Shots in the Dark

A day after the Crimson and three days after the story was posted on this blog, the Globe takes note of Larry Summers’ dis-invitation…..

Meanwhile, the San Jose Mercury News notes that the decision by the UC Board of Regents to disinvite Summers is stirring up controversy.

The University of California Board of Regents is being accused of squashing academic debate for withdrawing its invitation to former Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers to address the board.

…”The fact that the university capitulated to this is appalling. The administration is intimidated by a minority of faculty,” said David Horowitz, a conservative writer who founded the activist group Students For Academic Freedom. “Summers is a brilliant guy. I don’t share his politics - but if you can’t discuss ideas at a university, where can you discuss them?”

Because he was quoted in the Crimson yesterday, and because reporters are lazy, Greg Mankiw is quoted in both the Globe and the Mercury News.

The Crimson updates the story of Summers being disinvited to speak by the UC Board of Regents, and is the first news outlet that I’ve seen to carry a statement from Summers.

…Summers called the University of California system a “national treasure.”

“I regret missing the chance to discuss issues facing universities with the regents,” he said. “I often participate in discussions of this kind, and find that I always learn a great deal from the exchange of views and am sorry that the regents do not feel the same way.”

This is what’s known as a slam dunk. The PC cops in the UC system certainly made this easy for Summers. All he had to do was take the high road, and he makes them look like idiots….and of course Maureen Stanton, one of the petition organizers, did not answer the Crimson when it requested an interview. She should. Going underground now only makes her look like, having acted to squelch open discussion once, she is doing it again. And Stanton, who has a Harvard Ph.d. and is an accomplished scientist, should know better…..

In the Times, Harvard economist Gregory Mankiw joins Al Gore and calls for the implementation of a carbon tax, and using the revenue gained to cut payroll taxes.

Yet this natural aversion to carbon taxes can be overcome if the revenue from the tax is used to reduce other taxes. By itself, a carbon tax would raise the tax burden on anyone who drives a car or uses electricity produced with fossil fuels, which means just about everybody. Some might fear this would be particularly hard on the poor and middle class.

But Gilbert Metcalf, a professor of economics at Tufts, has shown how revenue from a carbon tax could be used to reduce payroll taxes in a way that would leave the distribution of total tax burden approximately unchanged. He proposes a tax of $15 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, together with a rebate of the federal payroll tax on the first $3,660 of earnings for each worker.

This is such a smart idea—and payroll taxes are regressive, anyway—that it will almost surely never happen. (Sorry, that was cynical.)

What’s really interesting is that Mankiw is an adviser to Mitt Romney, who has been vociferous in his opposition to any new taxes….

Anyone else see that Yankee-Red Sox game last night? That is why baseball is the greatest game. Mariano Rivera against David Ortiz, bases loaded, two out, bottom of the ninth, Fenway practically shaking with noise, after terrific pitching performances by Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling? (Clemens’ slightly better, but Schilling made it look easier—at least until the 8th.)

What an exciting, well-played game it had been, filled with baseball’s typical imperfections (the umpires cost the Yankees a run, calling Johnny Damon out at first on a play on which he was clearly safe) as well as its glories, including sterling defense by the Yankees. (How about that Doug Mientkiewicz?) And you have to love the rookies, Joba Chamberlain (man, is he good) and that baby-faced kid, Jacob Ellsbury? You have to like the looks of him, too—great plays in the field, gutsy at the plate. (Hitless, last night, though, for the first time since he’s been in the majors.)

And of course Derek Jeter…hitting .429 with men in scoring position and two out, coming through with a three-run home run that soared over the Monster.

I’m glad the Yankees won, of course. That makes it six of the last seven they’ve taken from the Sox, and if they see the Sox again in the playoffs, you’d have to say they have a slight psychological advantage. Everyone knows the Yankees have been a better team since the All-Star break.

As the Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy writes,

The Yankees beat the Red Sox 10 times in 18 meetings this year and the Nation can’t be comfortable with the prospect of facing the Bronx Bombers in the 2007 ALCS.

But as a fan of the rivalry and of the sport, I just love this kind of game. (I went to Giants Stadium yesterday to see the Giants get destroyed by the Packers, and boy, was that a crummy game. The Giants are awful.)

I should have been working last night, but instead I was sitting in front of the TV, on the edge of the seat, my heart pounding. In between innings, I’d jog back to the computer and try to work.

Could anyone (other than Sox fans) watch that game and not want the Yankees and the Red Sox to play each other again this season?

…why the televisions in both bars I was in tonight were showing college football; the Red Sox win a blowout against the Yanks. Did Josh Beckett just win the Cy Young?

Of greater concern to the Yankees than the loss is the possibility that Jorge Posada, perhaps baseball’s best catcher, got hurt in a collision at home plate….

The Times reports that more and more college grads are skipping business school altogether and instead going straight into working at a hedge fund.

(Is this one reason why so few of today’s college students care about the war? Because they’ve been paid off?)

As more Americans have become abundantly wealthy, young people are recalculating old assumptions about success. The flood of money into private equity and hedge funds over the last decade has made billionaires out of people like Kenneth Griffin, 38, chief executive of the Citadel Investment Group [blogger: Also, #25 on the 02138 Harvard 100], and Eddie Lampert, 45, the hedge fund king who bought Sears and Kmart. These men are icons for the fast buck set — particularly the mathematically gifted cohort of rising stars known as “quants.” Many college graduates who are bright enough to be top computer scientists or medical researchers are becoming traders instead, and they measure their status in dollars instead of titles.

…And top performers at the banks make so much money today that they don’t want to take two years off for business school, even if it’s a prestigious institution like the Wharton School or Harvard.

All of which puts HBS’s new 2+2 program into a new light—instead of it being a good deal for undergrads, maybe it’s actually an attempt to lock them in before they realize they can make much more money without going to business school…..

The Chronicle of Higher Ed follows up on the Larry Summers story.

The move followed a petition drive by female faculty members on the university’s nearby Davis campus, where the board is meeting.

The faculty members said it was inappropriate for the regents to have Mr. Summers as their guest at a time when the university is struggling to diversity its faculty ranks.

The petition, which drew 150 signatures, said, “Inviting a keynote speaker who has come to symbolize gender and racial prejudice in academia conveys the wrong message…

Do these people not realize that, in addition to being absurd, their actions will only have the effect of martyring Summers?

How many right-wing newspapers/columnists are taking pen to paper even now……

The University of California-Davis has rescinded a speaking invitation to Larry Summers.

After a group of UC Davis women faculty began circulating a petition, UC regents rescinded an invitation to Larry Summers, the controversial former president of Harvard University, to speak at a board dinner Wednesday night in Sacramento. The dinner comes during the regents’ meeting at UCD next week.

…“The regents represent the leadership and public face of the University of California,” the petition states. “Inviting a keynote speaker who has come to symbolize gender and racial prejudice in academia conveys the wrong message to the university community and to the people of California. It is our fervent hope that the regents will rescind this invitation and seek advice elsewhere.”

As some of you know, I have written critically of Summers in the past, but this is ridiculous, the height of political correctness. The shame of it is not just that the UC system regents have caved on an important principle (free speech), but also that other universities might, in the future, simply choose not to invite Summers and other controversial speakers, lest the PC police get up in arms….

In the NYT, Jenny Anderson explores why Mohamed El-Erian has quit his job as head of the Harvard Management Company.

Clearly even the best-run endowments have trouble holding onto talent. Harvard produces presidents, chief executives, doctors, lawyers, politicians and money managers (the money managers that come from Harvard’s endowment are called the Crimson puppies). Brand Harvard is so hot that there is an independent magazine dedicated to it, whose title is simply the institution’s ZIP code. And yet it has lost two endowment managers in less than three years.

…Maybe Pimco gave him more love. Or maybe it was just more money.

Here is a suggestion for a concerned alum or FAS member: To convene a panel discussion in, say, Memorial Hall about how enormous wealth is changing (corrupting?) the identity and mission of Harvard, and what to do about it.