Shots in the Dark

Russell Brand testifying before a Parliamentary committee on drug policy. It’s impossible not to like this guy…

(Thanks, Gawker.)

“I just wanted to add a few facts which may inform this discussion further. The Rhodes selection committee provides no funding for individuals selected to interview to fly to their home state/state of application. This automatically screens for a certain level of socio-economic privilege — like one of my friends said ‘do poor people ever win the Rhodes?’ It is a good question to ask. Secondly there is privilege within the Ivy-Rhodes, and, in particular, the Harvard-Rhodes nexus for preparing for this pinnacle status of a fellowship. Most public schools do not have the institutional resources to facilitate student applications to these very widely respected fellowships. Indeed many students in public school systems do not even know of the deadlines. These various points are often missed when the Rhodes is elevated as a peak achievement. And by peak achievement my focus is on relativity. It is viewed by many universities, students and the press alike as an achievement more extraordinary than other fellowships (like the Marshall or Fulbright), conventional vocations (health professions, teaching, etc), or community service based lifestyles.”

-Just posted on “Why Do We Care about Rhodes Scholars?”, 11/22/11

“Florida man mistakes girlfriend for hog, shoots her”

The mistake was not actually related to her appearance. …

From Yahoo News.

And they wonder why the 99% get upset…..

In Customer Service Consulting, Disney’s Small World Is Growing.

—a story in yesterday’s New York Times.

Disney folks in demand for tips on how to be nice

—Same story, with dumbed-down headline, in the Globe.

“Scholars are people, too, and we are beginning to feel, well, if not threatened, increasingly crowded out.”

—Edmund Morris writing in yesterday’s Times about the renovation of the New York Public Library, but also, it seems to me, using the library as metaphor.

One in an occasional series of quotes from actual press releases I get sent:

Dear Richard Bradley :

Two-time Grammy nominee Sarah Kelly has come a long way in the past few years. Following the end of an abusive marriage that left her questioning her self-worth, she visited her sister in Sweden and something magical happened. Sarah found her voice again – along with a new love…

A week or so ago, I wrote a post about Harvard Law Student Matthew Schoenfeld, who was being publicized by the Harvard Law School because he is president of the Harvard Law and Business Association and because, describing himself as a survivor of child abuse, he is trying to use that organization to raise money to fight the problem of child abuse.

I wrote:

Schoenfeld has worked for Lehman Brothers, spent a summer at Goldman Sachs…and worked at 3G Capital, a multi-billion dollar hedge fund in New York best known for acquiring Burger King.

So let’s see: Guy works at Lehman, Goldman, 3G Capital, and as a research assistant for Larry Summers. And Harvard is writing articles about him—widely picked up on the web—because he raised $11,000 for Big Brothers Big Sisters?

In a story titled Harvard Law Student Overcomes Abuse and Gives Back, today’s Boston Globe essentially rewrites Harvard’s press release about Schoenfeld.

Matthew Schoenfeld was Googling himself last year to prepare for a job hunt when he saw the newspaper article. It wasn’t a local-boy-makes-good story, though it could have been.

…the newspaper article’s Schoenfeld was not a 25-year-old wunderkind. He was a scared 11-year-old child.
In vivid prose, the article, from a 1998 copy of the New York Daily News, detailed a litany of abuses that began when Schoenfeld’s parents’ marriage fell apart and ended in fights so vicious that police often intervened.

His mother - according to the newspaper’s account of his father’s court testimony - hit and shook their only child, tried to sabotage his sleepovers, and once dragged him screaming off the bench during a Little League playoff game. She was stripped of custody, a rarity in New York.

“I hadn’t thought about a lot of that stuff in years,’’ Schoenfeld said.

I’m somewhat uncomfortable raising doubts about anyone raising money for a good cause, but…the Globe’s piece does beg some questions.

Such as:

There is no way that if you Google yourself, you will turn up a New York Daily News article from 14 years ago.

I tried a bit to find that article Schoenfeld refers to finding by accident, and the only way I could was by going to the NYDN site and typing in Schoenfeld’s name.

So maybe that’s a little bit of theater, then, on his part. Not the end of the world. He wanted to point the Globe reporter to a 3rd-party source for a difficult subject while making it seem as if he’d stumbled across it by accident.

Except that the Globe then says that Schoenfeld thought:

How should he handle this piece of his past, so incongruous with his present, now that he knew it was public?

Except…you’d have to go looking really hard to find any article involving Matthew Schoenfeld and abuse, and unless he talked about it, why would anyone do that?

It’s hard not to think that Schoenfeld is using his past for public relations while trying to suggest that he’s just concerned about setting the record straight.

Point two is probably more important: The New York Daily News article really doesn’t support Schoenfeld’s claim of abuse. The gist of the NYDN article is not that Schoenfeld was abused by his mother; it’s that he was caught in a vicious tug of war in a custody battle lost by his mother.

Why?

Possibly because of some racism (Schoenfeld’s mother is Indian), and possibly, the News suggests, because the judge had a conflict of interest: Though two court-appointed experts recommended that the mother retain custody, the judge relied on a contrary report from a third expert who was simultaneously advising him in his own bitter divorce.

The other experts described Raminder glowingly and saw no reason for such a step.…

The headline of the Daily News article:

MEET RAMINDER SCHOENFELD: SHE LOST CUSTODY EVEN THOUGH TWO EXPERTS SAID SHE’S A LOVING MOM

All this sounds messy and terrible and no child should ever have to go through such an ordeal. And of course who can know what really happened? (Schoenfeld himself calls the court decision “gutsy.”)

But one thing’s for sure: The article Schoenfeld points to, and the Boston Globe relies on, as evidence of his childhood “abuse” shows no such thing.

Schoenfeld is described by his peers at HLS as a master networker, which, coming from them, is saying something. He is also, of course, Larry Summer’s researcher, and says this of Summers:

For his own part, Schoenfeld said, he had found a role model in Summers, famously intense, [sic] himself. “Larry has said that while he was at the Treasury he tried not to suck up to the people above him. His goal was to help the people below him, which I think is really smart,’’ Schoenfeld said. “Helping people in general can only help you.’’

This is a neat trick: Sucking up to Larry Summers by praising his advice that you shouldn’t suck up to the people above you. Well-played, Mr. Schoenfeld.

Schoenfeld is off to Morgan Stanley after graduation. O, the public service.

Still, one suspects we will hear his name again, which is why it’s worth pointing out some of the cracks in the foundation that is here being built.

I’m too sad even to write about this now, but until I can…

From a press release I received this morning:

PREMIERING PUBLIC TV FILMS WITH NIALL FERGUSON, DONALD TRUMP, LARRY SILVERSTEIN, EARTH DAY WITH NATURE AND MORE…..

Civilization: The West and The Rest with Niall Ferguson (May 22 and 29, 2012) - Six apps that made the West the master of the modern word based on Ferguson’s internationally acclaimed book. Book is available upon request. Limited quantities.

In addition to the two Harvard affiliations Ferguson lists on his Harvard webpage, he also lists affiliations with Oxford, Stanford and Muzzy Lane Software, which promotes “game-based learning”—or, as we who are not making money off it say, “video games.” He also writes for the Financial Times and Newsweek, and is co-founder of a company that makes historical documentaries.

It’s amazing, the productivity of these Harvard professors.

More seriously: The amount of outside activity undertaken for profit by Harvard professors at the expense of their commitment to teaching is something that Drew Faust could try to reform…if she weren’t making $300, 000 a year by serving on the board of Staples.

As a wise man once said, “So it goes.”