal with incentives that could have brought the total to $8 million.....

Scott Boras, the agent for Damon and Alex Rodriguez, told The Associated Press that Torre would have lost respect among the players if he had taken a pay cut.

“It is difficult, near impossible, to accept a salary cut,” Boras said. “Successful people can afford their principles. They understand if they accept the position, there is a great risk the message to all under him is dissatisfaction.”

Does he think that any other team is going to pay a manager more?  ¶ 6:14 AM 5 comments   

  Sox Fans Viciously Turning on Each Other In the Globe, Dan Shaughnessy already starts apportioning blame.

Theo Epstein is in for his share of finger-pointing if the Sox are eliminated by the Tribe. It's never a good thing when your $143 million payroll bites the dust against a team with a $61 million payroll. Dan Duquette assembled half of the 2004 champs, but what we are looking at today is almost exclusively Theo's team and it's his most recent acquisitions who have been exposed thus far in October.

I'm going to stick up for fellow Eli Theo here, and not just because he went to a fine school in a lovely New England town (have you been there lately?), with a kick-ass football team, but because it's an indirect way of sticking up for the Yankees.

Whenever the Yankees lose a playoff, you hear some pundits say, as Shaughnessy just did, How dare a team with a fill-in-the-blank payroll lose?

To which I've always said that beyond a certain point, your payroll bears a diminishing correlation to the excellence of your team.

The Yankees, for example, consistently overpay for free agents; their payroll could probably be 20% smaller than the 200 million or whatever it is and they'd still field basically the same team.

But in any case, there are lots of other factors involved in a team's success besides being able to pay players the most amount of money (as the Red Sox are finding out).

Team chemistry, young players, finding the right young pitchers—none of these things are guaranteed by having a big checkbook, and one could argue that sometimes having a lot of money to spend works against these intangibles.

Granted, on balance having a huge payroll gives a team a significant advantage in being able to sign the players it decides are essential.

Nonetheless, I think that the correlation between payroll size and winning is less automatic than Yankee (and now Sox) critics like to assume.

If you look at the Yankees now, for example, the most exciting players (Chamberlain, Hughes, Cano, Cabrera) are the ones being paid the least, and the most underperforming players (Clemens, Giambi, Mussina, perhaps Damon) are being paid in the eight-figures....

That said, I do enjoy Sox fans turning on each other like starving, rabid dogs.  ¶ 6:42 AM 7 comments   

  I'm Your Girl The Globe reports* that Hillary Clinton has been playing up her feminine side lately, "increasingly portraying herself more as motherly and traditional than as trailblazing and feminist, sometimes playing up the differences between men and women."

...On "The View," a daytime TV talk show aimed at female viewers, Clinton criticized people who focus on her haircut or clothes, yet she joked about the differences between her and her male rivals: "Well, look how much longer it takes me to get ready."

And at the AFL-CIO Democratic forum in Chicago in August, the most memorable moment was Clinton's buoyant declaration to the union faithful that if they wanted a winner, "I'm your girl."

One understands Hillary's dilemma; apparently many voters still see her as too "strident," and she has to walk the line between being "strong" and being "feminine," which is of course a bogus dichotomy.

But still...

I'm your girl?

___________________________________________________________

* Incidentally, the reporter is our old friend, the M-Bomb, Marcella Bombardieri. We miss you, Marcella!  ¶ 6:34 AM 6 comments   

  Quote of the Day #2 "The fact that [Harvard] was actually paying for unsupervised drinking is simply stupid and shouldn't have been happening in the first place. Kids have far too easy access to alcohol as it is, and they didn't need their university's help to get it.''

—David Rosenbloom, 63, the chief investigator of the federally funded Youth Alcohol Prevention Center at Boston University's School of Public Health.  ¶ 6:30 AM 4 comments   

  Drew Faust in the FT She gave an interview to the FT's Rebecca Knight in which she said that her priorities are, in this order:

1) making Harvard more affordable to lower- and middle-income students
2) to "make Harvard operate as one university"
3) to advocate for the arts

Ms Faust said the fact that she is the first woman to lead Harvard "matters enormously".

"My appointment was stunningly meaningful to women and men across the world. I find this moving; I find this a responsibility. I'm proud to play that role."

Does anyone else get the feeling that Faust's appreciation of her status as HFWP (Harvard's first woman president) has actually grown since she was chosen?  ¶ 6:20 AM 14 comments   

  Quote of the Day “We’re not going to give up. We’re just going to go, play the game and move on. If it doesn’t happen, so who cares? It’s always next year. It’s not like the end of the world.”

—The Red Sox' Manny Ramirez  ¶ 11:32 PM 3 comments   

  Time to Get Out of the Market? Harvard alum Ray Soifer has a theory about when it's time to ditch your stocks: Anytime 40% of a year's HBS graduating class goes to Wall Street, as it did this year....

Mr. Soifer advises investors to sell stocks any time that more than 30% of graduates from Harvard Business School choose to work for brokerage firms, private equity shops, or hedge funds. The thinking holds that if so many bright young people choose to do such mind-numbing tasks as crunching numbers, preparing Power Point presentations, or pricing collateralized debt obligations, that's a sure sign of a market top.  ¶ 8:01 AM 1 comments   

  Sticking Up for Tactlessness Everyone's dumping on UC president Ryan Petersen for giving a speech at Drew Faust's inauguration that took a couple of mild shots at the Harvard College administration. Now the Crimson edit board joins in:

...the fiery speech that Undergraduate Council President Ryan A. Petersen ’08 delivered criticizing the College administration was inappropriate and wholly out of character with the spirit of the occasion. Charged with speaking on behalf of students at the College and all of the graduate schools, Petersen’s tactless rhetoric undermined the many legitimate points he made and rendered us embarrassed to be among the constituency that he purported to represent.

Embarrassed to be among the constituency that he purported to represent? That's a bit harsh, no?

If I may offer a word in Petersen's defense....

I love Harvard students, really I do. I had a fantastic time teaching them back when I was a TF, I learned a ton interviewing them for Harvard Rules, and hell, I even work for two of them. They're great guys, and I'm not just saying that so they'll give me a raise, though that's fine too. Harvard students are, to me, the most inspiring thing about the university, and there are many inspiring things about Harvard.

But there are times when the modern generation of Harvard students seems so conformist, so desperately afraid of rocking the boat, that one wants to shake them to see if they're really alive or if they're instead just some sort of Stepford student.

Heaven forbid that students protesting a heavy-handed and unresponsive administration do anything impolite or tactless. That would be nuts, right? Because in life, the best way to get ahead is to conform, play by the rules, suck up to your superiors, and toe the line. After all, you're all part of the same power establishment, right?

Harvard's presidential installation is on one level a celebration of the university, true. But on another level, it's a deeply political event, a coronation of sorts. It's about power, and it harnesses all the resources and heritage of the university to get everyone affected to buy in.

The Crimson editorial board has obviously drunk the Kool-Aid. The paper says he "implicitly rejected the mutual responsibility of the student citizenship he represented." I'm not so sure. Couldn't it be argued that part of the responsibility involved is to remind the Harvard administration that its students aren't just smiling suck-ups waiting for a pat on the head? That they are more than neatly dressed drones in capitalism's assembly line?

(But...oh no! There may be some bumps on the road to Wall Street. Disaster!)

Ryan Peterson threw a stick in the spokes of Harvard's best-laid plans. He reminded the community that students do have strong opinions and that some of them aren't afraid to express those opinions. He committed a political act during a political event.

More power to him, I'd say. Twenty years from now, I'd rather have a Crimson alum manifest that kind of we're not gonna take it attitude than the hush-hush, be good now posture of the Crimson's editorial board.  ¶ 6:46 AM 11 comments   

  Oh, By the Way The Red Sox lost.

Not that I care or anything.  ¶ 6:34 AM 2 comments   

  Drew Faust in the Crimson In the Crimson, columnist Alexandra Petri writes of the societal pressure on women to look good and how it affects their happiness. In this context, she says, Drew Faust is a breath of fresh air.

I have great expectations for the new Harvard president. For when I think of Drew Gilpin Faust, “effortlessly hot,” is not the first phrase that springs to mind. Nor is it the second, third, or tenth.

In this context, Faust shines like a beacon of hope. Perhaps her election will inspire more of us to set down the make-up bag and toe buffer—or whatever that horrifying-looking implement is—and find more productive ways to spend our time.

I'll leave it at that....  ¶ 7:50 AM 22 comments   

  Greetings from Miami Where I have to catch a plane in a couple of hours, and so write only to suggest that the Red Sox are in a bit of trouble now....Even the Yankees beat Jake Westbrook!

(Small consolation, but still....)  ¶ 7:16 AM 1 comments   

  The Craziness at Columbia Being president of Columbia really seems like a tricky job sometimes.

The New York Sun reports that an Iranian scholar there has accused Lee Bollinger of "mind-numbing racism."

Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature, writes in an article published this week in an Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram, that the introduction Mr. Bollinger extended to the visiting Iranian leader included "the most ridiculous clichés of the neocon propaganda machinery, wrapped in the missionary position of a white racist supremacist carrying the heavy burden of civilizing the world."

The Columbia president's opening statement, Mr. Dabashi writes, is "propaganda warfare … waged by the self-proclaimed moral authority of the United States."

I'm no neo-con, but how do such purveyors of agitprop get tenure?

I mean, really, that is just terrible writing.
  ¶ 6:42 AM 23 comments   

  Monday Morning Song   ¶ 11:09 PM 3 comments   

  On Physicality Let me address some posters below who suggest that I am "obsessed" with physical appearance because a) I live in New York, b) I'm sexist, c) I'm shallow, and d) just cuz.

All of the above may be true, but I don't think so; in fact, I don't even buy the premise that I'm obsessed with physical appearance.

What I have seen over and over, however, is that in every leadership environment one can imagine, physical appearance matters. Whether it's LBJ using his height to intimidate, Kennedy just, well, being Kennedy, Reagan using his twinkly eyes to charm, Derek Bok looking straight out of central casting, Larry Summers taking a different tack, Steve Jobs in blue jeans—the way that a leader physically presents him or herself affects the reception of his or her program. Remember Hillary Clinton's haircuts? Jimmy Carter in running shorts?

Another example: I am quite convinced that Al Gore will not run for president. Why? Because he's gained a lot of weight. Does that make me shallow? No. It just suggests to me that Gore enjoys his current life too much to conform to the sacrifices demanded of a presidential candidate. (After all, when was the last time a fat person ran for president? Because, well, what would that extra weight signify in a leader, really? Indiscipline? Sloth? Or just bad genes?)

I know that in Cambridge this is an unpopular theory, as it's more appealing to believe that ideas, people, and programs succeed on merit alone. This is, of course, nonsense. Perhaps things shouldn't be this way, but to point out a truism of the human condition does not make the observer shallow, sexist, and so on. Is it any coincidence that many of Harvard's best-known professors happen to be beautiful dressers? Do not Steve Pinker, Malcolm Gladwell and Albert Einstein all brand themselves in a particular way, and is this not relevant to the way in which they are perceived?

Now, you folks may fault me for discussing the physical makeover Drew Faust underwent in the last eight months—snazzier clothing, more jewelry, new glasses, better haircut, whiter teeth (I think). But hey, if I'm wrong just to remark upon it, then isn't she more wrong for doing it? Because she obviously thinks that appearance matters, or she wouldn't have done these things.

And let's be honest—you folks think so too. When I was reporting Harvard Rules, the one comment that I heard most about Larry Summers by far was criticism of his physical appearance—his untucked shirts, his dirty ties, his eating habits, and so on.

And this was, in fact, a perfectly legitimate thing to comment upon, as Summers' sloppiness suggested to many of you a disrespect to the community. Whether or not that impression was accurate or fair, it did have a tangible impact on Summers' ability to lead that community; he should have cared more about what he wore and how he looked. This was a mistake that Derek Bok surely never made.

And this is a lesson that Drew Faust seems to have learned, and there is nothing wrong in pointing that out, unless you want to close both your eyes and your critical faculties.

Now, tell me the truth: Imagine the (let's be honest, and no offense intended) slightly more drab Drew Faust on that stage the other day, instead of the more youthful, more spruced up Faust we all saw.

I'm sure it wouldn't have affected your reaction to her speech. You are, of course, bigger than that. But perhaps you'll concede that some people might have been more inclined to think positively of her because she looked great? Particularly all the non-academic types....

The point is, Harvard has a leader now who is in the process of evolving from one identity—the academic—to another: a national educational leader.

That process of transformation is going to be very important to her ability to do her job, and so it's interesting and worthwhile to take note of the various signs of ways in which she is changing. (Flashes of the spirit, an old professor of mine might have called them.) They suggest that she is either taking to her new identity, her new persona, or not. (In this case, I'd say, yes, she is—and that's probably a good thing for Harvard.)

Are they the most important ways in which she is changing? Probably not. But they are significant; they reflect her own self-consciousness about the demands of the leadership role she now has. She is playing a part, and the part demands a costume. When one reviews a play, does one not remark upon the wardrobe? There is no difference.

Remember, for example, that powerful scene in Elizabeth when Cate Blanchett acknowledges her transformation from an ordinary woman into the Queen of England by painting her face thick with white make-up? Is it so terrible to point out the parallels as another woman ascends to another throne?

The degree is different, the principle the same. One must look the part one is chosen to play, if one wishes to play it well.

A community of scholars—scholars, not cheerleaders—should not be so anxious about the delineation of transformation. If you are blind to these changes, you may one day be blindsided by them.  ¶ 8:19 PM 16 comments   

  Globe,Get Me Rewrite Manager Terry Francona had already shot his wad of reliable bullpen arms by using Manny Delcarmen, Hideki Okajima, Mike Timlin, and closer Jonathan Papelbon (for scoreless innings in the ninth and 10th).
—The Globe, today  ¶ 8:29 AM 0 comments   

  The Red Sox Were Losing Darn that Manny Ramirez!  ¶ 10:39 PM 4 comments   

  The Red Sox Are Losing That Curt Schilling's looking kinda shaky!  ¶ 9:57 PM 1 comments   

  The Speech, Part II Re-reading the post below, I fear that I may have come across as too hard on Drew Faust's installation speech. So let me add that, on the whole, I think it was a fine speech, generally gracious and eloquent, laying out some important and relevant themes. Was it ambitious? Not really. But maybe that's not what the university needs right now; perhaps a cautious leader is appropriate for this moment in Harvard's history. Someone who will soothe the troubled waters...and that takes time.

In any case, Drew Faust continues to interest in an entirely different way than Larry Summers did. She is harder to read than Summers, much more subtle, much more below the surface. But so far, she really hasn't made any mistakes, and given the immensely delicate situation she landed in, that may be enough. For now, anyway.  ¶ 7:03 PM 15 comments   

  The Speech Some thoughts on Drew Faust's installation speech:

* Speaking generally about the import and values of the university, rather than detailing a specific agenda, was probably a sound strategic move; there is no question that Faust has learned from the experience of her predecessor.

At the same time, it wouldn't have made much sense for her to talk grandly about her agenda, because as far as we know, she doesn't have one beyond the one she inherited. Moreover, just because this was not the occasion to detail her agenda doesn't mean that such an occasion does not exist. This may not have been the time for a "State of the Union" speech...but Faust needs to deliver such a speech sooner rather than later.

* "As our colleagues in anthropology understand so well..." Faust began one paragraph. That is a line one would never have heard coming from Larry Summers' mouth, and I suspect the humanists within FAS took note. Was the shout-out deliberate and political? Almost certainly. Will the humanists eat it up? Absolutely.

* The strongest part of the speech was Faust's detailing of the "state of paradox" in which higher education finds itself. Americans' ambivalence about their elite universities is an important puzzle to address.

At the same time, Faust's analysis of this paradox was lackluster. Quoting from a PBS special? For most people, that's an insignificant point of reference. (Ah, but Faust went on PBS' "News Hour.") Faulting the Bush administration? Few take seriously the Bush administration in any regard, including higher ed. It's a straw man, designed to please the base, which includes the editorial pages of the Globe and the Times, which will surely respond with their approval.

Harvard's larger and more difficult challenge is to identify and assert its values in what the New York Times Magazine tomorrow calls "the Second Gilded Age," and that is a subject about which Faust was conspicuously silent. I know it's a difficult subject to raise, given that many Harvard alums are participants in this new and worrisome money culture, and that many Harvard students go to Harvard primarily so that they can join it, and that some Harvard schools promote it. But is there any greater threat to the values that Faust was discussing in reminding her audience of what a university truly stands for?

(For more on this subject, see Andrew Hacker's essay in the current NYRB, "They'd Rather Be Rich, which raises issues that feel to me more urgent, if less politically palatable, than the ones Drew Faust raised yesterday.")

* I was struck by Faust's repeated use of the phrase "Harvard and its peers," which seemed both winningly modest and an attempt to establish a community of universities. Two good notes to strike.

* I continue to think that Faust needs to lay off the references to herself as a symbol of Harvard's progress. "My presence here today...would have been unimaginable even a few short years ago." Maybe, maybe not. I know that she is trying to congratulate Harvard, but it is impossible to make this remark without sounding self-congratulatory. Moreover, there are real dangers in equating yourself with the university; what goes up can come down, as my old college president, Bart Giamatti, learned when striking workers made him the personification of all that they disliked about Yale.

Everyone present knew that this was a historic day; everyone in the press was going to lead with it; how elegant it would have been for Faust to speak to this point with her presence rather than with her rhetoric.

To be fair, one can understand Faust's inclusion of the subject. It surely is a big deal to her, and some of her new constituencies feel passionately about the gender issue and would have expected her to take note of it. A tough line to walk.

* I think that Faust struck a wrong note by quoting James Bryant Conant's letter to "be opened by the Harvard president at the outset of the next century." (Faust "broke the seal," she says—but wouldn't Larry Summers have been the one to open this letter?)

Because Conant's letter began, "Dear Sir," Faust got a big laugh—the audience "erupted" in laughter, according to the Crimson—as she surely expected she would; there was no substantive reason to mention the fact. A Harvard president born in 1893 was sexist? Shocker.

But poking fun at the shortsightedness of a past Harvard president is a cheap shot. As Faust reminds us, she is a historian, one whose biography of a Southern slave owner depended on understanding the anachronistic attitudes of the past. From a scholar's perspective, this was not her finest moment. Was it a sign, no matter how small, that she is leaving behind her old identity, her old values, as a historian? Making the transformation from a scholar to a university president?

In such carefully considered writing, the inclusion of the unnecessary is always telling, and to me the fact that Faust went out of her way to chastise Conant suggests one thing: that underneath her placid exterior, Faust still carries an anger about the way women have been subjugated in the past, and that this anger will continue to show itself. Faust isn't going to avoid the subject of her distinctive status—Harvard's first female president—because it matters to her a lot, and because she's pissed about the sexism she encountered back in Virginia and, probably, everywhere else.

Good! She is more interesting as a result.

And here is another possible interpretation: That this was a subtle, very subtle, reminder of her predecessor's women-in-science remarks. You see? it says. When it comes to Harvard presidents and science and sexism....well, there's some history there. Faust reminds people of the discriminatory attitudes of past Harvard presidents, but she carefully avoids explicitly referencing one sitting on stage with her.

* Here's something else that makes her more interesting. I hesitate to point it out, because the same people who got mad when I mentioned that a college classmate considered Tamara Rogers a "knockout" (or whatever it was) will rise to the occasion again here.

But...as one looks at the photos of yesterday's event, it's impossible not to note the physical makeover that Drew Faust has undergone. Different hair: She's grown it out, got a better haircut, new, blonder coloring, carefully blown out; lipstick; new glasses; pearl earrings; good make-up. (And maybe more? Hmmmm....)

There were some pictures of Faust on Harvard.edu (in Memorial Church, for example) in which I almost didn't recognize her.

Am I wrong to bring this up? Maybe. But since Drew Faust herself keeps bringing up her gender, and for women in positions of power, such cosmetic adjustments are invariably a political act, this subject strikes me as fair game.

(In the new issue of 02138, for example, we ran an interview with a woman who wrote a book about the pro-feminist implications of a woman letting her hair go gray. So I am clearly not the only one thinking about this topic. Sample question from the female interviewer: Would you dye your hair if you were running for president? Author: "I think having gray hair would be a competitive advantage for me—a signal to the electorate that I was telling the truth.")

Don't misunderstand me; I see nothing wrong with Faust wanting to pay more attention to her appearance, and those of you who follow this blog will know that I have commented on the relationship between physical appearance and leadership skills regarding men at least as often as with women. (LHS, WAM) And, of course, the Harvard community was obsessed with the physical presentation of Larry Summers. What's good for the gander is good for the goose, right?

But what is interesting about Faust's transformation is that she looked younger and prettier yesterday in a more stereotypically feminine way than in any previous image of her I've ever seen.

For some people, that's feminist; for others, that's anti-feminist. The political labels are less interesting than the possibilities.

One could say simply that she learned from her predecessor—well, from all three of her most recent predecessors, really— that there is a correlation between the ability to lead and self-presentation.

One could say that her new power and fame has filled Faust with a flush of self-confidence and vitality that she wants her personna to reflect.

One could say that she concluded that her previous stark, minimalist look might not go over well with Harvard's moneyed alums.

One could say that men get cut more slack in this regard than women do, and that women are judged on their looks more than men are, and Faust is smart enough to know that.

One could say that she wanted to look nice on her big day.

I draw no conclusions; I just think it's interesting. And probably smart, and certainly understandable. We all might upgrade our presentation a bit if we were anointed president of Harvard.

There are no more fascinating people to watch than those in the process of self-transformation. For Harvard, that process may be more important than anything Drew Faust said in her speech yesterday.

Now:


Then

  ¶ 8:21 AM 16 comments   

  Here She Is....

The Times: Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard University’s first female president, was inaugurated Friday and offered a spirited defense of American higher education against demands that it quantify what it is teaching and focus primarily on training a global work force.

The Globe: Rather than give a list of priorities for Harvard in her address, Faust defended American colleges against attacks on their quality and said Harvard and other universities should become leaders in national conversations about education.

The Crimson: As expected, Faust explicitly avoided laying out a road map for her tenure in her 30-minute speech, calling inaugural addresses "by definition pronouncements by individuals who don’t yet know what they are talking about."  ¶ 7:59 AM 11 comments   

  It Has Come to This At least Yale football is awesome this year....

The Times reports on Yale's running back star, Mike McLeod.

McLeod, now a 202-pound junior running back, has taken a quantum leap in only his seventh year of organized football. Yale is 4-0 entering today’s home game against Lehigh, and McLeod has been almost unstoppable, amassing 719 yards and 13 touchdowns.

“He’s a fun guy to watch, but not to play against,” said Dartmouth Coach Buddy Teevens, whose team gave up 155 yards to McLeod in a 50-10 loss last Saturday.

Anyone out there going to the Game in November?  ¶ 7:54 AM 0 comments   

  Will the Red Sox Lose Tonight? Tim Marchman, a NY Sun baseball writer whom I think is quite good, previews the ALCS.

Despite their even ranks in the standings, these teams were not really equals over the season. Boston scored 56 more runs and allowed 47 less while playing a tougher schedule; their offense was the second-best in baseball after the Yankees', and their pitching staff was the best overall. The Indians are a very good team that probably played a bit above its head to reach 96 wins. The Red Sox are a dominant team and deserve to be favorites in the series.

Argh. Argh. The question is, are the Indians as good as they looked against the Yankees, or did the Yankees' lame-ass play make the Indians look better than they really are?
  ¶ 11:33 AM 7 comments   

  Gore's Great News Al Gore just won the Nobel Peace Prize.

To read 02138's blurb on why we chose Gore as Harvard's most influential alum, click on the link.

To read founding editor Bom Kim's interview with Gore, click here.

I have to say, this is terrific news, both for Gore—what a comeback from 2000—and the planet....

One has to ask: Should he run for president? Will he?

If you're a Democrat, wouldn't you vote for him over Hillary and Barack?  ¶ 8:37 AM 10 comments   

  Lee Bollinger: This is Not Free Speech The Columbia Spectator today runs this interview with Lee Bollinger.

Spectator: We've heard a number of reports, still unconfirmed at this point, that the NYCLU is offering to defend the perpetrator of the TC hate crime on free speech grounds. Do you believe that this is protected free speech...?

Bollinger: Based on the facts I know, I would never make a claim this is protected expression under the First Amendment. There are First Amendment issues about bias claims and hate crimes. There are things that need to be argued and discussed about them ... but fundamentally this is really not a First Amendment problem. But I don't know all the facts.

....

Spectator: You've said on several occasions that you stand by your introduction that you gave for President Ahmadinejad. I was curious if you could comment a little on the thought process that entered into the wording and tone of that speech, as well as the effect you think that speech and his visit are going to have in the long run.

Bollinger: The issue of how to create an event that is academically meaningful, that lives up to our intellectual standards of taking ideas really seriously and not holding back emotions and passions that are aroused by ideas and beliefs and actions—that's a very hard question and at a minimum. We knew that we had to have to have a significant period for questions, but it was my feeling, and I think it was also John Coatsworth's feeling, that we needed to engage with the president of Iran's stated beliefs and actions in a much more direct way as well. My biggest fear about the event was that we would not have a debate that would be at the level of the seriousness of the questions on the table.

So we decided, or I decided, I'll take responsibility for it, that I would be make an opening statement and that there would be a number of questions raised about matters that were widely reported and known ... and these would be posed in a very sharp and direct way. That we would not shy away from very serious exchange about very serious maters. And the Iranian representatives agreed to this ... this was understood to be the framing of the event.

Agree or disagree with Bollinger, he gives a lot of straight answers in this interview, and he is eloquent and thoughtful.

I wonder what he would think of the term "Beverage Authorization Team"? Or, as it is also known, "BAT Team"?

In the interview, Bollinger speaks in a voice that, I think, Drew Faust should carefully consider. He answers questions. So far, she has done none of that. Granted, he's been president for six years, and she has been treading carefully.

But one of the concerns about Faust is that, having risen to the top through political skills and the careful avoidance of offense (no shame there), she will not be able or will not want to project a clear and commanding voice of her own.

  ¶ 8:10 AM 5 comments   

  University Presidents on the Hot Seat DGF is, of course, making it official today. And here in New York, Lee Bollinger is making headlines every other day, even if not always in the most flattering ways.

Don't you get the feeling that the attention being paid to universities is really heating up? I do.

But in New Haven, Yale president Rick Levin is the quiet man of university presidents. And the Yale Daily News would like him to take a stand, any stand.

In 2007, Yale’s leader seems hesitant to take a stand on much else besides the need for self-serving growth: As much as we admire you, President Levin, for your audacious vision, tangible successes in the sciences and 14 years (this month) of steady and tactful leadership — in the pantheon of Yale presidents you rank among the best — we are pleading with you to publicly tackle an issue without filtering it first.

Interesting! What's going on here? I think there is a sense on campus that the world is getting to be a very dangerous and tricky and kind of scary place, and leading a university is not just about building buildings or asking for checks—it's about laying out a vision of the world and the university's place in it.

And yes, the YDN is right—sometimes that means you have to take a stand.
  ¶ 8:04 AM 1 comments   

  The President Arriveth Today is the big day: the installation of Drew Faust as president of Harvard.

Here's the Globe on context:

Faust, 60, faces high expectations that she can move Harvard forward with a more conciliatory approach than her predecessor, Lawrence H. Summers. Summers, an economist and former secretary of the Treasury, ended his tenure in early 2006 after five years, the shortest stint for a Harvard president in 144 years.

("Ended his tenure"?)

According to the Globe, Harvard faculty want Faust to....
1) make the faculty and administration more diverse
2) unify Harvard
3) emphasize teaching

The Crimson suggests that Faust will continue to avoid talking specifically about her priorities, as she has done ever since she was appointed.

Faust will probably appeal to the University’s 371-year history when she takes the stage for her installation today. She will probably note Harvard’s responsibility as a leader in higher education. And she will probably restate her commitment to breaking down barriers across the University. But one thing she still won’t do is present a comprehensive agenda for her presidency.

Peter Gomes and Neil Rudenstine both say that vagueness is a good idea at such a time. "All you’ll do is give your enemies a shopping list with which to do you in," Gomes says.

Derek Bok and Neil Rudenstine say they shied away from giving her advice, because that could be tough for the speaker. (Chivalrous of them. But would they say the same of a man?)

Here are a couple of themes that I would think important for DGF to address, but which she probably won't:

1) Elevating the importance of scholarship at a place that is more and more about money
1a) Doing what she can to address the fact that the public perception of Harvard is increasingly as an economic institution—how rich the university is, how rich its graduates are.
2) A discussion of the relationship between the sciences and the humanities, and ways in which the importance of the humanities can be shored up
3) The importance of universities and their presidents during a time of war and national self-doubt

Here are a couple of themes that I would think unimportant for DGF to address, but which she probably will:

1) the fact that she's a woman
2) anything to do with bridges

Best of luck to President Faust—it's a gray day here in NYC, and I hope the weather is better up there.  ¶ 7:42 AM 13 comments   

  Another Incident at Columbia Lee Bollinger sent this e-mail around 5:27 this afternoon:

Dear member of the Columbia community,

I am saddened to report that one of the bathrooms in Lewisohn Hall
was sullied with an anti-Semitic smear. It has been promptly
removed and is now being investigated.

I want to make two points. When words are the offender, as in this
incident, I am reluctant to draw attention to them and will
exercise restraint in doing so going forward. I do not want to
broadcast, in any way, the message they attempt to send or empower
those behind them. Despite the irrational, destructive hatred that
persists in our society and world, we do not accept this anywhere
at this University. No one among us should feel marginalized or
threatened by words of hatred. We are one community; and as one
community, we will overcome these hateful acts and hold each other
to the highest standards of respect for the dignity and diversity
of every individual.

In response to questions students have raised, I also want to
reassure you that we have utmost confidence in our Public Safety
officials and in the NYPD. Not only do they have well established
communications protocols in place when there is an immediate threat
of harm; they distinguish crimes that threaten our physical safety
from incidents like the one that occurred today.

Sincerely,

Lee C. Bollinger  ¶ 12:21 AM 2 comments   

  Women Vs. Men—the Debate Continues More on the women-in-science debate: According to the website Associated Content, Stanford study seems to disprove Larry Summers' suggestion that women may have less innate capacity for high-level science and math skills.

Stanford University psychologists Mary Murphy and Claude Steele have conducted a study to be published in a journal of the Association for Psychological Science that shows that the social and institutional organization of math, science and engineering environments play a significant role in contributing to gender ratio imbalance in maths, sciences and engineering performance and careers.

Further Murphy, Steel and colleagues have conducted studies to test the hypothesis that it is environment and not innate traits that limit the numbers of women in these fields. Previous research into disparities between women's and men's academic choices have focused on biological and socialization explanations. The new study suggests that the environment and the situational cues of the environment are significantly important in the explanation for the differences between women and men in performance and representation in maths, sciences and engineering.  ¶ 1:11 PM 0 comments   

  A New President Cometh Amidst all the drunkenness, it's easy to forget that a new president is being installed at Harvard tomorrow.

(I see that, after blowing off last spring's ROTC graduation, Drew Faust is smart enough to ask ROTC students to march tomorrow.)

I'd like to take the moment to prompt your thoughts on Faust so far: To paraphrase Ed Koch, how's she doing? Are you encouraged by what you see so far? What are your expectations, hopes? Is she making us forget Larry Summers, or wish for Larry Summers?

Don't be bashful, folks. Let's hear your comments. Otherwise, you'll make me feel like I've invited you to a party and no one shows up. (Not that any of us knows what that feels like, right?)

Let's get this intellectual party started.....  ¶ 8:35 AM 9 comments   

  Quote of the Day "Even in the Ivy League Towers, at Columbia University in 2007, we might as well be in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1809."

—New York state senator Bill Perkins, a Democrat of Harlem, at a protest yesterday  ¶ 8:24 AM 0 comments   

  Sex and the Ivy...and Booze (A natural combination, right?)

The Sex and the Ivy blog has a pretty smart take on the whole drinking controversy.

Its author quotes part of the College's press release on the matter—there are those Beverage Authorization Teams again (I just want to know, do they wear trenchcoats?)—then writes....

Poor freshmen. The press release goes on to talk about the UC doing things for the “greater good” instead of just the burgeoning drunkards etc. Maybe it’s just me, but I actually think depression is going to skyrocket on this campus if the booze is taken away. There is very little to look forward to as it is. Without the occasional tipsy end-of-week party, what’s left?

This remark provokes a lot of harrumphing—go read a book, says one earnest poster. "Surprise, surprise, social events are possible without alchohol," says another.

Yeah—which is why the College makes sure that all of its alumi events are alcohol-free.

Who (other than me) will argue that there's basically nothing wrong with students getting a little wasted from time to time?

Let me put it this way: What college graduate reading this blog would want to have gone through their college experience without the occasional episode of drunken goofiness? Be honest, now.

I know, I know—it's a messy, irresponsible argument. But humanity, even at Harvard, is like that. Imperfect. Flawed. Fallible. We learn from our mistakes, and better we learn at an early age. The attempt to stamp out such behavior is no less than an attempt to stamp out youth itself.

What, I wonder, are the unintended consequences of never allowing the future leaders of the world to do anything wrong? Never to cut loose? To make a mistake? To know what it feels like to do something stupid?

What makes these students stronger, better people is a diversity of experience...and that includes experiences that aren't suitable for listing on your resume. Perhaps those especially.


  ¶ 8:06 AM 8 comments   

  At Harvard, Trouble Brewing Storming the Tower, a blog devoted to Boston-area colleges and universities, covers the madness at Harvard.

.....when student-administration tensions are already running high, interfering with the UC's constitution, and making it clear that student self-governance is illusory, at best makes this molehill into K2. It's actions like this that make students launch ridiculous, education-interfering protests in the end, and make everyone else roll their eyes and sigh at how entitled all those college kids are.

Well, yes and no. I agree that outsiders aren't going to be particularly sympathetic to student outrage that someone else isn't going to pay for their (whoo-hoo!) drunken bashes.

But I disagree that such protests are "education-interfering." Such protests, whether smart or stupid, serious or trivial, are educational in and of themselves.

Frankly, any sign of independent, rebellious thought from the too-busy-achieving-to-care student body at Harvard is darned exciting.  ¶ 7:59 AM 1 comments   

  Jim Sleeper on Larry Summers On TPMCafe.com, Jim Sleeper writes smartly about how American conservatives spend more time taking aim at straw men and stereotypes than in addressing real issues that might make conservatism feel more relevant to modern life.

It’s a lot more fun to blame Columbia liberals for inviting Ahmadinejad than to show that American national-security strategists and savants nurtured, funded, armed, elevated, and stimulated the Iranian mullahtocracy from 1953 through the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal of 1985 and beyond. ...Similarly, it’s more fun to blame silly professors in California for cancelling a speaking invitation to Lawrence Summers than it is to expose the cheap fiction that as president of Harvard he was a brave, brilliant educator martyred on the altar of political correctness.

I think that's exactly right; the fable of Larry Summers' victimhood has some power, because it conforms to stereotypes that the right has and promotes about the left. But while in the short term the promotion of this fable may score conservatism some points, in the long run, it makes its advocates intellectually lazy and disengaged from deeper, truer problems. It's easy to bang the drums about political correctness and how the left has taken over our campuses—but in the end, it does no one any good, conservatives least of all.  ¶ 8:12 PM 2 comments   

  A Disturbing Incident A very upsetting incident at Columbia: a female African-American professor finds a noose hanging outsider her door.

Detectives with the New York Police Department’s hate-crime task force were investigating whether the noose, which was discovered on the fourth floor of the college at about 9:45 a.m., was put there by a rival professor or by a student who was angry over a dispute. Colleagues of the professor identified her as Madonna Constantine, 44, a prominent author, educator and psychologist.

The president of Columbia, Lee C. Bollinger, also released a statement condemning what happened.

“This is an assault on African Americans and therefore it is an assault on every one of us,” he said. “I know I speak on behalf of every member of our communities in condemning this horrible action.”

Of course, we all know from the Duke case (if not before) to withhold premature judgments or accusations.....  ¶ 3:00 PM 9 comments   

  The Globe on James Watson James Watson's book, Avoid Boring People, gets a nice write-up in the Boston Globe...

When Watson begins teaching at Harvard in 1956, the start of a brilliant career as an academic, readers get an entertaining front-row seat on this glitzy world that runs on brains, gossip, and (sometimes) backbiting. Watson, for example, can barely contain his disdain for onetime Harvard President Nathan Pusey. After criticizing Pusey's heavy-handed reaction to student protests at Harvard in 1968, Watson notes that Pusey's face hinted at his status as an intellectual lightweight: "Pusey had a wrinkleless face that reinforced the impression of a life devoid of pain or pleasure." Watson also criticizes former Harvard president Lawrence Summers for his social tactlessness.

Watson, of course, isn't exactly tactful himself. But in a time when Harvard officials toss around Orwellian-lite phrases such as "Beverage Authorization Team," it is refreshing to hear someone speak his mind without apology.  ¶ 10:25 AM 0 comments   

  The Crimson Boot Plants Itself Once they take away your right to party, I said below, they come for more....which I wrote without reading today's Crimson.

Dean's Office Freezes UC Funding, the paper headlines.

Bluntly calling into question the council’s commitment to preventing underage drinking, Assistant Dean of the College Paul J. McLoughlin II told UC officials yesterday that Harvard will not give the council any money to fund a public event by a student group or HoCo unless there is a Beverage Authorization Team present to enforce the legal drinking age.

Welcome to the fascist nanny-state, as articulated by Paul J. McLoughlin (harrumph, harrumph) the IInd. Next thing you know, students who get financial aid won't be allowed to receive information about abortion. Or perhaps students who take university jobs will have to sign an affidavit testifying that they are indeed U.S. citizens.

Note that phrase, "Beverage Authorization Team."

Sometimes, one has to remind oneself that Harvard is supposed to be the greatest university in the world, a locus of intelligence and clarity, especially in language.

How much did some Harvard bureaucrat get paid to come up with the term, "Beverage Authorization Team"? Because being patently insincere and disingenuous is a real skill.

“They’ve shown us they can’t be trusted, so we’re going to have a new process by which they can get money,” McLoughlin said.

Is Harvard, which makes its own finances as murky as it can, quite sure that it wants to promote this philosophy?

And really, why should the undergraduate council be forced to play the role of enforcer? That isn't its job. Do we really want students ratting out other students?

Perhaps it was a dumb idea for the dean's office to decide it would subsidize campus parties. (You know you have a bad collegiate social life when....)

It's time to act like grown-ups and admit that college kids, old enough to go to Iraq and kill people, are going to drink. And while the college ought to take reasonable steps to observe the law, enforcement, like drinking, ought to come in moderation.

Beverage Authorization Team...... I mean, really.

This isn't something I particularly care about, but has anyone in the development office considered the idea that fun—yes, pure, simple fun—is one of the biggest reasons students develop an attachment to their college, and later give money to that college?  ¶ 8:54 AM 22 comments   

  Speaking of the Red Sox If you throw up on the college shuttle bus, should you be forced to pay the (several hundred dollar) cost of cleanup?

That's the urgent question being debated at George Washington University.

There it was in the GW Hatchet: "Fines Imposed for Vomiting on Vern Express." Students who drink until they are sick could be charged $200 to $300 or more to clean up the bus....

And "mystery riders" could be on board at any time, the administration warned.

Like air marshalls! Saving us from the vomiterrorists!

In fact, it's a fine idea, with a sound underlying philosophy: I'm all for irresponsibility, as long as no one else is hurt and the irresponsible ones bear the costs of their actions.

Meanwhile, at Harvard, students may boycott Drew Faust's inauguration because of a decision by Harvard College dean David Pilbeam to stop underwriting undergraduate parties.

Colleges and universities in recent years have been under pressure to reform their alcohol polices following increased awareness of binge drinking on campus, and a series of student deaths on campuses. This year, New York University for the first time is requiring all students to undergo alcohol-screening questioning. Every student-run event at Columbia University must provide a "social, educational, or cultural theme, and may not have the availability of alcohol as its focus."

Bleh.

You have two more days of leverage, Harvard students! Use them. The stakes are high.

(I speak as one who once engaged in a powerful silent protest, a procession of candle-carrying mourners, outside a New Haven bar. We were fighting the cancellation of a two-for-one happy hour.)

Here's why this apparent triviality matters: Our country and our colleges seem determined to churn out perfectly behaved, brain-dead automatons who never do anything wrong...which likely means that they will never do anything really right. Perfect McKinsey fodder. But who wants to live in that society?

So fight for your right to party, youth of America.

(Maybe not to puke, though. You're on your own there.)

Once they take that away, they come for more....  ¶ 6:47 AM 5 comments   

  Is It The End of the World? No, I'm not talking about the Bush presidency, global warming, or China's environmental policies.

The Yankees have lost. It's wait till next year for the Yankees.

I am too distraught to say much about this disaster of a series. But I will say a few things.

You can't blame Joe Torre for the fact that his best pitcher was terrible—twice. However, I do question starting Chien Ming Wang on three days rest, which he'd never done in his career, after his initial outing against the Indians was so awful.

I also question starting Roger Clemens after he hadn't pitched in over two weeks.

One must give the Indians credit. How many two-out RBIs did they have? 12, 13? Those were backbreaking. And their pitching was superlative. (Although the Yankees should have knocked Paul Bird out last night a couple of times.)

Even with his two hits last night, Derek Jeter had a terrible series. So did Jorge Posada. So did A-Rod. I knew A-Rod was going to hit a home run with no one one base. No pressure there.

The Yankees need a first baseman who can hit and field. It may be time to say goodbye to Jason Giambi.

I am on the fence about Joe Torre. He's a great guy and a class act, and he does things, I'm sure, that none of us realize or appreciate. But how many years in a row have the Yankees underperformed in the playoffs?

Hideki Matsui. Eh. Great guy, but talk about your quiet statistics.....

Pitching, pitching, pitching. Time for Mussina to go. And Kyle Farnsworth. And Clemens, of course.

Jorge Posada should be signed for two years. I don't see any other switch-hitting catchers around who hit .330 this year....

A-Rod...jeez, I don't know. I'm so tired of the playoff fold. It'll take $30 million to keep him. Is a player who consistently chokes in the playoffs really worth that, no matter how good his regular season performance?

This is going to be a busy off-season.

Go Indians!  ¶ 6:52 AM 22 comments   

  More on the I-Banker and the Gold-Digger Gawker covers the controversy, and amidst the pretty funny comments there's this one from a poster identified as CollegeCallGirl (who is a story in herself).

Read carefully—it's a Larry Summers joke, and another example of how deeply his women-in-science-and-math remarks have penetrated the culture.

...he's a douche, but she was the one trying to use her looks as currency, and if youth and looks are all she's offering, he's right that it's a depreciating asset. At least, I think he is. I'm not that good at math (vagina).  ¶ 5:08 PM 2 comments   

  Really, Is Feminism Dead? The other night, I met a banker who told me a story that I found amusing (I was a little tipsy), but I wondered if it was apocryphal. It was a story about a woman who posted an ad on Craigslist advertising herself as a gold-digger looking for a rich husband, and the banker who responded to the ad skeptically, saying that his assets ($) would only continue to appreciate while her looks were a declining asset.

(What I didn't tell the guy, who was actually a very nice guy, was that I found the story kind of ironic, given that his fiancee, who was standing nearby, was an absolutely gorgeous woman wearing an engagement ring that she'd want to remove while swimming, lest it drag her down to Davey Jones' locker.)

Anyway, I pick up the Times today and there it is–the whole story. Apparently not an urban myth after all.

Here's the ad, which begins thusly:

I’m tired of beating around the bush. I’m a beautiful (spectacularly
beautiful) 25 year old girl. I’m articulate and classy. I’m not from New York. I’m looking to get married to a guy who makes at least half a million a year. I know how that sounds, but keep in mind that a million a year is middle class in New York City, so I don’t think I’m overreaching at all.

Are there any guys who make 500K or more on this board? Any wives? Could you send me some tips? I dated a business man who makes average around 200- 250. But that’s where I seem to hit a roadblock. 250,000 won’t get me to central park west....

And the response:

I read your posting with great interest and have thought meaningfully about your dilemma. I offer the following analysis of your predicament. Firstly, I’m not wasting your time, I qualify as a guy who fits your bill; that is I make more than $500K per year. That said here’s how I see it.

Your offer, from the prospective of a guy like me, is plain and simple a crappy business deal. Here’s why. Cutting through all the B.S., what you suggest is a simple trade: you bring your looks to the party and I bring my money. Fine, simple. But here’s the rub, your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity…in fact, it is very likely that my income increases but it is an absolute certainty that you won’t be getting any more beautiful!
So, in economic terms you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset.

...So in Wall Street terms, we would call you a trading position, not a buy and hold…hence the rub…marriage. It doesn’t make good business sense to “buy you” (which is what you’re asking) so I’d rather lease. In case you think I’m being cruel, I would say the following. If my money were to go away, so would you....

Ah, modern romance. The thing is, I know a ton of relationships like this in New York and, to a lesser extent, Washington, Boston, and LA. The power of the male-dominated money culture seems to be crushing women's desire for financial independence....  ¶ 12:22 PM 7 comments   

  Do Women Like to Clean? In the Washington Post, Rena Corey argues that women "yearn for that cozy, clean nest," and they're willing to do the housework in order to get it.

"....Maintaining a home is a worthwhile and creative pursuit, not just a series of menial tasks best contracted out to a weekly maid service. Keeping a tidy house needn't be an exercise in pointless, mind-numbing tedium, regardless of what girls of my generation were taught. Many of us for a few decades there refused to admit it, but deep down, we have a perfectly respectable desire to create an attractive, peaceful haven for our families and ourselves. Call it gender-typed indoctrination....be it genetics or societal brainwashing, 40 years of liberation has not changed the fact that the female of the species is most often the one who cares about matching towels and well-equipped kitchens."

"Be it genetics or societal brainwashing....."

Somewhere, Larry Summers is either laughing or crying.  ¶ 9:48 AM 8 comments   

  What's Wrong With This Sentence? Certainly, by 2006 it was easier for the [news] anchors and correspondents to offer a skeptical vision of the war, now that a majority of the country disapproved of the conflict, than in the heady days after the toppling of Saddam Hussein seemed to strike a blow for democracy in the Middle East.
—Media critic Howie Kurtz in the Washington Post  ¶ 9:13 AM 4 comments   

  Go Yanks! With one exception, yesterday was a great day for New York sports fans: The Giants beat the Jets, and the Yankees came from behind to beat the Indians. What a game! Roger Clemens came out and looked like he was going to blow yet another playoff game—Clemens is strangely bad in such situations—but then his hamstring gave out, and rookie Phil Hughes came on to pitch brilliantly. Johnny Damon hit a Yankee Stadium left-field homer, and the Yanks were off to the races.

Two more to go ...will Mike Mussina come up big? Or will he be the Mussina that went through a disastrous mid-season collapse which saw him yanked from the starting rotation?

All who believe in the triumph of good over evil must root for New York tonight. A vote for Cleveland is a vote for Satan. And bugs.  ¶ 8:02 AM 12 comments   

  Monday Morning Song   ¶ 7:39 AM 5 comments   

  China's Green Awakening The Washington Post reports that China is making an aggressive effort to try to deal with its environmental crises.

Elizabeth Economy, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of "The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenges to China's Future," said this time "the commitment, the profile, the energy behind the state's environmental protection efforts far exceeds anything we've seen in China's history.

There are lots of challenges here—the damage already done, the tension between economic growth and environmentalism, corruption, and more—but certainly this is a good sign.

Now if we could only get the American president with the program.....  ¶ 8:44 AM 0 comments   

  Bugged Out You know, sometimes you think you've seen just about everything there is to see in a baseball game, and then...a swarm of bugs descends upon the field, and you realize that you haven't.

The Yankees lost to the Indians, 2-1, last night, and the immediate reason why was...bugs.

Wayne Berisford, a professor of entomology at the University of Georgia in Athens, said last night in a telephone interview that the bugs, gnats or otherwise, were likely engaged in a mating swarm. He said warm and wet weather encourages such behavior.



Because he was swarmed by what looked like thousands of mosquito-like critters, Yankee pitcher Joba Chamberlain went all to pieces in the bottom of the eighth inning, with the Yankees leading 1-0 in a beautiful pitchers' duel, walked two guys, hit a man, and wild-pitched in the tying run.

Now, the Yankees had other problems. A-Rod is four for his last 50 playoff at-bats, an average of .080, and the Yanks have scored only four runs in their first two games with the Indians. Also, can't Luis Vizcaino go an inning without giving up a run?

But...it was the bugs.

You will counter that the Indians pitcher Fausto Carmona—a great performance—also had to deal with the bugs, but didn't flinch. And this is true. But it is not the whole story.

For two reasons.

One, Chamberlain was the first pitcher to have to deal with the bugs en masse. They sprung up almost instantly, and Carmona had the benefit of watching Chamberlain get distracted by them, so that when he went to the mound, he knew how much that distraction could cost him.

Second, I can't prove this, but I'm convinced that Chamberlain attracted more of the bugs than Carmona did. If we had a John Madden-like blackboard, we could graph the comparative number of bugs landing on their necks; Chamberlain had so many of them on his neck, it was actually kind of disgusting.

I don't know if this disparity was because Chamberlain was sweating more than Carmona, or because their sweat smelled different.

You laugh, but we've all seen instances where bugs swarm around one person and relatively ignore another just feet away. Or at least I have.

A few years back, I took a nature walk with two other people in a Brazil forest. The flies were terrible, like a curtain of insects that you had to push through before progressing. But they were far, far more interested in me than in the other two people, who were both Brazilian (we all had insect repellent on). Was I sweating more? Was there something new and exciting about my sweat? No idea. But the difference was so great that my friends were actually grateful to me for attracting so many of the bugs.

In any case, the Yanks are down, 0-2, their season on the verge of ending. Argh. And the Sox, give 'em credit, are up 2-0. Argh-argh.

Well, as we all know, comebacks happen....  ¶ 8:17 AM 2 comments   

  Back Sorry, folks, for the blog-silence. I've been dealing with a family illness this week—not anything I've got—but one that has required hospital visits and lots of family discussion. It has thrown me out of wack and taken up quite a lot of time.

Tomorrow, we can discuss what a horrid place Cleveland is, and why it, and its bugs, ought to be entirely eradicated.  ¶ 10:29 PM 5 comments   

  Full Disclosure Some of you suggested below that, in discussing Skip Gates' journalistic relationship with Bliss Broyard, I was inadequately forthcoming in confessing the controversies associated with my own writing.

Balderdash, I said. Stuff and nonsense. I've talked this stuff to death.

Bah. Humbug.

As if to prove the point, I'll be on CNBC tonight between 7:20 and 7:30; I was interviewed for a taped piece about the invidious ubiquitousness of confidentiality agreements.

I have no idea what I said and I probably look like hell, seeing as how I was interviewed in a broom closet in some midtown office building. (The glamor of TV.) But you can't say I didn't warn you......  ¶ 3:54 PM 16 comments   

  A Woman to Admire In this NYTimes podcast, Anita Hill addresses the tragic farce that is Clarence Thomas—my words, obviously—and reminds one what an impressive woman she is.  ¶ 9:39 AM 1 comments   

  Harvard's Money Problem The Crimson reports that Harvard offers financial aid to families with incomes that it describes as "middle-income," i.e., families with incomes of over $160,000 a year.

Last year, 1,362 Harvard undergraduates whose families made more than $100,000 received aid grants from the College. That figure included 351 students whose families made more than $160,000. In all, 3,357 College students received non-loan aid last year, out of a total of about 6,600 undergraduates.

Every so often Harvard trots out news of additional financial aid, and the rest of us are expected to ooh and aah at the university's generosity. But shouldn't attention be paid to another issue: the fact that Harvard's tuition (what is it now, $45k?) is unaffordable to all but the wealthy?

$160,000 a year sounds like a lot of money, and by the standards of, oh, 99% of Americans, it is. But can it pay for Harvard? Not really. Take out taxes, and you're down to about $110,000,maybe $120,000. Throw in mortgage payments, food, health care, car payments, clothing, energy costs, insurance, some retirement savings, maybe a family vacation—how much does the $160k family have now? Is it $50,000 to pay for Harvard? Doubtful. But even if it is, is it reasonable to expect a family to use one-third of its pre-tax income for one child's college tuition?

Harvard's hardly alone in this problem, of course—lots of universities have high tuition—but its resources allow it to address the issue more aggressively than other institutions can. So by all means, we should welcome every new financial aid initiative Harvard rolls out. And then push for more.  ¶ 7:28 AM 26 comments   

  Studies: Men Happy, Confident; Women, Not So Much A Princeton study reports that men enjoy hanging out with their parents more than women do.

This intriguing — if unsettling — finding is part of a larger story: there appears to be a growing happiness gap between men and women.

...Since the 1960s, men have gradually cut back on activities they find unpleasant. They now work less and relax more. Over the same span, women have replaced housework with paid work — and, as a result, are spending almost as much time doing things they don’t enjoy as in the past. Forty years ago, a typical woman spent about 23 hours a week in an activity considered unpleasant, or 40 more minutes than a typical man. Today, with men working less, the gap is 90 minutes.

The article suggests that it's because women are now working both in and outside the home; I have another theory, which I will keep to myself for the time being.

Meanwhile, Australia's News.com reports on a study suggesting that women feel threatened among men but men like being in large crowds of women.

Women feel threatened when outnumbered by the opposite sex, such as in maths, science and engineering classrooms, while men enjoy being in a roomful of women, a US study has shown.

...the study monitored the reactions of a group of advanced students in traditionally male-dominated fields while they watched videos depicting a conference. In one of the videos, men outnumbered women, while in the other the sexes were equally represented. The women's heart rates accelerated and perspiration increased when they watched the video in which their gender was outnumbered....

Well—not exactly conclusive. Interesting, though.  ¶ 7:11 AM 3 comments   

  Thought for the Day As the editorials continue to pour in, it is impossible to escape a conclusion: The female professors who pushed for the cancellation of Larry Summers' speaking engagement at the UC Board of Regents dinner have provided the single most important episode in Summers' public comeback.   ¶ 6:54 AM 7 comments   

  Quotes of the Day "Fuck the cops. Come, Jesus. Blow me again."  ¶ 6:49 AM 3 comments   

  James Watson on Larry Summers In this month's issue of 02138, we ran an excerpt of James Watson's new book, Avoid Boring People, in which he talked about Harvard's science crisis (Allston=big mistake) and discussed why he thinks Larry Summers shouldn't be faulted excessively for his leadership hiccups; he thinks Summers has Asperger's Syndrome.

In an interview with MSNBC.com, Watson continues that argument. I found this section particularly interesting.

Q: In the book, you led into those issues with the whole controversy over Harvard President Lawrence Summers and his remarks about genetic differences between the sexes [relating to proficiency in math and science], and how you might have handled that situation differently.

A: I would have, but you know, I think Larry had pissed off everyone even before he made that remark and didn’t know how to handle the hysteria afterward, which was led by my former student Nancy Hopkins, who went on television to denounce him.

Our brains aren’t equal. The same gene will make a boy badly autistic, and a girl will not suffer as much. So why? That’s really all I’m saying: This assumption that everyone has to be equal … Biology seldom treats people as equal. It hasn’t evolved to make laws easier, or social behavior easier.

But I’m convinced that instead of leading to a nastier society, we’ll be more compassionate. Instead of saying, “How can Summers be such a bore?” we’ll just say, “He can’t help it.” Of course, if you knew that, you wouldn’t have put him in as president of Harvard, because he really didn’t know how to deal with people. …

I'd be curious to see the unedited transcript, because this answer feels more oblique than Watson typically is.

In any case, the interview is well worth reading.  ¶ 2:30 PM 12 comments   

  Stanford Makes Mo' Money Stanford's endowment returned 23% last year, according to Bloomberg. It's now $17.2 billion, or about half of Harvard's $34 billion.

Stanford is also in the middle of a five-year, $4.3 billion fundraising campaign—the highest in the history of American higher education, which almost surely means the highest in the history of the world.  ¶ 8:35 AM 1 comments   

  Reasons to be Cheerful Today 1) It's October, the best month.
2) My new Apple wireless keyboard, which is so great that I may just write that Moby Dick sequel I've been thinking about. (Kidding! It's actually a prequel.)
3) The new Springsteen record.
4) The Yankees are in the playoffs...and the Mets aren't.
5) The revived Giants defense.
6) The fact that Radiohead are selling their new album online...and letting you pay whatever you think fair for it.

(I paid $8; my friend Peter, who is apparently cheaper than those ghastly shoes he bought in Mexico, paid eight cents. What would you pay?)  ¶ 8:15 AM 11 comments   

  Why (Yale) College Matters The Crimson reports that a Yale junior has won a New York Times essay contest on the subject, "Why College Matters."

The Yalie, Nicholas Handler, beat out at least five Harvard students, the Crimson notes.

Nicholas Handler’s prize-winning essay was written in response to an article by historian Rick Perlstein arguing that American college campuses are no longer the incubators of radical thought they were in the 1960s because of a modern-day obsession with market-centered thinking.

...In his essay, Handler responded that the lack of massive protests and student takeovers of administrative buildings is merely the result of the digital revolution, which has transferred the free expression of ideas from the picket lines to the Internet.

I'm pleased to see that Handler is a staff member of The New Journal, the magazine where journalists such as Hampton Sides, Jay Carney, Neela Banerjee, Daniel Yergin, Jim Sleeper and yours truly got their start....  ¶ 7:57 AM 0 comments   

  He's Going Down Jeffrey Epstein is going to jail for 18 months.

Sources said state prosecutors, who in 2006 charged Epstein with solicitation of prostitution, will upgrade the offense because the females were under 18, the age of consent in Florida. But Epstein, who denies knowing any of the girls were under 18, is not going to be charged with having sex with underage girls, sources said.

The feds have agreed to drop their probe into possible federal criminal violations in exchange for the guilty plea to the new state charge, with the understanding that he will do prison time, sources said.

When all is said and done, this is really a sad story. I can't condone what Epstein did, but at the same time, 18 months seems pretty harsh, given that he didn't force anyone to do anything. And 18 months in jail for a billionaire sex offender could be...well, I don't want to think about it.

Epstein says he didn't know any of the girls were under 18. I'm not sure that we should give him the benefit of the doubt on that. But if he's not being charged with having sex with underage girls, then 18 months for solicitation of prostitution?

I guess I'd like to know more details of what really happened here.....  ¶ 7:29 PM 1 comments   

  This One's for Standing Eagle The New York Times analyzes a new phenomenon: the arrival of the celebrity blog-comment poster.

There are those who have blogs. Then there are those who leave comments on other people’s blogs, sometimes lots and lots of comments, sometimes nasty, clever, brilliant, monumentally stupid or filthy comments.

Sound familiar? (Well, except for the stupid/filthy part.)  ¶ 6:00 PM 6 comments   

  Dick Brodhead Apologizes The president of Duke University apologized yesterday for not supporting the school's lacrosse players amidst allegations of rape that proved bogus.

"Given the complexities of this case, getting the communication right would never have been easy," Brodhead said. "But the fact is that we did not get it right, causing the families to feel abandoned when they were most in need of support. This was a mistake. I take responsibility for it, and I apologize for it."

Brodhead, who announced that Duke will host a conference to discuss how such situations should be handled, got a standing ovation...but at the same time, his actions surely have cost Duke millions of dollars in legal settlements. Can he survive? Should he?  ¶ 5:46 PM 0 comments   

  Monday Morning Song   ¶ 8:16 AM 2 comments   

  More on the Summers Fiasco A provocateur might suggest that the women who pressured the UC Board of Regents to cancel a dinner invitation to Larry Summers have proved Summers' arguments regarding the relative intelligence of women to men—because while those women, who have since gone underground, managed to get the Summers invitation withdrawn, they have also managed to unite both conservatives and liberals in the idea that Summers is a martyr to political correctness.

Conservatives have long pushed that theme, and the UC incident only drives the point home for them.

But now, I think, liberals are using the incident to show that they, too, can be tough on political correctness.

Here's Susan Estrich, former Dukakis campaign aide, writing on FoxNews.com:

So now [Summers is] back to being a professor, and a smart one at that, and someone with a fair amount to say about education and the economy and political correctness on campus.

But if my liberal feminist friends have their way, he won’t be allowed to say it out loud, at least not at any branch of the University of California.....

What’s liberal about that? Since when is censorship part of the feminist agenda?

The success of the petition drive in getting Larry Summers uninvited to the University of California Regents meeting wasn’t a show of strength for women, at least not in my book, but a sign of weakness, of lack of confidence in themselves and in the Regents and lack of commitment to the academic freedom and open debate that should be at the core of any great University.

Estrich is, of course, correct. The fact that not one of the petitioners has spoken to the press is another sign of weakness. Which just perpetuates another inaccurate female stereotype.....  ¶ 7:38 AM 2 comments   

  Harvard's Money: Attracting Attention I've been arguing for some time now that Harvard is in the midst of an identity crisis it refuses to acknowledge: It has become so rich that it is now better known for its vast wealth than for its educational product, and it is arguably better at raising money than it is at teaching students. (The cart before the horse and all that.)

And because of Harvard's being defined by great wealth, people are going to start asking questions of it that would typically apply to a business rather than a school.

For example: In today's Los Angeles Times, the economist Robert Reich wonders why giving to Harvard is considered giving to charity.

I'm all in favor of supporting the arts and our universities, but let's face it: These aren't really charitable contributions. They're often investments in the lifestyles the wealthy already enjoy and want their children to have too. They're also investments in prestige -- especially if they result in the family name being engraved on the new wing of an art museum or symphony hall.

..I see why a contribution to, say, the Salvation Army should be eligible for a charitable deduction. It helps the poor. But why, exactly, should a contribution to the already extraordinarily wealthy Guggenheim Museum or to Harvard University (which already has an endowment of more than $30 billion)?

Reich proposes a solution: Revise the tax code so that only gifts to charities explicitly designed to help the poor get a full deduction.

This surely won't happen. Nonetheless, it's another example of how Harvard's fortune is making people reconsider the way they look at the university. And that's not even mentioning how it changes the way the university looks at itself....
  ¶ 7:24 AM 2 comments