Shots in the Dark

Billy Joel invites a music student onstage to play “A New York State of Mind” with him. Absolutely wonderful.

In one of the clearest narratives of the Harvard email scandal that I’ve read, the Washington Post’s Bonnie Goldstein points out that both the “cheaters” in Harvard’s “Introduction to Congress” class and the deans who violated Harvard policy in their conduct of espionage may have been tripped up by confusing regulations in both instances. (That’s a charitable view about the deans, but assume that it’s true for now.)

Yet only the students will suffer any material consequences for their actions.

Reminding the world that dean of undergraduate education Jay Harris called the cheating scandal a “teaching opportunity,” Goldstein writes,

As with the students of the government class, the administrators did something they were trusted not to. Carefully worded apologies notwithstanding, in the spirit of taking the high road, would it be too harsh to sanction the people who made the bad decision? [Blogger: That’s FAS dean Michael Smith and Harvard College dean Evelynn Hammonds.] To take advantage of a “teaching opportunity,” maybe a short suspension as an example to others would broaden the “conversation of academic integrity.”

Of course this will never happen. But…why not? The lack of any consequences for these deans’ actions invites cynicism and a loss of confidence about Harvard’s moral grounding. [The deans’ mealy apology did more damage than good.)

Shouldn’t Harvard’s deans be held to—at the very least—the same standards of integrity Harvard asks of its students?

Two really nice pieces in the Times in recent days: this profile of Ted Kennedy Jr. by Mark Leibovich, which is somewhat unconventional in its methodology but really does give you a sense of the conundrum of being Teddy’s son; and today’s story about how the NRA has successfully fought attempts to take guns away from abusive husbands—and how many women have been killed as a result.

Make that three nice pieces of reporting: I was fascinated by this article on how the new pope can’t escape the lingering consequences of the Catholic Church’s complicity with the Argentinean military dictatorship in the 1970s…

After a previous military coup in Argentina in 1930, the church forged a role as a spiritual guide for the armed forces. By the time military rule was established again in the 1970s, their operations overlapped to the point where some bishops were provided soldiers as personal servants in their palaces, and only a handful of bishops publicly condemned the dictatorship’s repression….

Pope Francis was not one of them.

Sheryl Sandberg on Michael Lewis, in Thursday’s New York Times:

Michael Lewis’s ability to boil down the most complicated subjects is like a magic trick. You can’t believe your eyes. He takes on important issues — from the 2008 Wall Street crash in “The Big Short” to parenting in “Home Game” — and breaks them down to their deepest truths. His combination of an extraordinary analytical mind and a deep understanding of human nature allows him to weave together data and events to offer a fresh and insightful narrative. Whatever the topic, the result is always compelling and even thrilling. I am in awe of him.

And Michael Lewis on Sheryl Sandberg, in the April Vanity Fair:

Sheryl Sandberg is one of those people who attract more attention than they want. [Blogger: I guess she didn’t really want to go on 60 Minutes or appear on the cover of Time or pose for Vogue.] If she were a man, no one would think twice about her career: McKinsey consultant, chief of staff to U.S. Treasury secretary Larry Summers, head of one of Google’s biggest businesses, and now chief operating officer of Facebook. Those are the sorts of jobs that people who finish at the top of their Harvard Business School class wind up in. Alas, Sheryl Sandberg is not a man, and so her career is not just a bunch of jobs she happens to have held but a social statement.

…Some women will be annoyed by Sandberg’s challenge, but I’ll bet most will be thrilled by it. And I suspect at least a few men will read this book and think, Oh no, they’re starting to catch on.

Sometimes it is a very small world….

A “MAN-ifesto” advocating ” a future in which women will finally get to work twice as hard as men, and men will finally get to “Lean Back (and Relax!).”

…but he’s still a bigot!

This from a letter he wrote against an Argentinian proposal to legalize gay marriage:

Let us look towards Saint Joseph, to Mary, the Child, and let us ask with fervor that they will defend the Argentine family in this moment. Let us recall what God himself told his people in a time of great anguish: “this war is not yours, but God’s”. That they may succour, defend, and accompany us in this war of God.

A war of God, eh?

One wishes the media would stop buying the spin—the new guy is humble! He’s from the South!—and get to the main point. While there are stylistic differences between him and Ratzinger, and some of these will surely have some consequences, nonetheless, Bergoglio is a 76-year-old man with no doctrinal differences between himself and the rest of the Catholic hardliners. He is the Marco Rubio of Catholic dogmatists.

Then there are those lingering questions about his role and the Church’s complicity during the Argentinean dictatorship and disappearances of the 1970s…

I haven’t seen anyone write about this yet, but I would love to hear an informed take on what it means that, to follow a pope who just retired from old age, the Catholic church just picked a 76-year-old….

That’s Depeche Mode on David Letterman.

(Sorry about the Sony crap that you may be forced to watch for a few seconds.)

More than some of the posters below, I think that the statements residential dean Sharon Howell made to the Boston Globe are a bombshell. In effect, she’s saying that Michael Smith and Evelynn Hammonds lied when they said that the residential deans were told to expect an investigation of their email and that she was quickly told of the e-spionage after it occurred.

According to the Globe [emphasis added],

[Howell] emphasized that at the time she was approaching the other resident deans, no administrator had raised the possibility of searching e-mail accounts, much less said definitively that a search would occur.

The Smith and Hammonds statement also said that Howell “was immediately informed of the search, and its outcome” shortly after the fact, a point Howell disputed vigorously. She reiterated her earlier statement to the Globe that administrators did not tell her, “verbally or otherwise,” that the search had happened until last week. She did learn of it before then, she added, but only because the dean who forwarded the e-mail had confided in her.

There’s no way to sugarcoat it: Someone here is lying.

Hmmm. Let’s see. Is it the residential dean who doesn’t have job security and is standing up for a matter of principle and spoke openly to the press for what she thinks is right? Or is it the two deans who spied on people’s email, didn’t tell them about it although university policy mandated that they do so, and have since hidden behind legalese and press releases, not daring to speak an un-lawyered word?

I know who I’m betting on.

Michael Mitzenmacher and Greg Morrisett, according to the Globe, think all this is “overblown.” Their reasoning seems to be that we should take the deans’ explanation of what happened at face value.

Serious question: Why?

Two of the highest-ranking officials at Harvard initiated a Nixon-esque investigation to determine the source of a leak, and appear to have lied to cover it up.

How much worse does it have to get before this becomes a big deal?

And finally, in terms of the university’s reputation, it’s already a big deal. Just Google “Harvard email.” You’ll see.

Faust’s statement further said that she had been ­informed in September of a ­potential breach in confidentiality surrounding the school disciplinary board’s handling of the cheating case and was also told the concern had been ­resolved, but was not ­“informed of specifics.”

A claim that doesn’t pass the smell test…

Thanks, Boston Globe.

Depeche Mode have announced their US tour dates…