Shots In The Dark
Please, Make Him Stop
Fabricator Jayson Blair
has written a column for
bp, a magazine for people with bipolar disorder. (Blair, you will remember, was the
New York Times reporter who plagiarized other people's work and claimed to be reporting from places he'd never even visited.)
In the past, Blair has blamed racism for his downfall at the
Times. Now he says it's because he suffers from bipolar disorder. This strikes me as an insult to people who really are the victims of racism or bipolar disorder.
I don't believe that journalists who make mistakes should be driven from the business forever, doomed to life as a publicist or monk. I'm glad that former
New Republic plagiarist Ruth Shalit has been given
a second chance, and I was willing to be open-minded about former New Republic (and George) fabricator Stephen Glass when he returned with a novel,
The Fabulist. But still...would it be so hard to say, "I was young and incredibly ambitious, and I responded by lying and making things up"?
Apparently, yes. Better to blame the disease.
Harvard Rules...in the Wall Street Journal
Michael Steinberger, a senior correspondent for the American Prospect, has a piece in today's Wall Street Journal on
why Harvard gets so much ink. He mentions
Harvard Rules and Ross Douthat's
Privilege, of course, as examples of the media paying attention to Harvard. But before launching into his explanation, he first argues that Harvard doesn't deserve all the attention it gets.
According to Steinberger, Harvard:
--doesn't produce presidents the way it used to
--doesn't produce business leaders very often, and when it does, they underperform businesspeople from other schools
--doesn't lead in technological innovation
--it isn't as intellectually influential as it used to be
In short, "Harvard is diminishing in importance as a factory for ideas and a breeding ground for future leaders."
But what do you really think, Mr. Steinberger?
Well, apparently he thinks that the prevalence of Harvard grads in the media (he's not one) helps explain the media's attention to Harvard.
Sometimes, certainly. Another reason, I think, is the name brand quality of the university. A third reason is that the university is still excellent in so many ways.
But say for the sake of argument that Steinberger's right about Harvard's diminishing centrality. The question then becomes, is Larry Summers' presidency addressing these issues?
And I don't ask that question rhetorically... It is, really, Harvard's most important question, and I don't think there's a simple yes or no answer.
The Harvard AIDS Scandal--400 Dead?
The Crimson estimates today that up to 400 people may have died while waiting for AIDS drugs from Harvard—drugs that never reached them, because Larry Summers delayed the purchase of those drugs for five months after Harvard received grant money from the federal government.
As reporter May Habib puts it, "Mass Hall delayed the funding until it imposed a structure that placed more administrative control over the grant in the hands of University officials."
For "University officials," you can substitute the words "Larry Summers."
(Come to think of it, you can substitute "Larry Summers" for the words "Mass Hall," too, so that the sentence should really read: "Larry Summers delayed the funding until he imposed a structure that placed more administrative control over the grant in the hands of Larry Summers.")
But Summers has done a remarkable job of distancing himself from this story. He's never been quoted (that I've seen) on any aspect of it. Instead, he's gotten provost Stephen Hyman and even Corporation member Jamie Houghton to speak to the press. He even has his new spokesman, someone named John Longbrake, speaking on the record. Everyone but the ultimate authority.
As I've noted before, Hyman has given a multiplicity of excuses to explain the five-month delay, one of which directly contradicts a quote from Jamie Houghton, the Corporation's senior fellow.
This Crimson article adds yet another: "Hyman has said that the University was concerned that anti-retroviral drugs purchased through the grant...would end up on the black market and that patients who began treatment would have to stop because of shortages or supply chain problems."
So...the logical option is just to let them die?
The most heartbreaking thing about this article is the plaintive quality of the quotes from those who had hands-on contact with the African patients. "They basically held us hostage," Nigerian program director Robert Murphy said of Mass Hall. "They didn't draw down on the funds, they delayed until the very end...."
Meanwhile, many of the health care workers in Nigeria were working without pay for months because Harvard wouldn't initiate the program...but they knew that without their help, people would die.
This One's for the Birds
How can you not love
this story? An ivory-billed woodpecker, thought to be extinct for 60 years, is spotted deep in an Arkansas swamp. Naturalists keep the sighting secret for a year while they work to confirm the sighting. And—good heavens—Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, who's generally more interested in pillaging the environment than protecting it, announces that the government is going to contribute ten million bucks to preserving land for the bird.
We will always need wonder and mystery in life, and a story like this helps make us feel that, as much as we've trashed the planet, perhaps there's still hope left. Here's my favorite quote:
<<"Frank Gill, former president of the National Audubon Society, said of the news, "You get so depressed by the state of things, to suddenly have this happen in your backyard" is wonderful, "just the thought that there are places in the world still—deep wilderness—harboring a secret like this.">>
Well said, Mr. Gill.
The Harvard AIDS Scandal, Cont'd.
In John Donnelly's April 24 Boston Globe piece on the AIDS scandal at Harvard, provost Stephen Hyman gave this explanation for why the university waited five months after receiving a federal grant before beginning to purchase AIDS drugs for dying Africans:
<<"One major concern for Summers and members of the Joint Committee of Inspections, a Harvard audit board, was whether the US government or patients could sue Harvard for any perceived future problems, Hyman said. In 2000, the US government had sued Harvard for alleged misuse of federal funds in a development grant in Russia. 'That lawsuit sensitized [Larry Summers] enormously for the need for Harvard to do this right,' Hyman said.">>
But just three days before that, on April 21, Corporation senior fellow Jamie Houghton told the Crimson something very different.
<<...James R. Houghton '58 said the University's actions on the Kanki grant were not related to the HIID investigation [of Harvard in Russia]. "It was a large grant that we just felt in that part of that world needed controls," Houghton said. "I don't think that that's an abridgement of academic freedom at all.">>
Well, gentlemen—which is it? A "major concern" or a non-issue? If you're going to craft a message to explain this tragic inaction, everyone involved has to stick to it. Otherwise, it looks like you're not telling the truth.
Regardless of whatever impact the HIID fiasco had, one can't help but wonder: If those people dying of AIDS happened to live in, say, Boston, instead of Africa, would Harvard have waited for five months before purchasing medicine that could have saved their lives?
One suspects that legal concerns, if any actually existed, would probably have mattered less if it it were white Americans who were dying, rather than black Africans.
Allston and Science, Part 2
Perhaps I was too glib before. Because the more I look at the Task Force on Science and Technology Report, the more I think it requires careful annotation. Turns out there's another between-the-lines implication that I missed at first glance: the further centralization of power in the hands of Larry Summers.
It works like this: the task force issued a "call for ideas" to the Harvard community, with a particular emphasis on proposals that cut across several schools and departments. (And here's a wonderful line:) "Meritorious proposals with a scope no greater than a single existing department were referred back to the relevant school."
What a lovely way of saying "rejected out of hand."
So only cross-departmental or -school proposals were considered. Aside from whatever intellectual merits this may have, it also promotes the dismantling of Harvard's every-tub-on-its-own-bottom structure and centralizes decision-making.
By making future projects cut across departments and schools, the individual department chairs and school deans become less powerful, and Larry Summers accrues more...especially since he'll be the one doling out the real estate. Those proposals, chairs, and deans which please him will get space. Those which don't...won't.
Tricky, eh? Larry Summers must have learned this tactic while back at Treasury, sneaking things through Congress by burying them in pages of legislation too numerous or boring for most people to read...
Schadenfreude, Part 2
Time's Matt Cooper, still going through legal hell trying to protect his sources,
has dumped lawyer Floyd Abrams. Not that Matt cares, but I couldn't be more delighted. Abrams is—you heard it here first—a pompous, overrated hired gun, more interested in getting his name in the papers than being a careful and good lawyer. (Go ahead, Floyd, sue me.)
I have some firsthand experience here; Abrams once delivered an unhelpful opinion on a legal matter I was involved with, despite a blatant (and unacknowledged by him) conflict of interest.
Since then, though, I've paid some attention to what Abrams really does—primarily, coast on his reputation from his long-ago glory days as a guy who truly believed in freedom of the press. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Matt Cooper had discovered the same thing.
A Little Spinach with Your Pop Culture
Meanwhile, back at Harvard, the university "Task Force on Science and Technology" has released a report on the development of the Allston campus. It's too dry for me to sum up, so I'll just quote the
Crimson's article today:
" A Harvard task force will recommend today that future Allston development be anchored around two science complexes of 500,000 square feet each, in which faculty from different fields will work collaboratively on several broad areas of interdisciplinary research."
The twelve-page document has a lot of filler, with lines like, "The Task Force found extraordinary variety in the subject, scale, and organization of research being conducted at the University." (Shocked, shocked.)
But between the lines, the implications of this report for Harvard are fascinating and profound. First, the projects it advocates will require staggering sums of money—in the billions of dollars, surely. Brace yourselves, Harvard alums—you know what's coming. But it will be interesting to see if the university develops new fundraising methods, and particularly closer partnerships with the private sector, to pay for all this.
Second, and perhaps most important, if anything like these proposals get built, the identity of Harvard will change fundamentally; it really will look a lot like MIT. From all I can tell, the Allston development includes no new growth for the humanities. So consider all the science that would be conducted on both sides of the Charles, and you can see that the identity of Harvard would become primarily that of a science and technology-oriented research university.
With particular emphasis, I should add, on the word university. This massive science complex would primarily engage graduate students, post-docs, and scientists. The importance of Harvard College—the sense that it is the university's crown jewel—would surely diminish.
The plot thickens, doesn't it?
The World's Most Annoying Trend
Pop-up ads that make noise, like the buzzing of a fly or the clicking of a camera shutter. Yes, ad geniuses, they get your attention—and make you instantly click away from the page that contains them.
(No link here, but don't worry: they'll find you.)
Sometimes I Get Out of My Apartment
Last night I was invited to the opening of a new downtown boutique called...
Butik. I wish I could say that I was invited because of my great friendship with its owner,
Danish model Helena Christensen, whom you may remember from the Chris Isaak video "Wicked Game," but no—a friend was organizing the event.
The long and narrow store is at 605 Hudson Street, but I could tell when I was getting close because of the crowd of smokers standing around outside. (Fashionistas are one of smoking's last holdouts in New York, perhaps the last upmarket profession where people still consider it chic to puff away.) Inside was a bar serving apple martinis and bottled water. The place was so crowded, I picked a spot and tried not to be moved.
I am a terrible guest at such things, because mostly I just stand around and gawk. But truth be told, there was a lot to gawk at, especially for someone who works from home most of the day. At 36—decrepit by model standards—Ms. Christensen is still stunning, and for a while she was standing with
Iman greeting guests. (A gay man next to me was obsessed with Iman's voice, so I encouraged him to introduce himself. "I loved her in 'Out of Africa,'" he raved.) Every other guest seemed to be a model, which has the effect of making one realize just how much one does not. Even the men were models...or guys who looked like they make so much money, they don't need to be handsome to date models, which is another well-defined New York genre.
As for the merchandise...I couldn't see very much of it—some wrought iron chairs, a couple of old skirts—but from what I could see, it looked like a lot of stuff that I've thrown away over the years. (Well, not the skirts.) Nonetheless, I am told these
objets d'art are very glam right now. If you're in the market for it, and price is no object—or if you just hope to catch a peak of Helena Christensen—you could do worse than dropping by Butik.
After about half an hour, Iman left, and the spell was broken. I pushed my way through the crowd, past a harried waiter holding a tray of salmon tartare above his head while a horde of men clambered hungrily through the door. (Question: What kind of hors d'oeuvre do you serve a room full of models. Answer: No thank you, I'm not hungry right now.)
"I admire you for that," I told him. He winced and said, "It's not a very admirable position."
On finally getting outside, I passed a group of four men who looked like investment bankers just as one was saying, "Show me the money—I couldn't agree more. Show me the money.
Show me the money."
New York! It's a great city.
More Proof That Karma Does Exist
Katie
Couric's troubles continue. She's less popular than Diane Sawyer! Everyone seems to think that she's gotten too big for her britches. Morning TV watcher Bill Kauzlarich of Farmington, Ill. tells USA Today, "I'm a big fan of Katie (love those legs and heels), but she sure seems full of herself." While Shirley White of Birmingham, Mich., adds, "Katie's style has evolved into a know-it-all interviewer who constantly speaks over her guests and at times comes off abrasive."
Those of you who've known me for some time will understand if I pause to enjoy a moment of schadenfreude....
Bye-Bye Bolton
There are times when a White House nomination gets blocked or otherwise derailed for all the wrong reasons—silly controversy, meaningless personal foibles, partisan bickering. What's happening to the Bolton nomination isn't one of those times.
As the Senate expands its investigation of him, Bolton is twisting in the wind for all the right reasons. By temperament, he's not the right man for a diplomatic job; and as a longtime foe of the United Nations—not just critic, but foe—his nomination is an insult to that body. Moreover, he's driven by ideology rather than by judgment, and don't we have enough of that in this country as it is?
Bolton's nomination is toast. And if you're sensing that I'm happy about that, you're absolutely right.
It all makes me think that humility—as opposed to the arrogance of the people trying to thrust this noxious character down our throats—is really an underrated public virtue.
In Defense of Vomit
That's the headline on
this Crimson column in defense of the protester at the CIA/Department of Homeland Security recruitment talk who made himself throw up into a bag, thereby bringing much opprobrium on the protesters and just generally grossing everyone out.
Key graf: "Like most people, I am uncomfortable with vomit. But what made the CIA/DHS protest so brilliantly inappropriate is exactly that it was so inappropriate. The vomit jolted students into paying attention. ...Vomit may not be pretty, but vomit works."
I, too, am uncomfortable with vomit, although as a former college student, I'm mildly familiar with it. So rather than go out on a limb and take an opinion on this important issue, I leave it up to you to decide....
Cornel of the South
Here's one review of a recent Cornel West speech at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.
Key quote: "Anyone who came out to hear West would have found a patriotic and deeply religious man talking about democracy as a spiritual imperative in a way that is refreshingly - at times even jarringly - inclusive."
West had an audience of about 1,000....or about 300 more than Maureen Dowd when she visited UNCG.
Appeal to a popular audience is hardly the only measure of an academic's worth—although it does seem to be one that Larry Summers generally values—and it's certainly not the most important measure, but still, I wonder: Is there any current Harvard professor who could travel to the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and draw a crowd of 1,000 people?
Which is not to slight Harvard professors, but merely to suggest that the banishment of Cornel West is a deep and ongoing loss for Harvard.
Come Back! Come Back!
This report by the Computing Research Association warns of a drop in the number of undergraduates interested in majoring in computer science. The drop applies to both genders, but it's particularly dramatic among women. Between 2000 and 2004, the number of men planning to major in comp sci declined 60 percent; between 1988 and 2004 (don't ask me why the dates are different), the number of women declined 80 percent.
Key quote: "The furor over recent remarks by Harvard University president Lawrence Summers about women's alleged inability to understand science is whispered to be making things worse."
There's no evidence presented for that claim, and I'm sure it would be nearly impossible to prove, but I'd like to see some substantiation.
Bottom line: "The number of total incoming freshmen last fall who felt they would probably major in computer science was just less than 1.5 percent of all enrolled freshmen."
I don't know if that number applies to Harvard. I do know that Larry Summers has pushed for the elimination of humanities departments with such low levels of interest....
Following the Money
Here's one Harvard alum, John J. Christman, class of 1955, who's so upset about the goings-on at Harvard that
he's cutting off his checks to his alma mater and skipping his 50th reunion.
(Hmmmm...a member of the Harvard class of 1955 panned my book in the LA Times. Must be a cantankerous bunch.)
The unusual thing about this man is that he's not stopping giving because he's mad at Summers; he's stopping because he's ticked at the faculty.
Key graf: "The recent disrespectful antics of the Harvard faculty toward president Lawrence Summers have just turned me off completely. I know of only one way to get this situation turned around. That is for the alumni to shut off the money spigot."
Christman goes on to say, "This conclusion has not come to me recently. I have been disaffected since the nonsense of the 1960s was allowed to get totally out of control. The recent actions are only a manifestation of the fact that the inmates have taken over the asylum. The present faculty and fellow travelers are just the students of the 1960s who forced the university to do away with ROTC and establish such nonsensical courses as women's studies, black studies, etc."
Really, you can't make this stuff up.
Of course, Mr. Christman's decision to stop contributing to Harvard will probably hurt the president he wants to support....
Pushing a Snowball Down a Hill
The UK publication Medical News Today
picks up the story of the Harvard AIDS scandal. But where are two logical outlets, the New York Times and the Washington Post? The Times should cover the story because of its inherent importance, and the Post has a local angle—how a university mismanaged a government grant, delaying its implentation in contravention of the terms of the grant—and how, according to AIDS doctors in Africa, people died as a result.
Come on, guys. Get in the game. This story is objectively more important than the women-in-science controversy, and just think of all the newsprint you devoted to that....
Another Shameless Plug
Saw another powerful, well-made documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival today: "The Brooklyn Connection," directed by Klaartje Quirijns. The film tells the story of Florin Krasniqui, a Kosovar Albanian living in Brooklyn. Almost singlehandedly, Krasniqui equipped and armed the Kosovo Liberation Army in its war against Serbia—and he did it all legally, buying thousands of guns in the United States and putting them on planes to Albania, where the arms were smuggled over the border into Kosovo.
I once spent some time in Kosovo and wrote a piece about life there after the NATO bombing of Serb troops. It's a dangerous, creepy place where violence simmers just beneath the surface of ordinary life. But the film is also about how absurdly easy it is to export violence across borders. In one disturbing scene, Krasniqui buys some kind of massive gun (I'm a blue stater, I have no idea what kind) from a Pennsylvania gun shop. The proprietor asks him what he plans to use it for; Krasniqui says he's going elephant-hunting. No one believes this lie, but no one cares. It's cover enough.
We hear a lot about other countries, Muslim countries, exporting violence to the United States. But in this case, Krasniqui, a private citizen, exported violence from the United States to a predominantly Muslim country, and he did it all perfectly legally. That's scary. That the United States happened to support the efforts of the KLA doesn't change the fact that next time, all those guns could be going to someone we don't support. And as the film shows, if NATO-occupied Kosovo devolves into violence again, NATO soldiers will be fighting rebels equipped with American firepower. All legally bought and sold.
Full disclosure now: The film was based on a book by my friend Stacy Sullivan, a brave journalist and fantastic writer. It's called Be Not Afraid, For You Have Sons in America, and it's a gripping read. Congrats to Stacy and everyone else involved in the making of The Brooklyn Connection.
More Sex and Scandal
That got your attention, didn't it?
But this time, the scandal is at a high school—my old high school, as a matter of fact, the
Groton School, in Groton, Massachusetts. A few years ago, an embittered male student raised allegations of sexual abuse at Groton, although sexual harassment might be a better term for it. (Oddly, the alleged perpetrators were also boys, which raised all sorts of stereotypes about prep schools. None of which were true when I went there, and no, I'm not just saying that.)
Anyway, the father of the student was furious with the way the school had handled the matter, and all of a sudden, the New York Post began running salacious Page Six items about buggery (well, not really, but that was the implication) at a hoity-toity prep school (and I guess Groton is pretty hoity-toity, although somehow everyone there, including myself, manages to feel like loners and outsiders).
Terrible publicity for the school, of course, which was such an easy target for the Post that it could do little to fight back. Then the matter got in the hands of an ambitious district attorney who sensed an easy mark, and now Groton has "pled guilty,"
as USA Today puts it, to not reporting allegations of sexual abuse.
Groton paid a $1250 fine, which tells you something about how serious its alleged offense was. Still, a big story in USA Today—"Elite Prep School Pleads Guilty in Sex Abuse Case"—isn't good for any school.
All I can say is that Groton's getting a raw deal on this one... As it happens, I doubt I'll ever be able to afford to send my kids there. But if I could, I would. Without hesitation.
For My Texas Readers
Cornel West will be speaking at the University of Houston on Thursday. The grammatical and factual mistakes in this University of Houston
press release, by the way, do not bode well for UH students....
2 Out of 3? Could Be Worse
Could be 3 out of 3.
Readers of Gawker.com
guess the identity of that unnamed "journalist-turned-Ivy-League-lecturer" who's been a little too friendly with his female students. Two out of the three guesses involve Harvard profs. (One of those guesses, to be fair, is clearly a joke.)
Dating grad students is one thing...but did that visiting lecturer really date
undergrads? Yucch.
A Shameless Plug
On Monday night at the Tribeca Film Festival I saw a wonderful movie that deserves wider recognition—and a theatrical release. Called
Special Thanks to Roy London, it's the story of acting coach Roy London, who died of AIDS in 1993. I hadn't heard of London, who never allowed his acting classes to be recorded and gave only two interviews. But as this documentary shows, he had a fascinating life and a huge influence on an enormous number of actors, including Jeff Goldblum, Garry Shandling, Sharon Stone, Geena Davis, and Hank Azaria. It's quite remarkable to watch a film in which Hollywood stars talk modestly about their own gifts and expansively about how much someone else made them better. Roy London sounds like a very special person.
Now, full disclosure: The film is directed by Christopher Monger and co-produced by Karen Montgomery, who happens to be his wife. I know them both a little bit; Christopher wrote the screenplay for the never-made film of American Son. (If you're interested, e-mail me, we'll have lunch.) This film was a labor of love for him and Karen, and it shows. They did an amazing job.
Review This
At a speaking engagement a few weeks ago, I suggested that the ultimate test of Larry Summers' leadership style was results, and that so far, the results were lacking. Summers' style seems to have impeded his agenda as much as promoted it, I said.
After the talk, an angry alumnus asked me for specifics. I pointed to the curricular review, which I said was in a state of freefall, a fiasco. He responded that that wasn't so. "You should read
Dean Kirby's 8,000-word letter to the faculty," he said. I answered that I had, that this was perhaps not the most objective source, and that he could easily find other viewpoints by reading, say, the Crimson. He walked away in something of a huff.
Now there's more evidence that I was not, in fact, smoking crack.
The Undergraduate Council has released a report "strongly criticizing the progress of the Committee on General Education," which is the review's most important component. According to the Crimson, the Council "encouraged the Committee on General Education to state a cohesive philosophy on what a Harvard education should be before making any recommendations for change."
Here we are, two years into Larry Summers' highly-touted curricular review, and undergraduates are rightly pointing out that the review lacks any guiding philosophy other than the mantra to get something done as soon as possible so that it can be flacked to alumni and the press.
A curricular review needs the wholehearted participation of the faculty, which it has never had, since Summers has made a point of discouraging that. One faculty member involved in the review told me how Summers "dominated the proceedings and dismissed the input of committees that had put hundreds of hours of work into it." Meanwhile, the Committee on General Education, for example, is stocked with his inner circle—Steve Pinker, Luke Menand, Robert Kirshner, Michael Sandel, etc.
After the no-confidence vote, serious faculty participation in the review is even less likely.
I hear whispers that the entire effort is essentially crumbling...and that what might happen is the passage of a few small steps—promotion of study abroad, for example—and the abandonment of any attempt at a larger, cohesive overhaul.
Voice of the Left
The Village Voice has
this smart piece on Harvard, along with some kind words about Harvard Rules. It's nice to see the book discussed, finally, in a progressive publication.
You have to give the conservative media credit; they realize the reality of the university as a political battleground in a way that the liberal press, such as it is, does not. Ross Douthat's Privilege has been picked up and carried around on the shoulders of conservatives as if it were the quarterback who scored the winning touchdown. By contrast, Salon.com, the Nation, Mother Jones, the New York Review of Books, the American Prospect—none of these places have reviewed either Harvard Rules or Privilege.
I wonder if the left, shaped so much by the '60s and '70s, doesn't simply take its dominance in academia for granted. If true, Baby Boomer liberals are going to be in for a big surprise. As Tom Wolfe and, more realistically, David Brooks, have pointed out, college students today are hardly surefire liberals. If the left cedes this turf to conservatives, it's in even greater trouble than it is now.
Waffle, Waffle
The Crimson also runs an
unfortunately tepid editorial on the AIDS grant situation.
Key grafs: "Bureaucratic oversight is often a necessary evil at a university. The administration's unprecedented takeover of a federal grant given to a researcher that teh School of Public Health (SPH) is a perfect example of this. In February of 2004, Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases Phyllis Kanki received a $107 million grant to address AIDS in Africa as part of President Bush's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. ...But last summer, University officials imposed a centralized management structure on Kanki as well as a provision tantamount to a gag order that prevents her from talking to the government, even though she was the recipient of the grant.
"It is unfortunate that the University is forcing Kanki to manage her grant through an executive director who reports directly to Mass. Hall. However, given the tremendous size of the grant—almost two times larger than any other received by Harvard—and the liability Harvard assumed by accepting the grant, the administration's actions are understandable though inexplicably heavy-handed."
Curious, that phrase—"understandable though inexplicably heavy-handed."
I know the Crimson tends to err on the side of caution when criticizing the Harvard administration, but this time, the Crimson has just erred. If Harvard has long-established principles of grant management—which of course it does—then the particular size of this grant is not the issue. Moreover, oversight by this Mass. Hall is hardly a guarantee that things will run better. Finally I'm not convinced that liability was an issue here either; the comparison between this grant and Andre Shleiffer's work in Russia is tenuous. (Somehow I don't see Dr. Kanski investing in African stocks.)
The Crimson is buying into the spin put out by Mass Hall. It should raise the question of whether Summers' overarching desire to control every major project at Harvard led him to delay implementation of the grant program for five months, possibly costing thousands of lives. I suspect that the real reason the Crimson won't just come out and say so is because the possibility is simply so upsetting, so appalling, that no one wants to believe it could be true.
Meanwhile, I wonder how Summers' apologists—those people who talk about him being a free speech martyr—will reconcile that portrayal with the fact that he (through his dean, Barry Bloom) imposed a "gag order" on a Harvard professor. To keep her from talking to the government....
Hmmmm
Folks up at Harvard might want to read the blind items on today's
Page Six with particular interest, given the precarious state of gender relations in Cambridge.
Pinker Vs. Spelke
The Crimson covers the Science Center debate between Steve Pinker (i.e., Summers surrogate) and Elizabeth Spelke (speaking on behalf of Nancy Hopkins and women everywhere). According to the Crimson, Spelke seems to have gotten the better of the debate, at least as far as the audience was concerned. Still, it sounds to me like she conceded a few points that she needn't have. For example...
1) "Pinker later noted that women are not underrepresented everywhere, but only in the hard sciences."
Granted, I'm going on the Crimson's version of what was said here, but this is just nutty. As Nancy Hopkins pointed out in her essay in the MIT faculty newsletter (see below), science and math are far from the only fields where women are underrepresented. For example: business, law, medicine, op-ed pages—even the humanities. (At Harvard, men outnumber women in the humanities by about two to one, despite the fact that women are earning more Ph.D.s in the field than men are.)
2) “Spelke brought up some key points,” said Parvinder S. Thiara ’07, who sported a Che-Summers shirt for the event. “But she did admit, and I think it’s important, that at the highest level, there was no discrimination.”
It's unclear from this quote what highest level Thiara is referring to—whether it's the sciences, or the professions in general. But if it's the latter, all you have to do to refute it is to look at Harvard. Where are the women in the highest levels of the Summers administration? Why is there only one woman on the Harvard Corporation?
Maybe Spelke wanted to keep the issue as narrowly focused as possible...but the argument that there's discrimination against women in all fields certainly helps explain the lack of women in science, as opposed to the innate differences line of thinking.
3) "Pinker also noted that men and women tend to have different priorities in life; men seek status and money, while women look more for interpersonal relationships.
“'What this means is that there are slightly more men than women who don’t care whether or not they have a life,' Pinker said."
According to the Crimson, Pinker was positing a biology-is-destiny explanation for this phenomenon. That's curious. There are so many plausible sociological factors to explain the differing choices that men and women make, I'd love to hear Pinker make this case.
I'm no scientist or deep thinker like Steve Pinker is. But the more I hear of his thinking, the less convinced—and more unimpressed—I become.
State of the Literary World, Part 1
Today's Times has an inadvertent commentary on just how screwed up the state of serious writing—and reading—is today.
On the one hand,
Janet Maslin gushes over a new book,
History of Love, by Nicole Krauss. Sample gush: "Beyond the vigorous whiplash that keeps Ms. Krauss's "History of Love" moving (and keeps its reader offbalance until a stunning finale), this novel is tightly packed with ingenious asides."
On the other hand, literary darling Steve Stern
is struggling just to stay in print, despite regularly receiving the kinds of reviews that, well, Janet Maslin gives to Nicole Krauss.
The literary world has never been fair, of course, but there are some particular concerns in this comparison. Why is Nicole Krauss headed for massive success and Steve Stern forced to teach writing at Skidmore College to make a living?
It doesn't sound as if it's because Krauss is much the better writer. Perhaps it's a question of image. Krauss, young and pretty, is pictured lying down in blue jeans and a low-cut blouse. The middle-aged Stern is pictured from the waist up, wearing a sweater that appears as bedraggled as does the rest of him.
Krauss also happens to be married to literary celebrity Jonathan Safran Foer, author of the wildly overrated
Everything is Illuminated. The two make for good copy: the Times recently ran a real estate article about their purchase of a $6 million townhouse in Brooklyn.
Writers write today in a culture in which fewer and fewer people are reading. That's partly why publishers like to have a pretty face and a sexy backstory to market. But I can't help thinking that this is not, ultimately, how the written word will retain its relevance. Writers are never going to be able to compete with movie stars on the looks front; you can't win competing on someone else's territory. (And you sure don't see Hollywood studios marketing their stars as really, really smart.)
Publishers have to have faith in what they sell...even if Steve Stern doesn't much resemble Brad Pitt. They may just have to think of more creative ways to sell it. Maybe promoting Stern's new book,
Angel of Forgetfulness, on the web is one way....
Case Closed?
Scientific American weighs in on the differences between the male and female brain. The piece is, of course, pegged to Larry Summers and his thoughts on the innate differences between men and women. The conclusion seems to be that while male and female brains turn out to have numerous differences, it's absolutely impossible to say what, if any, real world effect those differences produce, and to suggest that they affect career choice is an extrapolation unsupported by evidence.
Key quote (from
this sidebar specifically about Summers): "What does the research say? Evidence linking inequities in anatomy to intellectual ability is hard to come by. For starters, sex differences in performance on standardized tests of general intelligence are negligible, with insignificant differences sometimes favoring women, sometimes favoring men. And although neuroscientists are discovering a multitude of sex-related differences in brain structure and function, no one can at present say whether these differences have any influence on career success in science--or, if they do, how their effect might compare with that of cultural factors."
Summers' remarks at the NBER conference seem increasingly out of the mainstream....
Where's Larry?
There's one source conspicuously absent from Donnelly's article: Lawrence Summers. The Harvard president either wouldn't be interviewed, or wouldn't be interviewed on the record. Meanwhile, Stephen Hyman, Summers' #2, is forced to make excuses for his boss—excuses that will stain Hyman's reputation permanently.
Why wouldn't Summers speak? After all, whenever there's good news—about, for example, Harvard's financial aid program (as opposed to its AIDS program)—Summers is more than happy to be quoted on the record. In fact, he insists upon being quoted in those articles.
This story, however, is bad news, and Summers wants to disassociate himself from it. Given the precarious condition of his presidency, he can't afford bad news. So he shovels responsibility onto an underling.
It would be impressive if Summers stood up and said, "I'm the president. This is my responsibility. The buck stops here."
Instead, he leaves the impression that he is more concerned with saving his own ass than doing the right thing....
Consider the Excuses
In John Donnelly's
well-reported article, provost Stephen Hyman proffers a number of excuses for Harvard's five-month (minimum) delay in buying AIDS drugs for dying people in Africa.
These excuses include:
1) "[Summers] worried that the program was hastily crafted and could be a legal risk to the school."
2) "...during the five-month period, Summers and [Hyman] were reviewing Harvard's role in the project and trying to ensure that it was properly managed."
3) "One major concern for Summers...was whether the U.S. government or patients could sue Harvard for any perceived future problems, Hyman said. In 2000, the U.S. government had sued Harard for alleged misuse of federal funds in a development grant in Russia. "That lawsuit sensitized him enormously for the need for Harvard to do this right,' Hyman said."
4) Hyman and Summers were so concerned about AIDS patients, they wanted to take the time to set the program up correctly. "'Precisely because this is about life and death, it is absolutely critical that we get this right,' Hyman said."
5) Was this task appropriate for Harvard? "Hyman said Summers also raised questions about whether running an AIDS program in Africa was consistent with the university's strengths of teaching students and conducting research."
Let us consider these excuses, noting first that their multiplicity suggests a bureaucrat throwing explanations at the wall in the wan hope that one of them will stick.
1) "[Summers] worried that the program was hastily crafted and could be a legal risk to the school."Well, yes, the program was hastily crafted; it was called the "President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief." In other words, the White House's express intention was that this money be spent
quickly. So Summers overruled the White House.
2) "...during the five-month period, Summers and [Hyman] were reviewing Harvard's role in the project and trying to ensure that it was properly managed."
Let me repeat: the President's
Emergency Plan..
.
In any event, given the upheaval at Harvard recently, one has to ask whether a program under Larry Summers' control would, in fact, be better-managed than one independent of his authority. The evidence would suggest that management is not Summers' strong suit.
3) "One major concern for Summers...was whether the U.S. government or patients could sue Harvard for any perceived future problems," Hyman said. In 2000, the U.S. government had sued Harard for alleged misuse of federal funds in a development grant in Russia. "That lawsuit sensitized him enormously for the need for Harvard to do this right," Hyman said.To those familiar with the events in question, the cynicism of this explanation is staggering. At the center of the government's lawsuit is Harvard economist Andre Shleiffer, who is accused of profiting off Russian stock investments even as he was taking US money to give advice on the Russian economy. For years, Harvard has been arguing that it did nothing wrong in the Shleiffer fiasco, and has backed the economist to the hilt. Why? Well, as Boston Globe columnist
David Warsh has persuasively suggested, perhaps because Shleiffer is one of Larry Summers' best friends....
But setting aside that conflict of interest, let us consider the argument on its own terms. In one instance, Harvard is being sued over accusations that one of its economists insider-traded and that Harvard should have known about it.
In another scenario which is supposed to be analogous, an African AIDS patient might sue Harvard over mismanagement of a federal program. Think about that. Assume that such a patient lived long enough to file a lawsuit (because that's what dying African AIDS patients do, file suit against a far-away university). What's the realistic likelihood of such an event occurring?
Yup--better to just let the patient die.
4) Hyman and Summers were so concerned about AIDS patients, they wanted to take the time to set the program up correctly. "Precisely because this is about life and death, it is absolutely critical that we get this right," Hyman said.In other words, because this is a matter of life and death, let's move with exruciating slowness that will, in fact, cost lives—possibly thousands of them.
5) Was this task appropriate for Harvard? "Hyman said Summers also raised questions about whether running an AIDS program in Africa was consistent with the university's strengths of teaching students and conducting research."Whatever the answer to the question may be, the real point is that it contradicts things Summers has said a hundred, a thousand, times. He has consistently advocated a greater role for the university in the real world and urged that Harvard help solve the world's health problems in a hands-on way. In
this speech from just a few months ago, Summers contradicts the above explanation in half a dozen different ways.
Here he talks about Harvard's attempts to participate in tsunami relief. And
here Summers talks about his view of the global role for Harvard's School of Public Health.
Key quote: "But I say to you, if any institution in the world is well situated to maximize the contributions to solving that problem [of disease and economic inequity], it is the School of Public Health, with unmatched connections throughout the developing world, with an extraordinary scientific capacity, located here in the center of the best bio-medical research community that there has ever been in the history of the world, in the middle of a university whose major mission is to become more open to the rest of the world. It is a very exciting time to be associated with the Harvard School of Public Health because I am convinced that the School is going to accomplish great things in the next 10 years. And I am determined to do everything that I can to help [dean] Barry [Bloom] and his colleagues do those things and make progress against what I believe are the largest solvable problems that this planet faces."
Sounds like a prescription to fight AIDS in Africa, doesn't it?
The point is, none of the various excuses that Stephen Hyman offers are convincing. The truth may just be that Summers wanted to take control of a $100-million federal grant...no matter how long it took. Or how many people died in the meantime.
The Real Story?
One reason why I'm appalled by Summers' handling of this AIDS grant is because I don't believe the proffered excuse that he was worried about legal risks. The other three institutions which had received money from the federal government weren't worried, and they started spending the grant money almost immediately after receiving it. After all, people were dying.
So what was really going on? Well, there's substantial, if circumstantial, evidence that Summers just didn't like the fact he didn't control a massive federal grant given to one of Harvard's schools—and he refused to let the program be implemented until he did control it.
Start with my own reporting, on page 305 of
Harvard Rules: "In the spring of 2004, Barry Bloom, dean of the School of Public Health, infuriated Summers by announcing that the school had received a $100-million grant from the federal government without first informing Summers or including the president's name in the relevant press release. According to several sources familiar with the incident, Summers was so enraged that, at a subsequent dinner attended by both Bloom and him, the president insisted on being somewhere he could not see the dean. (Asked for comment, Bloom said, 'I have the greatest respect for President Summers.')"
The Boston Globe and Harvard Crimson have both detailed Summers' attempts to wrest control of the grant away from Dr. Phyllis J. Kanki, apparently because Summers didn't think Kanki was competent to handle such a large grant. (She is, after all, a woman in science.)
Never mind that the federal program which distributed the grant money was called the "President's
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief."
(That would be President Bush; italics added.)
Or that grant applicants were given a month to write proposals, due to the urgency of the situation. People were dying.
Larry Summers held up the purchase of AIDS drugs for dying people for—depending on how you calculate the delay—five to seven months. And one very possible reason is because he was furious that he was not given credit for bringing the money to Harvard, and he did not control the distribution of it.
In other words, because his ego was bruised.
This story is a tragedy.
Inexcusable
The Globe's John Donnelly investigates Larry Summers' handling of the $100-million AIDS grant to the Harvard School of Public Health. This disturbing piece of reporting raises probably the most serious questions about Larry Summers' judgment and leadership style yet raised.
Nut graf: "Harvard University president Lawrence H. Summers delayed the spending of millions of dollars to treat dying AIDS patients in Africa for five months last year, because he worried that the program was hastily crafted and could be a legal risk to the school," a senior Harvard official said. "...Harvard's delay meant that some patients died."
Some background. In February 2004, the federal government awarded large grants to fight AIDS in Africa to Harvard, Columbia, Catholic Relief Services, and the Elizagbeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. As Donnelly reports, the latter three institutions began spending that money in March. Immediate action was urgent.
But Harvard waited until September to start spending its funds, many of which were earmarked for the purchase of AIDS drugs. The drugs didn't start arriving in Africa until November and December, nine and ten months after Harvard received the money. How many AIDS patients died during that time? "We lost many," said Dr. Isaac Adewole, who oversees one of Harvard's treatment sites. "Even now, we still don't understand what Harvard was doing." And, Donnelly notes, "doctors running the program said that without the delay they would have had more than 10,000 on treatment in the first year," instead of the 7,300 it had at the end of March. That's a difference of at least 2700 people receiving treatment. 2700 people.
What was the reason for the delay?
"Harvard Provost Stephen E. Hyman said that during that five-month period, Summers and he were reviewing Harvard's role in the project and trying to ensure that it was properly managed."
Of particular concern, Hyman claims, was "whether the U.S. government or patients could sue Harvard for any perceived future problems." Hyman referred to a federal lawsuit against Harvard for alleged misuse of federal funds in a development grant in Russia. "That lawsuit sensitized [Summers] enormously for the need for Harvard to do this right," he said.
But as Donnelly reports, Summers spoke with Columbia president Lee Bollinger to discuss these concerns, and Bollinger spoke with Dr. Allan Rosenfeld, the dean of Columbia's school of public health. "I told [Bollinger] that I didn't think there was a large [legal] risk," Rosenfeld told Donnelly. "I don't think the university is at any greater risk than any other funder."
So we are left with an unconvincing explanation, a nagging question—what was really going on here?—and a sense of horror over the fact that thousands of people may have died due to Harvard's inaction.
Meanwhile, Larry Summers quite obviously declined to speak for this story. (If he did, it certainly wasn't on the record.)
Instead, he has shoved Stephen Hyman out in public, leaving the poor provost to twist in the wind..... Hyman may not yet realize it, but this scandal will forever taint his career. How many people will have to fall on their sword for Summers before they decide it's just not worth it any more?
More Men Behaving Badly
More stories about how Bush U.N.-nominee John Bolton terrorized people who disagreed with his opinions or refused to give him the intelligence estimates he wanted to push his ideological agenda.
The Bolton nomination is dead. The only question is whether President Bush decides that it's in his political best interest to force a vote—which he'd lose—or whether he withdraws the nomination early next week. My guess: The Republicans don't really want to have to vote for this guy, who gives every indication of being a complete crackpot. They'll pressure the President to avoid a vote, so that they don't have to go on the record with their support or opposition. Bush will withdraw the nomination.
I think there's a larger point here besides the fact that Bolton is, apparently, a jerk. Despite the fact that the war on Iraq may yet turn out to be a success, Americans don't want unilateralism. We still think diplomacy is important, and yes, even the United Nations. In fact, we may think that even more now than we did before the Iraq war, and the realization that those much-touted weapons of mass destruction don't exist.....
Another point: Since Bolton was obviously Dick Cheney's guy, one has to wonder where else Cheney is driving Administration policy...
Sticking up for Summers
Writing in the Jewish World Review, First Amendment advocate Nat Hentoff
makes the case for Summers as a victim of political correctness. Hentoff tells the story of a high schooler in Yakima, Washington, who defended Summers.
Key quote: "President Summers offered no conclusions [at the NBER conference]. He wanted these intellectuals to do what they're supposed to do — think. But his challenge resulted — as high-schooler Toop wrote — in "the political correctness squad (rushing) upon him like a pack of bloodthirsty dingos that just smelled baby."
I've written before that I don't think this controversy had anything to do with free speech—or political correctness, for that matter—but in the interests of balance, I post the article for your consideration.
And also because I love that simile—"a pack of bloodthirsty dingos that just smelled baby." Fantastic. Rush Limbaugh, your successor has just entered the building.
Yet Another Reason to Buy a Mac
Microsoft
caves in to bigotry. So disappointing.
Show Me the Money
I've long thought that the key to Summers' fate lies in the hands of Harvard donors. If a significant percentage of them stop giving, his goose is cooked. But if they continue to give—or actually increase their contributions—his position is stable, and he can work to shore up his internal support.
Now I hear that the Corporation has privately acknowledged that Summers needs to be "built up" before he can embark on a major, public capital campaign, a process that, the Corporation thinks, could take two years.
Moreover, a recent Summers visit with several Silicon Alley billionaires left the billionaires "visibly unimpressed"...
The Image Problem, Redux
Crimson columnist Stephen W. Stromberg
has a smart take on the latest Summers controversy, his remarks on Native Americans and genocide. Like me, Stromberg finds the latest remarks less objectionable on paper than would merit the angry reactions they have prompted. I think it has something to do Summers' high-handed manner of speech; Stromberg argues that people are just so irritated with Summers now, they're quick to be offended.
(A possible flaw in this argument: the Native American conference took place last September, and participants were ticked off at the time.)
Stromberg suggests that one solution is for Summers and Mass. Hall to be more forthcoming with information generally.
Key quote: "Releasing everything—meeting notes, administrative documents, memos, you name it—isn't just in the best interests of the Harvard community, but of the president's office, too. And this doesn't just apply to potential scandals. Students and Faculty often feel out of the loop in Allston decision-making, the curricular review, shakeups in administration. ...They complain that communication between Mass Hall and the rest of the University community often comes in the form of press releases...."
It's a smart piece and well-worth reading.
And if I may add my two cents: Summers should make it a policy not to speak to journalists off the record or on background. It would befit his office, and diminish the air of secrecy and manipulation that surrounds his presidency.
Kinda like Ali-Foreman
I have no idea if this is a public event, but if it isn't...well, I couldn't sneak in, because I'm a reporter, and that's frowned upon for us. But if I were you, I would. It should be fascinating....a conversation about the brain that's really a conversation about Larry Summers.
<
A Conversation with Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke
Friday, April 22
4:00 pm
Science Center B
The speakers will discuss research on mind, brain, and behavior that
may be relevant to gender disparities in the sciences, including the
studies of bias, discrimination, and innate and acquired differences
between the sexes.
Sponsored by Harvard University - Mind/Brain/Behavior>>
Wish I could be there...but I'm helping some friends move, and postings may be affected today.
The Image Problem
This story in
The Record of New Jersey compares Larry Summers to Princeton president Shirley Tighman. Less than favorably.
Key quote: "If the president of Harvard thinks women are innately inferior, how far have we come? The reassuring answer from the president of Princeton: We've not only come a long way, but the young women coming after us will go a whole lot farther."
But here's the real problem. The piece is headlined: "Princeton to Harvard: Girls Rule."
I'd guess at least one newspaper in every state in the country has done a similar piece. The common theme: Despite what Larry Summers might say, girls in our state are good at science, and don't care if the president of Harvard thinks otherwise
This is obviously a caricature of what Summers said, but that's the way the media works. The problem for Summers—and for Harvard—is that the caricature is taking root.
Limning Larry
An interesting side note from the Globe article: Summers' spokesman mentions that Summers was basing his statements about Native Americans on a number of sources he'd read, including Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" and an article in Commentary magazine.
(Incidentally, we don't know who Summers' spokesman is, because as with erstwhile presidential flack Lucie McNeil, Summers apparently doesn't want the person quoted by name. Thus we have the curious phenomenon of a university president who won't speak to the press on the record and will only allow his spokesman to be identified as his "spokesman." Transparency, anyone?)
But on to the main point.... This isn't the first time Summers has gotten in trouble for delivering remarks to an academic audience based on his reading of a popular book. His women-in-science comments were drawn from Steven Pinker's book, "The Blank Slate."
Why is this important? Well, for one thing, because Summers delivers these remarks with a posture of omniscience, but he's generally speaking to people who've written more specialized materials than these popular works. That's a recipe for trouble.
Summers clearly has an affinity for popular tomes. Why? Perhaps he's playing catch-up after a decade away from academia in Washington. Or, as some Harvardians suspect, perhaps he disdains humanities-related scholarship that isn't popular. If it's not read by a wider audience, Summers isn't interested.
That could be one reason why Summers has such an affinity for celebrity academics like Pinker, Luke Menand, Michael Ignatieff, Samantha Power, Malcolm Gladwell, et al. He doesn't see the point of intellectuals who don't reach a broader, "real world" audience. Not a humanist himself, and uncomfortable with the humanities, he depends on data to evaluate works in the humanities. In this case, the data appear to be sales figures.
Deja Vu All Over Again
Marcella Bombardieri in the Globe picks up on the
latest Larry Summers controversy, his remarks at a conference on Native American studies.
Key quote: "The new controversy is another distraction for Summers at a time when many professors say the debate over his leadership, which culminated in a vote of no confidence last month, has paralyzed the administration. However, several critics and supporters of Summers alike said yesterday that they did not think the speech about Native Americans would significantly alter the campus discussion about the president, since most people's opinions about Summers are already hardened."
That last line about hardened opinions is particularly important, since it goes to the question of whether Summers can resuscitate his presidency. The worst of the women-in-science controversy may be past. But the lines of division are so deeply plowed, it's hard to see how Summers can smooth them over. Unless, perhaps, you are willing to take a long-term view--say, five to seven years. But how long is the Harvard Corporation going to allow the University's agenda to lie fallow (sorry, I'll stop now) so that Larry Summers can attempt to refurbish his reputation?
And that scenario assumes that no new controversy erupts, which would be an assumption based more on wishful thinking than past precedent.
How Power Works
I've been meaning to write about Skip Gates' decision to step down as chairman of the African and African-American Studies department. I don't think there's any deep inner meaning; Gates has been chair for a long time, and he really doesn't need the job to maintain his exalted position in the world of academia. Plus, being a chair can be a huge drain on time and energy.
More telling is how widely Gates' decision was covered—from the New York Times to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Under normal circumstances, a decision to resign a department chair hardly merits newspaper coverage. Two factors are involved here. One, Gates' own celebrity status. And two, newspapers looking for any hint of instability at Harvard. Everything related to Summers is hot, hot, hot....
Here's
a more important story: Gates is now becoming the chair of the Pulitzer Prize committee. The position conveys enormous cultural power. Just one example: Even more than usual, one must now read every mention of Gates in the New York Times with deep skepticism.
There's no way the paper can ever be objective about the chair of the Pulitzer board....
And Speaking of Curious Choices
So the new pope is a 78-year-old former member of the Hitler Youth who believes that Catholicism is the "true" religion and all other faiths are deficient. According to the Times, the newly-named Benedict XVI "has repeatedly condemned religious pluralism" and has argued that concern about child molestation by priests "is intentional, manipulated, that there is a desire to discredit the church."
Ratzinger has also reinforced the ban on women priests and attacked feminism as ignoring biological differences. He's anti-gay, anti-birth control, anti-stem cell research....
Well...this should be interesting. Without knowing, of course, how Ratzinger's papacy will turn out, let me just suggest that secretive selection processes have not served the world's iconic instititutions well in recent years.
Which reminds me of John Bolton....but that's a blog entry for another time....
Rack 'em Up, Let's Break
Here's
InsideHigherEd.com's take on the Summers talk regarding Native Americans.
Just so everyone can keep track, let's sum up whom exactly Larry Summers has offended during his four years as president of Harvard.
1)
African-Americans. (The Cornel West incident, stated doubts about affirmative action.)
2)
Latinos. (Rejecting calls for a Latino studies department, Summers explained that the reason there was an African-American studies department—but shouldn't be a Latino studies department—was because of the importance of the Civil War.)
3)
Muslims. (Summers argued that people who felt Harvard should divest from Israel over human rights issues were anti-Semitic; he treated Muslim commencement speaker Zayed Yasin with contempt.)
4)
Native Americans. (See above.)
5)
Asians. (Summers repeatedly recounted an inaccurate story about the number of teenage prostitutes in Seoul, South Korea, which suggested that there were more teenage prostitutes in Seoul than there were teenager girls.)
6)
Women. (The women in science remarks, among other things.)
7)
Gays. (Summers repeatedly called for the return of ROTC to campus, despite the military's anti-gay discrimination; he refused to fight enforcement of the Solomon Amendment, which mandated military recruiting on campuses receiving federal monies, on the grounds that the issue of anti-gay discrimination was not important enough to merit jeopardizing federal dollars.)
The only major ethnic group or other constituency at Harvard that Summers has not insulted or offended in some way, as far as I can tell, is his own—white Jewish men. Which helps to explain some of his troubles. Politicians—and the president of Harvard has to be a politician—are supposed to broaden their base of support by reaching out to different constituencies, rather than pissing them off.
It continues to fascinate me that the members of the Harvard Corporation saw Summers as the man who could unite and lead this university....
Whoops! He Did It Again! (Again)
Larry Summers
has released a transcript of remarks he made at a September 2004 conference on Native American studies at Harvard. Those remarks became an issue when the Washington Post profile of Summers (mentioned below) quoted scholars who'd been present saying they were offended by the president's remarks at the event. At the time, the Crimson had heard rumors that Summers had angered attendees, but—shock!—his ever-helpful press secretary, Lucie McNeil, had refused to release a transcript. Perhaps the remarks were off the record.
Here's a key quote from the Crimson write-up:
"Even seven months after the conference, several scholars who attended the event are still incensed by the president’s remarks.
Michael Yellow Bird, director of the Center for Indigenous Nations Studies at the University of Kansas, said that Summers’ remarks were “really, really insulting.”
Tara Browner, associate professor of ethnomusicology and American Indian studies at UCLA, wrote in an e-mail to The Crimson Sunday that she and several other attendees were “appalled” by Summers’ statements."
But the Crimson's reportage of the transcript actually makes things out to be more complicated. It doesn't seem that Summers said anything factually incorrect. He said that more Native Americans died from diseases carried by Europeans than in combat, and there was no conscious plan to commit genocide. Some of the scholars present thought Summers was presenting a whitewashed view of history, apologizing for colonialism.
What's really going on here? It's the difference, I think, between the way Summers' words read on paper, and how they sound when he delivers them. It's a question of style. When Summers speaks in public, he often com
