Shots in the Dark

In the Times, Katie Hafner writes an article about Harvard librarian Sidney Verba and his role overseeing Harvard’s partnership with Google, as Google attempts to digitize all the books in Harvard’s libraries.

Although this was not Ms. Hafner’s intention, the article raises questions about whether the deal between Harvard and Google was made not on its merits, but because of a close relationship between Larry Summers and a top Google executive.

Hafner’s piece romps along for some time, rather sympathetically to Mr. Verba. Hafner suggests that Verba was well aware of the implications of Google’s project—which many authors believe constitutes copyright violation on an unprecedented scale—but at the same time, she quotes Verba saying, “It’s become much more controversial than I would have expected. I was surprised by the vehemence.”

Given that the Google project could one day allow readers to search every book in existence online, without authors receiving a penny, one wonders how much Verba had truly considered its implications. Google vows that it won’t allow readers to read whole books online…but once the scanning is done and the books are posted, that genie will be out of the bottle. Either Google will change its mind…or hackers will write programs, much like peer-to-peer file sharing networks, that allow users to download entire books from Google, all free of charge.

Moreover, there’s a local angle for Harvardians: President Larry Summers is profoundly skeptical about Harvard’s libraries—how much they cost, and whether all of their resources are really necessary—and during his tenure, Harvard’s libraries have come under steady pressure to cut hours and staff.

So how did Verba decide to support this initiative? That’s where Hafner’s article gets really interesting.

She writes, “When Sheryl Sandberg, a Google executive, first visited Harvard two years ago and put forth the idea of digitizing millions of books spread out over Harvard’s more than 90 libraries, Mr. Verba was skeptical. The sheer magnitude of the task seemed staggering.”

Hafner then discusses Google’s awesome scanning abilities.

But wait—there’s a critical fact about Sheryl Sandberg that Hafner either doesn’t know or doesn’t mention.

True, Sheryl Sandberg is a Google executive; she is the vice-president of global online sales and operations.

“In this role,” according to Google’s website, “Sheryl is responsible for online sales of Google’s advertising and publishing products. She also runs sales operations and support for Google’s consumer products and for Google Print.”

Huh. No mention of any work with university libraries. So why was Sandberg chosen to propose this project to Harvard?

Turns out that Sandberg has some pretty tight Cambridge connections. She’s a 1991 graduate of the college, an economics major who graduated summa cum laude and was awarded the John H. Williams prize for the top graduating student in economics. And she’s a 1995 graduate of HBS.

But perhaps most important was this: Prior to joining Google, Sandberg was chief of staff to none other than Treasury secretary Larry Summers.

From all I hear, the two of them were close at Treasury and have remained good friends. So Google’s decision to send Sandberg to Harvard—never previously disclosed, as far as I can tell—would seem to have something to do with her relationship with Harvard’s president.

All of which makes one wonder: Was Harvard’s decision to join the Google project influenced by the relationship between Larry Summers and Sheryl Sandberg?

In Washington, from whence Summers and Sandberg came, this is called lobbying. It’s illegal to leave the government and immediately start lobbying your former employer, because your close connections to that employer could inappropriately influence that employer’s decisions. But no such restrictions apply to the non-profit world.

Nonetheless, since the Google decision could affect the livelihoods of every Harvard professor who’s published a book—presumably all of them—and since it will have a profound effect on writers everywhere, it behooves the faculty to start asking questions about how the Harvard-Google relationship was forged, and whether the process was corrupted by the relationship between Sandberg and Summers. After all, this deal between a non-profit university and a private sector company was made in the utmost secrecy, with absolutely no discussion among the people affected—those who write the books that are in Google’s libraries.

At the next faculty meeting, Harvard’s professors should ask questions such as:

Why was there no public discussion about a deal involving the entire Harvard faculty?

Did Sandberg and Summers discuss the Google deal before any decision was made?

When Sandberg came to Harvard to see Verba, did she also visit Summers? After she met with Verba, did she subsequently contact Summers?

Did Summers and Verba discuss the deal before a decision was made?

Did Verba feel any pressure from Larry Summers to play ball with Google?

Did Verba have any incentive to try to please the president by going along with the Google deal?

Was it really Verba who made the decision to go along with Google, or was it Larry Summers’ decision, for which Verba is the front man?

If Larry Summers were to leave the Harvard presidency—not an insane proposition—could he ever profit financially from a relationship with Google—by, for example, serving as a member of Google’s board? And would he now take a public oath to avoid any such financial relationship?

Harvard’s participation in Google’s project is a hugely valuable endorsement, one that is surely having a broad impact. You can imagine librarians at many universities saying to themselves, “Well, if Harvard is doing it, then it must be a good idea.”

(I’d say that Google couldn’t buy that kind of publicity, except that may be exactly what Google has done: Was Sandberg was hired precisely because of her connections with Summers?)

But it isn’t a good idea if the real reason why Harvard joined forces with Google is the tight relationship between the university’s president and his former closest aide.

Thought that would get your attention….

Are conservatives hypocrites when it comes to sex?

Well, yeah. Just ask “Hot Tub Tom” DeLay.

Does it matter?

I think so…and in this piece for TomPaine.com, I talk about why, when Scooter Libby writes a novel about a ten-year-old girl who repeatedly has sex with a bear, it’s a problem not just for Republicans, but for the country as a whole.

Following the Globe, the Crimson weighs in with its report on Harvard’s declining rates of alumni giving.

The article doesn’t contain a lot of new information, but it does update the Globe piece in a couple of bemusing ways.

First, vice-president for finance Donella Rapier seems to have learned that it’s not wise to concede that President Summers’ image problems may be hurting alumni giving, as she did in the Globe.

“A number of people have been incredibly supportive of the president and all he is trying to do, and some have asked questions,” she told the Globe.

President Summers was apparently none too pleased by this display of…well…admitting the obvious.

Now, Rapier tells the Crimson of her “strong sense…that our alumni are highly supportive of the President and his vision for Harvard’s future.”

(Where is Global Language Monitor when you need them?)

In the Globe article, Rapier also suggested that many alumni were hard to reach because they only had cell phones, an assertion about which this blogger was skeptical; I suggested that the presence of e-mail should more than compensate for the miniscule number of alums who don’t have landlines.

Perhaps Ms. Rapier reads this blog, because now the Crimson reports that “in their attempts to contact alumni, Harvard fundraisers now face e-mail spam filters…and overflowing e-mail inboxes.”

Too funny.

Look, there probably is some correlation between President Summers, who is obviously a divisive figure, and alumni giving. But there may also be more credible explanations that have nothing to do with “e-mail spam filters.”

(I mean, come on, people—you are Harvard. If your fundraising is dependent on not being considered spam, then you’ve got a serious problem.)

How about the fact that, since 2001, the stock market has either been declining or in the doldrums, and people just don’t feel as rich as they did in the 1990s? Or the fact that 2001 marked the departure of a president who’d just completed a huge capital campaign?

If I were trying to explain away declining rates of alumni giving, I’d throw out those explanations, instead of talking about what a challenge cell phones are.

One word of caution to the Crimson: It’s time to treat last year’s alleged $590 million raised—ostensibly a record—with skepticism. Do you really think that there was no pressure on the relevant parties not to make it look like fundraising was down during Larry Summers’ annus horribilis?

From what I hear, these numbers are more cooked than a chicken in China….

Global Language Monitor, a non-profit group that monitors language use—where do these people get the time?—has compiled a list of the 10 most politically correct words or phrases of 2005, and Larry Summers’ use of the phrase “intrinsic aptitude” lands at number two on the list.

“Intrinsic aptitude” was, of course, the phrase Summers used to explain why he thought women are less gifted at science and mathematics than men are.

In fairness to President Summers, many people thought the phrase was politically incorrect. So he’s sort of getting it coming and going here.

Also on the list were “deferred success” (for “failure”) and “misguided criminals” (terrorists).

What was Bob Woodward thinking/smoking?

Yesterday he announced that he was made privy to Valerie Wilson’s CIA identity a month before Bob Novak was. (Typical Woodward; he always has to be first.)

Yet for months, he has been disparaging the importance of Patrick Fitzgerald’s leak investigation.

As Howie Kurtz reported today in WashPo, Woodward “said on MSNBC’s ‘Hardball’ in June that in the end ‘there is going to be nothing to it. And it is a shame. And the special prosecutor in that case, his behavior, in my view, has been disgraceful.’ In a National Public Radio interview in July, Woodward said that Fitzgerald made ‘a big mistake’ in going after Miller and that ‘there is not the kind of compelling evidence that there was some crime involved here.'”

This is not rocket science; this is journalism 101. If you have a conflict of interest in a matter, you must disclose it while writing or talking about it. Woodward’s criticism of the investigation now looks like nothing more than protecting a source. And, for that matter, himself.

I don’t think you could find another reporter, for example, who ever thought that Fitzgerald’s behavior was “disgraceful.” That’s strong language—and it sounds much more like the White House than like an independent, non-partisan commentator.

Perhaps Woodward felt free to call Fitzgerald “disgraceful” because the independent counsel wouldn’t talk to him….whereas everyone who does talk to Woodward gets the kid-glove treatment.

Woodward has humiliated his employer. By placing his own story and his own source above the interests of the Washington Post, Woodward shows that his true loyalty is not to the paper, but to himself. And yet, managing editor Len Downie does nothing but say that there was a miscommunication, and that everything is cleared up now.

I think it’d be a better move for Downie to say that he’s going to reevaluate the nature of Woodward’s relationship with the Washington Post—not to fire Woodward, but to create a clearer relationship so that the paper’s priority is primary and this kind of embarrassing incident never happens again.

The location of the secret Shiite torture prison happens to be the former headquarters of top American administrator for Iraq, Paul Bremer….

Whoops!

…is to wrap yourself in the cloak of patriotism by saying that any criticism of the war is a criticism of the soldiers.

Funnily enough, that’s what Dick Cheney did in his speech yesterday.

For example:

What we’re hearing now is some politicians contradicting their own statements and making a play for political advantage in the middle of a war. The saddest part is that our people in uniform have been subjected to these cynical and pernicious falsehoods day in and day out. American soldiers and Marines are out there every day in dangerous conditions and desert temperatures – conducting raids, training Iraqi forces, countering attacks, seizing weapons, and capturing killers – and back home a few opportunists are suggesting they were sent into battle for a lie.

It takes some chutzpah, saying that opponents of the war are guilty of “cynical and pernicious falsehoods”….because doesn’t that pretty well describe the Administration’s case for war? And isn’t that the reason those soldiers and Marines are out there every day, in dangerous conditions and desert temperatures, etc., etc.?

Five more killed and eleven wounded yesterday, by the way….(a story that doesn’t even make the front page of NYTimes.com.). We’re getting from 2000 to 2100 pretty fast.

A young filmmaker named Evan Coyne Maloney has made a film, “Brainwashing 201,” decrying the treatment of campus conservatives.

Weirdly enough, Maloney was encouraged in his dream of becoming a documentarian by Michael Moore, who is not known as a campus conservative.

And following the more typical path of a young conservative, he found a rich sugar daddy, Stuart Browning—described by the Chronicle of Higher Education as a “multimillionaire interested in politics”—to fund him….

Apparently in the film, Maloney does things like wander onto various college campuses and ask where the “men’s center” is. (Which is kind of amusing, actually.) Sounds like Larry Summers might like this documentary….

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Here is his response to the letter of protest from 24 faculty members over his alleged plans to fire FAS dean Bill Kirby:

“Dear Colleagues:

I write to share with you the text of a message I sent Tuesday in response to a statement reported in that day’s Crimson from a group of current and former department chairs:

‘I share your dismay at the irresponsible and misguided speculation reported in last Thursday’s Crimson regarding my relationship with Dean Kirby, and I agree that these kinds of rumors are unhelpful and counterproductive as we work to achieve our common goals. Dean Kirby has my confidence and support as he leads the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in a series of critically important activities designed to advance the Faculty’s academic priorities. I have been very much encouraged by the progress he and the faculty as a whole have made recently in curricular reform and other matters, and I look forward to our continued work together.’

I very much appreciate your ongoing commitment to our common goals.

Sincerely,
Larry Summers

Huh.

Couple of things. First, why exactly was the Crimson story “irresponsible” and “misguided”? (Note that Summers does not describe it as “wrong.”) Seems to me that the paper was merely doing its job…and I haven’t seen anyone question the accuracy of the story. And you’d better believe that, if they could, they would.

Dean Kirby has my confidence and support….

Yes, fine. But does he also plan to step down from his position at the end of the year, and has he negotiated this option with President Summers?

Or does he now find himself in a position of unanticipated strength?

Reuters has followed up on Marcella Bombardieri’s Globe piece about the faculty protest letter at Harvard, and you can find it here, on CNN.com.

This isn’t quite at the New York Times’ level of attention…yet. But it’s getting there….