Shots in the Dark

The New York Times reports that Berkeley has joined EdX, the online education project started by MIT and Harvard. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that while Berkeley won’t be investing in the project—Harvard and MIT have kicked in $30 million apiece—it will contribute “a new online education platform” that engineers at Berkeley have been developing.

I’m fascinated by the evolution of this, because I really don’t have a sense of the point of online education or where it’s going. Why give away intellectual property for free? (Well, for free so far.) That spreads your brand, I guess, but does it really help the brand, or does it cheapen it? How good is the quality of online education? My intuition would be that it doesn’t compare to the classroom experience, but I have to admit, this is based on the fact that I once tried to take a course online and quickly grew way too distracted to keep “attending.” If EdX eventually gives degrees of some sort, doesn’t that devalue a Harvard diploma? Or are universities just doing it because everyone else is doing it, and they’re afraid they’ll be the last one standing when the music stops?

Here’s an example: One of the two courses Harvard now offers at EdX is CS50, basically, intro computer science. It tells students that they will have to do eight problem sets requiring 15-20 hours of work apiece. That’s a lot of hours. If you complete the work successfully-how on earth would anyone know if you’re cheating?—you’ll get “an honor code certificate from HarvardX.”

Whee! Exciting! You can cheat to pass, but you’ll still get “an honor code certificate.”

I’d be genuinely interested to hear Drew Faust lay out an extended vision for online education, but most of what she has said goes like this snippet, quoted by Harvard magazine:

…Faust focused on the “unprecedented opportunity to dramatically extend our collective reach by conducting groundbreaking research into effective education and by extending online access to higher quality education…in a way that benefits our students, our peers, and people across the nation and the globe.”

That’s interesting. Oh, wait—it isn’t. I just fell asleep. But I think Faust is saying that online education is good because it helps Harvard learn more about online education. And it’s good for students and stuff “around the globe.”

Despite all the highfalutin’ rhetoric, EdX is probably just a way to make money by giving people a taste of free, then up-sellling them—like an app and an upgrade. Basically, in other words, it’s the Extension School online. And the Extension School is…you know…kind of a joke. (I should know—I once taught there.)

But you can get a diploma from it that says Harvard, and I’ve seen people out in the workforce proudly touting their Harvard diplomas which, on closer examination, turn out to be Harvard Extension School diplomas. And this is good for Harvard why?

It’s not the main point, but one of the reactions I had when hearing about the victims or near-victims of Aurora, Colorado, was: Who brings a three-month-old baby to a midnight showing of Batman?

It’s inappropriate for several reasons. It’s incredibly inconsiderate to the other patrons, and it’s unhealthy for the baby. Three-month-olds should be asleep at midnight; if they aren’t, they’re probably crying, feeding, or needing a diaper, none of which should be happening in a movie theater. (What movie theater allows people to bring a baby to a midnight movie? All of them, I suspect.)

More important, Batman is a violent, scary film. It’s nuts to think that taking your baby to Batman is acceptable behavior.

None of which means that you or your baby deserve to be shot. Of course not. (And thank God the baby’s wound wasn’t fatal.) But it is worth pointing out that just as there’s a delusion in thinking you’re the Joker and that you want to sew chaos—if that is, in fact, what inspired James Holmes—there’s also a delusion in thinking that popular culture is so important, you have to a) not only see the first possible showing, but b) take your baby to it. Ultimately, bringing a baby to a violent midnight movie is just selfish; it’s saying, I want to see this movie so much, screw what’s good for my kid. Must…see…Batman…opening…night! My need to indulge my escapist fantasy is more important than the needs of my baby or the hundreds of other people in the theater who want to see the movie without being interrupted by a crying infant.

In other words, the audience and the killer have some things in common. It’s just that the killer is a bit further down the mental ladder. He’s at the point where his narcissism is so great, his escapist fantasy means taking other people’s lives.

A number of ostensibly feminist writers have decried those of us who think it’s wrong to bring a baby to a midnight showing of Batman. Or any showing of Batman. Or any movie, period.

On the Huffington Post, Lisa Belkin writes an absolutely incoherent defense of bringing children to movies called “Stop Wondering Why There Were Young Children at the Aurora Theater.”

My own 18-year-old son was at a midnight showing in our neighborhood, and when he was much younger I took him and his brother more than once to the midnight release of Harry Potter books as special treats. I also let them stay up until midnight when they were very young to ring in New Year’s Eve.

Belkin’s argument seems to be that people are blaming the parents for the shooting; so far as I can tell, that’s not the case. That would be a stupid argument.

But at the same time, we are sometimes too reluctant in our society to point out bad manners and bad behavior, or to consider the myriad acts that may stem from those phenomena. Did James Holmes’ parents contribute to his mental illness through some form of abuse? Probably not, but we don’t know. Could bringing a baby to a midnight showing of Batman begin a progression of mental disturbance or violent fantasies in a child’s mind? Doubt it, but I don’t know—and if these people’s subsequent parenting shows similar lack of judgment, then who’s to say? Their kid could grow up to be mentally troubled. Crazier stuff has happened. The child brought to Batman at midnight as a three-month-old might one day become a James Holmes in his own particular way.

We want to think that we and the killer are fundamentally different; that we are “normal,” and he is an “other.” Yet as I look around at the people who lose themselves so completely in mass popular entertainment that they seem to prefer fantasy to reality—look at all the devotees of Comic Con, for example, wandering around in their Batman masks or Wonder Woman outfits as if reality should be fantasy—I wonder: How great are the differences really?

“You know, soothing words are nice, but maybe it’s time that the two people who want to be president of the United States stand up and tell us what they are going to do about [guns], because this is obviously a problem across the country.”

—New York Mayor Bloomberg, talking guns and Colorado. This is one issue he’s consistently been right on.

It’s impossible not to be angry and devastated by what happened in Colorado last night. So perhaps you’ll forgive my reaction to this statement released by the family of James Holmes, the killer:

Our hearts go out to those who were involved in this tragedy and to the families and friends of those involved. We ask that the media respect our privacy during this difficult time. Our family is cooperating with authorities in both San Diego, California and Aurora, Colorado. We are still trying to process this information and we appreciate that people will respect our privacy.

To which I say: Fuck you. Because first or all, people weren’t “involved in this tragedy.” They were wounded or murdered. And while this may be a tragedy, that word sounds like a euphemism coming from the killer’s family; you should say something more honest, like, “this horrible act of mass murder.” And because finally, your son or sibling just murdered 12 people, wounded 50, and traumatized hundreds of others. Your privacy is exactly the least important thing at this particular moment. So go ahead and “process this information.” But don’t expect a lot of privacy-respecting from the rest of the world while you do it.

The Huffington Post reports that Harvard’s David Gergen went on CNN to say what a great company Bain is, and how the White House is “way off-base” in criticizing the company—without disclosing that he was on Bain’s payroll for this and that multiple times. He also tweets nicely about Bain here.

And by the way-you won’t find anything about his relationship with Bain on Gergen’s Harvard webpage. Aren’t Harvard profs supposed to disclose that stuff? (But you will find Gergen arguing here about the importance of transparency in money in politics.)

Gergen eventually disclosed his conflict of interest here.

In the Washington Post, Kathleen Parker—no dummy herself—argues that they/we have.

She is particularly concerned about…

….rising generations who have spent a frightening percentage of their lives consuming data in a random world of tweets, blogs and food-fight commentators, for whom fame is a goal and reality a show? Once accustomed to such high-velocity infotainment, how does one develop tolerance for the harder reads and the deeper conversations?

Parker’s right: There’s a legitimate concern here. While social media may stimulate some kinds of intelligence, there’s no question but that it diminishes attention span, and I think it often seems to have a kind of neutering effect on critical thinking. (I envision all those people, wandering the streets of New York, staring into their phones, texting banalities to their friends. Might they once have been lost in…you know…thought?)

Also, time is finite, and all the time we spend texting and surfing and tweeting and, yes, blogging must come from somewhere; inevitably some of it comes from time we might once have spent reading and thinking and having actual conversations, rather than the exchange of pop culture trivia that now passes for discussion.

And speaking of pop culture—I remember, on seeing the Matrix for the first time a decade or so ago, thinking how powerfully relevant it was to modern life—the metaphor of all these people essentially sleepwalking through life, artificially fed and stimulated and wholly manipulated—and sometimes, even when they were aware of that, preferring to live in such a condition. Now, in a world of constant diversion, aren’t we even closer to living in the Matrix?

Larry Summers argues in a Reuters column on how to address income inequality [emphasis added]:

Parents always seek to help their children, and it is not realistic to think that privileged parents will do differently. But there is no reason why the estate tax should dwindle relative to the economy at the same time that great fortunes are increasingly dominant. Nor should tax planning techniques that are de facto tax cuts only for those with millions of dollars of income and tens of millions in wealth continue to be legal. It is not realistic to expect that schools and universities that depend on charitable contributions will not be attentive to offspring of their supporters. Perhaps, though, the custom could be established that for each “legacy slot” room would be made for one “opportunity slot”.

I’m no expert on this–though sometimes I wonder if LHS is—but are “legacy slots” and “opportunity slots” really so clearly defined? Are there no applicants to “legacy slots” who might otherwise get in? Or is Larry Summers giving away a long-held bias of his—the belief that alumni kids are, as a general matter, otherwise unqualified (which is to say, unqualified)?

Just one of the multiple reasons that LHS was primed to despise the Winklevosses, by the way…

Is this really the best idea that the former president of Harvard can devise to address unequal access to elite higher education? Because it’s pretty glib… (Or perhaps it was written by ghostwriter Matthew Schoenfeld?)

(Thanks to Harry Lewis for pointing this out in a comment below.)

From Lawrence Lessig, writing for TheAtlantic.com:

A tiny number of Americans — .26 percent — give more than $200 to a congressional campaign. .05 percent give the maximum amount to any congressional candidate. .01 percent give more than $10,000 in any election cycle. And .000063 percent — 196 Americans — have given more than 80 percent of the super-PAC money spent in the presidential elections so far.

.000063 percent have given 80% of super-PAC dollars. That can’t be good….

And then divide that number in half—assuming that those monies have gone roughly equally to each candidate, which probably isn’t true, but for the sake of argument—and consider that the winner of this election will owe a lot to a very, very small group of people.

When chatting with a colleague today, I had the occasion to quote Bob Dole, which is always good clean fun, and it inspired me to go back and watch this video of him on Larry King Live during the 1988 campaign. (Note to Larry: never, ever wear that sweater again.)

It’s fascinating to see a member of what is now a dying breed—moderate Republicans—respond to interview questions. He gives genuine answers and doesn’t dodge the questions; the level of bullshit is almost nonexistent. He’s also quite funny. (I love his line about Dukakis and the eye chart.) And he says of his opponents—both Republican and Democratic—that they are good guys and smart in a tone which suggests that he actually means it, and that it’s no big deal to accord them such respect.

Watch the interview—and then compare to Mitt Romney. Hard to think of a clearer contrast between honesty and dishonesty.

The Harvard Law grad continues his suck-uppy ways!

Schoenfeld has an op-ed in today’s Journal called “Air Jordan and the 1%.” In it, Schoenfeld makes one of the most bizarre arguments to justify growth in income inequity that you’ll ever stumble across: That the enormous salaries of elite basketball players such as Michael Jordan raised salaries for their teammates, whereas if you redistributed the income of the NBA’s Michael Jordans to other players, everyone would suffer, and that this principle holds true for society at large:

…top players would be disincentivized to play for the team in the future, knowing that such repossession could also happen to them. And without an objective measure of overall player performance, the team could one day decide that even a high-performing player was overcompensated and therefore should see some of his proceeds redistributed to his teammates. The team would quickly become uncompetitive.

In other words, the poor should actually be grateful to the super-rich, for making them try harder.

There are lots of ways to address this argument, whether on a micro- or macro- level, but I would just point out that the NBA has a salary cap, meaning that, in effect, the more money today’s Michael Jordans make, the less their teammates get paid. So the analogue that Schoenfeld is using to demonstrate the virtues of a free market society is not itself a free market.

Schoenfeld does points out that the 1% shouldn’t completely forget about the poor.

Certainly there are reasons for concern if lower-income Americans aren’t able to save or acquire sufficient capital to pursue innovative ideas, or to see their children attend decent schools. They will suffer, and the country will lose out on significant intellectual capital and growth opportunities. But this should not be confused with inequality.

Yes. The foremost threat to lower-income Americans is that they aren’t able to acquire sufficient capital to pursue innovative ideas. On the question of whether they have enough money to buy groceries, pay their rent and go to the doctor from time to time, we should not worry too much, because inequality is healthy—just ask Michael Jordan’s teammates.

What planet exactly does Mr. Schoenfeld live on?

Now, all this is, of course, suck-uppy to the investment banks which Schoenfeld hopes to work for. But here’s the most egregious suck-up in the piece: He quotes Larry Summers, for whom he worked (works?) writing speeches.

“From the time of Pericles until the end of the 18th century in London—2,300 years,” notes Harvard Prof. Lawrence Summers, “standards of living on Earth increased perhaps 100%.” In the U.S. since 1790, by contrast, real per capita gross domestic product has increased nearly 4,000%.

Set aside the merits of such clever thinking for one moment. In the interest of intellectual honesty, shouldn’t you at least mention that you are quoting the guy who paid/pays you to write stuff for him?

You should!

But Schoenfeld—and the Journal—don’t. And as a result, we think that Schoenfeld is impartially quoting an expert whom he happens to think made a good point, as opposed to making his former/current employer look good in print.

Oh, the cheesiness of it all.

When last I wrote about Schoenfeld, some people thought I was being too tough on someone who wasn’t a public figure (not a prominent one, anyway). Well, now he’s writing in praise of the 1 % in the Wall Street Journal in a way that almost completely negates any concepts of community and social responsibility. I’m not sure I was tough enough.