Shots in the Dark

At B.C., an adjunct professor has resigned in protest of Condoleeza Rice’s speech there.

I’m no Condi fan, but…resigning?

Steve Almond explains that Rice “has lied to the American people knowingly, repeatedly, often extravagantly over the past five years, in an effort to justify a pathologically misguided foreign policy….”

The letter of resignation suggests that this departure is no great loss.

And if you check out Almond’s website, the move looks more like a way to gin up publicity for his book tour…..

Although I do like that Almond is no fan of the massively overrated Jonathan Safran Foer.….

Hillary Clinton has apologized for her claim that young people today “think work is a four-letter word.”

Mrs. Clinton explained that she was chastised by her daughter Chelsea, who called her to say, “Mom, I do work hard and my friends work hard.”

(After working hard to get a two-year master’s degree from Oxford, Chelsea works hard pulling down a six-figure salary as a “consultant,” a job which she surely had to work hard to get. At least the Bush girls are doing something useful.)

Mrs. Clinton told Chelsea, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to convey the impression that you don’t work hard.”

Which, of course, is exactly the impression that Hillary meant to convey.

Clinton made the original remarks at a speech before the largely-Republican U.S. Chamber of Commerce. She backtracked in a commencement address at Long Island University.

The whole episode reminds one of why it is so hard to like Mrs. Clinton.

The original comment—which is actually kind of interesting, and I think not entirely wrong—was a craven attempt to win over an audience more conservative than she in preparation for a presidential run.

The flip-flop is the inevitable result of saying something that you may or may not mean but which is primarily intended to win the support of an audience which normally wouldn’t support you. It’s hard to stand behind a remark that you probably didn’t believe in the first place.

I still think that the Democrats need a credible alternative to Hillary Clinton… As Newt Gingrich points out, her negatives are awfully high.

…to discover that some early employees of Southwest Airlines are not only millionaires, but are still working as flight attendants. “We’ve come all the way from hot pants to hot flashes,” says Sandra Force, who has been with Southwest since it began in 1971.

The Times always has trouble when writing about people who are not yuppie professionals. And this story has some hilarious (in a bittersweet kind of way) dubious assumptions.

1) It shouldn’t come as a shock that after working for 35 years at a very tough job, flight attendants are worth two or three million dollars. More people are millionaires than used to be, and anyway, 35 years is a long time.
The real story is that employees who work that hard and that long at other companies aren’t millionaires….and that CEOs who don’t work very hard or very long or very successfully or very honestly are paid annually in the tens of millions.

2) Why don’t these people retire? the Times asks.
Well, first because some Americans still work hard. But perhaps more importantly, if you retire at age 56, the age of one of the people interviewed, you probably have another 20-25 years of life expectancy…and $2 million isn’t really a lot of money to live off for two to three decades.

It’s great that Southwest treats its employees well and earns their loyalty as a result. And it’s certainly newsworthy. I guess my point is, it shouldn’t be.

That was Larry Summers’ advice to Harvard undergrads in an event billed as Summers’ “final event” with undergrads (although the baccalaureate and Commencement come to mind).

According to the Crimson, Summers said, “At a time like this, the question should never be what you’re against. It should be what you’re for, and what each of us individually can do that is really important and that can make a difference and change the world…this University, as it strengthens itself, has the potential to do just that.”

Asked about reports that he had once referred to Harvard College as “Camp Harvard,” Summers responded that he was “substantially misquoted.” He added that he could not remember “precisely in what context, if at all, I used the phrase ‘Camp Harvard.”

But he said that if he had used the phrase, it was in reference to high student satisfaction in extracurricular actitivies outside academics—and his view that a similar level of excitement should be maintained in the classroom.

Translation: I was misquoted, although I don’t remember what I said, but if I did say it this is what I meant.

Of course, the second of those assertions negates the first, and the third does not follow logically from the second.

And the first assertion isn’t true in the first place.

Summers was not substantially misquoted, according to people I interviewed for Harvard Rules. At a first year-meeting with house tutors, he emphasized his desire for students to work harder by saying, “We don’t want this place to be Camp Harvard.”

It is a little difficult to see how that translates into discussing “high student satisfaction with extracurricular activities outside academics.”

Why the Washington-style dissembling? What possible difference could it make now?

How about this for a response: “I was being hyperbolic, but sometimes I do worry that the students’ devotion to extracurriculars comes at the expense of their classroom work.”

In the end, it’s just easier to tell the truth….

Two Yale grads, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, spoke at Tulane’s commencement yesterday.

Meanwhile, Anderson Cooper will speak at Yale’s commencement. And Jim Lehrer will speak at Harvard’s.

Of course, Tulane’s commencement is a big deal in that it’s the university’s first after Hurricane Katrina.

But still…Anderson Cooper and Jim Lehrer?

Rather quietly—which is exactly the style of Yale president Rick Levin—Yale appears to be beating out Harvard for influence in China.

That, at least, is the suggestion of Marcella Bombardieri in today’s Globe…..

Given the contrasting styles of Levin and Larry Summers, this is an interesting conclusion. Levin may be the quietest, least-known president of Yale in the last 100 years; the same could not be said of Summers at Harvard.

Of course, the comparison isn’t really fair, given that Levin has been president of Yale since 1993 and Summers has been at Harvard only since 2001, and of course no one would say that Summers has not paid enormous attention to globalization.

I just raise it as part of a larger question about the efficacy of various leadership styles—something I’d like to see, oh, the Harvard Business Review do a comparative case study on.

May 11, 2024 —New DNA Evidence in Duke Lacrosse Case
Prosecutors believe they have DNA evidence to tie a third Duke lacrosse player to the alleged attack of a 27-year-old exotic dancer, sources close to the investigation tell ABC News. Sources say the third player is the same person who was identified with “90 percent” certainty by the alleged victim in a photo lineup.
—Christopher Cuomo, ABCNews.com

May 13, 2024—Duke Lacrosse DNA: Mystery Man Revealed
Accuser’s Boyfriend is Single Source of DNA on Vaginal Swab
—Christopher Cuomo, ABCNews.com

Just one question: If the DNA comes from the accuser’s boyfriend, why does ABCNews.com headline its story “Duke Lacrosse DNA”? To get even more things wrong?

What’s the most e-mailed article from the Duke Chronicle? It’s a piece by senior Matt Sullivan called “Rain on the Duke Parade” that laments the end of fun at Duke.

On a high school visit to Duke,

I had dinner with seven gorgeous girls on a gorgeous night outside at Parizade until the Delta Sig formal kicked us out, headed to the Edens quad for a Kappa Sig rager full of kegs, tunes and hugs, passed out in section, woke up and wrote my last high school English paper, got on a plane and couldn’t help but think of who wouldn’t want to grow up at a place like this, where you work hard and you play hard and then you work harder and then you play harder and that’s what you’re supposed to be doing if you want to. Duke rocked….

But those salad days are over.

In the four years since, I have witnessed nothing short of an administrative ransacking of this school’s social life…

I’m slightly sympathetic to this argument, since I partied a lot at college and don’t regret it for a minute. Bladderball, Tang, Feb Club…that was just mad fun with no harm done.

(All right, the whole thing with the tequila shots contest/Julie B. episode wasn’t my finest hour, but I was under a lot of pressure at the time. Same thing with the incident at the Branford Ball. Same thing with—oh, never mind.)

Like the late Eliot House master Alan Heimert, I also believe that you can’t completely control adolescent behavior and that it’s actually useful, from an evolutionary point of view, when young people do stupid things—they learn. The touching-a-hot-stove theory….

On the other hand, that behavior sometimes hurts other people, as it allegedly has with the Duke rape, and that should never be tolerated.

Meanwhile, our litigious culture makes it increasingly difficult for college administrators to turn a blind eye to young kids doing dumb things, even if they’d like to.

And while American kids might like to think of college as a place to “study hard and play hard,” international students might come to college to study harder, and wind up kicking our economic butt.

So, while I’m sure that Mr. Sullivan has a point, his piece is really an elegy to a culture of partying that’s getting harder and harder to validate.

The class of 2010’s yield—the percentage of accepted applicants who choose Harvard—has come in at 80%, a record, according to the Crimson.

This is rather remarkable, coming after a year in which the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences was ousted, the president resigned, and a celebrity student imploded amidst a plagiarism scandal.

The news, as they say, was not good.

So why are the numbers going up?

Dean of Admissions William Fitzsimmons argues that it’s because the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative is so appealing, but since no numbers of how many students are coming under the terms of that initiative are provided, it’s impossible to know whether that’s true. I’m sure it’s a factor, but does it explain everything?

I wonder if these numbers don’t suggest the truth of that adage that “all publicity is good publicity.”

Is it possible that modern students just don’t care about how a university makes news…as long as it’s in the news? Is this just another manifestation of the American obsession with celebrity?

It’ll be interesting to see Duke’s yield this year….

In the Crimson, Anton Troianovski has reported an important story today: the fact of rising deficits at FAS and their impact on college life.

University President Lawrence H. Summers and Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby have been unusually aggressive in pushing for new buildings, letting construction begin before a major donor was secured. Administrators say that Harvard had no choice but to build in order to keep its status as a leading research university, and insist that the Faculty can handle the cost.

But some professors worry, and some financial planners concede, that crucial uncertainties remain in the financial plan…

Among the uncertainties:

—whether the departures of Kirby and Summers will cause fundraising to fall short of targets
—to what extent government money can alleviate the deficit spending (in the case of the stem cell institute, not at all)
—the lack of major donors supporting new building projects

I would add two more uncertainties:
—was fundraising falling short of targets even with Kirby and Summers in place?
—to what extent will financial pressures warp the search for a new FAS dean and president, forcing Derek Bok and the presidential search committee to place greater-than-usual emphasis on candidates’ fundraising abilities?

(Note that a poster below suggests that this would be one reason for eliminating Theda Skocpol from being named FAS dean. The poster claims that she wouldn’t be a good fundraiser, and this at a time when fundraising is urgent.)

To his credit, Troianovski also finds several instances where this deficit spending is forcing budget cutbacks that have a direct impact on student life: departments with unfilled professorships, cutbacks in grant money, budget cuts in the operations of the student houses. “We’re saving shoelaces,” says Peter Hall, director of the Gunzburg Center for European Studies.

It’s a problem those students who lined up to cheer President Summers on his resignation day might want to consider. The impact of Larry Summers on student life is more subtle, and more mixed, than simply his attendance at pizza feeds and his support of a student center, fine as those things may be….