Words with a "D" This Time   ¶ 10:30 AM 6 comments

  As in Deadly Henry Allen of the Washington Post has written an entire column about words that begin with "D."

There's something about the word "disembowel." Or "depravity," or "disfigurement" -- about so many words that begin with the letter "d." Divorce, destitution, doubt, drugs, dirt, dwindle. So many of them are on our lips just now....

And they say newspapers aren't on the cutting edge....  ¶ 9:53 AM 1 comments

  Let Freedom Ring...like a Sharapovian Grunt In Slate, Anne Applebaum addresses one of the most important issues of our day: Why are there so many gorgeous female tennis players from the former Soviet Union?

To put it bluntly, in the Soviet Union there was no market for female beauty. No fashion magazines featured beautiful women, since there weren't any fashion magazines. No TV series depended upon beautiful women for high ratings, since there weren't any ratings. There weren't many men rich enough to seek out beautiful women and marry them.....

But freedom (well, kind of) has changed everything!

In the past, you had to play chess or be a champion gymnast to come to international attention if you were born in the Eastern bloc—chess and competitive sports figuring among the few party-approved export industries. Nowadays, stars in fields previously unsanctioned by the party—crime novelists, conceptual artists, computer whizzes—from Russia, Hungary, or Uzbekistan have a shot at fame and fortune, too....

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall indeed.




  ¶ 6:25 AM 6 comments

  Summers on the Endowment In what is apparently an interview with the Crimson, Larry Summers took exception to the idea, which has some currency in Washington, of mandated endowment payout levels.

“I sympathize with the impulse, but worry about straitjackets,” he said.

Summers also claimed that he had tried to raise the income level under which a student could get free tuition to $100,000, but had been resisted by the faculty and overruled by the Corporation.

If so, that would be a rare instance where the Corporation did not do what Summers told it to.

A side note: I think it's fair to say that Summers is not taking the Derek Bok, post-presidency approach of not commenting on university matters so as not to create tensions with the person currently holding the job....  ¶ 6:10 AM 21 comments

  Bye-Bye, HMI The Crimson lands the story:

The University is planning to spin off part of Harvard Medical International (HMI), a major not-for-profit subsidiary of Harvard Medical School, to Partners HealthCare, a non-profit that owns several major Massachusetts hospitals.

...University and Medical School officials involved in the discussions expressed concern that the organization’s activities no longer fully reflected Harvard’s core mission of education and research.

As one reads the Crimson piece, which is full of assertions that this is a good thing for HMI to lose the Harvard name, one can't help but feel that there's a whole lot of spinning going on....  ¶ 6:07 AM 2 comments

  A Giant Challenge In the New York Sun, Eric Edholm lists 10 obstacles the Giants face in trying to beat the Patriots.

1) Relative inexperience
2) Brady in big games
3) Eli Manning as the center of attention
4) The Patriots' running game
5) Wes Welker
6) Mike Vrabel
7) Vince Wilfork
8) the lack of Jeremy Shockey
9) Randy Moss
10) Bill Belichick and his tendency for surprise

It's true—the Patriots have a lot of weapons. Nonetheless....go Giants!


  ¶ 6:00 AM 1 comments

  He's Gone Rudy Giuliani is dropping out of the presidential race. Yay! Now, instead of cynically exploiting 9/11 in a presidential campaign, he can go back to cynically exploiting 9/11 in order to enrich his own coffers. Still offensive, but at least he'll no longer be offering to turn this country into an armed camp so as to fulfill his delusions of omnipotence.

Meanwhile, John McCain is in serious need of some Crest White Strips. Dude looks old!

  ¶ 1:43 PM 13 comments

  More on the Origins of TheRoot The Times covers Skip Gates' new venture, TheRoot.com, and its odd connection to the genetic testing company he co-founded, AfricanDNA.

The third major part of the new site, titled “Roots,” will have online tools for people to build their family trees, link to or add information to other people’s trees and construct maps showing their ancestral trails. It will also urge people to have DNA testing, which can help them trace their backgrounds to specific ethnic groups and parts of the world. It will offer links to companies that do the testing.

One such company the site will direct people to, www.AfricanDNA.com, is co-owned by Mr. Gates, a relationship that would be prohibited at some publications.

“I don’t see a conflict of interest,” he said, because The Root will fully disclose his roles and will link to every company that does the DNA testing.

I find this all very odd. There is an entire section of TheRoot devoted to DNA testing; the very name of the publication is connected to genealogy; and frankly, there seems much more care devoted to the DNA testing part of the site than there is to the actual online magazine part of the site.

Is this a real magazine, or just a front to drum up business for Skip Gates' new company?

Moreover, TheRoot doesn't link to every other company that does DNA testing. It links to some of them—sort of.

When you click on a box labeled "DNA testing," a small "Disclosure" form briefly pops up—far too quickly to be read— then goes away and is replaced by a video promoting genetic testing. If you stop the process (for me, holding my space bar did it), you can actually read the box, which says,

Though TheRoot.com has a business relationship with AfricanDNA.com, which was co-founded by Henry Louis Gates Jr., there are many other companies that offer DNA testing services. Among those that you can choose from are RootsforReal.com, OxfordAncestors.com, The Genographic Project ( www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic ) and Ancestry.com .

Companies aimed specifically at African Americans include AfricanAncestry.com. Prices and services vary by company.

In type that is about twice the point size, the disclosure form then provides a link: CONTINUE TO AFRICANDNA.COM.

Given that Skip Gates is all over the site, and that his affiliation with AfricanDNA.com is probably a selling point, and the site is designed to funnel traffic to AfricanDNA.com, which genetic testing service do you think most readers will go to?

In another video, with the author Bliss Broyard, Gates hands Broyard a piece of paper and says, "For you, with our special test..." The paper discloses that she is 17.2% black.

As the Times points out, TheRoot.com is co-founded by Don Graham, publisher of the Washington Post. Graham should know better than to permit this kind of arrangement in a publication that defines itself as a magazine. It'd be akin to him devoting the entire editorial page of the Washington Post to a company in which he was a primary investor—every day.

Should the entire "Roots" section of TheRoot.com be considered an advertisement? (Yes.) Should the details of Gates' business relationship with AfricanDNA be disclosed? (Yes.) Should the exact nature of the site's "business relationship" with AfricanDNA.com be disclosed. (Well, obviously.) Can you trust the "editorial" of TheRoot? No.

I look, for example, at the first two stories on the site, which are both about Kenya, and I think, Are they there because of all the turbulence going on in Kenya? Or are they there to further the readers' mental and emotional connection to Africa, so that they will start to think seriously about investigating their genetic origins?

The idea of an online magazine devoted to black issues is a great one. It's unfortunate that this magazine is fundamentally compromised from its inception.  ¶ 8:09 AM 21 comments

  Uh-Oh New York wide receiver Plaxico Burress has predicted a Giant win, 23-17.

Argh!

Such a bad move....and so unlike the Giants, who have been low-key all season.

Also, Eli Manning was on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

These are two bad omens.....  ¶ 7:59 AM 2 comments

  Bush's State of the Union If you were president, and you were giving your last State of the Union address after eight years, wouldn't you want to say something sort of thoughtful and interesting? Maybe wax philosophical a bit, or try to inspire the nation?

Yeah. Me too. But then, we're not George W. Bush.

Here's the Washington Post's Tom Shales on the speech:

Last night Bush was assertive nearly to the point of bellicosity as he discussed his pursuit of the war in Iraq and his version of U.S. foreign policy, which dominated the second half of the speech. "We will deliver justice to our enemies," he said with a kind of Old Testament thunder. "Al-Qaeda is on the run in Iraq, and this enemy will be defeated," he declared, adding, a little later, "We will not rest until this enemy has been defeated."

He did not speak softly, but he carried a big shtick.

The Republicans in the House chamber naturally loved it and interrupted the president with applause more times than even he appeared to expect. There was one dramatic wide shot of the chamber right after Bush demanded renewed funding for the interception of communications among terrorist groups. "The time to act is now," he said, and in the shot one could see precisely half the assemblage -- the Republican half -- rise as if one person, while the Democrats, in the foreground, sat still in their seats.

Will somebody please tell members of both parties that all the standing and knee-jerk applause amakes them all look like complete and utter sycophants?

And so, by the way, does the pleading way in which they thrust out their programs for Bush to sign.....  ¶ 6:21 AM 8 comments

  David Gergen Gets Down   ¶ 6:11 AM 3 comments

  If I Were a Reporter for the Crimson... ...I might start looking into the activities of Harvard Medical International, which describes itself as "a self-supporting not-for-profit subsidiary of Harvard Medical School."

What exactly is this group, which launches Harvard-branded hospitals in foreign countries, and why does it get to use the Harvard name? What were the terms of its arrangement with the Harvard Medical School, and who oversees it? What, in this context, does "not for profit" mean?

Word has it that a certain high-ranking University official has also been asking such questions.....  ¶ 3:59 PM 21 comments

  Skip Gates Keeps Busy He's got (yet) another gig: helping launch The Root, an online mag for black Americans. He's editor-in-chief—and he's also pitching tools to help blacks investigate their DNA history. Fascinating! Especially since Gates is an investor in AfricanDNA.com, a company he co-founded. (Watch Gates swab his own DNA in this video.)

Here's Gates' bio from the press release announcing AfricanDNA.com. Anything missing?

Long interested in genealogical research and DNA testing, Gates is the author of Finding Oprah's Roots, Finding Your Own (Crown, 2007) and the forthcoming In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past, to be published next spring (Crown, 2008). He is also the host and executive producer of the critically acclaimed 2006 PBS series "African American Lives" and its follow-up, "Oprah's Roots." "African American Lives 2" will be broadcast on PBS in February, 2008 in conjunction with Black History Month. Professor Gates is Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford African American Studies Center, the first comprehensive scholarly online resource in the field of African American and African Studies. Gates, an influential cultural critic, has written for Time Magazine, The New Yorker and the New York Times. The recipient of 48 honorary degrees and a 1981 MacArthur Foundation "Genius Award," Henry Louis Gates, Jr. received a National Humanities Medal in 1998, and in 1999 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

To be fair, Gates' Harvard title is noted early in the release. But it is remarkable that in the entire paragraph above, Harvard is unmentioned, as is any other university at which Gates has taught.

Well, Larry Summers works in a hedge fund, Skip Gates is becoming a business entepreneur. Has it occurred to anyone at Harvard that the university is paying its University Professors extremely well...so that they can go off and make fortunes doing other things besides teaching and research?

There's a case to be made that this doesn't matter, that Summers, Gates, et al bring renown to the university. But they are certainly expanding the traditional role of the University Professor and, indeed, the university itself. It is no strange irony that the people who are supposed to represent the pinnacle of Harvard's scholarship are now pioneers in the corporatization of the university.

Ironically, one University Professor who did significant teaching, Cornel West, is the one most associated with not teaching.....  ¶ 7:50 AM 4 comments

  Brady: Going Down? The quarterback has a sprained right ankle, didn't practice at all last week, and may not practice until Wednesday or Thursday.

The Patriots don't seem concerned. Overconfidence? Perhaps.

The Giants, by the way, are 11 1/2 point underdogs....  ¶ 7:38 AM 1 comments

  Are the Patriots Overconfident? Yes.

As were the Buffalo Bills back in Super Bowl XXV.  ¶ 8:35 AM 3 comments

  Rudy Giuliani Nears Rock Bottom The Washington Post has a nice description of Giuliani blowing off potential voters who want to shake his hand.

While it's too early to write Giuliani's campaign obituary, it's not hard to see his weaknesses as a candidate. He seems constitutionally resistant to lengthy sessions of flesh-pressing and to uncontrolled campaign dialogue. He favors long, discursive speeches and generally limits questions to a handful, when he takes questions at all. Contact is across a rope line, generally -- except when he must walk across a room to an exit, where bodyguards keep the curious at bay with deftly placed forearms, if necessary.

Want to know why? As any New Yorker will tell you, it's because Rudy is an asshole.

(Sorry, but it's true.)

The somewhat more sophisticated explanation: Giuliani doesn't really believe in democracy. He believes in a hierarchy of citizenry in which he is at the top controlling the masses. (A small but symbolic example: We New Yorkers still have to deal with ridiculous iron gates Giuliani placed across certain New York avenues to force people to cross the street at certain points.)

Giuliani is cold, arrogant, patronizing, mean, bullying, and has fascistic tendencies. He would, I think, if elected, be a greater threat to the Constitution than Dick Cheney has been. And he'd do it all in the name of keeping us safe....but the truth is that he'd do it because he gets off on power.

In New Hampshire, where Giuliani led in the polls early and then collapsed by December, one of the former mayor's appearances ended when aides asked attendees to remain in their seats so he could quickly leave the building and get to his next stop.

"I couldn't figure out what he was doing," said Andrew Smith, director of the Survey Center at the University of New Hampshire, who was there. "Was there some kind of security consideration? Did he fear that some old Rotarian lady had a butter knife? That kind of thing really hurt him here."

There is an overwhelming narcissism in Giuliani, some/much of which was present pre-9/11, but which was deepened by Giuliani's sense of his own importance on that day. (And, indeed, he was important on 9/11.)

I used to think that Giuliani was simply cynical about exploiting 9/11 for political gain. Now, I've come to suspect that he has so deeply internalized that experience that it has permeated his entire world view, like the little black oily alien virus that used to creep into people's eyes on The X-Files. Hence all this nonsense about security. Giuliani believes that he is the only man who can save the world...and thus, every bad guy in the world wants to take a shot at him.

In response to a query about whether he would be afraid of getting killed politically if he tried to greatly cut taxes, he grinned and boomed: "They'll kill me? The Mafia never killed me. You think I'm scared of them?"

This is a very dangerous man. We are fortunate that his political career is almost over.  ¶ 8:06 AM 6 comments

  The Heat Is On It becomes more and more apparent that Harvard's recent move to expand financial aid was primarily motivated by a desire to fend off political pressure from Washington.

Unfortunately, that strategem doesn't seem to be working. Yesterday the Times reported that the Senate Finance Committee has signaled that it will continue its push to compel "well-endowed" colleges such as Harvard and Yale to spend a greater percentage of their endowment annually.

The Senate Finance Committee, increasingly concerned about the rising cost of higher education, demanded detailed information on Thursday from the nation’s 136 wealthiest colleges and universities on how they raised tuition over the last decade, gave out financial aid and managed and spent their endowments.

... “Tuition has gone up, college presidents’ salaries have gone up, and endowments continue to go up and up,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the committee. “We need to start seeing tuition relief for families go up just as fast.”

A fascinating abandonment of the free market by Grassley...but then, since universities such as Harvard enjoy non-profit status even while they rush to monetarize everything they discover in their non-profit science labs, there is some legitimate government jurisdiction here.

This is a big test for Drew Faust...and truth be told, Larry Summers might have been better-equipped, given his Washington experience and economic know-how, to repel such Washington pressure.

It will be fascinating to see how Drew Faust responds....  ¶ 7:35 AM 5 comments

  The Money Culture Hits High School The Times reports that it's not just Ivy Plus schools who are "well-endowed"—it's exclusive prep schools such as Exeter and Andover. Exeter now has $1 million in endowment funding for every one of its students.

Exeter may be a particularly successful example, but its ballooning endowment also reflects a broader trend. In the 10 years through the 2005-6 academic year, the number of students at independent schools, which does not count parochial schools, rose just 11.6 percent, according to the National Association of Independent Schools. Over the same period, the average endowment per student, adjusted for inflation, increased by 93.5 percent.

Other schools mentioned included Harvard-Westlake in LA, Brearley in New York City, and Choate.

I've seen some of this at my own alma mater, Groton, for which I raise money. Groton, which is a small school of a little more than 300 students over five grades, has had to transform itself to keep up with larger competitors such as Exeter and St. Paul's. Where Groton once had its 8th and 9th grade boys sleep in cubicles with curtains for doors—sounds weird, but the kids loved it—the place now has dormitories, a gym, and a performing arts theater that are nicer than those, I'd bet, at most small colleges. It's a little ridiculous, but Groton feels it has to maintain this level of facilities in order to continue attracting the children of the wealthy who are the natural constituency of any prep school. (And no one's making a lot of money doing this; teachers at Groton get some nice benefits, but mostly they make their age.) It is a wonderful school and I was fortunate to go there, but it has become almost surreally luxurious.

(In one encouraging sign, Groton is now free for any student from families with incomes of less than $75, 000.)

Why does all this matter? Because it shows again how the very rich in this country are pulling away from everyone else....  ¶ 7:00 AM 6 comments

  To Sleep, Perchance, To Dream Did Heath Ledger dream before he died?

It's a morbid question, but one answered by this "Explainer" in Slate....

Meanwhile, Fox's John Gibson defends his joking about Ledger in the hours after Ledger's death by saying, "There's no point in passing up a good joke...."  ¶ 6:59 AM 5 comments

  Well, There You Go A Baptist church in Kansas has announced plans to picket memorial services for Heath Ledger because of his portrayal of a gay cowboy in Brokeback Mountain.

“You cannot live in defiance of God,” [church member Shirley Phelps-Roper] said. “He got on that big screen with a big, fat message: God is a liar and it’s OK to be gay.”

How Christian....

I suppose it's encouraging that most of the posts on FreeRepublic, the arch-conservative website that posted this story, are as appalled as any decent person would be.  ¶ 9:37 AM 8 comments

  Tomcatting Around in New York City
Are Patriots fans worried/irritated that quarterback Tom Brady seems to have moved to New York before the Super Bowl to hang out with girlfriend Giselle Bunchen?

You should be!

First of all, what, Giselle can't go to Boston? We've never seen her there, but Brady is constantly in Manhattan. The Patriots quarterback is dissing his own town.

Second, shouldn't he be practicing or something?

As the New York Post, which is reveling in Giants mania, puts it,

Meanwhile, [Eli] Manning got down to business in a different way. His older brother Cooper Manning said the quarterback is spending his free time studying plays and watching game footage. "He'll be relaxing a whole lot less and getting more and more prepared for the game," he said. Brady, on the other hand, may have been studying anatomy. "I would be concerned about sex affecting him mentally, because his mind is in a different place," said sports psychologist Dr. Todd Hays.

I would be concerned about sex affecting him mentally, too, if I weren't actually hoping for it.

Third, has Brady forgotten the Jessica Simpson curse? Tony Romo and the Cowboys sure haven't.

Fourth, is Brady getting hair plugs?




  ¶ 8:49 AM 11 comments

  More on Manhattanville In the Yale Daily News, Victor Zapana writes what is perhaps the best, most balanced piece about the Columbia expansion that I've seen anywhere.

Zapana details the objections that some neighborhood residents and businesses have to the Manhattanville Project, as we shall call it. But while most of the press coverage has reported on the protesters to Manhattanville, Zapana also captures the mixed feelings that people have—opposition, anxiety, and optimism.

For Manhattanville businesses whose land is within the 17-acre plot but has not yet been purchased by Columbia, a sense of tension permeates the four city quadrangles that make up this mostly abandoned industrial sector, where the landscape is marked by street after street of closed factory buildings. Residents are concerned that expansion will leave them without a source of income, but project backers predict it will revitalize the area, bringing in hundreds of well-paying jobs and permanently attracting businesses. [Emphasis added]

But as momentum builds for a project whose impact on the surrounding environment may be similar to that of the possible addition of two new residential colleges here in New Haven, the diversity of opinion — the opposition, in other words — is waning.

The Coalition to Preserve Community, a small but vocal group of community organizers opposed to the expansion, has struggled to attract large numbers of community members to join its ranks....

If Zapana's right, that's an interesting shift that hasn't been picked up on elsewhere. Previous press accounts made it seem that the entire neighborhood [sic] was marching in the streets against Columbia.

And Zapana reports on what seems to me the obvious fact that some area businesses have good reason to think they'll cash in on Manhattanville.

Especially at stores outside the 17-acre plot, some business owners and employees anticipate there may be some economic gain for them if more students and Columbia workers move into the area.

On the corner of West 125th Street and Broadway sits a small, 50-year-old liquor shop with a huge selection of wines stacked on the walls. The owner of the West 125th Street Liquors, Inc., Omar Ramirez, insists he is looking forward to the benefits Columbia’s new buildings might bring. He sees the expansion bringing in many more customers to his store, because “there’s a big wine culture” among students.

He hopes this “big boom” will happen sooner rather than later. “It’s gonna be a big change here, and we definitely need it,” he said. [Emphasis added here, too.]

I know the liquor store whereof he speaks, and there's no question that it would be helped by Manhattanville.

Meanwhile, the Times ran a telling piece on one of Manhattanville's most vigorous opponents, and he's not exactly what anti-growth lefties would imagine. Nicholas Sprayregen is a multi-millionaire who owns five warehouses under the rubric "Tuck-It-Away Self Storage." He owns four properties in the Manhattanville area, and he's clearly hoping to get every red cent out of Columbia that he can. Which, of course, is his right—but he shouldn't pretend to be a civil rights crusader when he's really just trying to max out his profit.

“I would have never thought four years ago that I would get involved in a civil rights issue; I had never before considered myself as part of a minority that was being stamped upon.” He does now. “This is about the powerful growing more powerful at the expense of those who have less.

Puh-leeze. What exactly has Sprayregen done for the area in the 30 years he's owned buildings there? Zilch.

I think the press coverage about Manhattanville may be turning because, on balance, the plan is a good and important thing for this New York area. (It really is hard to call it a neighborhood, since the only neighbors there are really people, like me, who live around it.)

Sooner or later, the merits of this thing win out over the arguments of self-interested multi-millionare landlords who, over decades, have done nothing to beautify the area or create jobs but are suddenly passionate defenders of justice and the American way....  ¶ 8:20 AM 0 comments

  The Dilemma of the "Well-Endowed" University AP education writer Justin Pope has a solid piece about the growing tensions between the super-rich colleges and everyone else.

Harvard's endowment - the largest overall - expanded by an amount last year that's more than Ivy League rival Cornell has altogether. Princeton now has more than $2 million in the bank for every student. Stanford raised nearly $1 billion during its last reported fiscal year alone.

The disparity between the haves and the have-nots appears to be creating a schism in education similar to the schism in American social class.

Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust added to the tension by getting into an exchange with Big Ten provosts over whether ambitious science research should be left to the most elite universities. Some objected to her suggestion that it would be better for some institutions to focus on social sciences and humanities.

As a handful of colleges get richer and richer, what effect does this have upon the American system of higher education in general? And how will American society be shaped by the education wealth gap?

It's an interesting and important problem—perhaps the most important problem that Drew Faust will face in her presidency.  ¶ 8:11 AM 6 comments

  Dartmouth Gets in the Game The New Hampshire college just announced that, starting next fall, students from families with incomes of under $75,000 will not have to pay tuition.....  ¶ 6:15 AM 1 comments

  Death of an Actor I don't know about you, but I find the death of Heath Ledger very sad, and I wonder how long it will be before some rightwinger—Rush Limbaugh, perhaps—links Ledger's death to his portrayal of a gay cowboy in Brokeback Mountain in a "See? That's what happens!" kind of way.  ¶ 7:42 AM 19 comments

  The Super Bowl Awaits The Globe reports that Patriots fans, all fired up about the possibility of a 19-o season, are driving Super Bowl tix to record highs.

Don't waste your money, Pats fans. Your boys are going down!

(Clearly, I have become more confident in the past 24 hours.)

Pats fans are paying as much as $10k for a seat on the 50-yard line.

Which is, of course, just the kind of thing that makes you root for the underdog, storybook, hardscrabble, blue collar, ordinary Joe Giants.....


Plaxico Burress burns Al Harris for the umpeenth time in Sunday's legendary victory
against the Packers.  ¶ 7:45 AM 3 comments

  Stone on Bush Oliver Stone is pitching "Bush," a movie about our current president.

Stone, an outspoken critic of the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq, told [Daily Variety] he's not looking to make an anti-Bush polemic. He said he wants "a fair, true portrait of the man. How did Bush go from being an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world?"

That's a movie I'd like to see, actually.  ¶ 7:41 AM 2 comments

  The Downside of Travel Abroad Meanwhile, New York state attorney general Andrew Cuomo is investigating travel abroad programs at a number of schools, including Columbia and Harvard....

Questions about study abroad programs were raised in an article in The New York Times last summer that described how some program providers offer colleges rebates, free and subsidized travel, unpaid seats on advisory boards, help with back-office services, marketing stipends and other benefits. Critics say the arrangements, which are seldom disclosed, can limit students’ options and result in higher prices for those seeking international experience.

Hard to know how serious this is, but having Andrew Cuomo—one of the more ambitious and less pleasant men in New York—investigate you isn't going to be fun.....  ¶ 7:17 AM 5 comments

  The Lower-Income Student Issue, Take Two As if to reinforce the concerns of Roger Leheka and Andrew Delbanco (see post below), the Hartford Courant reports that "the number of low-income students at Yale is declining."

In recent years, Harvard and Yale universities, and others, have boosted financial aid and expanded recruiting to draw more students of modest means.   ¶ 7:12 AM 0 comments

  Summers Gets a Boost, Faust Takes a Hit In the Times, scholarship consultant Roger Leheka and historian Andrew Delbanco, both Columbia-affiliated, take aim at Harvard and Yale's new financial aid plans with what is perhaps the most serious criticism yet of those new proposals. (Due more to the location of the argument than its novelty.)

Next year, each of these institutions will add more than $20 million to what they now spend on financial aid, reducing the cost of a college year for families earning $180,000 to $18,000, from $30,000. That’s good news for students at Harvard or Yale. But it’s bad news for many hoping to attend other private four-year colleges — and for the nation in general.

The problem is that most colleges will feel compelled to follow Harvard and Yale’s lead in price-discounting. Yet few have enough money to give more aid to relatively wealthy students without taking it away from relatively poor ones.

The authors point out that 99% of colleges in the U.S. have an endowment that is less than 1% of Harvard's.

And here's where it gets really interesting: The writers then note Larry Summers' stated concerns about the lack of lower-income students at Harvard and elsewhere, and suggest that this is a far more important issue than the extension of financial aid to middle-class families.

In 2004, Lawrence Summers, then Harvard’s president, pointed out that three-fourths of the students at selective colleges come from the top income quartile and only 9 percent from the bottom two quartiles combined. ....The problem Mr. Summers described is only growing worse.

The authors don't come out and say so, but they strongly imply that Summers was primarily concerned with the plight of lower-income kids, while Drew Faust and Rick Levin are actually hurting lower-income students.

It is understandable that Harvard and Yale want to make themselves more affordable. But the way they’re going about it sets an example that is likely to make it even harder for low-income students to attend the best college for which they are qualified. Harvard’s stated motive is to stop prospective students from “voting with their feet” by choosing public universities or other private colleges. But surely this is not a very serious problem for a university that each year turns away hundreds of high school valedictorians and whose yield (the percentage of admitted applicants who enroll) is around 80 percent.

Is that fair? I'm not so sure—who knows if Larry Summers wouldn't have enlarged financial aid in the same way that Drew Faust just did? (After all, surely the original "free tuition" plan was not his idea, just as this recent enlargement was not Drew Faust's.) And it doesn't seem at all unrealistic to me that a family with an income of $150,000 would have trouble paying Harvard $50,000 of that. Moreover, will those 99% of colleges really take money away from poor kids in order to compete for kids with Harvard and Yale, when surely the applicant pool has little overlap?

Nonetheless, the impression that will linger in the minds of anyone who reads this piece is pretty clear: Summers right, current (unnamed) Harvard president wrong.

The answer, according to Leheka and Delbanco, is more government aid to colleges less "well-endowed," to quote a certain Harvard president—i.e., rich—than Harvard and Yale.

Otherwise, America will be the loser, no matter who wins the Harvard-Yale game.

I think this line of criticism has now reached the point where Drew Faust and Rick Levin need to respond....  ¶ 6:48 AM 3 comments

  Isis Comes to Harvard The Crimson reports that Isis, a finals club for women, is getting a room of its own, renting space from the Owl.

It is truly a sign of progress in gender-equity that there is a women-only finals club named after a Saturday morning television character from the 1970s.


  ¶ 10:58 AM 10 comments

  "He's Got Heart" That's what Giants coach Tom Coughlin told Archie Manning about his son, Eli Manning, in what was surely a deliberate allusion to Gene Hackman in The Replacements, one of the great football movies.

I am still reveling in the Giants victory. They weren't supposed to win. They were playing legendary Green Bay in the "football cathedral"—can we ban that expression, please?—Lambeau Field, they couldn't handle the -20 temps the way the Packers could, Brett Favre was just too good and Green Bay was having a "storybook" season.

Nobody gave the Giants a shot.

Well, the Giants have now set a football record for winning on the road—10 straight—they never looked rattled by the crowd or the cold (and, shoot, watching on TV, I was rattled by the crowd—when they chanted, "Go, Pack, Go!", it was loud), and Eli Manning outplayed Brett Favre. That last interception Favre threw was a terrible pass, and frankly, he looked throughout like he was having a rougher time of the temperature than Manning was.

Plus, how about that Plaxico Burress? He was unstoppable all day, catching 11 passes, and not because the coverage was bad; I thought that catch where he went up with his hands facing the quarterback, tipped the ball, turned to face the end zone and caught the ball around his waist even as he was running was one of the most remarkable catches I've ever seen.

Kind of looks like it's the Giants who are having a storybook season now, doesn't it? (And just as an aside, that was really a heck of a football game, wasn't it?)

So it's off to play the Pats. Who could be confident of victory against New England? Not me. I'm sure the Giants again will be huge underdogs, and they should be. They're just a ragtag collection of no-name players—just one Giant made it to the Pro Bowl, as opposed to a dozen Cowboys. (And where are the Cowboys now?) They have a punter who's played for 20 years without making it to the Super Bowl, a quarterback overshadowed by his older brother, a wide receiver playing all year on a sprained ankle, a cornerback playing with a shoulder that keeps popping out of its socket. They have lost three starters (Jeremy Shockey, anyone?) to broken legs.

But the Giants have heart.

After all, it was the Giants who came closest to beating the Pats during the regular season. And Tom Brady threw three interceptions yesterday. And the Patriots didn't really look that awesome against a Chargers team depleted by injuries. And New England will have much more pressure on them than the Giants will.

I'm talking myself into hope, I know. But you should too. Because any human being with a soul—with, yes, a heart—will be rooting for the Giants on Super Bowl Sunday—not the bloodless, automaton, not-averse-to-cheating, Bill-Belichick-is-a-genius-but-what-a-jerk Patriots.

Go Giants!




Victory.  ¶ 8:18 AM 7 comments

  Oh, By the Way The Giants are going to the Super Bowl...and the Packers aren't!



Take that, you cheeseheads! (Especially the overconfident ones who posted below.)  ¶ 11:08 PM 0 comments

  Go Giants! The boys in blue are 6.5 point underdogs against the cheeseheads. On the other hand, they were underdogs against the Cowboys, and huge underdogs against the Patriots, whom they almost beat in the last week of the season. So why not? Every decent, patriotic American should want the Giants' storybook season to continue. And if you're rooting for the Packers, well, then Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee ought to call for your deportation....

Go Giants!  ¶ 7:55 AM 6 comments

  Summers on the Mend Larry Summers has been all over the news lately with his calls for an economic stimulus, delivered most recently in Congressional testimony on Wednesday afternoon—and it's having a restorative effect on his reputation.

"When Summers Speaks, Congress Listens," is the headline on a 1/16 Forbes piece on Summers.

His turbulent tenure as president of Harvard University well behind him, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers is still considered an important voice in setting the nation's economic course.

..."Fiscal stimulus is the single biggest issue on the economic policy agenda of the president, Republicans and Democrats, and it was put on the agenda by Summers," said Jason Furman, director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based public policy organization.

Sloppy journalism alert: That last sentence should read, "...director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based public policy organization that was co-founded by Larry Summers and Bob Rubin."

The article quotes various members of Congress about how seriously they take Summers, and concludes,

Following his resignation, Summers took a yearlong sabbatical, and is now an economics professor at the Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Which reminds me—now that he's a University professor and all, does anyone have any idea what Summers is doing to earn that $400,000 a year salary? Because it kind of feels like he's taken two years off, doesn't it?  ¶ 7:41 AM 34 comments

  McCain Vs. Hillary? John McCain won the South Carolina GOP primary yesterday, while in Nevada, Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama.

First, the Republican side:

McCain won South Carolina with about 33 percent of the vote, to Huckabee's 30 percent. With more than 90 percent of precincts reporting, former senator Fred D. Thompson (Tenn.) was third with 16 percent, and Romney was fourth with 15 percent. Turnout was well below that of the 2000 GOP primary, when more than 550,000 participated.

That last sentence is most important, I think: It's more suggestion that GOP voters are dissatisfied with their choices, which are about to become fewer: Fred Thompson will probably drop out soon, and Lord be praised, Rudy Giuliani probably will as well, if he doesn't win Florida, which it doesn't look like he's going to.

(Incidentally, Mitt Romney won primaries in Nevada and Wyoming.)

As for the Dems....

Competing in the first state with significant blocs of minority voters, Clinton won 51 percent of the vote, Obama took 45 percent and former senator John Edwards garnered 4 percent, the result of a colorful and at times chaotic process that included caucuses held in casinos on the Las Vegas Strip. Clinton won almost every casino site and dominated among women and Latino voters, while Obama drew overwhelming support from blacks -- a potential foreshadowing of how the contest could play out when almost two dozen states vote on Feb. 5.

Because of the geographic spread of his support, Obama actually took one more delegate than Hillary did, 13 to 12.

Doesn't the press, which had basically written off Hillary up to the day of the New Hampshire primary, look silly now?

And here's another good sign for Dems:

Perhaps the clearest winner of the Nevada caucuses was Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid, who secured the early spot on the calendar for his state and boldly predicted turnout of 100,000 -- more than 10 times the Democratic turnout in the 2004 Nevada caucuses. That forecast appeared to come true, with upwards of 114,000 caucusgoers reported.

Democratic voters are energized....  ¶ 7:25 AM 4 comments

  Harvard is to Hogwarts As.... So J.K. Rowling will be this year's commencement speaker at Harvard. Interesting! I don't decry it, because, let's face it, Rowling has changed the world, and she has created wonderful stories that have been read by millions upon millions of children and adults. That's certainly an accomplishment worth rewarding.

I do think it suggests, along with The Great Debaters, that Harvard is making conspicuous efforts to accomodate itself to the great onrushing power of pop culture....  ¶ 3:31 PM 7 comments

  Harvard's New Calendar The Crimson reports that the university has unveiled a new academic calendar that does three things:

1) Synchronizes calendars university-wide
2) moves college exams before Christmas
3) provides for a three-week January semester

My thoughts.

1) That's fine and good
2) So obvious it's amazing that it wasn't done decades ago; at last, Harvard catches up to Yale
3) A bone-headed idea (although getting away from Cambridge in January is a fine thing). I thought this plan had died a quiet death. How did it ever resurface? Why not just have exams, have Christmas break, then—wait for it—start the next semester?  ¶ 8:21 AM 34 comments

  One for the Ladies
I was sitting in the lobby of the Carlyle Hotel yesterday when George Clooney, wearing jeans and a long coat, walked in and stood next to me chatting with some handlers for a couple of minutes before taking the elevator to his room.

Since every woman I know swoons over George Clooney, I would like to say that he's got bad skin and a paunch. (That competitive male thing.) But in truth, I can not. The guy's a hunk, as handsome in real life as on screen. And, as far as one could tell in a brief encounter, he had a nice way about him, too—relaxed, friendly, approachable—especially considering that he'd just run a gauntlet of papparazzi to get into the hotel. Kind of reminded me of someone else I used to know.  ¶ 8:11 AM 4 comments

  ...and One for the Guys
Oh, and I also saw Natalie Portman there too. Adorable! All swaddled up in a winter coat.




  ¶ 8:04 AM 10 comments

  It's Mitt Mitt Romney wins the Michigan Republican primary with 39% to John McCain's 30% and Mike Huckabee's 16 percent.

Here's what this does and doesn't mean.

It doesn't mean that Romney's on a roll. Michigan is practically his home state; if he couldn't win there.....

It does mean that there are really no strong candidates in the Republican field, and there is certainly no candidate who has given voters a compelling reason vote for him above the others.

I went to a dinner party last night at which a group of New York liberals (lovely people, this group, and very engaged with what's going on politically) debated whether Hillary or Barack would be most likely to defeat John McCain, the Republican that the table considered the most electable Republican. (I'm not so sure, but that was the consensus.)

You want to know the truth? It doesn't matter. In this coming election, any Democrat beats any Republican.

For two reasons. One, the economy makes the public want change. Two, George Bush. Election 2008 is not just a call for change, it is a referendum on the loathsome—and loathed—Bush, and all the Republicans will be hard-pressed to sufficiently distance themselves from him without alienating GOP voters and suppressing their turnout. It will be a very fine line for this group of candidates to walk; none of them are good enough politicians to be able to walk it.

(The fact that the top three candidates—Romney, McCain, Huckabee—are all "outsiders" of a sort shows the desire to have a non-Bush, though.)

Meanwhile, the Dems should mount a drumbeat: Bush, Bush, Bush, calling on the Republicans either to defend or repudiate their party's two-term president.

And then they should turn around and say, change, change, change.

Of course, none of this means we can take a vacation for the next ten months and wake up in November with a Democrat elected president. But it is to suggest that while this state-by-state horse race goes on, and we obsess with personalities and identity politics, it's important to look at the underlying forces that are really driving this campaign.  ¶ 7:52 AM 14 comments

  Our Eloquent Presidential Candidates "Our party and our nation is [sic] bigger than this."

—Hillary Clinton, in a written statement yesterday, commenting on her recent feud with Barack Obama  ¶ 6:39 AM 9 comments

  Go Giants! My friends from Wisconsin are confident—perhaps too confident.

Dallas fans were confident too, I point out.

(Of course, none are as confident as those noxious Patriot fans.)

But I think the Giants have a decent chance of winning this game in Green Bay, and maybe, just maybe, beating the Patriots in the Super Bowl.

Wouldn't it be nice?  ¶ 6:26 AM 3 comments

  Mr. Suck-Up Goes to Michigan Boy, has Mitt Romney gotten craven in his desperate attempt to win a primary. (Yes! Even more craven than usual!)

Trying to win votes in a state where the auto industry is dying, Romney has come out against new gas mileage standards and pledged to raise federal investment on (basically) car-related technology from $4 billion to $20 billion.

In other words, a massive pork barrel program—and this from a man who has cast himself as a true conservative.

Two thoughts.

First, American auto executives, who at the Detroit auto show are only announcing more gas-guzzling vehicles, and won't have any fuel-efficient new cars until 2010 at the earliest, are morons, and don't deserve to have taxpayer dollars thrown at them. It'd be the definition of good money after bad.

Second, is a certain frequent poster on this blog ready to admit that he is wrong and Mike Huckabee will not win the Michigan primary?  ¶ 6:13 AM 18 comments

  Mr. Levin Comes to Washington Think this debate about higher ed and financial aid isn't deeply political? Then why would Rick Levin, on the day Yale's new aid policy is announced, be meeting with the editors of...the Washington Post?  ¶ 6:08 AM 0 comments

  Paris Hilton?
What, did everyone else say no?  ¶ 6:02 AM 8 comments

  Drew Faust on the Hot Seat The Crimson reports that 11 provosts from public universities have sent Drew Faust a letter strongly criticizing her recent remarks about public education in Business Week magazine. (Here is a copy of the letter.)

...she was quoted as saying that public universities short on federal funds should leave expensive scientific research to their wealthier peers.

“We emphatically reject that notion,” wrote the administrators, who are provosts from schools such as the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “Collectively, our institutions educate more than 380,000 students, produce 1 in every 8 American PhDs, and conduct more than $4.5 billion worth of research every year.”

The president's response? To paraphrase Gomer Pyle, deny, deny, deny.

....Faust has sent a letter to each provost stating that the BusinessWeek article “seriously misrepresented” her views. ...

“I did not say, and I do not by any stretch of the imagination believe, that our leading public universities—which have been so critical for so long to the nation’s scientific enterprise—should somehow cede the field to well-endowed private institutions,” she wrote. [Emphasis added]

But according to Business Week, that's exactly what she said. (Note also that she so wished to avoid the word "wealthy" that she preferred the giggle-inducing "well-endowed.")

Not that Faust seems worried about Harvard or other top-tier research schools. "They're going to be—we hope, we trust, we assume—the survivors in this race," she says. As for the many lesser universities likely to lose market share, she adds, they would be wise "to really emphasize social science or humanities and have science endeavors that are not as ambitious" as those of Harvard and its peers.

Herewith, I will give some free advice. (Though really, I ought to charge for this stuff.)

President Faust, if you didn't say what you're quoted as saying, then call on the Business Week reporter to release the transcript of your interview.

But if you claim that you were misquoted and you don't call for the Business Week reporter to release the transcript, then, frankly, no one has any reason to believe you and you have compounded the initial error by looking political and disingenuous, which I'm sure you're not. Better to just admit that you said something dumb (heck, I do it all the time), apologize and move on.

Crimson reporter Rachel Pollack, you really ought to have called Business Week for comment. Don't just let Drew Faust's denial stand there. Ask the magazine if they misquoted her or not. Makes for a more interesting story, not to mention that it's only fair. And what the heck, why don't you ask them to release the transcript of the interview? If they have nothing to hide....

There. That and $2 will get you a tall coffee at Starbucks, though not a particularly good one.  ¶ 8:53 PM 3 comments

  Yale Ups the Ante Yale has announced that it will match Harvard's recent financial aid increase--and raise the level to which the increase applies to $200,000 from Harvard's $180,000.

Here's Bloomberg, which beat the Times by a day on the story:

Families with annual incomes under $120,000 will pay 50 percent less starting in 2008-2009, the New Haven, Connecticut, university said today in a statement. Parents earning less than $60,000 won't need to pay at all, the school said. Yale also plans to peg its 2008-09 tuition increase to inflation.

This last line may feel unimportant compared to the $200k news, but it isn't. Critics of university tuition hikes, such as Iowa senator Charles Grassley, have consistently wondered why college tuitions rise so much faster than the rate of inflation. Yale's announcement that it will tie its next year's tuition increase (I suppose a freeze is out of the question) to inflation suggests Rick Levin's sensitivity to the political buzz surrounding the issue.

``Yale's action shows that, despite some squawking, the sky won't fall when universities increase the amount of money they spend from their endowments, and when they do, it can mean big help for families struggling to pay college costs,'' Grassley said in a statement.

Harvard seized the initial high ground when it made its announcement. I wonder if Rick Levin hasn't just taken it back.  ¶ 4:35 PM 2 comments

  The Money Culture Furious that he didn't get a year-end bonus, a Merrill Lynch stock adviser defecated on a restroom floor at the firm, stepped in it, then deliberately tracked his excrement all over the office.

Kids today!   ¶ 4:54 PM 11 comments

  John Kerry Makes His Play Massachusetts senator and former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry just endorsed Barack Obama.

Question: Does this help or hurt Obama?  ¶ 9:26 PM 5 comments

  Drugs—and the Storm My cousin's daughter died from a mixture of heroin and cocaine, according to this article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Her parents think that post-Katrina depression was also a factor.

"She loved life," [her friend] said. "But she hated some of the stuff that happens in life."  ¶ 5:43 PM 8 comments

  Quote of the Day "I steal from the dead; they're not around to whine to the Columbia Journalism Review."

—Alex Beam, in today's Globe. The guy really is a local treasure. Also, a huge pain in the ass. But his is the kind of writing that makes newspapers still worth reading.  ¶ 10:31 AM 2 comments

  Drew Faust in the NY Sun The Sun gives Drew Faust's new book, This Republic of Suffering, a rave review, one of a string of positive mentions the book has been attracting. (Could this book be a bestseller? I'd be mildly surprised, but not entirely; the Civil War always intrigues, Drew Faust is now a high-profile figure, and reading about the Civil War might be one way Americans can consider the Iraq war.)

"No one expected what the Civil War was to become," Ms. Faust writes at the beginning of her book, and it is the terrible surprise of the war, the inability of Americans to predict or prepare for its cost, that she so powerfully communicates.

The book sounds fascinating. But something else from the review jumped out at me—an unintentional insight, I think, into Drew Faust's leadership style.

As armies and governments tried to figure out how to bury so many corpses and assign the correct name to each grave, civilians back home evolved their own rituals and fictions to try to make sense of their loved ones' deaths in battle. Ms. Faust sheds light on both of these processes, thanks to her extensive research in official records and private correspondence. In general, she keeps her own voice muted, seldom imposing an interpretation, but allowing the dead to speak for themselves. [Emphasis added]

If you substitute—heh-heh—the word "faculty" for the word "dead," that bolded sentence pretty much sums up the way that Drew Faust has led Harvard since she was anointed president. And at least for the moment, it seems to be working: The place is calm, projects are chugging along, there's been nary a hint of divisive controversy on campus this year.

There is, of course, a chicken-and-egg question here: Is Drew Faust a good historian because she started as a good listener, or did she become a good listener through her historian's work, in which the voices of the past do, or should, matter more than the voice of their retriever?

And, of course, there's the interesting corollary about gender. What role did Faust's sex play in making her a good listener? Did she have to be, growing up an ambitious and intelligent woman in conservative Virginia, where women's proud voices might not have been encouraged in the public sphere?

(My grandmother ran for Congress from Yorktown, Virginia, around 1950, I think it was, so I know something of this. She was female, Catholic, from Chicago, and opposed segregation. Didn't stand a chance.)

And another corollary: Any discussion of academic field, gender, voice and leadership style in this context can not help but lead to thoughts of Larry Summers and questions of how his voice, developed through years of family arguments and contentious econ seminars, infiltrated and shaped his own leadership style.

Does the field of history encourage listening more than the field of economics does? If so, why, and what are the implications? And how might that dynamic be shaped by gender, and how might it affect who chooses to enter that field?


  ¶ 10:04 AM 14 comments

  Words Fail My cousin Mary lost her daughter, 16-year-old Madeleine, on Sunday morning. I knew her as a young girl, running around her grandparents' home in a holiday dress. She was beautiful in all the ways that matter.

If you have a moment, please read about her. What is written in the newspaper is, of course, insufficient, as anything that I could write would be. Still, I know that Madeleine's family would appreciate it. In between those lines there was a life that can now only be remembered.  ¶ 8:21 AM 8 comments

  The Comeback Kids It's Hillary over Barack and McCain over Romney and, decisively, Huckabee. (Sorry, Standing Eagle. I coulda told you New Hampshire doesn't go for evangelicals.)

New Hampshire, I think, just saved the presidential aspirations of both senators.

And who knew—Hillary's tears seem to have helped her. She did well with women voters, which she didn't, particularly, in Iowa.

Sometimes, life is good: Rudy Giuliani appeared to finish a single percentage point over Ron Paul.

In other important electoral news, Goose Gossage got elected to the Hall of Fame! He's a terrific pitcher and a sweetheart of a guy, and he absolutely deserves to be in the Hall. Congratulations, Goose.

On the other hand, what about Jim Rice? He deserves it, too...doesn't he?  ¶ 12:20 AM 23 comments

  Granite States Looks like it's going to be a record turnout in New Hampshire. And what's really exciting is that, if Iowa is any indication, Democratic voters are coming out in much greater numbers than Republican ones—a sign, I think, that Democrats are passionate about wanting change, while Republicans aren't all that fired up about their choices.

That's my wishful thinking, anyway, and I'm sticking to it.  ¶ 2:36 PM 1 comments

  More Yale on the Move I neglected to post this article from the Sunday Times about Yale's investments in its campus. The university is undergoing a remarkable physical transformation.

Yale University is rebuilding itself — drawing on its huge, rapidly growing endowment and on multimillion-dollar gifts, mainly from alumni — to renovate 54 buildings and construct 16 new ones. Not since the 1930s has Yale undertaken so ambitious an expansion.

The theme of the article is how private spending on infrastructure is outpacing public spending; New Haven can not afford to spend what Yale is spending, and so there's enormous pressure on the university to fill the vacuum—to pay for the extension of a local airport runway, for example, or somehow contribute to the development of high-speed rail service to Manhattan.

It's a sign of the attention being paid to Yale's wealth—a sign that certainly extends to Harvard, Columbia, and others—that the university could even be considered as a funder for such large-scale public works.

Yale has suffered historically in comparison to Harvard by being located in New Haven. What's interesting about this latest evolution is that its impoverished-city locale is actually helping the university in its rebuilding program—it's simply easier to get things greenlighted in New Haven than (certainly) in Cambridge and probably even Allston.

And the university is making the most of the opportunity; it's renovated two-thirds of its dorms (when will Harvard do this?), and many of the new or renovated buildings on campus are architecturally significant.

Much of this has happened under the radar. But as I've been saying for a few years now, New Haven is becoming quite a nice place in which to attend college. And Yale seems to have an energy that is making the university an exciting place to be.  ¶ 7:34 AM 2 comments

  Yale in WashPo, NYT, and More Rick Levin at Yale seems to have stolen some Harvard headlines; today, the Washington Post covers Levin's announcement that Yale will start spending more of its endowment on financial aid and investments in science. And the Times covers the announcement as well.

“The folks in Washington are saying you’re hoarding money, and we felt uneasy about it ourselves,” Dr. Levin said. “We had been talking about it, frankly, for a couple of years.”

Levin declined to specify what Yale will do regarding financial aid, but indicated that an announcement will be forthcoming.

“When all is said and done, people are not going to be choosing between Yale and Harvard based on cost,” Dr. Levin said.

There are hints that Yale will not only see Harvard's aid extension to families making up to $180,000 a year, but raise it to $200,000.....
  ¶ 7:18 AM 1 comments

  Oh, Almost Forgot There's a primary tomorrow in New Hampshire.

My predictions: Hillary gets crushed, but does not drop out. McCain wins, with Romney coming in second and Huckabee third.

Your thoughts?  ¶ 4:56 PM 8 comments

  Roger Clemens Pumps It Up The former Red Sox and Yankee pitcher is suing trainer Brian McNamee for defamation after McNamee accused him of taking steriods.

Clemens' lawsuit says: "According to McNamee, he originally made his allegations to federal authorities after being threatened with criminal prosecution if he didn't implicate Clemens," according to the 14-page petition."

Well, that is ramping things up a notch, isn't it?

Anyone changing their mind about Clemens?  ¶ 4:51 PM 1 comments

  Calling Sam Spektor The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Yale will increase its endowment spending by more than a third next year, with a minimum of 4.5% and a max of six percent. The additional money will go to student aid and biomedical research.

Tellingly, the announcement prompted positive words from Iowa senator Charles Grassley, who has started focusing on the endowment payouts of wealthy colleges.

“This is a great day for parents and students,” Mr. Grassley said in a written statement. “The Yale bulldog might take a bite out of tuition costs for middle- and low-income families.”

But Mr. Grassley also said he hoped Congress would continue discussing an endowment-spending mandate.

Drew Faust, Rick Levin just raised the stakes....

Will Grassley now turn his spotlight on Harvard? Could we soon see hearings on Capitol Hill?  ¶ 4:39 PM 12 comments

  Larry Summers Goes Online The Times reports today that Larry Summers has invested in a new video-centric website called Big Think, ostensibly a "YouTube for ideas.".

Big Think mixes interviews with public intellectuals from a variety of fields, from politics, to law to business, and allows users to engage in debates on issues like global warming and the two-party system.

[Calling all editors: Spot the grammatical error in that sentence.]

The site was started by Harvard alums Peter Hopkins and Victoria Brown, both former bookers on the Charlie Rose Show. (For some reason, the Times doesn't mention that Brown is a graduate of HBS. Relevant, one would think.)

The Times reports that Hopkins finagled a meeting with Summers by convincing his assistant to put him on the schedule, and that after a year, Summers ponied up a five-figure sum.

“I’ve had the general view that there is a hunger for people my age looking for more intellectual content,” said Mr. Summers, who resigned as Harvard president in 2006 after making controversial comments about the lack of women in science and engineering. “I saw it as president of Harvard when I saw C.E.O.’s come up to my wife and want to discuss Hawthorne.” (His wife, Elisa New, is a professor of English at Harvard).

Sounds like an interesting site, and I wish it well. But I also wish that the Times, which has rhapsodized about Larry Summers for years now, would adopt a little more skepticism when it comes to Summers' doings.

For example:

1) Does a five-figure investment really justify putting Summers front and center in the story? Wouldn't it be nice to know, as Times reporter Tim Arango does not appear to, what the total capitalization of the site is?

The press release cites some other interesting people:

The value of Big Think as an emerging media property is reflected by a
formidable group of financial backers who share the founders' vision for
raising the quality of media by bringing great minds to a broad, global
audience. These include Peter Thiel (PayPal, Facebook and Clarium Capital),
Larry Summers (Former Secretary of the Treasury, Former President of
Harvard), Tom Scott (Nantucket Nectars and Plum TV), and Gary David
Goldberg (creator of Family Ties and Spin City). David Frankel, South
African venture capitalist, is lead investor.

It's fascinating, by the way, to see how the Times pretty much inserts that entire paragraph, not-quite-verbatim, into its story:

A handful of other deep-pocketed investors also decided to chip in, including Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist and co-founder of PayPal, the online payments site; Tom Scott, who struck it rich by founding, and selling, the juice company Nantucket Nectars and now owns Plum TV, a collection of local television stations in wealthy playgrounds like Aspen, Martha’s Vineyard and the Hamptons; the television producer Gary David Goldberg, who was behind the hit shows “Spin City” and “Family Ties”; and David Frankel, a venture capitalist who was the lead investor in Big Think.

2) I'm sure that many people Larry Summers' age are looking for intellectual content. Are they really looking for it on the web? Be honest: Would you watch a five-minute interview with Pete Petersen? Or John McCain on the question, "Is ethanol overhyped?"

3) Could Larry Summers please name two of the multiple CEOs who asked his wife about Hawthorne? It's possible, but it seems unlikely.

4) A three-second Google search shows that Hopkins was a "Weissman scholar" at Harvard—he interned at NBC News in London—and apparently met Summers at an event for the scholarship's beneficiaries. Probably worth mentioning.

5) It's also probably worth mentioning that the real relevant connection here is not Harvard, it's the Charlie Rose Show, on which Summers has appeared numerous times.

6) The Times might also have mentioned that Summers was one of the founding contributors to "Open University," the New Republic's academic blog, and something one might consider a forerunner to Think Big. Why is it worth mentioning? Because from all appearances, Open University is a complete dud—the last post there was five days ago—and as far as I can tell, LHS has not written for it once. Seems relevant, right?

7) Isn't it also worth mentioning, as the Times doesn't, that Summers is now a managing director in a hedge fund? Relevant for a guy who's just made an investment in an Internet start-up, no?

So, interesting story, poorly reported. The New York Times, it seems, can not help but dance to whatever tune Larry Summers plays.  ¶ 3:53 PM 13 comments

  You Can't Tell Me This Wasn't on Purpose
Could the New York Times have picked a less flattering picture of Hillary Clinton to run on its website front page?

(But it's a good choice; there's a lot to ponder in that picture.)  ¶ 8:36 AM 13 comments

  Harvard's Hot Gossip It's a big day for Harvard on Page Six today. Jeffrey Epstein is trying to bargain his way out of being a convicted sex offender. HLS alum Blair Berk swears that her client, Lindsay Lohan, wasn't boozing it up on New Year's Eve. Harvard College alum Michael Hirschorn was boozing it up in Mexico on New Year's Eve. And the Post follows up on the Crimson story that reported that The Great Debaters, Denzel Washington's new film about the Wiley College debate team that beat Harvard in the 1930s, didn't actually debate Harvard at all.

Five Harvard-related gossip items in one day! If only the Globe was a little more fun, what material the university could give it.

In a more serious vein, I was particularly interested in the item about The Great Debaters.
The movie is being heavily marketed on the premise that the Wiley College team of black debaters beat Harvard's white team. "Inspired by a true story," the movie ads say. Well, turns out it wasn't Harvard but USC that the Wiley College team beat.

As the Crimson reported,

In reality, Wiley competed against the University of Southern California for the national title; in the film, the small college goes up against Harvard. Why the change in schools?

“Harvard just sounded better, to be quite honest,” says Washington.

What intrigues me about this little revelation is that The Great Debaters is one of the few productions Harvard has permitted to film on campus—and it propagates a pretty significant historical inaccuracy about Harvard. Unless you happened to read that Crimson piece, or Page Six, or my blog, you'd never know that Harvard wasn't actually a part of this historical drama.

I'm not worried about Harvard's image suffering from the myth that the university lost this debate; the university comes off terrifically well in the film, which I'm sure is no accident.

What strikes me as curious is why Harvard decided to cooperate when the story is historical fiction essentially marketed as fact. Millions of people are going to come away thinking that this false history involving Harvard is, in fact, true.

Is that an appropriate deception (because, let's face it, it is a deception) for a university dedicated to the advancement of knowledge (veritas, right?) to participate in? What would members of Harvard's history department say? Is fictional history justified if the university comes out smelling like roses?

Clearly someone on the PR side of things decided that this was a good project for Harvard to be associated with, and there's certainly an argument to be made for that point of view. It's great public relations! Good for the brand!

But the decision is just another sign of who really has the power at Harvard—the image-makers, the lawyers and MBAs, rather than the faculty, who might have said, Hey, wait a minute--this didn't actually happen, and we shouldn't help Hollywood say that it did.  ¶ 5:30 PM 10 comments

  An E-Mail from Mitt Romney Since I wrote an article about Mitt Romney for 02138 a few months back, I'm on the e-mail list for his campaign. Today I got one that seems worth sharing.

Dear richard,

As you’ve likely seen by now, we finished a strong second place in Iowa** and the mainstream press has been quick to call this devastating.

Well, I’m here to tell you that just like in the Olympics, winning the silver in the first event does not mean you’re not going to come back and win the gold in the final event. And we’re going to win the presidential nomination, by pulling together.

I’m humbled by what you have done so far. Now, the action you take today could determine the course of history!
Please Invite 5 friends to join Team Mitt. It’s going to take every mouthpiece and volunteer possible for victory. Someone from my staff will follow-up with all new Team Mitt members immediately.

Call a friend, forward them this email, stop by their home or office and ask for just one more contribution to help us win New Hampshire and continue this campaign to the ultimate finish – the White House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Finally, help 5 friends learn more about me with a personalized phone message. Just use our new phone messaging tool. I’ll even record a customized voicemail greeting for your cell phone if you’d like. Imagine the surprise your friends will get when they call.
Remember – Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush also finished second in Iowa and went on to win the Republican nomination, and I will too. I’m the only candidate who is competitive in all of the early primary or caucus states – South Carolina, Michigan, Nevada, Florida…and of course New Hampshire.

You know as well as I do that Iowa represents the beginning of the process, and we’re on our way to New Hampshire to win – with your help.

* This is the definition of spin. No one other than Mitt Romney or someone working for him would call that a "strong second place." He was ten points behind a guy whom he exponentially outspent.....

I do think his point about Bush and Reagan is worth remembering, though....  ¶ 5:14 PM 12 comments

  The Crimson on Columbia The Crimson ran an interesting piece yesterday on Columbia's expansion and how it puts pressure on Harvard to do more for the Allston community.

The Columbia plan, approved by the New York City Council last month, offers ammunition to local critics who say that Harvard isn’t doing enough to provide benefits to the Allston community that will be affected by the expansion.

I have no doubt that Columbia is doing more than Harvard in this regard—wouldn't take much, right?—but the reporter, Vidya Viswanathan—any relation to Kaavya?—doesn't really get into why that may be: Columbia doesn't dominate its community as Harvard does. It has much trickier local politics. And it also has the element of race to deal with: It's a largely white university expanding into a largely black area, and it has, in the past, made some terrible town-gown missteps. The residents of that area were smart enough to know this, and so they used the race card to pressure Columbia into making payments and payoffs that were surely substantially larger than Columbia would have paid were that situation not the case.

Don't get me wrong—it might well be the most judicious outcome, especially in the long term. Columbia should invest in this neighborhood. But it wasn't a pretty process.

The possibility of racial conflict doesn't seem to exist in Allston (unless I'm wrong), and Harvard's influence in its town and nearby Allston is much more dominant than Columbia's in Manhattan.

As I say, an interesting piece in the Crimson....
  ¶ 8:43 AM 4 comments

  Clemens: Those Were Vitamins Roger Clemens says he did receive injections in his butt, but they weren't steroids, they were vitamins....

Couldn't he have just bought some Flintstones chewables?  ¶ 8:38 AM 1 comments

  Insurgents' Day Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee win in Iowa.

I think this is a mixed result for anyone who wants to see a Democrat win this November, for two reasons.

One, Hillary is one Democrat guaranteed to drive Republicans to the polls.

Two, I think Mike Huckabee is a bit of a nut. But he may just be a stronger national GOP candidate than Mitt Romney (obviously, he was the stronger candidate in Iowa). On the one hand, he doesn't believe in evolution; on the other hand, not all of his positions are insane, and some are surprising for a conservative Republican. He's obviously warm and personable, and he doesn't have the Mormon problem.

Here's one frustration I have: If you read the media accounts, you'd basically get the impression that Hillary and Romney should drop out today. Here's Adam Nagourney in the Times: "Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Edwards...both vowed to stay in the race." And that's in the third paragraph of his piece....

Well...duh. Of course they're going to stay in the race. It's been too close to call for weeks now, and after one caucus, they're going to drop out? Silly.

Here's the Washington Post: With a huge campaign fund and much of the party establishment behind her, Clinton will have significant assets to employ in the coming contests. But Obama also has a massive campaign fund and has already begun to put organizations into the later-voting states in what his advisers have anticipated could be a lengthy and brutal battle in the weeks ahead.

Much better.

The Globe, to its credit, is also more level-headed than the Times. Its main piece on the outcome makes no such pronouncements, and it even runs a news analysis piece saying that history doesn't always bode well for the early primary winners.

I slag the Globe a lot, so I want to give it a shout-out here for cooler political reporting than in today's Times.

But, my, this is all very interesting, isn't it? Times like this, I miss being a political reporter.....
  ¶ 8:15 AM 0 comments

  Tom Wolfe: Another Dud on the Way The Times reports that Tom Wolfe is "leaving" his longtime publisher, Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, insteading signing up with Little, Brown to publish his new novel, "Back to Blood."

One suspects that the real story here is that Farrar, Strauss didn't want Wolfe at the price he was requesting, and his agent, Lynn Nesbitt, is spinning the decline as Wolfe's decision.

After all, Wolfe's last two novels, "A Man in Full" and "I am Charlotte Simmons," were truly dreadful, almost unreadable.

In AMIF, Wolfe reported that Atlanta was, apparently, growing. In IACS, Wolfe discovered that college students like to drink. Now, with that same unerring feel for the zeitgeist, he's writing about immigration and Miami. "Miami is not only exciting, it's red-hot," Wolfe tells the Times.

That would have been a prescient observation back around the time Brian De Palma made "Scarface," in 1983, or Michael Mann created "Miami Vice" in 1984, or when he remade the show into an (underrated) movie in 2006, or maybe even when Jerry Bruckheimer created "CSI: Miami."

Prediction: Back to Blood will not only be a stinker, but it will bomb financially.  ¶ 9:46 AM 11 comments

  Drunk English People England's future?

The Daily Mail reports that Brits got so drunk on New Year's Eve, the country's medical services had to respond to an emergency call every eight seconds, the highest rate since the millenium.

Let's hope they didn't drive on the wrong side of the road.

(Sorry, that was terrible.)  ¶ 6:28 AM 4 comments

  Meanwhile, In Iowa... ...the nation's first presidential caucuses happen today. For the Republicans, the question is, Will Mitt Romney beat Mike Huckabee, and will John McCain stage a surprise comeback? (The odious Rudy Giuliani is not competing in Iowa.)

For the Dems, Hillary Clinton has the most to lose if she doesn't win, in my opinion; Barack Obama and John Edwards would both seem more viable, plausible frontrunners with a win in Iowa.

I haven't seen any polls that look credible, but if I had to guess, I'd say that Hillary will not win today...and if you gave me the right odds, I might even bet you that she'll finish third.....

Meanwhile, Mike Bloomberg added fuel to the speculation that he'll run by dissing the current crop of presidential candidates.

With unusually dismissive language, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg offered tart assessments of his potential presidential rivals at a news conference on Wednesday, suggesting they are offering meaningless bromides rather than serious answers to the problems confronting the country.

He's right, of course.

Your thoughts?  ¶ 5:55 AM 4 comments

  Should Harvard Be Free? Harvard's recent expansion of financial aid has sparked all sorts of interesting conversations, some of which, I think, the University might not have expected. First, in the Boston Globe, college consultant Steven Roy Goodman questions the university's motives, saying that altruism had nothing to do with it.

Now the Crimson goes to the trouble of reprinting an article from last October in which it asks that question that one so often hears, Should Harvard just pay for all of its students?

For many the idea of a free private college education is a fantasy, as tuition rates around the country climb upwards at alarming speeds with no end to the rise in sight. According to “Making Harvard Modern” by Morton and Phyllis Keller, Harvard’s own tuition has skyrocketed from $2,600 in 1970 to $22,699 in 2000 and currently sits at $30,275, up 5.3 percent from last year. The 21st century has seen the introduction of several initiatives to address prohibitively high tuitions among elite institutions; some, including Harvard, have even moved to eliminate parental contributions from low-income students. But with an endowment larger than some countries’ GDPs, the question becomes: is Harvard doing enough? Why can’t Harvard be free for all students?

It's an interesting question in a sort of, let's-get-mildly-drunk-and-talk-of-wild-hypotheticals kind of way. But it's actually a great question for the powers-that-be at the university to have kicking around, because it keeps the conversation from focusing on potentially more problematic issues. Such as:

Why does Harvard tuition consistently rise faster than the rate of inflation?

Given Harvard's enormous wealth and profit-making ventures, should the university remain tax-free?

Should Harvard, as some in Congress are suggesting, be required to spend five percent of its endowment annually?

Harvard's endowment will almost certainly pass $40 billion this year, and hit $50 billion in 2009. These questions are only going to get more pressing.....  ¶ 2:50 PM 41 comments