Shots In The Dark
Great Bird of Truth
Like me, Andrew Furman is psyched about the discovery of an ivory-billed woodpecker in the swamps of Arkansas. Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education,
he waxes eloquent about the ornithological implications. But he's most struck by the fact that a group of seven scientists, naturalists and researchers kept the bird's existence secret for almost a year until they published their news on April 28th. To him, such collegiality and self-selecting isolation from the capitalistic rat race are vanishing from university campuses.
He writes: " I fear that we are increasingly deaf to such wisdom, as academies of higher learning adhere more and more to corporate models of productivity and accountability, and as knowledge is reduced to a mere commodity. Students, the consumers in the equation, pay for knowledge, and professors are expected to provide it. My hope is that the childlike ebullience of certain oddball professors out and about on our campuses Thursday morning, April 28, might serve as a corrective to that unfortunate view. For at our best, we are all -- students and professors alike -- ardent seekers of knowledge, knowing all the while that the ivory-billed, though we may glimpse its splendor, will remain forever elusive."
The ivory-billed woodpecker as a metaphor for the quest for knowledge. Deep! I like it. Next, someone's going to find a white whale.
Showtime: Part of the Left-Wing Media Conspiracy
According to me, anyway. Here's
my piece about why Showtime is the anti-Bush channel, written for the website
TomPaine.com.
What Would Tom Friedman Say?*
In India,
five of six winners of a prestigious scholarship are female scientists.
Telegraph of India columnist Ayswaria Venugop writes, "Not that the achievement would change either Summers’s opinion — although the gentleman did say sorry — or the “innate differences” between the sexes that he talks of, but it surely is indication that, like in several other areas, women are slowly breaking through the scientific glass ceiling."
The achievements of women in science in non-American cultures has always been one of the most obvious pieces of circumstantial evidence against Summers' women-in-science theory. Ironic that Summers, who is a great proponent of students traveling overseas, would not have noticed that female scientists are not always discriminated against elsewhere as they are in this country.
*New York Times columnist
Tom Friedman, who has traveled to India many times, is a great friend of Larry Summers.
Darwin and Larry Summers
A
curious piece in Canada's National Post argues that the attacks on Darwin and the criticism of Larry Summers are both religiously based, just from different ends of the political spectrum.
"Intelligent Design is linked with the 'fundamentalist right,' while Mr. Summers came under attack from the 'egalitarian' left. In fact, both are essentially religious positions," writes columnist John Foster.
How's that again?
Well, "the attack on Mr. Summers... seems to come from evangelical academics who are uneasy with the implications of neo-Darwinism for their socialist-inspired faith in an egalitarian society of equal results rather than equal opportunities."
Like many arguments in support of Summers, this one rests on a caricature of the Harvard faculty—its intellectual composition and its motives. I'd argue that this kind of caricature has been deeply damaging to Harvard.
It's certainly not Summers' fault (and, in fact, he may be sympathetic to it, particularly now). But as I've written before, a ringing defense of the faculty coming from the Harvard president would be more than appropriate—it would go a long way towards winning support from that constituency.
Plenty of Men are Morons, Too
Just so you know that I'm equal-opportunity cranky.
And By the Way
Don't you just love that line from Fields: "If gays were warmly embraced....."
I'm not sure if that's Freudian, but it's definitely some kind of slip.
Some Women are Morons, Part II
In today's Washington Times, Suzanne Fields writes what must be
one of the stupidest Memorial Day columns to mar the pages of an American newspaper.
"War is hell," she begins.
(Apparently no one has ever said that before.)
After describing a trip she made to see wounded veterans—in the future, all trips by newspaper columnists to see wounded veterans should be off the record, so that they can't milk the experience of visiting those poor guys for a lousy newspaper column—Fields then goes on lambaste Ivy League colleges for denying ROTC the right to recruit on campus.
Those colleges don't like the military's discrimination against gays, she says. "But that's simply a smokescreen; if gays were warmly embraced other reasons would be quickly found."
Pardon my French, but that's just bullshit. If the military lifted its ban on gays, sure, you might have a few 1960s-stragglers who'd continue to protest the military's presence on campus. But the vast majority of students and professors would be happy to have ROTC back. Even if it's only because of the awkwardness of appearing anti-military at a time when everyone wants to "support our troops."
(Which we should do, of course...by doing things like providing them with the armored Hummers they need, paying them decently, and not letting them be ripped off by sleazy insurers preying on their fears before they go to Iraq.)
Discrimination against gays is something these universities take seriously, even if Fields doesn't.
But here's my favorite part of Fields' column:
"Patriotism remains a tough sell on some of our most 'prestigious' campuses. Yale and Brown, along with Harvard and Columbia, have no ROTC program. Perhaps it's tradition. Though New England took pride in its abolitionist sentiment, far fewer Harvard students rushed to enlist than their Confederate counterparts on Southern campuses when war broke out between the state...."
I certainly agree that Harvard students should do their part in wartime, and that it's important for Harvard that it feels the trauma of war just like any other part of America.
But to say that Southern slaveholders who rushed to war to fight for slavery were greater "patriots" than Harvard students were.... Well, that suggests that Fields' understanding of history is as silly as her interpretation of current events. After all, given that Harvard volunteers were fighting for the Union and Southern men were fighting to secede from it, then by definition, every Harvard soldier was a patriot, and every rebel was...not.
The Ethicist, As It Should Be
One of my favorite columns in the New York Times Magazine is "
The Ethicist," by Randy Cohen. I don't know who Randy Cohen is and I've never really understood who made him Mr. Ethics—well, obviously, the Times did—but
why anyone made him Mr. Ethics is what I really mean.
Anyway, I love "The Ethicist" because it gets my blood boiling. Every week I read it and think what a complete drag life would be if everyone acted the way that Randy Cohen suggests. (Like Canada.) Sometimes he's just wrong. Other times he's probably right, but there's something so goody-goody about his advice—maybe it's the schoolmarm-ish way he delivers it—that you want to go out and do the exact opposite of what Cohen recommends.
With that in mind, herewith the first in a series: Providing alternative answers to the questions people write to the Ethicist. Because, after all, it's not like the Times has
a monopoly on ethics.
Today Steven Tanzer from Bayside, New York, writes about his son, who wrote an essay for his school's essay contest, which had a $750 prize. "After the deadline, the school announced that because only one student had applied for the scholarship, it was extending the deadline." The guy's son protested, as one might. Tanzner asks: "Was it ethical to extend the deadline?"
Cohen's answer: Your son "doesn't have much of a case." He bases this conclusion on the premise that the school was awarding the prize to the "best" essay, which implies more than one—"good, better, best," Cohen says. So the school was right.
Wrong!
The student fulfilled the stated terms of the contest. His essay, relative to the other entries, was not only the best; it was good compared to all the others, and it was better than all the others. It's not his fault that the other kids were too busy checking out Internet porn to bother scratching a few hundred words on a sheet of notebook paper.
In denying him the money, the school is changing the terms of a contract after the fact. That's like scheduling an exam for Wednesday and then giving it on Tuesday.
If the school doesn't pay up pronto, the kid should sue, making the point that even school administrators ought to keep their word—a valuable lesson for school administrators. The suit would attract lots of national publicity, and the kid would one day become a great defender of the rights of the oppressed.
Now, isn't that a better outcome than Cohen's, in which the school's sleazy behavior goes unpunished and a little boy learns that you'll never make any money writing?
Surely We Have Women Who Are Idiots
Did you see this line blaring out from the cover of yesterday's New York Times Book Review?
"Surely we women have a gene—in addition to those saucy, but ill-mannered, hormones—for theatrics, so frequently do they puncture our inner lives and decorate our outer ones in operatic robes."
It's from a
review by someone named Toni Bentley of a Mary Wollstonecraft biography.
Now, I know that Bentley is trying to write as pretentiously as she can—those saucy, but ill-mannered, hormones!—but still.....
Do women really need another woman saying that they have a gene for theatrics?
There are moments when I feel sorry for Larry Summers. Imagine if he—or any other man in a public position—had made such a remark?
Go Yanks!
I'll be out of town for a couple days over the holiday weekend, so posts may be scarce. But don't forget: the Report Card is coming soon! And there's still time to vote. Give your grade to President Summers at the end of his first four years by e-mailing me (on background) at richard@richardbradley.net.
Meantime, the Yanks and the BoSox play three big games, staring with Randy Johnson vs. Tim Wakefield. The Yanks are now in second place, the Sox in 4th. My prediction: They will both move up one by the end of the season. Let's hope it starts tonight! (Sorry, Harvard readers....)
Perhaps He'd Already Had A Few
Don't you love it when corporate executives reveal just how out of touch they are?
At a media conference yesterday, Martin Nisholz, president of New York Times Digital,
defended his company's decision to start charging $50 for online access to the Times' archives and its columnists.
"There comes a point at which you have to say, 'Where is the value equation?' when you are talking about online media," Nisenhold said. As I've suggested before, when people start using language like "value equation," you know they're trying to sugarcoat something they'd find hard to defend in plain language.
He then added: "For the cost of roughly two and a half martinis, you can have access to the entire archives."
Hmmm...I don't know about you, but I'm not throwing back $20 martinis. If Nisholz is, the Times is either a) paying him too much, or b) needs to start paying attention to his expense account.
But what the paper really needs to consider is how that kind of "let them drink martinis" attitude reflects a class-based view of the electronic world...and whether such a dismissive attitude towards the vast majority of Americans really serves the paper well.
United Gets Back to Me
Regular readers will remember that some weeks ago I traveled to Portland, Oregon, to talk about Harvard Rules, and subsequently bitched and moaned about the misery of flying on United Airlines. So great was my frustration over the appalling customer service that I actually took the trouble of e-mailing United, whose website promises a response to customer complaints within 24 hours.
Well...so United was off by about 400-500 hours. Perhaps they have a lot of complaints.
Anyway, I post below the response. The deconstructionists amongst you will note that it doesn't actually address any of the specific complaints I had; that, in fact, it appears to be a generic response similar to the ones politicians send out when you write them about your opinion on a particular issue. Which is to say, it's meaningless. It's even hard to tell whether this letter is in response to a complaint or a compliment.
As I said before, no wonder United is bankrupt.
Here goes:
<
Thank you for contacting us. I appreciate the opportunity to respond.
There is much about air travel that has changed. Airport and aircraft
security is one very visible change and while procedures can be frustrating at
times, they help keep us safe. So we value your patience and support.
Other less visible changes, from adjusted timing for passenger check-in and
flight departures to recent ticket and fare policy changes, focus on our being
a dependable airline for you. Because passenger safety and well being are our
first priority, some travel delays are unavoidable. But new procedures help
minimize other delays and make travel more reliable. For instance, lobby
check-in times were adjusted to allow passengers and their bags more time to
reach their gates. And flight connection times were expanded in many cases.
To do a better job communicating with our customers and focus on your needs
and expectations, we have improved our training processes and updated our
technologies. Employee service training elements and tools have also been
enhanced to best serve you.
To make your travel reliable and easy, laser-based bag scanning technology is
used to electronically match bags to passengers. Baggage delivery has
significantly improved as a result. United EasyCheck-In and EasyInfo speed
you through the airport. These services provide automated check-in
convenience and real-time flight detail.
We're striving to make air travel as smooth and comfortable as possible. I do
understand that there is more work to be done and I sincerely thank you for
your feedback. Please continue to send us your comments.
Sincerely,
Carol Spitelli
Customer Relations>>
What Women Apparently Don't Want
...is to be patronized by the New York Times. That column by John Tierney is
getting blasted all over the Internet. It's not just the content of Tierney's column (see below). It's that there's something particularly irritating about having men draw conclusions about the nature of women on the New York Times op-ed page...when there are no women writing on that page.
For the same reason,
Matt Miller's column all about his wife's theories on corporate America
is annoying
. If Miller's wife is so smart, how come she's not writing for the Times op-ed page?
How could the Times not have realized what a huge mistake it was making in hiring Miller as the replacement for Maureen Dowd, the sole female columnist at the Times op-ed page, while she's on book leave?
How, in this day and age, can you not have one—we're not talking a lot here, folks, just one—female columnist at the Times?
And this at the same time that the Times is asking its readers—male and female—
to pony up $50 to read its columnists online....
The Government's Watch List
As the Chronicle of Higher Education reports, the
House of Representatives has just voted to compile a list of colleges and universities which ban military recruiting.
There's only one possible reason for such a list: to intimidate those institutions. It's a prelude to cutting off whatever federal funding they may receive, should
the Supreme Court rule that the government has the right to do so.
Republicans used to consider themselves the party of small government, even though that identity started to shift around 1994, when the GOP took control of the House. In the realm of education, it's remarkable just how much the Republican Party is using federal power to try to shape the content and diminish the autonomy of institutions of higher learning. Surely this would be an issue that the Harvard president should address? It doesn't have to be an attack on the GOP; picking such a fight wouldn't make much sense. But how about a ringing affirmation of the independence of the university from outside pressures?
Quoting Myself, Cont'd.
The Times reports that the heads of various journalism schools—and Alex Jones, from the Kennedy School at Harvard—are banding together to save journalism. (Well, kind of.) It's an interesting development, but one that may miss the larger problem: stupid people.
My thoughts about this
here, from the Huffington Post.
Steroids? No, Couldn't Be Steroids
Detroit Tigers catcher Ivan Rodriguez, whom Jose Canseco has accused of using steroids, has dropped from 215 pounds last season to 187 this season. "He does a lot of sprints,"
explained one of his teammates. Rodriguez also said he's cut down on fattening foods and late-night meals.
Coincidentally, Rodriguez's batting average has dropped from about .330 to around .280.
It's pretty hard not to conclude that Rodriguez is another example of a player who's stopped taking steroids because of the league's new testing regimen. I mean, let's face it—anyone who's tried to lose weight knows that you don't lose 30 pounds by running a few windsprints and cutting back on the chicken wings.
To the best of my knowledge, Jason Giambi is the only player who's admitted to using steroids. And he's being pilloried for that admission. Where's the logic in that?
The Satire Problem, Cont'd.
Ben Atherton-Zeman, writing in the MetroWest Daily News, writes
a humor column about what would happpen if the state of Massachusetts banned the letter "r." (Get it? It's a joke about Boston accents.)
Yes, you're right—it's not very funny.
I mention it only as continuing proof of how the women-in-science controversy continues to make Larry Summers an object of satire, even after his commitment to spend $50 million to address the issue.
Atherton-Zeman writes this: "We're losing both "R"s in Hahvahd," Summers complained during a recent interview. "What will we do with all those sweatshirts with the old spelling on them?" He was later heard to say, "Women in particular will have a hard time with the new spelling -- I think spelling's just a little harder for them."
Someone at the Kennedy School, or maybe the business school, really ought to do a case study
on how this incident has played out in the media and how one particular gaffe has had such a profound effect upon an individual's public image.
So That Would Be a No?
The Cincinnati Post doesn't think much of the $50 million, either.
In
an editorial in today's paper, the Post says this:
"This farcical soap opera and shakedown sum up the tyranny that taints higher education today. Academic freedom to speak one's mind is limited, apparently, to views deemed acceptable by the self-anointed commissars of political correctness. Those who don't toe the party line must pay.
Owing to his beneficence and raised consciousness, Summers may yet hold onto his job - but academia, if it wastes money in a similar fashion as Harvard, will suffer."
I guess the Post doesn't think much of academia, women's lib,
or the $50 million, now that I think about it. Apparently living in Cincinnati makes you grumpy.
Grading the President! Part 2
Thanks for all the e-mails so far, and keep 'em coming to richard@richardbradley.net. (They're all on background, of course.)
This is going to be a very interesting report card....
Meanwhile, Down South at Columbia
Lee Bollinger undergoes a trip to the dentist's office, in the form of a
New York Times profile that posits significant discontent with his leadership at Columbia.
"In one of many telling moments, Ann Douglas, an English professor, described a recent book party attended by many faculty members, where 'everyone was saying disparaging things about Bollinger and no one was rising to his defense.'"
Sound familiar?
In fact, much of the article does sound eerily similar to events at Harvard this past semester. Which makes me draw a few conclusions:
1) Academics are cranky and don't like change.
2) Presidents hired with a mandate to change will provoke friction, inevitably.
3) Professors in the humanities, whether they realize it or not, are experiencing a profound sense of alienation and, possibly, irrelevance, as new university presidents shift the focus of their universities to the sciences and to solving the problems of the world.
4) If Columbia professors have problems with Lee Bollinger, they'd have Larry Summers' head on a spike by now.
Because there are big differences between Bollinger and Summers, too. First, the level of discontent is not nearly as high at Columbia as at Harvard. Second, Bollinger had to deal with an extremely tricky controversy in the Middle Eastern studies department that was not of his own making, and he navigated through it reasonably well.
And perhaps most important is Bollinger's attitude towards dissent.
"'I'm just not troubled by the level of disagreement and debate,' he said recently, during an interview in his expansive office on the second floor of Low Library, adorned with bright geometric paintings by Josef Albers. 'It's debate and it's healthy.'"
He's also pretty self-deprecatory. "'It would be nice if I was smarter, and in 48 hours could have grasped everything,' added Mr. Bollinger, who was a clerk for Warren E. Burger, the chief justice of the United States. 'But I'm not. And I still don't grasp everything.'"
It's impossible to judge from outside just how sincere Bollinger is about these remarks, of course. But can one imagine Larry Summers saying something as modest as "It would be nice if I were smarter and could grasp everything"?
Part of what caused the women-in-science controversy is that Summers does believe that in 48 hours he can grasp everything....
A Crimson Columnist's Conclusions
Stephen W. Stromberg does a year-end wrap-up in
his column today.
Stromberg discusses a political science class he's finishing that discusses transitions from feudalism to absolutism, and remarks, "The logic of absolutist state-building basically came down to this: put one guy in charge and generate a hierarchy of technocrats, each with his or her own specialized turf, below the leader. That’s basically what has been happening at Harvard over the last four years."
He also goes on to chastise Harvard students for complaining too much and faults the curricular review as vague and vision-less.
Quite an interesting column, actually, and more constructive than I'm making it sound.
The $50 Million, cont'd.
Rocky Mountain News columnist
Vincent Carroll isn't too happy about Larry Summers' decision to spend $50 million on diversity, as he writes in this colum item, "As usual, make the students pay."
Key graf: "It's bad enough that Harvard President Lawrence Summers has spent most of this year backtracking and groveling, by turns, for musing about whether innate aptitude explains in part the ratio of men and women in math and science careers. Now he has embraced reforms that include punishing students who had nothing to do with his remarks and who might not agree with them."
Carroll particularly doesn't like the fact that graduate students in science will be compelled to undergo "sensitivity training" in gender bias.
"If the training is anything like the diversity programs favored by corporate America, it will be condescending and simple-minded, while ruled by the assumption that every participant is a closet Neanderthal."
All of this—the original controversy, the $50 million, the diversity provost, the sensitivity training, everything—is so unnecessary.
What Harvard simply needs is a president who consistently and strongly sends the message that diversity at every level of the university is essential—a "role model," if you will.
Larry Summers, who involves himself in the smallest details of university life in so many other areas, never played any role in this issue until his own ass was in a sling. Why?
I'm still waiting for Summers to hire a high-level woman or minority in his academic administration. How can anyone take Mass Hall seriously on the diversity issue when it has all the ethnic and gender diversity of the Porcellian?
Sadly, the first person Summers will hire to diversify his administration will inevitably be...yes...the diversity provost.
Where are the Women, Part 358
I've written elsewhere about
the paucity of women on newspaper op-ed pages, and God knows I've written (probably way too much) here about the women in sciences issue.
But these gender deficits keep cropping up. Now the
Project for Excellence in Journalism has released a study showing that
women are dramatically under-represented as sources in journalism.
So women are under-represented in academia...business...journalism. The list goes on. It occurs to me that if women could unite across these fields to raise the issues these gender deficits have in common, there could be a real movement here—a second wave of feminism.
(Or has there already been a second wave? Maybe a third wave? Where's
Naomi Wolf when you need her?)
What the Economists Say
The paper that Tierney refers to, "Do Women Shy Away from Competition," is actually quite interesting, if you have time to read it. (Go to the link in the item below and scroll to the end of Tierney's column, where you can download the paper as a PDF.)
If you can't read it, here's one conclusion from the authors, economists Muriel Niederle and Lise Vesterlund.
"The present paper is part of a research area that tries to understand why women are underrepresented in many high profile jobs and in whole professions," the authors write. "For example, women have a higher attrition rate from science and engineering, and it increases with academic rank.
"Standard explanations include different preferences (or household or biological constraints) of women in terms of time to be invested in a job. An explanation for the lack of women in science and engineering is also possible differences in ability. An alternative explanation is discrimination, namely that the glass ceiling effect is man made, such that women may not be equally promoted and nurtured in science and engineering.
"We studied an additional explanation, namely that women may be less “competitive,” less prone to select into competitions, but not because of differences in preferences over time invested in jobs, or differences in raw ability of performing in a task. "
"...There is indeed evidence that, for example, the decision of women to quit sciences and engineering is not primarily due to ability. ...It seems therefore that decisions of women to remain in male-dominated areas are not driven by actual ability only. In natural settings issues such as the amount of time devoted to the profession, and the desire of women to raise children may provide some explanations for the choices of women.
"In this paper we examined an environment where women and men perform equally well, and where issues of discrimination, or time spent on the job do not have any explanatory power. Nonetheless we find large gender differences in the propensity to choose competitive environments. We feel that the effects we discover in the lab are strong and puzzling enough to call for a greater attention of standard economics to explanations of gender differences that so far have mostly been left in the hands of psychologists and sociologists."
In other words, we don't know the answers, but they don't seem to have anything to do with innate differences in aptitude...and we certainly don't trust certain psychologists and sociologists (you know who you are, SP) to answer these questions.
Here We Go Again
Like a certain university president, New York Times columnist John Tierney has decided that he knows "what women want," as the title of
his column today puts it.
Tierney wants to know whether, if you could eliminate all the social factors in the workplace and evaluate men and women based solely on merit, would women make as much as men?
For insight, he turns to a social science experiment that seems interesting but hardly definitive. (It's a little byzantine to explain here; if you're interested, go to the link.) The test aspired to determine each gender's appetite for competition.
The researchers' conclusion? "Even in tasks where they do well, women seem to shy away from competition, whereas men seem to enjoy it too much," Professor Niederle said.
Here's where Tierney gets into trouble, to my mind: "You can argue that this difference is due to social influences," Tierney says, "although I suspect it's largely innate, a byproduct of evolution and testosterone."
So far as I know, Tierney has no particular expertise in the field of biology, sociology, genetics, sociobiology, or any other field that might allow him to pronounce on why men seem more competitive in one experiment than women are.
So why does he jump to the conclusion that this apparent difference between the genders is genetically based?
Because, I think, the vogue of sociobiology in recent years has given people who like to dabble in this material just enough information to say dumb things that they think make them sound smart.
Also, it's just easier for some men to downplay the impact of socializing; genetics is a one-stop answer shop. If you really start to consider the impact of socialization on U.S. socioeconomic structure, the world as we know it starts to look very shaky, and just about everything we thought we could take for granted, we can't.....
Grade the President!
It's exam time at Harvard. It's also the end of the fourth year of Larry Summers' presidency—the moment when, if Summers was the U.S. president, he'd have to stand for reelection.
Of course, Summers doesn't have to worry about his job security, since the Harvard Corporation seems to have become a subsidiary adjunct of Mass Hall.
But in honor of the covergence of the two timelines, I'll be posting a Summers' report card after Memorial Day. (And don't worry—no grade inflation here!) The president's report card will grade his progress on several counts, focusing on the goals Summers emphasized when he became president: Allston, boosting the sciences, improving undergraduate education, internationalizing the university.
I'll also be throwing in a few other areas to be graded, such as: Is Harvard better off than it was four years ago? Has Summers restored the presidency to its pre-Rudenstine role of public intellectual?
And I'd love your help. Everyone can grade the president! Just send an e-mail to richard@richardbradley.net with your suggestions.....
God and god at Yale
After two hundred years, Yale has severed its official relationship with the Congregational Church, and yesterday that
church held its last Sunday service at Yale's Battell Chapel.
This is a painful decision for everyone involved, but it seems an inevitable one. At a campus of increasing diversity, how could one denomination claim a monopoly on Yale's church?
I know that Larry Summers feels the same way about Harvard's Memorial Church, and that Peter Gomes, the minister at that church, adamantly disagrees. As campus life at Harvard has been quiet the past few weeks, I suggest that President Summers raise this issue at Commencement. Just to be provocative.
Kidding aside, it would be an interesting debate for the campus....
And Speaking of Corporatization
Mass Hall is taking two steps that will increase the level of bureacracy and corporate culture at Harvard.
First, provost Steve Hyman
has announced the creation of three new vice-provosts to preside over international affairs, research policy, and diversity. (The latter was first announced last week, of course.) Though Hyman says the jobs will go to faculty members to ensure that there's a "faculty sensibility" there, they reflect a growing, power-centralizing central administration. For better or worse.
The second development is the announcement of
a Harvard-branded credit card. As I wrote in Harvard Rules, Larry Summers has been considering the move for several years now. Lots of other universities do it, as a way to build alumni loyalty while creating an additional revenue stream. Harvard has held out largely out of a reluctance to commercialize its name. That reluctance is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.
Just listen to this language from the solicitation: "The Harvard Alumni Association World MasterCard offers a rewards program like no other, designed with distinguished Harvard graduates in mind. Only Crimson Rewards offers valuable perks with exclusive HAA rewards. You will receive one (1) Crimson Reward point for each $1 dollar you spend.* The more you use the card the faster your Crimson Rewards points add up."
Well, this is just bullshit, of course. This particular MasterCard offers a "rewards program" exactly like every other credit card—reward points, etc. And I love that phrase, "designed with distinguished Harvard graduates in mind." No, it's designed for any Harvard grad with a fair-to-middlin' credit history. But apparently a little sucking-up works.
I'm sure there are good arguments for this move, but there are good arguments against it, too. In a small way, such dishonest and insincere language is already a corruption of
veritas.
Interestingly, the proceeds from the card will go to a Summers' pet project: a "presidential scholars" program to fund graduate students. Summers is taking this step in order to fund a program near and dear to him....
Again, I raise this not to argue that it's a bad idea, simply to point out a theme.
Smarter Thoughts from the Left Coast
Writing in the Herald of Everett, Washington, economist James McCusker has
perhaps the most thoughtful take on the $50 million payoff that I've seen—certainly more so than the Globe or Times.
"Is diversity worth the price?"McCusker asks.
"Clearly," he continues, "Harvard believes in a market-based solution; they plan to buy the diversity they want on the open market. This, however, implies a market-based value to diversity itself, otherwise there is no way to determine whether $50 million is too much, or too little, to spend. Right now, the precise value of diversity is not so important, for $5 million a year is a bargain price to quiet down the row touched off by Summers with his "women in math and science" ruminations. Eventually, however, like all budget items, diversity has to prove its worth in terms of value for the money."
The rest of McCusker's piece is well worth- reading, because he's right, of course. Just how did Larry Summers come up with that $50 million figure? How do you determine how much diversity is too much, if that's possible, and how much is not enough? And how much money does it take to get just the right amount?
Interestingly, McCusker suggests that in trying to answer these questions, Harvard will have to become more corporate, as American companies have been confronting these issues for decades.
Since that's something Summers has been trying to do all along—make Harvard more corporate—this outcome would be no small irony.
The Globe's Verdict
The Globe's Marcella Bomardieri weighs in with
her take on the $50 million; she's slightly more positive than the Times. On the one hand, she writes, "it hasn't exactly convinced Summers' critics that he's a new man." On the other hand, "some female Harvard scientists are more optimistic than they've been in a while."
Bombardieri is a fine reporter, but this is a silly conclusion. Of course they're more optimistic. After a national controversy, the president of Harvard finds himself compelled to address a problem—partly of his own making—and throw money at it. He's going to have to hire more women and pay them better, and he has virtually no leverage in resisting the demands of female faculty members.
So whether or not Summers has changed, he's got to take steps to improve the lot of women at Harvard because he can't afford another media controversy and faculty rebellion.
What really matters is this: What happens in a year, when the spotlight is off? And what will be the next shoe to drop at Harvard?
Should the Groton Sub Base be Closed?
Naval expert Joe Buff doesn't think so, and he makes a
pretty good argument against the closing.
Among his reasons: What if Newport News got blown up by terrorists? That would leave the eastern seaboard with no submarine bases?
Sad to think that every national security decision we now make has to consider the possibility of terrorists detonating a nuke. Sad, but realistic.
The Times' Verdict on Larry Summers
Today's Times mentions
Summers in the Week in Review section—and like humorist Andy Borowitz, they lump him with Mexican president Vicente Fox in the "uh oh, time to apologize" category.
The Times' conclusion on the $50 million payoff?
"The latest offering is unlikely to quell unhappiness over his leadership among the faculty and students. The big unknown: What do the members of the Harvard Corporation, which governs the university, think?"
Note the implicit assumption in that question....
Bill O'Reilly: Hot Under the Collar
Yesterday Bill O'Reilly
imagined (on the radio) how Michael Kinsley, LA Times op-ed editor, would feel about terrorism if terrorists cut his head off.
(Kinsley, a former boss of mine, and O'Reilly have clashed before, after Kinsley questioned O'Reilly's working-class authenticity.)
Does anyone else get the feeling that the hideousness of the war in Iraq is really taking a toll on the level of civility in this country? Emotions are running high....
A Small, Great Deed
Former commissioner of baseball
Fay Vincent has resigned from the board of Jesuit-run Fairfield University (in my hometown) because of the ouster of dissenting editor Thomas Reese from the Catholic magazine
America.
He has also refused an honorary degree from Bridgeport's Sacred Heart University, also a Catholic institution.
Vincent, an honorable baseball commmissioner, has steadily and quietly shown himself as an honorable man. His protests may have no larger impact, and, as if he knows that, he has not publicized them. And yet, they reflect an individual act of conscience far more powerful than anything Benedict XVI has yet done.
My Visit with Bill O'Reilly
Don't know if you saw it, but I went on The O'Reilly Factor last night to discuss the Harvard students' production of a
play about Abu Ghraib.
Here's the background: When O'Reilly heard about this production, he sent a camera crew to film it. The crew apparently got permission from the student producers, which is required. But when they got to Harvard's theater, they were turned away, per instruction of Robert Mitchell, the FAS press secretary. (In my experience, an officious and rude man, but never mind.)
So O'Reilly wanted to have a conversation about whether Harvard was "un-American." I told his producer that I could say that, yes, Harvard had a history of anti-Semitism.Yes, it had a history of discriminating against women. That it was so elitist, it sometimes thought itself better than the rest of America, yes.
But un-American, no. That's ridiculous. And as for the students involved, I would say that what they were doing—engaging in protest during wartime—was profoundly American. Whereas we'd like at least to think that the torture at Abu Ghraib was un-American.
Apparently, that worked; I'd be the token lefty. (I don't think of that position as liberal, just informed. But things are what they are these days.)
I'd been on the show once before, about six years ago, but O'Reilly didn't remember me. (Understandable—he's got a lot of guests coming through those doors.)
He's changed since then, become cooler and more self-important. I liked him on that first appearance way back when. I have no idea what we were talking about, but O'Reilly seemed like he enjoyed a good fight and respected you if you gave him one. Now he gives the impression that he wants you to disagree with him because it's good TV, but at the same time, how dare you?
Before the show, we were chatting about how the segment would go, and I said to O'Reilly, "You know I'm going to defend the students, right?"
His answer: "You can say whatever you want, just don't say anything looney. My audience won't like it if you say something looney, and you want to sell
books, right? We know how to sell books here on the Factor."
Here's another way in which O'Reilly has changed: He uses the first-person plural to refer to himself.
I do want to sell books, so I agreed not to say anything looney.
As for the segment itself, I have no idea how it went; it's impossible to tell when you're going through it how you come across. The other participants were a Harvard undergrad named Matthew Downer, and a law student named Benjamin Shapiro, author of a book about how universities are corrupting young people whose title I can't remember. (Sorry, Ben! But I'm sure it's like nothing I've ever read before.)
Downer—the president of the Harvard Republican Club, but not identified as such—was the only person who'd seen the play, so he had a distinct advantage over the rest of us. He used that advantage to argue that the play was "sympathetic to the cause of the insurgents," something which I suspect is
a load of crap. Sympathetic to the victims of torture, maybe. But to the cause of the insurgents? I seriously doubt it.
Anyway, O'Reilly was actually pretty reasonable, in his way, although I did try to call him out when he labeled "Abu Ghraib" (the play) as un-American. And he's great on TV, there's no question about that. The guy has total command in that studio. Moreover, he instructed us beforehand not to talk over each other, as we'd each get time to talk, and he was true to his word on that.
Most of all, I tried not to say anything looney. I knew his audience would never stand for that.
George Will—Time to Retire?
Apparently thinking that it is under attack, George Will
defends the study of history in his column today. He went to a lecture at the White House by Yale historian Donald Kagan, and, well, he must have needed a column.
Here's his lede: "When Yale awarded President Kennedy an honorary degree, he said he had the ideal combination—a Yale degree and a Harvard education. Today, he might rethink that, given the Harvard faculty's tantrum that caused President Lawrence Summers' cringing crawl away from his suggestion of possible gender differences of cognition. At least the phrase 'Yale education' does not yet seem, as 'Harvard education' does, oxymoronic."
Where to begin?
First, JFK's quote has been dead wrong for decades anyway; everyone knows that the ideal combination would be a Yale education and a Harvard diploma. Yale has a better (undergraduate) education, and Harvard has a better-known brand.
Second, Summers didn't just talk about "possible differences" in cognition; he talked about possible inequities. There's a difference.
Third, Will's getting on his years now. Instead of becoming more thoughtful, he's becoming more bilious. Note the faculty "tantrum" and Summers' "cringing crawl".... George Will has become such a parody of his sniping, snobbish self that it's time for his editors to suggest a lengthy sabbatical.
Apparently Will would have liked Summers to stand with a mighty sword and slay the faculty dragon. Because he goes on to decry post-modernism in historiography, on the grounds that post-modernists deny that great men do great deeds for the right reasons.
Will says that "the defining characteristics of postmodernism [are] skepticism and cynicism."
On the other hand, the greatest critics of postmodernism, according to Kagan and Will, are religious true believers.
The true road to salvation (i.e., moral guidance) instead lies in history, which Kagan/Will seem to define as the study of great men who did great things for the right reasons.
At the risk of being post-modernist, might I suggest that Will and Kagan might hold this view of historiography because of their political beliefs? And that therefore we should take their words with a grain of salt, because their's is hardly an objective truth? That their view of history—history shows great men doing great things because we need it to—is tautological?
Meandering on, Will concludes thusly:
"Historian David McCullough says the study of history is 'an antidote to the hubris of the present— the idea that everything we have and everything we do and everything we think is the ultimate, the best.' Compare, for example, the heroic construction of the Panama Canal and the debacle of Boston's “Big Dig'' 100 years later."
History does indeed stand as an antidote to the hubris of the present...but the greatest example of hubris in our world today is the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq. Which Will supports.
Will continues: "Near the “Big Dig'' sits today's Harvard, another refutation of the theory of mankind's inevitable, steady ascent. From Yale, however, comes Kagan's temperate affirmation of the cumulative knowledge that comes from the study of history."
Harvard is "another refutation of the theory of mankind's steady, inevitable ascent"? Oh, please.
George Will, take a look in the mirror. Who's the cynical one here?
News Flash
I'll be appearing on
The O'Reilly Factor tonight to talk about Harvard. Check local listings for times.
More on the Times
Tim Noah has an interesting suggestion about the Times' plan to charge $50 for online access to its columnists: What happens when certain columnists drive much more traffic than others?
Let us say, for example, that Maureen Dowd is much more widely read than John Tierney. Not a big deal when everything on the Times site is free; matters more when you're charging readers for content. Will columnists' salaries now rise or fall in proportion to how many paying readers click on their columns? And will columnists start changing their subject matter in order to attract those lucrative hits? (More Michael Jackson, less foreign affairs.)
I think there's another likely consequence: More women columnists.
Here's why. The overwhelming number of subscribers will be male. It is, after all, a male-dominated page. And so, in order to attract women subscribers, the Times will do something it has so far been reluctant to do: hire female columnists. (Now, there's only Dowd.)
As the book publishing world will tell you, women are much bigger readers than men. So the economic logic of this move should sooner or later compel the Times to have more female columnists than male ones...which would mean a profound transformation, in composition and subject matter, of the Times op-ed page. This is going to be interesting.
The Apology Shuffle
Steven Wynn in the San Francisco Chronicle
writes about the recent spate of apologies in public life.
Key graf: "Whether it's a married New Jersey governor with a secret gay sex life, Yankee first baseman Jason Giambi juiced up on steroids or a scholar caught cribbing from someone else's research, the apology has become mandatory, well-scripted behavior. CBS newsman Dan Rather (for the botched Bush National Guard story), Harvard University President Lawrence Summers (for his remarks about women's aptitude for math and science) and just the other day Mexican President Vicente Fox (a comparison of the Mexican and black work ethic) have all performed their public rites recently.
Wynn is cynical about this; I'm not. Granted, the apologies aren't always quickly delivered, and sometimes they're less-than-sincere. Nevertheless, there's nothing wrong with apologizing. Even imperfect ones are better than nothing.
Showing Us the Money
Harvard has released
its annual list of salaries, which it must disclose by law. Larry Summers is making $637, 824; Steven Hyman earns $371, 710; and v-p for government blah-blah-blah Alan Stone pulls down $313, 549. (No wonder Stone keeps such a low profile.)
A couple of points:
* The Harvard Management Company officials are making less than they did last year.
* Summers' compensation package is actually diminished because, apparently, of a lower tax burden on his Washington apartment (which, last time I checked, he was sharing with a roommate). Does Harvard really need to pay for Summers' Washington abode?
* The highest-paid people at Harvard are administrators, not professors.
* There are some high-paid female administrators, but the highest-paid administrators are men. Why does Alan Stone make 300k when v-p for finance Donna Rapier only makes $200k?
* Finally, though I can't prove anything, I can't help wondering if this report isn't cooked in some way. Summers' salary has gone up steadily since he took office (with the exception of his last year, Neil Rudenstine made less than $400,000); this is the first year that Summers' salary increase has been modest.
Since it would have looked terrible for Summers to have gotten a big raise this year, I can't help but wonder if the numbers were jiggered to avoid the appearance of rewarding Summers for what has been essentially a disastrous year.
But as I say, I have absolutely no proof of that. Just a sense of how much Harvard cares about appearances, and how sensitive the question of Summers' compensation is.
He Swings! He Hits! (He Throws! He Takes Steroids!)
Jason Giambi went 3-for-4 last night, with a homer and two singles, as the Yankees won their tenth straight.
I'm sure there's no connection, but ever since I wrote about him here, Giambi's been on a little bit of a hitting streak. (Which is to say, he's had some hits.) I'm delighted to see it—and delighted to see the Yankees playing the kind of baseball they're capable of.
Meanwhile, around the league, it appears that
pitchers are the new steroid users....
And Speaking of Submarines
Remember the San Francisco, the nuclear sub that hit an undersea mountain a few months ago? Well, it came a lot closer to sinking than was realized at the time. (Actually, the people on board realized it, but the rest of us didn't.)
The Times has
this story about what really happened in that terrifying incident. It's gripping reading.
The Great One Speaks
Norman Mailer wonders if the Newsweek fiasco wasn't a set-up. I do too, a bit. It feels too much like the Dan Rather/Bush memos story, and that always smacked of Karl Rove to me. Plus, the way the White House is jumping on this has a certain pre-planned quality. Talk about crocodile tears!
The question, of course, would be why? It seems farfetched to think that the White House and/or Pentagon would go to such lengths to discredit the media, even at the expense of U.S. standing in the Muslim world. (But then, they wouldn't have known that riots would be the result.....)
The Satire Problem, Cont'd.
This, from the Onion, speaks for itself.
Here's a question that Harvard folks might want to ask themselves as commencement rolls around: Is the Harvard brand better or worse off than it was four years ago?
He's Back!
Andy Borowitz
has a column in which he talks about how American students are really, really good at Star Wars trivia. (It's a joke, kinda sorta.)
His closer:
"Elsewhere, Harvard president Lawrence Summers said he would spend $50 million to make Harvard's faculty more diverse, and an additional $10 million to send flowers and candy to female faculty members."
Not to kill the joke (but to kill the joke)... Borowitz's point—that this move feels a lot like a payoff—is sure to be picked up in the next news cycle. Right-wing women-bashers, here's your cue....
Quoting Myself, Cont'd.
The New York Times is about to start charging for "premium" content on its website. (Whenever people start using bogus words like "premium," you know you're about to get screwed.)
My thoughts on the move
here at the Huffington Post.
All Hands on Deck
Connecticut governor
M. Jodi Rell is calling upon the state legislature to provide $1.5 million to fund efforts to keep the naval submarine base in Groton. The state's representatives in Congress are united in their opposition to the base closing. Naturally, this is going to be a fight. Connecticut may have the arguments to win it; does it have the clout?
A Good Day for Larry Summers
I'm on deadline , so I haven't had the chance to read the reports of the two diversity committees. Which means that my impressions today will be kind of like most people's....
And my impression is that this is a good day for Larry Summers.
To start, the coverage of yesterday's announcement is significant.
Front page of the Times, two stories in the Globe—here's
one, here's the
other—Reuters, the Boston Herald, the
Financial Times, the
New York Sun,
InsideHigherEd.com, and a host of other, smaller outlets.
There'll be more to come.
Second, $50 million sounds like a lot. And academics are always susceptible to being bought off.
Third, Summers is saying the right things. For example: ''The objective is not just [to put forward] a set of recommendations, but to bring about a set of very important cultural changes," he said on a conference call with reporters. ''Universities like Harvard were designed a long time ago by men and for men. To fully succeed on these issues, we're going to have to address issues of culture. " (From Marcella Bomardieri's story in the Boston Globe)
There are still lots of questions, of course. Where will the money come from? Over how many years will it be spread out? Will the new diversity chief have any real power? Will the changes affect the autonomy of individual departments and schools? Will they add to the centralizing power of Mass Hall?
And most of all, does Larry Summers really believe what he's saying? Can a 50-year-old man change?
Some of this will become clear in time. Today, Larry Summers is probably feeling a lot better about his future than he was a couple months ago.
Well, That Was Expensive
Larry Summers
announced today that Harvard will spend $50 million to recruit, pay and otherwise support women and minority faculty members.
Wow.
I guess this isn't surprising; as I reported in Harvard Rules, Summers indirectly paid Skip Gates about a million dollars to stay at Harvard. Expand that to departments across the university, and $50 million isn't a huge surprise.
I can't argue with the goals of this initiative; Harvard needs more women and minority faculty members.
I also can't help but wonder if there wasn't a better way to address this issue. And very possibly, for Harvard, a cheaper one. But that's what happens when you have the president over a barrel. Imagine if Summers had tried to say no to the requests of the two committees he appointed to investigate these issues....
Here's an interesting question, though: Whose budget will all this money come from? The president's? FAS's? Every school's?
I would suspect the latter...and also that not all the deans are going to be happy about this. But we'll see when the details emerge.
Quoting Myself
The submarine base at Groton, Connecticut, is now slated to be closed, something that hits close to home for me. I've blogged about it
here, on the Huffington Post.
The Satire Problem, Cont'd.
Humorist (and Harvard grad) Andy Borowitz has a funny piece about Larry Summers on
his site today.
It's headlined: "Presidents of Mexico and Harvard to Collaborate on Most Insulting Remark Ever."
Funny graf: "Mr. Fox, who insulted both Mexicans and American blacks in a comment made Friday, and Mr. Summers, who outraged women with remarks made earlier this year, appeared ebullient at the prospect of working together to offend everyone on the planet."
Funny line: “We have been big fans of each other’s work for a long, long time,” President Fox said.
Occasionally, I get some flak from Harvard folks for being tough on Larry Summers. Good or bad, I welcome the input, whether via comment posts or e-mail. But don't blame me for stuff like this. I'm just the messenger....
Take that, Larry Summers, Indeed
Kathy Paur, a Harvard graduate student in mathematics,
spoke at Dartmouth on the subject of Larry Summers' remarks on women in science and math. Let's just say she's not a big fan of the Harvard president.
Among some of the things Paur mentioned:
—Harvard's math department has no tenured female professors
—Since Summers became president, the number of women teaching in the math department has steadily declined
—The math department has offered tenure to five women that Paur knows of, but all said no—evidence, she claims, of a department culture hostile to women, because people don't usually say no to Harvard
—according to research she conducted on men's and women's scores on math tests around the world, Summers' theory of intrinsic differences in aptitude is wrong
--out of 60 speakers at Harvard math colloquiums in the past six years, none were women
Sounds like the math department has some explaining to do....
The Limits of Tolerance
Newsweek is
scrambling to explain its story on the alleged desecration of the Qu'ran by U.S. soldiers. The magazine is, understandably, freaked out that Afghan Muslims responded to the story by rioting, burning buildings, and killing 15 people.
As long as the magazine is right, Newsweek shouldn't apologize. It's a legitimate story. And as readers, our reaction should not be, "How could we have done anything to offend Muslims?"
Certainly as a practical matter, flushing the Qu'ran down the toilet is a very bad idea; the consequences are proof of that. It's not so good from a moral point of view either. We should be respectful of all faiths.
But does that act of disrespect really justify riots and murder? There's a difference between being respectful and sympathetic to the Muslim world, and being apologetic for some of the harder-to-justify behavior that goes on within it. Our cultural sensitivity shouldn't excuse inexcusable behavior. You burn a Bible and I'll be plenty upset, but I'm not going to go out and kill someone.
Defacing the Qu'ran is Americans' shame; the subsequent violence is not.
"Take that, Lawrence H. Summers!"
So begins
an item from The Telegraph of Calcutta, India.
I reproduce it here to make a couple of points:
"Take that, Lawrence H. Summers! Four months after the Harvard University president started a debate on whether women had the right stuff for science, the National Academy of Science has chosen a record number of women scientists among the 72 invited to join the academy. The 19 female members account for 25 per cent of the new members. The number, however, isn't a reaction to Summers' speech. Members selected this year's class by secret ballot last September."
One, it's amazing the resonance the Summers controversy still has, and how far it has reached.
And two, this particular piece of journalism is actually quite unfair. It starts by referencing Summers...and ends by saying it has nothing to do with Summers. But now, whenever there's anything in the media having to do with women's accomplishments, Summers is the anti-reference point.
