Victory I'm delighted to announce that Judge Douglas Woodlock of Federal District Court in Boston has ruled in favor of 02138 in Facebook's attempt to win an emergency injunction against the magazine and force 02138 to take down documents from the ConnectU v. Facebook trial. The transcript of the judge's ruling will be released tomorrow, and since I'm in Mexico I don't have a complete sense of what happened in court. But I'm told that the judge agreed with our arguments that posting the documents helped show what our article, "Poking Facebook," was based upon, thus promoting greater public knowledge both about journalism and about Facebook.

Again, since my understanding of the decision is based largely on e-mails and quick phone calls, including one from the bow of a boat headed to the reefs of Cozumel, I should say that further and more specific details will emerge soon. I'll post 'em as soon as I've got 'em.

But here is the point: This is a victory for 02138, yes. I'm delighted that the judge decided as he did. But beyond that, this is a victory for the ability of the American press to do its job with some assurance of legal protections, even when a $15 billion company brings its legal guns to bear on you, forcing you into court 36 hours after notifying you of its discontent. And with brand new lawyers, by the way; our guy was conflicted out when he realized that a different part of his firm represented Facebook, and, well, let's just say that Facebook's a considerably bigger client of his firm than 02138 is.

We're working on the next issue of 02138 now. I hope that there won't be anything in it that lands us in court again. But if there is, and if we believe that we were right to publish it, we'll fight it again.

Thanks for your interest and support.  ¶ 9:32 PM 3 comments   

  Dispatch from Mexico I'm on vacation, but this is important: Facebook is trying to use legal pressure to stop 02138 magazine from disseminating information about the contested origins of Facebook.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Facebook Inc. filed two legal motions aiming to force an independent magazine to take down from its Web site documents related to a suit over the social-networking site's origins.

Early yesterday, Facebook's lawyers notified 02138, an independent magazine geared at Harvard alumni, of two separate emergency motions seeking the removal of the documents from its online edition.

The documents are still available online here, but Facebook has a lot of lawyers....If you're interested, take a look at these documents. And spread the word that a company that plans to collect and sell personal information about 50 million users doesn't want one magazine to conduct reporting about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg....  ¶ 11:52 PM 6 comments   

  Hasta Pronto I'm headed to Mexico in about an hour, so posts will be scarce (though I'll try) for the next few days.   ¶ 7:21 AM 0 comments   

  The Bomb is Back H Bomb, Harvard's twice-published sex mag, has regained its status as an official student organization and plans to publish again this spring, according to the Crimson.

That should be interesting....  ¶ 6:53 AM 7 comments   

  Columbia: Onward, Upward The New York City Planning Commission has approved Columbia's plan for a 17-acre expansion into west Harlem by a vote of 10-1, with one abstention.

As I stood on the open-air subway platform at 125th street this morning, looking north and west over the dreary parking garages, storage facilities, paint shops, and so on that make up the area in question, I thought, Good.

There will, of course, be opposition.

“We’ll stand in front of those bulldozers,” said Tom DeMott, a leader of the opposition Coalition to Preserve Community. “This battle is not over by a long shot.”

Mr. DeMott would be better served by working with Columbia to make this plan as conducive to the long-term economic growth of Harlem as possible than by standing in front of the bulldozers. But that would not attract him nearly as much attention....  ¶ 2:13 PM 11 comments   

  Ted Kennedy on Himself The Globe reports that Ted Kennedy has sold a memoir to the Hachette Book Group for $8 million. Good for him—let's hope he tells an honest story. He could tell a fascinating one.

I have some small insight into this news. Back when I was writing my book about John Kennedy, I took a lot of heat from some people who thought it was a bad idea, including Caroline Kennedy. (Though you'd never be able to find her fingerprints on it—everything she did was through surrogates. A careful woman.)

But not Teddy. His representatives were, if not supportive, quietly cooperative throughout, and I got the feeling that the senator knew well that such books about his family helped to build its mythology and thus had a certain social and political value. Also, he obviously cared about John very deeply, and I don't think he minded so much the idea that an admiring colleague would remember his nephew in a book.

While Caroline Kennedy never acknowledged the letters I sent to her in which I explained the nature of my book—what it would be, what it wouldn't be—I spoke to a Ted Kennedy aide on several occasions, and those people were always perfectly civil and decent about the project. Before the book was officially published, I made sure to send copies to the senator.

So when people would say to me, "How do the Kennedys feel about your book?", I would respond, well, the Kennedys aren't a monolith; you can't speak of the family as if it has a collective brain. Most of the time, I got the feeling that that wasn't the answer people wanted to hear, but it was the true one.

All of which is a long way of suggesting some small insight into why Teddy might be writing his memoir now, other than the $8 million—because he believes in the power and merit of books, believes in the telling of history, rather than trying to squelch it.

I would also note something that the Globe does not pick up (shocker): Hachette Book Group is, of course, an arm of Hachette-Filipacchi Media, the publisher of George magazine. So there is an emotional connection involved that the Globe missed. Senator Kennedy's memory appears to be longer than those who write about him, which bodes well for his memoir.

  ¶ 8:13 AM 2 comments   

  Yale on the Mend Beinecke Library at night




The New York Sun has a nice piece on how Yale is rebuilding its modernist architecture, including some truly lovely buildings—the Yale Art Gallery, Ingalls Rink, and Beineke Library, all of which, in my opinion, are distinctive and beautiful.

(Yale's architecture may be more interesting and daring than Harvard's as a result of its being in much-maligned New Haven, and thus less tradition-bound and freer to experiment, than Harvard in Cambridge. A silver lining of life in a post-WWII city, I suppose.)

Yale is also restoring one building that it is hard to believe will ever be anything but a monstrosity—the cold and Soviet-style Art and Architecture building, by Paul Rudolph. Well, let them try; it can only help. At the very least, they'll put some air conditioning in the thing.  ¶ 10:20 PM 1 comments   

  Quote for the Day “We meet at a time of crisis in our democracy, a time of deep stalemate and frustration — a time when many Americans are losing confidence not only in our present leadership but in our institutions and even in the future of our nation itself.”

—Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., in a speech written for George McGovern  ¶ 10:17 PM 0 comments   

  How Completely Great A poster below tips me off to the fact that there's an entire blog devoted to deconstructing Maureen Dowd—the Dowd Report. It's brilliant.  ¶ 10:02 AM 2 comments   

  Dartmouth v. Harvard InsideHigherEd reports that a Dartmouth trustee, Todd J. Zywicki, has given a speech in which he attacks the culture of higher education and, more specifically, Harvard.

Those who control the university today, they don’t believe in God and they don’t believe in country,” he continues. “The university is their cathedrals…their entire being. Both those who fund it and those who teach within it are tied up in the university.”

[Blogger: The university is their cathedrals?]

Commenting on campus culture as a whole, Zywicki told the audience, “We have the Spanish Inquisition, and you can ask Larry Summers whether or not the Spanish Inquisition lives on academic campuses today.”

The Spanish Inquisition? Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

I know I should take conservatives more seriously about such things—a Dartmouth alum calls for Zywicki's resignation—but they're so over-the-top and ill-informed, it's hard not to get a good chuckle out of them. Problem is, they are enormously good about getting the message out on such things; their sense of grievance is powerful. But, my gosh, they sound so unhappy.

In any case...speaking of Larry Summers, anyone know how that book of his is coming along?  ¶ 6:44 AM 3 comments   

  Word Down The Crimson reports that a new version of Microsoft Word is frustrating students.

Some users complain that Word 2007, which is installed in Harvard’s computer labs, has created incompatibility problems and is difficult to navigate.

Documents are now saved as “.docx” files instead of the traditional “.doc” format, making it difficult to open newer files on older versions of the software.

This is the kind of thing that makes a Mac user chuckle. Why on earth would anyone want to save a document with the ending ".doc" or ".docx"?

I mean, really—.docx?

Thankfully, such nuttiness isn't to be found on Office for Mac.....  ¶ 6:40 AM 6 comments   

  Schlesinger on War In the Washington Post, Walter Pincus notes that Arthur Schlesinger's reflections on Vietnam, published in his posthumous Journals, show unnerving parallels between Vietnam and Iraq.

How many times has President Bush used such phrases as "precipitous withdrawal" and remarked that only Americans can defeat the U.S. military effort in Iraq? Last April, for example, Bush said: "Precipitous withdrawal from Iraq is not a plan to bring peace to the region or to make our people safer at home. Instead, it would embolden our enemies and confirm their belief that America is weak."

What a shame that the shallow, catty Maureen Dowd was the person the Times chose to have review Journals, which are full of more nuggets than Dowd could ever know.  ¶ 6:29 AM 1 comments   

  Thanks for Thanksgiving It was a great long weekend for playing catch-up. On my days off, I wrote captions for the photos in my book, paid bills, responded to/deleted over 2,000 e-mails, exercised, and wrote several overdue thank-you notes. I also watched American Gangster (flawed, but very good) and The Mist (better than you think—and the darkest ending you'll see in an American movie for a long time).

I also Tivoed the Giants game, then learned that it had been a hideous defeat, and so deleted the recording. I love Tivo.

And I did not blog, as a little recharging of the batteries was necessary. But suitably rested, I'm back....for most of the week. I head to Mexico for a little underwater R & R on Thursday.....  ¶ 6:22 AM 0 comments   

  Yale: More Fun than Harvard? That's always been my impression, dating back to when I was an undergrad in New Haven and Harvard people who came to visit were always talking about how much more fun Yale was.

Now the Crimson seems to agree, editorializing that the tailgates at Yale were vastly better than in Cambridge—traditionally the case (it's also true of the parties), but apparently this year the reason was due to a mellow police presence at Yale.

In Cambridge last year, the Boston Police Department and Harvard administrators organized the strictest Harvard-Yale tailgate in recent memory. Regulations and checkpoints were everywhere. Every last detail was proactively enforced. Students were not allowed to bring any liquids into the event area, and students over 21 were required to receive a wrist band in order to be able to purchase beer and spiked hot chocolate (a policy repeated at Yale’s “student village” but not at the entire tailgate).

Harvard and Boston need to take a good look at the philosophy of tailgating in New Haven and realize that a more pragmatic approach can be more effective for all parties involved.

Hmmm. True enough, but the Crimson misses an important point: Undergraduate fun is not high on Harvard's list of priorities. What is important to the Harvard administration is staying on good terms with politicians and residents in Boston and, more specifically, Allston.

Why did Harvard crack down so much on fun at last year's Game?

So as to avoid irritating any constituency which might slow down its Allston plans.....  ¶ 12:28 PM 3 comments   

  No Contest in Halberstam's Death Kevin Jones, the Berkeley graduate student who made an illegal left turn at a red light and got David Halberstam killed, has pleaded nolo contendere to a charge of misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter. He'll get a sentence of 30 days, probably reduced to 5-10 and community service.

On the one hand, I think this guy should be locked up because his idiotic driving got a great writer killed.

On the other hand, this is something that he's going to have to live with the rest of his life, and that is a pretty serious punishment. To be an aspiring journalist, and then be indirectly responsible for the death of one of the great journalists of the 20th century—that will not be easy for Mr. Jones.

It reminds me of that scene in "Saving Private Ryan," in which Tom Hanks is dying at the end after sacrificing himself to save Private Ryan, and as he's dying, he says to Ryan, "James, earn this. Earn it."

In other words, do something with your life that justifies this loss.

One hopes that Mr. Jones will rise to this challenge.  ¶ 2:41 PM 3 comments   

  Reading Was Fundamental Though it's too late for me to do much more than acknowledge this issue, I did want to mention the new study showing that Americans are reading less and that their test scores are in decline as a result.

Harry Potter, James Patterson and Oprah Winfrey’s book club aside, Americans — particularly young Americans — appear to be reading less for fun, and as that happens, their reading test scores are declining. At the same time, performance in other academic disciplines like math and science is dipping for students whose access to books is limited, and employers are rating workers deficient in basic writing skills.

It's not a surprise, of course. If I were a kid today, I'd be watching more movies, playing more video games, and so on than when I actually was a kid. How could one not? They are ubiquitous, and tempting. And of course the amount of time in kids' lives is finite.

The thing that is frustrating about the study is that it's limited. Yes, fine (well, not fine), test scores are declining, and to the extent that test scores reflect deeper things, that is alarming. But what else do kids lose when they read less that can not be so easily measured? How is their development affected without the lessons and instruction and challenge of reading stories?  ¶ 11:58 PM 10 comments   

  A Quick Post Before (Jury) Duty Calls I'll be hanging out in the Manhattan courthouse today, so posting will be slow until later.....  ¶ 7:53 AM 6 comments   

  Japan's Eco-Atrocity Japan has decided to extend its "scientific" whaling program to the hunting of humpback whales.

The new hunt is certain to renew Japan's angry standoff with antiwhaling forces. Greenpeace and the animal rights activist group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society have said they will track Japan's hunt in the South Pacific.

(Did anyone read the New Yorker profile of Sea Shepherd head Paul Watson?

Watson believes in coercive conservation, and for several decades he has been using his private navy to ram whaling and fishing vessels on the high seas. Ramming is his signature tactic, and it is what he and his crew intended to do to the Japanese fleet, if they could find it.

Watson's clearly a little nutty, but after reading the piece, I decided I'm glad that he does what he does.)

In addition to being a creature of enormous beauty and intelligence, as research into whale songs is showing, the humpback is a particularly popular spotting for whale-watchers. (Did you know that whale songs, which can last hours, have been found to contain elements of grammar and that whales have been found to sing in dialects?)

Japan has also decimated the world's supply of tuna (though all those Americans who have hopped on to the sushi bandwagon aren't helping).

It's appalling that Japan hunts any whales at all. But slaughtering humpbacks? This is not something a great nation should lower itself to.  ¶ 8:19 AM 2 comments   

  Clash of the Titans Apparently there was a football game in New Haven yesterday. Good thing I decided not to pay the slightest bit of attention...

By the way, speaking of salaries, as some of you have been, the YDN reports that Yale's Rick Levin is the highest paid president in the Ivy League, with a total salary of $869, 026.

His salary has increased at twice the rate of the salaries of Yale professors, who average $151, 152 .....

Also interesting is the fact that David Swensen, Yale's investment manager, who has made the university billions of dollars, gets paid a relatively paltry $1.64 million, or a rough 20-25% of what Mohamed El-Erian made in his first year, by my calculations.....  ¶ 8:01 AM 2 comments   

  Quote of the Day "Girls confuse me."  ¶ 4:19 PM 1 comments   

  The Ivy League Goes Left On the Huffington Post, Sam Stein looks at presidential giving by Ivy League faculty. Turns out....you guys are liberal!

More than 86 percent of Ivy League teachers and employees who have donated to presidential campaigns have given to a Democrat , according to an analysis of campaign finance reports. That percentage -- which does not include those who work in affiliated hospitals -- is more than 10 points higher than the education industry as a whole.

Good thing for the GOP that you don't make much money.

Of the roughly $470,000 donated by these Ivy League higher ups, approximately $205,000 has been given to Sen. Barack Obama, D-IL, and $147,000 to Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY. The top Republican recipient was former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney, who received approximately $33,000 in Ivy League largesse.  ¶ 7:35 AM 34 comments   

  More on the Globe's Wacky Website You'd think a major newspaper could afford a decent web designer, right? (Though maybe the premise is wrong.)

I continue to be amazed by the idiocy of the Boston Globe's website redesign.

The page looks nothing like a newspaper, which the New York Times—the best newspaper website—has shown is a really helpful visual tool, allowing visual cues that tell the readers which stories the paper thinks are important.

Instead, the Globe lists its stories in one narrow column that goes endlessly down and down the page—wasting over 50% of the space in your browser window while you scroll and scroll, like Ed Harris falling to the bottom of the ocean in The Abyss.

And talk about weird editorial choices! I have great respect for the deceased, but do we really need "Obituaries" coming before "Nation," "World," "Sports," "Business," and just about everything else in the paper?



Ed Harris prepares to read the Boston Globe online.  ¶ 7:19 AM 1 comments   

  The Bushies' Reality Disconnect Two pieces of White House news:

A federal court has ruled that new and minimal fuel standards for light trucks fail to consider the impact of those trucks on global warming.

The court's ruling rejects mileage standards that were to have gone into effect next year and would have raised required average fuel economy for light trucks from 21.6 miles per gallon to 23.5 by 2010. The light truck category -- sport-utility vehicles, pickup trucks and minivans -- makes up 50.2 percent of the U.S. automobile market, with passenger cars accounting for the rest.

A great victory for common sense, right? And yet the Bush administration continues to insist that global warming doesn't exist or isn't the result of human activity. Last year, the Smithsonian director watered down an exhibit on the Arctic to downplay global warming "in order to avoid a political backlash."

The museum's director, Cristián Samper, ordered last-minute changes to the exhibit's script to add "scientific uncertainty" about climate change, according to internal documents and correspondence.

Samper put the project on hold for six months in the fall of 2005 and ordered that the exhibition undergo further review by higher-level officials in other government agencies. Samper also asked for changes in the script and the sequence of the exhibit's panels to move the discussion of recent climate change further back in the presentation, records also show.

Here is a particularly funny (in a ha-ha, now I'm going to jump out a window, kind of way) part of the Washington Post's story on this controversy. It's a little long, but worth reading—the payoff comes at the end.

"Arctic Meltdown," the original name of the show, was designed to "explore dramatic changes during the past half-century in the Arctic environment," according to a June 2003 statement of purpose. The exhibit would show "global changes can have local consequences and local changes can have global consequences," the statement read.

Igor Krupnik, a Smithsonian scientist who reviewed the initial statement, called it a "very good start," but said it was important to find "a new title (or better title)." He suggested one based on a University of Colorado researcher's interview of an Inuit tribesman who had referred to Arctic weather as uggianaqtuq, which she interpreted to mean "you are not yourself."

Smithsonian researchers changed the title later in the summer of 2003 to "The Arctic: A Friend Acting Strange," and later the last word became "Strangely." That title also was almost jettisoned when a linguistic expert questioned the translation, saying uggianaqtuq really means "being eaten by dogs or lice."

How great that the Eskimos have a word that means "being eaten by dogs or lice." You've got to figure that that one isn't hauled out very often...... I mean, are Eskimos regularly eaten by dogs or lice? And if they are, they should try to deal with that.

Anyway, I digress. The point is that it would be nice to have a government run by adults who actually think about passing on the planet to their children and grandchildren in some livable form.....  ¶ 6:59 AM 3 comments   

  Barry Bonds Belly Up Lots of baseball news!

The Yankees are about to sign A-Rod for 10 years and 270/280 million.

The timing of the reconciliation is intriguing, coming the day after open negotiations began for free agents. No other team had come forward as an aggressive pursuer of Rodriguez. Yet the Yankees made sure to all but lock him up before other teams could realistically make a strong push.

Boras is famous for negotiating massive contracts, but even with the bonus package, this deal will fall short of the 12-year, $350 million contract the Yankees believed Boras sought last month.

Meanwhile, Mariano Rivera is holding out for a fourth contract year. The Yanks have offered three years at $45 million. I think no on this one; Rivera has shown signs that he isn't the pitcher he once was, and giving a 38-year-old reliever four years and some $60 million is too much.

Also, the Yankees might sign Mike Lowell and move him to first. Hah! I kind of like that. Except I don't think Lowell will hit particularly well in Yankee Stadium. He owes his career year to the Green Monster.

Oh, and Barry Bonds got indicted.

Barry Bonds, baseball’s career home run leader, was indicted yesterday on five felony charges — four for perjury and one for obstruction of justice — for testifying before a federal grand jury in 2003 that he never used anabolic steroids or human growth hormone.

This is going to be ugly, but I think it's important; baseball is going to have to really deal with the steroid era before it can move on.

Also, Barry Bonds is really not a very good role model, which I know is an old-fashioned thing to say, but it's true. I've always been amazed to see how the otherwise rational people of San Francisco continue to support him....  ¶ 6:50 AM 0 comments   

  Pay-Rod Goes Solo? The Times reports that Alex Rodriguez has asked to negotiate with the Yankees without the presence of his agent, Scott Boras.

Why does this make me happy?

Well, first, because I wrote several days ago that this process shows every sign of being Boras' first big fiasco, and several posters strongly disagreed.

Second, because there'd be worse things than having A-Rod come back to the Yankees under these circumstances. Certainly that would be better than signing Mike Lowell, who hits about .190 when he's not in Fenway....  ¶ 3:57 PM 5 comments   

  Universities Go Left The New York Sun reports on a conference sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute which will allegedly show that American universities are growing more liberal.

"Universities are tilting to the left, and it starts at the student level and goes all the way through to the hiring level and even to the promotion level," the vice president and director of the National Research Initiative at AEI, Henry Olsen, said. "This is a real problem, not anecdote masquerading as fact."

(I like that, "it starts at the student level." And how exactly would universities be to blame for the politics of their incoming students more than, say, George W. Bush?)

This liberal bias is apparently wounding to conservatives who wish to become scholars.

"If my students show conservative bias, I steer them away from the academy," a professor of English at the University of Virginia, Paul Cantor, said. "They have no future — they will not get jobs. If they want to teach traditional works in a traditional matter, they have no future in an English department today."

(Professor Cantor is a visiting professor at Harvard, incidentally.)

I'm not quite sure I buy all this agita. Can anyone find a case of a conservative scholar being rejected for tenure because of his or her politics? How many conservatives even choose to go into academia? And if in the free market of ideas, most intellectuals are liberals, then how can a good-conscience conservative complain about that?
  ¶ 10:43 AM 14 comments   

  Lee Bollinger on the Hot Seat At Columbia, 100 professors have presented Lee Bollinger with a "statement of concern" about his leadership.
They are most angry about the introduction he gave to Iranian president, A-jad, apparently seeing it as a concession to pressure from conservative critics of the invitation.

Afterward, several faculty members stressed that there had been no call for Mr. Bollinger to step down and nothing like the anger that led to the resignation last year of Lawrence Summers, Harvard University’s president.

“I didn’t get the sense that this is the final call for Bollinger,” said Peter Bearman, a professor of sociology. “Rather, the prevailing mood was one in which faculty eloquently modeled how to disagree, without insult or ad hominem charges.”

Take that, FAS.

Nonetheless, the Columbia faculty looks absurd. (Full disclosure: I advise students at the Columbia Journalism School, so marginally, I'm on the faculty. Really, really marginally.)

Eric Foner, an American history professor who was one of the most outspoken professors at yesterday’s meeting, read aloud some of Mr. Bollinger’s remarks to Mr. Ahmadinejad, and added, “This is the language of warfare at a time when the administration of our country is trying to whip up Iran, and to my mind is completely inaccurate.”

As a political agitator, Eric Foner makes a great historian....

And does this sound familiar to anyone?

Mr. Bollinger, who likened his experience at the faculty meeting to watching open-heart surgery on himself....

Of course, I'm not privy to internal sentiments; maybe there are things going on that I don't know about which are contributing to this outpouring of discontent. I just think that if the Columbia faculty can't get along with Lee Bollinger, who's about as liberal as you can get and still hope to run an organization, it needs a serious reality check.....  ¶ 6:47 AM 4 comments   

  The Death Of Free Speech, Apparently In his New Republic blog, Marty Peretz rips into J. Lorand Matory's motion regarding free speech on the Harvard campus.

(Imagine...if any humanists in FAS blogged, they could stick up for Matory! Or criticize him. Whichever.)

Peretz argues that Matory is really gunning for Larry Summers, and after Summers, Israel.

I know Matory's reputation, especially among his colleagues, one of whom dismissed him as "simply a crackpot."

He's also an obsessive. And one of the people with whom he is obsessed is Larry Summers. This obsession, one would think, had reached its satisfying fruition when a prior resolution introduced by Matory, a withdrawal of confidence from Summers as the president of Harvard, passed and resulted in the latter's resignation. There are four direct references (and at least two indirect allusions) to Summers in the Crimson piece. If it is aimed against anybody in particular the person in the cross-hairs is Summers. If anybody's right to "express their reasoned and evidence-based ideas" has been violated it has been Summers. First, in a resolution introduced by Matory himself and passed by the F.A.S. that directly made a certain view of things verboten and pushed Summers out of his job. Second, in the scandal perpetrated by the Board of Regents at the University of California by withdrawing an invitation for Summers to speak at one of its meetings.

But for Matory, it appears, that Summers's primal sin is defense of Israel....

There's more—and it doesn't get any nicer. But it appears that Marty Peretz (who, full disclosure, hired me as an intern long ago at TNR, and with whom I've had occasional contact since then) will not have to worry; Matory's motion was apparently roundly rejected.  ¶ 11:09 PM 10 comments   

  At Columbia, Let 'em Eat...Nothing The New York Post reports that one of the students on a hunger strike at Columbia collapsed over the weekend. But here's the real humor (and this is dark!) in the situation: The woman in question is anorexic.

I mean, really, you can't make this up—an anorexic woman goes on a hunger strike.

Forgive me if I sound unsympathetic, but...well...I am. These five Columbia students are the type of left-wingers who give liberalism a bad name. They're protesting against racism at Columbia, against a lack of diversity on the faculty, for diversification of the Core Curriculum, for an expansion of ethnic studies and "multicultural resources," and against Columbia's expansion into west Harlem. And they're pissed off at Lee Bollinger. (Because, you know, it's not as if Bollinger has ever done anything substantive to help minorities advance in the world. Like, oh, taking affirmative action lawsuits to the Supreme Court.)

And some other stuff too.

If you look at the photograph in the linked article, you can see that two protesters are surrounded by balloons on which they have scrawled slogans.

The most prominent one says, Manhanttanville equals displacement of people, people without jobs, a greater social class difference, and a disrupt [sic] in the rich Harlem culture. Is all of that worth a few buildings?

What a bunch of nonsense.

Taken in order:
1) Columbia's project in Manhattanville won't displace anyone, as the university has promised to house everyone currently living there within the confines of the development, if that's what they want. And let's remember, we're talking something like 100 families. Not exactly Robert Moses-like displacement here.

2) Manhattanville will probably create more jobs than currently exist in what is a largely barren area.

3) Class differences in New York City are not the result of Columbia University.

4) There is no "rich Harlem culture" in Manhattanville. It's a dreary "neighborhood" of body shops, warehouses, parking garages, storage spaces, and the like.

The area of Harlem that's really changing—where there is some Harlem culture threatened—is East Harlem, around the Metro-North line and the Lexington Avenue subway. But no one protests this, because there isn't a big, bad university with deep pockets to be blamed...just anonymous private developers, and people priced out of other parts of the city, looking for (relatively) affordable housing....  ¶ 10:45 PM 10 comments   

  Speaking Freely Here is Professor J. Lorand Matory's motion to be voted on at tomorrow's faculty meeting:

2. Professor J. L. Matory will move:

That this Faculty commits itself to fostering civil dialogue in which people with a broad range of perspectives feel safe and are encouraged to express their reasoned and evidence-based ideas.

As much as I'm all for civil dialogue, I have to say that this motion feels, well, silly to me. People should "feel safe" to express their ideas? For God's sake. You are tenured professors at a university. If you do not feel "safe" expressing your ideas at Harvard, then you are too gentle a soul for this world.

What problem is this motion responding to? What grievance would it resolve? What practical impact would it have? (The only symbolic impact, if it were passed, would be to make the Harvard faculty look thin-skinned, out-of-touch, petulant and spoiled.) What possible enforcement mechanism could there be?

Even the idea of an enforcement mechanism is absurd.....  ¶ 8:15 AM 42 comments   

  HMC's New Boss Harvard has picked a temporary head for the Harvard Management Company. His name is Robert Kaplan, and he's ex- of Goldman Sachs and a current HBS professor.

Will Kaplan be the permanent head of HMC? Well, the advantage of keeping him on is that, having been at Harvard for some time, and as a graduate of the college, he would be inclined to feel some institutional loyalty that Mohamed El-Erian clearly did not....  ¶ 8:47 AM 4 comments   

  The Naked and... Norman Mailer has died of kidney failure.

It is a huge, irreplaceable loss.

When he was young, Mailer said, "fiction was everything. The novel, the big novel, the driving force. We all wanted to be Hemingway ... I don't think the same thing can be said anymore. I don't think my work has inspired any writer, not the way Hemingway inspired me."

I hope that isn't true; in fact, I know that isn't true, for, though I am not a novelist nor could I even approximate Mailer's stature as a writer, he was a huge inspiration to me.

On first reading "The Naked and the Dead," I found it a revelation, a testament to the combined powers of imagination, creativity, and reportage. I have urged more people than I could count to read it since, as a demonstration of what a novel can and ought to be.

And when I was in college and read "The Executioner's Song," I thought to myself, this is what journalism can do. Even though it's not entirely journalism.

He lived a life full of mistakes, inconsistences, irritants, arrogance, brilliance, wonder, and most of all, passion.

He lived a life.  ¶ 9:05 AM 2 comments   

  Making Up With ROTC? In the Crimson, Harry Lewis argues that it's high time for Harvard to normalize relations with ROTC.

The issue is not bringing an ROTC unit to Harvard. Units are merging today, not splitting. We should normalize Harvard’s relations with MIT ROTC. Harvard ought to pay its bills to MIT directly. It ought to bus our ROTC students as it buses our volleyball teams.

Lewis acknowledges, of course, the rationale for Harvard's ROTC ban—the military's discrimination against gays—but argues that Harvard's interaction with the military is more likely to erode that ban than its isolation from the military.

To quote Democratic Congressman Barney Frank ’61 (Massachusetts), speaking courageously some weeks ago on a related matter, “idealism that is empowered by pragmatism is the way in which we make progress.” We are part of American society and ROTC is sui generis, an exception to our rules about student activities.

This is a very tough issue, and Lewis is clearly trying to resolve it for all parties. And I agree that a greater connection between Harvard and the military would probably be good for Harvard, and might be good for the military.

But I wonder if it is not just Harvard hubris to suggest that the university's greater interaction with the military will do anything to change its discriminatory ways.

The current system is awkward, yes, and opens Harvard up to criticism from the right-wing and less ideological supporters of the military.

Still...if it were black people the military was shutting out...would we then say that it was acceptable for the military to recruit on campus?

Serious question.

So the question that follows is, What's the difference?

(Sadly, many African-Americans insist that there is a difference beyond the obvious one. They're wrong.)

The difference is that it's still more acceptable to discriminate against gays than it is against blacks.

And so I tend to come down on the side of saying, you know, awkward as the current situation is, it's the best of various bad solutions...  ¶ 7:24 AM 18 comments   

  The Globe Gets...Whiter! The Boston Globe has redesigned its web page. And, amazingly, it's even worse than the old one.
The font is nice...but row after row of light blue headlines against a white background? Yikes. Who can read that?  ¶ 7:13 AM 1 comments   

  Ruth Wisse: Good for the Jews! In the Washington Post, Ruth Wisse takes on W&M's argument that American Jews are too powerful.

Instead, she says, they're not powerful enough.

These days, it's becoming downright chic to hint forebodingly that America's Jews are just too powerful. But whether it's the political scientists John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt or former president Jimmy Carter, those who accuse modern Jews of having excessive clout are getting it precisely backward. In the real world, Jews have too little power and influence. They also have too little self-confidence about defending themselves.

Even in academia, Wisse argues, Jews are too hesitant about sticking up for themselves.

Consider the halls of ivy where, if anywhere, the intellectual firepower of Jews might be expected to be on display in defense of Jewish interests. At Columbia University, the late Edward Said used his authority as a teacher of comparative literature to apologize for Palestinian terrorism and condone Arab violence against Israel, including, in one instance, by personal example. (In 2000, a photographer for a French news agency snapped him in southern Lebanon tossing a rock toward an Israeli position.) Much of the Jewish professoriat looked the other way or signed his petitions.

Elsewhere in the academy, Jewish professors themselves lead the anti-Israel barrage. In fact, Mearsheimer and Walt expected Jewish organizations to sponsor their talks and complained of "censorship" when the groups did not. Clearly, there is nothing quite as fun -- or as lucrative -- as baiting Jews.

There is nothing quite as fun or as lucrative as baiting Jews? Who knew?

(Although she has a point that W&M were a little silly about expecting Jewish groups to be all understanding about The Israel Lobby.)  ¶ 12:36 PM 25 comments   

  The Ivy League's Worst A Capella And the winner is...the Penn Chord on Blues, who won an overwhelming victory.

Congratulations, Chord on Blues!

Now, please--stop singing.  ¶ 11:39 AM 7 comments   

  Out on a Limb Indian doctors have successfully operated on a two-year-old girl born with four arms, four legs, and extra internal organs, according to the London Daily Mail.

The photos are extraordinary...but definitely not for the squeamish.  ¶ 9:59 AM 14 comments   

  OxBridge Closing In? London's Daily Mail reports that, though Harvard is on top of an international survey of universities, its lead over Oxford and Cambridge has shrunk considerably.

Oxford rose one place on last year to claim joint second place with Cambridge. Both were just 2.4 per cent behind Harvard. Two years ago, the gap between Cambridge and Harvard was 13 per cent.

The survey by the Times of London Higher Education Supplement will be available online tomorrow.  ¶ 9:54 AM 1 comments   

  No Free Speech at Harvard? That's what Professor J. Lorand Matory thinks, and as a result, he's raising a motion at the next faculty meeting to "explicitly embrace free speech at Harvard," as the Crimson puts it.

[Matory] argued in [a] September op-ed that those who question Zionism and Israeli policy toward Palestine “tremble in fear” of the backlash that would result from voicing their opinions.

“My colleagues are urging me to bring forward a resolution [to the Faculty meeting] in support of free speech,” he said. “I want for us to be able to talk openly. If there is fear and pain, it should be expressed.”

Matory has, of course, been outspoken on Israeli-Palestinian issues, so the most vocal pro-Israel members of the faculty are skeptical about this motion. Alan Dershowitz challenges Matory to a duel (well, not really), and Ruth Wisse says...

“This is a bogus issue. There is an agenda here and free speech is not it.”

What would Walt & Mearsheimer say?  ¶ 6:25 AM 20 comments   

  Portfolio on Boras, A-Rod Here's a good Scott Boras joke, courtesy Portfolio.com:

The devil approaches Scott Boras and offers him a deal: The agent can represent any 10 ballplayers he wants in exchange for his immortal soul. Boras mulls this over for a moment, meets Satan’s gaze and snaps, “Okay, but what’s the catch?”

Columnist Franz Lidz agrees that Boras has badly botched the A-Rod negotiations....  ¶ 12:31 PM 5 comments   

  More on Harvard Blogs IvyGate reports that there are a bunch of Harvard student blogs focusing on politics.

Meanwhile, I was wrong that there's only one blog written by a Harvard faculty member.

Apparently, there are two.

You folks really think you're going to keep up with Stanford this way? Here's a partial list of Stanford faculty members who blog.....  ¶ 8:23 AM 3 comments   

  Glamour Babes Glamour magazine names among its "women of the year" for 2007 Drew Faust, Amy Gutmann, Shirley Tilghman, and Ruth Simmons.

Oh, and Jennifer Garner.  ¶ 7:57 AM 0 comments   

  Michael Smith in the Crimson Johannah Cornblatt profiles FAS dean Michael Smith today. The piece details his background, but doesn't really consider why and how he was chosen for the deanship.....  ¶ 7:22 AM 15 comments   

  The Case of MIT v. Frank Gehry MIT is suing the architect because his $300-million Stata Center is a piece of junk.

All right, that's not exactly what the suit says.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has filed a negligence suit against world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, charging that flaws in his design of the $300 million Stata Center in Cambridge, one of the most celebrated works of architecture unveiled in years, caused leaks to spring, masonry to crack, mold to grow, and drainage to back up.

And here's something that you don't hear a lot: John Silber speaking...without foaming at the mouth.

"It really is a disaster," said former Boston University president John Silber, who sharply criticizes the Stata Center's design in a new book, "Architecture of the Absurd: How 'Genius' Disfigured a Practical Art."

After learning of the lawsuit yesterday, Silber said Gehry "thinks of himself as an artist, as a sculptor. But the trouble is you don't live in a sculpture and users have to live in this building."

In this case, I have to agree with Silber. Have you ever been inside the Stata Center? It's grim!

Also today, the New York Sun analyzes "the Bilbao Effect," the rush of building showcase art museums provoked by the success of Frank Gehry's Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain.

In 25 years, will this construction binge seem brilliant or foolish? Will it have advanced the mission of art museums, or merely diffused it?

  ¶ 7:07 AM 0 comments   

  Will the Sox Sign Curt Schilling? As a Yankee fan, I say, by all means....sign a 41-year-old pitcher who went 9-8 last season!

Schilling wrote on his 38pitches.com website, "Talks with the Red Sox are moving. Theo and I have spoken multiple times daily over the past week, and given the current situation, I am feeling very confident that we will be able to finalize a 1-year contract to allow us a chance to finish our career as members of the Red Sox organization.

One question: Why does Schilling refer to himself in the first person plural? Is he pregnant?

Meanwhile, the Yanks look like they'll sign Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera, and are hoping that Andy Pettitte will decide to pitch next year. And A-Rod may be realizing that he misplayed his hand....

That decision [to opt out of his contract] triggered a firestorm of negative attention for Rodriguez, possibly tarnishing the image of an image-conscious player. For that reason, said a person close to Rodriguez who spoke on the condition of anonymity, Rodriguez is dismayed with the fallout and is considering whether to give the Yankees a discount on the front end of a new contract.

Translation: A-Rod and/or Scott Boras realize that the way they've handled this has hurt A-Rod's value on the free agent market, and he's not going to get a raise over what the Yankees were paying him....
  ¶ 7:03 AM 6 comments   

  More on Rubin In the Wall Street Journal, Bob Rubin continues to strike the "oh, all right, if you insist" theme.

Mr. Rubin said he was reluctant to take the chairman's post but ultimately agreed to out of "concern for the company and concern for the people of the company and the importance of the company in the global economy."

He added that it wasn't the way either he or Sir Win Bischoff, who was named interim CEO, "would have chosen to spend our lives at this point."

This seems rather uncharitable, given that Citigroup has been paying Rubin approximately $20 million a year for the past eight years for the odious burden of taking the occasional meeting...

Until now, Mr. Rubin's job at Citigroup largely entailed attending -- and offering advice at -- weekly meetings of business heads, helping to orchestrate acquisitions and tapping his contacts to win business for the New York bank. "If you need somebody to call somebody and get the phone answered, Bob can do it," says a senior Citigroup executive, noting that Mr. Rubin enjoys "unencumbered access" to leaders and executives around the world.

Harvard-watchers might also wonder if criticisms about the Citigroup corporate board might also apply in some cases to the Harvard Corporation.

To critics, the composition of the 14-person board is part of the problem. Corporate-governance experts frown upon boards stocked with CEOs, arguing that such executives tend to defer to their fellow CEO's judgment and are less likely to exercise aggressive oversight. Citi's board is stacked with current and former chiefs, from Time Warner Inc. CEO Richard Parsons to Alcoa Inc.'s Alain Belda. Only Mr. Parsons, who ran a small New York bank until 1995, has a background in the financial-services industry.

And finally, it is interesting to see Rubin, who meticulously cultivates his reputation, taking a few hits.

It is Mr. Rubin, the highest profile member of the star-studded board, who has been a particular lightning rod for criticism. His murky responsibilities and lucrative pay package have fostered resentment. Last year, he collected a total of about $17.3 million in salary, bonus and stock awards, making him Citigroup's second-highest paid executive after Mr. Prince, according to the company's proxy statement. To some past and current Citigroup executives, and to investors, the pay seems excessive.

"I and others should hold Rubin partially responsible" for Citigroup's struggles, says Douglas Kass, who runs Seabreeze Partners Management Inc., a hedge fund that doesn't have a position in Citigroup stock.

There was a time when journalists would have been terrified to use words like "murky responsibilities" when discussing Rubin, lest the find their access quickly cut off....

  ¶ 8:40 AM 2 comments   

  Why You Have to Love British Journalism Today's Daily Mail has a piece on a Facebook group called "30 Reasons Girls Should Call It a Night,*" in which young women post photos of themselves in various states of drunken misbehavior.

The site is apparently full of pictures like this:



So much for feminism, right?

But there are actually some serious issues here, having to do with the changing nature of privacy. Surely these pictures will, for a while, come back to haunt these young people. But as always the boundaries will be pushed, and one day we can expect to hear a presidential candidate say, Sure, I once posted a picture of myself drunk and passed out on Facebook, but...who didn't?

Check out the comments, which are pretty funny—including the one from Rebecca Levy, a journalist at The Sun, who offers to pay women on the site for their stories....  ¶ 8:19 AM 10 comments   

  A Capella, the Finals Ivygate is into the finals of its worst Ivy League a capella contest, and the competition is fierce!

It's the Penn Chord versus the Cornel Absolute A Capella and the Dartmouth Cord...  ¶ 6:54 AM 2 comments   

  Bob Rubin at Citigroup Robert Rubin has been appointed the temporary chairman of Citigroup after its chair and CEO, Charles Prince, has been pressured into resigning, according to the Times.

Mr. Rubin, who has held the largely advisory role as chairman of the bank’s executive committee, will take on a wider role, though he continues to balk at supervising the bank’s daily operations. Mr. Rubin has long insisted that he does not want to take over as chief executive.

Is there anyone who has better mastered the art of being appointed to high positions by insisting that he does not want them?  ¶ 10:26 PM 2 comments   

  Faust on the Arts Drew Faust has named a panel to revitalize the arts...

“This marks a new beginning for a new era of arts at Harvard,” Faust told hundreds gathered at the inaugural production of the New College Theatre.

That's fine. Everyone likes the arts!  ¶ 8:30 AM 54 comments   

  Say It Ain't Blow, Martina I've long had a little crush on Martina Hingis—those thigh muscles! that steely will!—and so I find it hard to believe that she's been doing coke. For God's sake, she's Swiss!

“The fact is that it is more and more difficult for me, physically, to keep playing at the top of the game,” Hingis said in her statement. “And frankly, accusations such as these don’t exactly provide me with motivation to even make another attempt to do so.”

“I’m now 27 years old,” she added. “And realistically too old to play top class tennis.”

Perhaps we could just hit a few, Martina? You can have FBI....


  ¶ 8:19 AM 5 comments   

  The Nightmare of Airport Security Every time I fly, I'm amazed at the idiocy of airport security. (Six years after 9/11, and they still haven't figured out a way that people can take off their shoes without hopping around on a bare linoleum floor, then shuffling through the metal detector like some prisoner of war?)

When I came back from Miami a couple weeks ago, I lost some toiletries because, even though the amount in the clear tubes was well underneath the permissible amounts (amounts which are, as far as I can tell, completely arbitary), the stated volume of the tubes was greater than that which is allowed.

So I love Patrick Smith's Ask the Pilot column in which he talks about the absurdity of it all.

...It's our own United States that retains the crown for loopiest behavior. Any argument was put to rest earlier this fall, when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security presented the latest version of its "Secure Flight" anti-terrorism program, requesting that governments hand over a docket of personal data on all foreign airline passengers bound for the United States. (This would affect not only commercial flights arriving in the United States but those merely overflying U.S. territory -- an Air Canada plane, say, flying between Toronto and the Caribbean.) This data may include, among other things, a flier's union affiliations, reading preferences and -- look it up yourself if you don't believe me -- sexual habits. What somebody's sex life might have to do with blowing up a plane is something I can't begin to fathom; how any government might actually get wind of this information is even more troubling.

...I'm continually startled by the number of otherwise smart and reasonable people who believe that concourse security actually needs to be more intrusive and rigorous.

Yes! And meanwhile, the average TSA employee still looks he's taken a few too many punts to the head.....  ¶ 8:08 AM 2 comments   

  Are Jews Smarter? According to the IQs of Ashkenazi Jews, they are, writes Will Saletan in Slate.

The American Enterprise Institute had a panel discussion on the subject. Dana Milbank wrote a WashPo column about it.

A culture that trains its young people to procreate only with one another becomes, over time, a genetically distinct population. And if that culture glorifies intelligence to such a degree that it drives less intelligent people out of the community—or prevents them from attracting mates—it becomes an IQ machine. Cultural selection replaces natural selection.

The downside? Some of the same genes that may make Jews more intelligent may also make them more prone to certain diseases.

One day we may have to declare an amnesty for every public thinker/speculator who ever committed a gaffe when trying to address the subject of comparative intelligence/genetics, from Jimmy the Greek to Charles Murray to Larry Summers to James Watson.

Because it's clearly a subject that's not going away...but it's also the easiest subject in the world about which to sound like a really bad guy.  ¶ 7:55 AM 10 comments   

  Andy Pettitte: Also Old School Pettitte said yesterday that he'd play for the Yankees or not at all.....

“The New York Yankees committed an awful lot of money to me and put it in my hands, gave me a player option and trusted me with that option," Pettitte said. “It probably wouldn't be real honorable for me not to do anything other than shut it down or go back and play for the New York Yankees."

As Borat would say, "Very nice!"
  ¶ 9:06 AM 4 comments   

  Curt Schilling: Tough Guy, Great Pitcher Curt Schilling announces that if he has to leave Boston, the only team he wouldn't consider is the Yankees.

You know, I kind of like Schilling for that. It's old school.....

On the other hand, I wish he would stop talking about how the individual achievements of Red Sox players are "God's work"....

Interesting to me also that Schilling blogs—and his blog is quite interesting—but, that I know of, one member of FAS blogs.  ¶ 8:23 AM 4 comments   

  Worst A Capella: The Semifinals It's the Penn Chord versus the Dartmouth Cords. (Really bad names!)

I'm torn: the Dartmouth group seems to be better. But in a capella, better is actually kind of worse.

Take a look, you'll see what I mean.

The question is really, why is a capella so annoying? Is it the awful dancing? The sickly sweet versions of songs you previously liked? The astonishing, discomfiting whiteness of it? The fact that it gives every appearance of being the kind of thing that high school students do to get into college, but should be instantly dropped once they arrive?

I know these aren't exactly matters of state. But still, I've always wondered.....  ¶ 8:06 AM 8 comments   

  Don Rumsfeld: Flaky! The Washington Post has an interesting story today; the paper has acquired a bunch of internal memos written by Donald Rumsfeld while he was secretary of defense.

The memos, which were known internally as "snowflakes," show how Rumself tried to drum up, then prop up, support for the war.

In my opinion, they also suggest that Rummy is one of the more serious jerks you could ever want to know.

In a series of internal musings and memos to his staff, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld argued that Muslims avoid "physical labor" and wrote of the need to "keep elevating the threat," "link Iraq to Iran" and develop "bumper sticker statements" to rally public support for an increasingly unpopular war.

Think that's bad? Listen to this.

In one of his longer ruminations, in May 2004, Rumsfeld considered whether to redefine the terrorism fight as a "worldwide insurgency." The goal of the enemy, he wrote, is to "end the state system, using terrorism, to drive the non-radicals from the world." He then advised aides "to test what the results could be" if the war on terrorism were renamed.

Rumsfeld's meanderings really build the case not just for war with Iraq, but for war without end.

One of the lessons of Rumsfeld's disastrous tenure, I would suggest, is that it is a mistake to appoint as secretary of defense someone who actually seems to enjoy war......  ¶ 7:54 AM 2 comments