Shots in the Dark

Frank Ben-Eze, prominently mentioned in last week’s New York Times as the 6’10” basketball player Harvard had recruited despite the fact that he apparently fell below minimum academic standards, has announced that he has “reopened his recruitment.”

The announcement was actually made by Rob Jackson, a former coach of Ben-Eze’s; the player himself declined to comment.

Last week, I predicted that Ben-Eze, whom coach Tommy Amaker seemed to think would be accepted, would be hung out to dry in the wake of the bad publicity, and this may very well be what happened—that a player who was likely to get admitted was sacrificed in the wake of bad press.

Very bad press.

Consider, for example, famed basketball writer John Feinstein writing in the Washington Post:

…what has happened at Indiana this winter doesn’t even come close to being the saddest story in college basketball this season. That dubious honor belongs to Harvard.

Feinstein mentions Amaker’s recruitment of “six players whose basketball pedigree is far higher than that of past Harvard players,” then adds…..

The real culprit in this story, though, is the athletic director— just like at Indiana. Bob Scalise has a lot in common with [Rick] Greenspan: He’s arrogant and self-righteous and not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.

Feinstein is not gentle on Scalise—or Harvard.

Now, having been outed by the Times, Harvard is trying to back-pedal….

A Harvard flak named Alan J. Stone told Thamel: “We can say that any statement about someone being admitted to Harvard who is not qualified would be absolutely inaccurate, as is any suggestion that standards have been lowered for basketball. Harvard’s admissions criteria are — and remain — very high. They have not changed at all.”

Stone’s last sentence must be a lie—unless Scalise was lying when he told [Times reporter Pete] Thamel that Harvard was willing to lower academic standards for Amaker.

….Amaker didn’t speak to Thamel. He hid behind a statement, which is embarrassing.

Downright Harwellian, you might say.

To be fair, it’s possible that, regarding the specific case of Frank Ben-Eze, Amaker was treating Ben-Eze’s admission as if it was definite when it wasn’t, or that Ben-Eze just decided to go somewhere else where basketball was more valued.

It’s also possible that Hillary Clinton will run a clean, positive campaign for the next six weeks, and that the people of New York will decide that we don’t care how much he spent on prostitutes, Eliot’s our man!

For Harvard, the departure of Ben-Eze from the class could help raise its Academic Index, a complicated formula that establishes minimum standards for athletes to be admitted to Ivy League programs. Ben-Eze, a native of Nigeria who played for Bishop O’Connell High School in Arlington, Va., has not attained the 171 index minimum.

No one at Harvard comments, though it’s not clear whether reporter Pete Thamel asked anyone at Harvard to do so (which is a little odd, frankly).

I’ll let Feinstein wrap it up:

But let’s tell the truth here. Harvard fired a good man [former coach Frank Sullivan] without just cause. The school is trying to claim it is still “Harvard,” when clearly it is not. It is rolling in the mud with everyone else in college athletics. And right now, it is not a pretty sight.

Well, let me actually pose a question here: Where is Drew Faust in the midst of all this mess? Still on her book tour?

Harvard has taken a big hit in this matter, and she has been as quiet as a country mouse. I guess her handlers have convinced her—did it take much?—that it’s more important to stay out of this mess, preserve her pristine reputation, than try to explain just how Harvard went so wrong here.

But as one ethical scandal after another hits Harvard, Faust will eventually have to say something. Right?

Harvard alum Benjamin Scheuer has penned a little ditty to Eliot Spitzer called “Hey Mr. Governor.”

It’s not exactly “Hey, Jude,” but you have to give the guy points for quick turnaround.

Yale signs him up to teach at the Div School and the School of Organization and Management…

Another of 02138’s “Power Couples,” Cass Sunstein and Martha Nussbaum, are in the Globe today.

Sunstein has declined to talk about his relationship with [Samantha] Power, but it’s no coincidence that the celebrated legal scholar has decided to ditch the Windy City and accept a position at Harvard Law School.

…As for Power, she’s apologized for calling Clinton a monster, but this is hardly the first time she’s used hyperbole to make a point. In an interview with 02138 magazine, she referred to Obama as “charming and hot” before quickly adding “but please don’t lead with that.“

The Greatest Game was written up a bit in the New York Daily News on Sunday, in an article comparing the Hillary Clinton campaign to the 1978 Yankees.

Like the Clinton campaign, the Yankees were filled with clashing egos, and fell far behind their opponent—14 games by late July.

That’s kind of like losing 11 primaries in a row - they were basically written off,” said Richard Bradley, author of the forthcoming “The Greatest Game: The Yankees, the Red Sox, and the Playoff of ’78,” and a former executive editor of George magazine.

“But the Red Sox made a couple of mistakes, had a couple of injuries, and they could never quite put the nail in the coffin,” added Bradley in a not-so-subtle allusion to Barack Obama.

The Yankees/Red Sox race went down to a one-game playoff. Will the Clinton/Obama competition go to the convention?

Not too long ago, Eliott Spitzer and his wife, Silda Wall, were on the cover of 02138’s “Power Couples” issue, and profiled inside.

Now….

The affidavit says that Client 9 met with the woman in hotel room 871 but does not identify the hotel. Mr. Spitzer stayed at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington on Feb. 13, according to a source who was told of his travel arrangements. Room 871 at the Mayflower Hotel that evening was registered under the name George Fox.

After yesterday, the 02138 story was picked up by the Washington Post, Folio, Politico.com, the Boston Herald, the Baltimore Sun, Good Morning America, and others.

The Boston Globe profiles Matt Walsh, the former Patriots assistant who may or may not have damaging videotape implicating the Pats in further spying on other teams.

Walsh seems to have made some mistakes in life, such as a stupid and risky prank he played in college.

But this Globe article is a nasty piece of work, one-sided and filled with anonymous smears. For example, the piece reports that he “has exaggerated or misrepresented elements of his online biography.”

We learn considerably further down in the article that the source for this is anonymous Patriots officials.

And the piece opens with a pretty damning quote:

“He sounded like a loose cannon,” said the coworker, who asked not to be identified to avoid entangling his new employer in the controversy. “He was very bitter about how things ended with the Patriots and he seemed like he was keen on using whatever he had to get back at them by going public and really trying to damage the team.”

Hmmmm. Pretty tough quote to open with given that it’s coming from an anonymous source who may still be in the NFL.

In fact, I could pretty easily re-mix the piece and, with the exact same information, come up with an article whose theme is that the Patriots are trying to isolate, smear and intimidate a former employee turned whistleblower.

I’m not saying this because I believe that the Pats did anything wrong; I have no idea.

It’s just that this is a man’s reputation at stake, and this is a textbook example of bad journalism.

Phillip Boffey, a Harvard alum nearing his 50th reunion, writes in the Times on the controversy involving Harvard basketball.

The biggest puzzle is whether Harvard is lowering its vaunted academic standards to snare some top players. Two former assistant basketball coaches have suggested that their teams had to meet higher academic standards than the latest group of recruits. It is hard to unravel the truth, given that the information is confidential. Just trying to figure out how those standards are set seems to require a Ph.D. in mathematics.

And that’s pretty much where Mr. Boffey wraps things up.

If you too think she should disclose her tax returns, as Barack Obama has done, sign here.

(Thanks to Andrew Sullivan, where I came across this.)

Several items down, in the “Harvard: Men Not Allowed” post, Harry Lewis just wrote the italized comment below.

Since some of you asked that comments which continue a meaningful discussion be highlighted (as opposed to lost under the weight of new posts), and since Harry puts this better than I did, I’m going to post it here:

Richard is right. The analogy with Jewish students reserving a room breaks down because student organizations can’t exclude any Harvard student on the basis of race, gender, or religion. (Only recognized organizations can reserve rooms, and to get recognition your organization must have “a constitution and by-laws whose membership clause shall not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or physical disability.”) So the Jewish students group couldn’t reserve a room and exclude non-Jews from the meeting. Nor could the Black Students Assn hang a “blacks only” sign on the door when they hold their meetings. In this situation the opposite is happening. At the behest of certain students, Harvard is hanging a “women only” sign on the door of the gym during certain hours, and that seems to me a departure from Harvard’s practice since 1977, when it assumed responsibility for the nonacademic side of women’s lives and forced desegregation of all officially recognized activities [with two exceptions only: athletic teams and choral singing groups]. This exclusion has arisen through a curious alliance of religiously conservative students with the “All Genders Welcome” Women’s Center, but the same principle would be at stake here however it came about. I do understand the feelings of those who think this is a trivial compromise and no one should worry about it, but it’s a violation nonetheless of a principle that has been sustained honorably for a long time (and, at times, only with some pain, but I’ll skip those details!).