Shots in the Dark

Like me, the first lady is a survivor of skin cancer.

I stand ready to offer Mrs. Bush solace.

The Crimson runs a piece on Steve Hyman’s viability as a presidential candidate, which includes some quotes from yours truly….

I am always amused when they refer to Harvard Rules as “a scathing account” of Larry Summers’ presidency. To me, it’s just a work of reporting that reflects the division on campus during the Summers presidency…and while it may not be flattering to Summers, no one ever questioned its accuracy.

The Times has a long, almost rambling piece on the subject of women in science.

Organizers of these [women in science] events dismiss the idea voiced in 2005 by Lawrence H. Summers, then president of Harvard, that women over all are handicapped as scientists because as a group they are somehow innately deficient in mathematics. The organizers point to ample evidence that any performance gap between men and women is changeable and is shrinking to the vanishing point.

Instead, they talk about what they have to know and do to get ahead. They talk about unspoken, even unconscious sexism that means they must be better than men to be thought as good — that they must, as one Rice participant put it, literally and figuratively wear a suit and heels, while men can relax in jeans.

For at least 50% of the population, the women-in-science gaffe lives on…

And remember how, yesterday, the Crimson spoke to a group of alumni who all voiced their support of Larry Summers? This article reminds me that the Crimson didn’t actually speak to any alumnae….

Even the Weekly Standard can’t stomach the argument of the Harvard Salient’s Ryan McCaffrey.

According to McCaffrey,

Pinochet successfully rescued Chile from the threat of violent communist revolution, and orchestrated one of the most dramatic economic turnarounds of the era—bringing a country from total economic chaos into immense prosperity.

Writes John Londregan in the Standard,

Pinochet and his apologists argue thus: “Castro and the far left are worse than Pinochet, they kill more people and deliver fewer benefits than did the military government of Chile.” Are we to admire Pinochet because his murderous regime was more efficient than tyrants on the left at producing higher GDP?…

An American in Iraq who was trying to root out corruption and stop gun-running is imprisoned by the U.S. military without a lawyer and tortured for three months. He keeps track of his imprisonment by scribbling clandestine notes in a Bible.

A Pentagon spokeswoman says that the man was “treated fair [sic] and humanely.”

What has George Bush done to our country, and how will he ever make up for it?

In the spirit of the holiday season…angel fish!

The Crimson interviews a number of fatcat Harvard alums, all of whom indicate that Larry Summers was the fatcat’s meow.

Investment strategist Byron R. Wien ’54, who has served as a member of the executive committee of the COUR, says that he was concerned by the fact that so many of names on the [presidential search] list were career academics. “One of the great things about Summers was that his experience was broader than just university life,” Wien says.

One of the great things?

“Look, the issue with Summers is that Harvard was run from 1636 to 2000 by the faculty—and he was trying to wrest some of that away,” he adds.

So that’s what the issue was…. Never mind that the faculty’s loss of standing at the university was a trend in progress during the Bok presidency and continuing on through the Rudenstine years. The faculty had been accepting of its loss of authority under Bok and Rudenstine; for some reason, Summers compelled the faculty to rise up and take back power.

(Of course, on the other hand, if you concede the premise of that remark, that the faculty were in charge for 350 years, well, they obviously weren’t so bad at it, were they?)

“Frankly, I thought that the vision that Larry Summers had was super,” says Albert W. Merck ’43, whose family founded one of the 10 largest pharmaceutical firms in the world. “This one was going to take us into the 21st century.”

“One of the best things that happened was that he put undergraduate teaching on the front burner,” Merck says. The president feuded with some faculty members—most publicly, African-American studies scholar Cornel R. West ’74, over what Summers saw as an insufficient emphasis on teaching students at the College.

Hmmm. Never mind that Cornel West taught one of Harvard’s largest classes when Summers took him on. Never mind that Derek Bok prioritized teaching for 20 years. And never mind that Mr. Merck’s firm has recently suppressed news that one of its most lucrative drugs causes heart attacks.

What’s going on here?

1) The Summers’ agenda—which, as reported in the premier issue of 02138 magazine, was actually a four-page memo created by the Corporation—was, in fact, pretty obvious.
2) Rich alums feel both a natural empathy with former Treasury secretaries and a post-1960s distrust of academics
3) A significant number of Harvard alums from decades past aren’t actually that smart
4) The alums are saying that they all support Summers’ agenda, but are carefully avoiding any discussion of Summers’ leadership style.
5) Larry Summers’ attempts at historical revisionism—making the mailing to alumni of his Commencement speech part of his severance agreement, for example—has been strikingly effective, while the faculty have done nothing to publicize and record their version of the events of the past five years
6) Harvard alums have absolutely no idea what really goes on on campus, and their ignorance increases as they grower older, wealthier, and more influential in campus affairs
7) All of the above

Harvard Economics, the Parody

Okay, it’s not that funny. But I find myself weirdly fascinated by the range of motion in Ed Glaeser’s eyebrows.

Harvard Economics 2006 Recruitment

Oh, dear. You have to give John Campbell and Ed Glaeser credit for trying to get with the program by making this video for YouTube, an attempt to recruit economics grad students to Harvard.

But then you watch it…and…oh, dear. Where to start? The stilted artificiality of the whole thing? Professor Campbell’s tie taking on a life of its own? Ed Glaeser’s death grip on his own hands? The fact that two white male economists are encouraging you to contact the (of course) female assistant to make travel plans? The “director’s” voice at the end, saying “okay” to signify that Campbell and Glaeser have successfully read their cue cards?

Choices, choices…

Sportswriter Peter Golenbock has written a novel, 7: The Mickey Mantle Novel, which tells a salacious and sleazy version of Mantle’s life. The book is filled with tales of Mantle’s drinking and womanizing, including a purported romp with Marilyn Monroe, either during or after her marriage to Yankee Clipper Joe DiMaggio.

The question is, Will anyone want to read it? Everyone knows that Mantle was no hero off the field….but do they really want his on-field heroism diminished thusly?

I recently read Golenbock’s biography of Billy Martin, and it was so filled with tawdry detail, the book was a struggle to read. Martin was, off the field, a truly awful person. It was, however, exhaustively researched, and Martin had clearly participated; there was no question in my mind that the book was journalistically credible.

So why would Golenbock now take this route? He’s being published, for example, by Judith Regan, who planned to publish that ghastly O.J. Simpson book….

Myself, I think I’ll wait for the Mantle biography now being written by Jane Leavy, author of the terrific Koufax…..