It Has Come to This Yankees versus Red Sox. Three final games. The Yankees up by one. The Red Sox playing at Fenway, where they are tough to beat.

As I've said before, isn't autumn baseball grand?

These are two terrific teams engaged in the best rivalry in sports. And there is nothing like baseball to ratchet up the tension. For the past month, this pennant race has been tightening...and tightening....and tightening. It's getting hard to take. My brother, also a Yankees fan, insists that he would like nothing more than for the regular season to end in a tie, followed by a one-game playoff between the Yanks and Sox. I couldn't take it, and I don't know if most Sox fans could either. If the Yankees lost, we'd be subjected to millions of column inches about how the 1978 Bucky Dent homer has finally been erased. If the Yankees win, we'd lord it over Sox fans so brutally they'd never recover.

No...please. It's bad for the heart. Let the Yanks win two out of three this weekend.

Herewith, a handy viewers' guide to the most pertinent questions of the next three days.

1) How big a factor will Fenway be?
2) Whose middle-inning relief pitchers will hurt their team more?
3) Which Mike Mussina will show up on Sunday—the one who pitched a terrific game in his first start back from a sore elbow, or the one who lasted about an inning in his last start?
4) Will anyone pitch to David Ortiz after the sixth inning? Just walk the friggin' guy, okay?
5) Can Tim Wakefield continue to pitch as brilliantly as he has the past couple of months? (Won't that guy ever retire?)
6) Curt Schilling has been mediocre this year—except when pitching against the Yankees. Can he pull it off again, just as he did about three weeks ago, when he was masterful against the Yanks at the Stadium? Or will he bumble and fall?
7) Who'll rise to the occasion more tonight: Yankee rookie pitcher Chien Ming Wang, who is as cool a customer as I've ever seen in a rookie, or the emotional, fiery David Wells—who famously fades near the end of a long season, particularly as he gets older and fatter. (Sorry, was the framing of that question biased?)
8) Who'll manage better, Joe Torre or Terry Francona? Last year, Francona clearly outmanaged Torre in the championship series, making a series of moves that all paid off while Torre managed like a mime on Prozac.
9) Who wants the MVP more, David Ortiz or Alex Rodriguez? (Who says I never say anything good about the Red Sox? Unless something changes dramatically this weekend, I'd give the award to Ortiz, no matter which team finishes first. Rodriguez has been great for the Yankees...but it seems like every time the Red Sox come from behind and win, Ortiz is the reason. The guy is just great.)
10) Defense, defense, defense. Whose is better? I give a slight nod to the Yankees—particularly at third, where A-Rod has been astonishingly good.
11) As Gene Hackman famously said in the classic football film "The Replacements," in order to win the big games, "you gotta have heart." Which team wants it more?

Go Yankees!  ¶ 9:00 AM 1 comments   

  Make the Money and Run Today marks Jack Meyer's final day as head of the Harvard Management Corporation, the investment group that invests Harvard's billions. Meyer has been wildly successful in the job, so the pressure is on his successor, which may be one reason why, despite an almost year-long search, his successor has not yet been named.

Vice-president for finance Ann Berman—herself heading for the exits—tells the Crimson that there will be "transitional leadership" at HMC until a final replacement for Meyer is named.

There remain those at Harvard who are hoping that phrase "transitional leadership" will apply to other areas of the university.

In any case, this is a hugely important story. More than its students, more than its professors, what drives the modern Harvard is money, and it could be argued that Jack Meyer has been the most important person in the creation of modern Harvard. It could also be argued that this will be the most important personnel decision Larry Summers will make as president.

In universities as in politics, the adage holds true: If you want to know the real story, follow the money.  ¶ 8:53 AM 0 comments   

  I Expect It Would Be an Interesting Conversation The University of Michigan is initiating a series of undergraduate courses on ethics. Here's one description:

"Forums to facilitate discussion about ethics are undefined right now, but their basic function is clear — providing a discussion setting on topics such as military action in Iraq and Harvard President Lawrence Summers’s controversial comments on women in science."

It is an interesting moment in Harvard's history—although not inherently a bad one—when its president has become a topic in other universities' classes for a conversation about ethics.

Funnily enough, the Michigan program is taking shape just as Harvard seems to be phasing out its own undergraduate requirement in "moral reasoning".....  ¶ 10:01 AM 1 comments   

  Well, No One Ever Said He Was Fluent in English Here's a line from the battle-cry of defiance posted on Tom DeLay's website:

"Thank you for visiting and I look forward to keeping you up to date on our fight this out of control DA."

It's a classic story: Whenever you get indicted, the first thing that goes is your ability to write a sentence.


  ¶ 9:56 AM 0 comments   

  And on a Serious Note David Brooks has a solid column in today's Times about the DeLay situation. (I'd link to it, but because of the NYT's foolish, influence-diminishing greed, I can't.)

Here's the critical graf:

"Will we learn from DeLay's fall about the self-destructive nature of the team [partisan] mentality? Of course not. The Democrats have drawn the 10-years-out-of-date conclusion that in order to win, they need to be just like Tom DeLay. They need to rigidly hew to orthodoxy. They need Deaniac hyperpartisanship. They need to organize their hatreds around Bush the way the Republicans did around Clinton."

Seems to me that Brooks is exactly right. While Democrats can revel in the Republicans' current troubles, those troubles actually mask glaring Democratic weaknesses. It's still unclear what the party stands for, other than a nip-at-his-heels opposition to Bush. The party lacks not only a vision, but also strong, charismatic leaders to communicate it. The closest the Dems come to such a figure—at least in terms of the 2008 election—is Hillary Clinton, and even though you can't underestimate her, she does have an awful lot of baggage.

My guess is that by the time 2008 rolls around, most Americans are going to want a fresh face from both parties. (Weirdly enough, 69-year-old John McCain, whose candor is always refreshing, fits the bill more than anyone else other than Barack Obama, who won't be running this time.) Is there any Democratic candidate who fits that description? Because despite the GOP implosion, Democrats still lack a candidate they can proudly call their own.  ¶ 9:16 AM 0 comments   

  Angelina Jolie=Gollum? According to Jennifer Aniston, yes, says the gossip rag Star (via Gawker).

I must say that, as a former magazine editor, I admire the editor who came up with the idea of running a side-by-side comparison of a beautiful but slightly wacko movie bombshell and a hideous fictional movie monster torn apart by the corruption of power.

Yes, you need to do the serious stuff. (Maybe not at Star, though.) But sometimes, you need to have a little fun too....

And just for the record, in my opinion, Jennifer Aniston really ought to be annoyed at her ex-husband, not Angelina Jolie, who has two lovely adopted children.

I would add that there are other figures in our public life who may bear a greater resemblance to Gollum.  ¶ 9:05 AM 0 comments   

  Proof That God Exists? Tom DeLay is indicted, the Red Sox lose, and the Yankees retake first place...on the same day. Coincidence? I think not.

Humor me, if you would, while I make a modest suggestion.

One of the many reasons I dislike the Sox is that, although they play in leftie Massachusetts, they are actually a Red State team. They have the most evangelical Christians of any team in baseball, even as they date college students (she's a freshman?) and marry strippers. They are proudly anti-intellectual, calling themselves "the idiots." They campaign for George W. Bush.

So isn't it just possible that the fate of the Sox and the fate of the Republican Party are linked? And that the heavens have turned against both?

I know the season isn't over. I know anything can happen, and overconfidence is a recipe for disaster. But I can still hope, right? Hope that just maybe this time, for once, God is on our side.  ¶ 8:24 AM 2 comments   

  A Little Dark Humor with Your Giant Squid Here's a funny/sad joke.

Donald Rumsfeld is giving the president his daily briefing. He concludes by saying, "Yesterday, three Brasilians were killed."

"OH NO!" the president says. "That's terrible."

His staff sits stunned at this rare display of emotion, nervously watching as the president sits, head in hands.

Finally, Bush looks up and asks, "How many is a brazillion?"


________________________________________________________________

P.S. Thanks, Kristen...  ¶ 8:31 AM 4 comments   

  Harvard Natives Getting Restless Yesterday's faculty meeting sounds like a hot one. First, Randy Matory led a discussion about Conrad Harper's resignation from the Harvard Corporation, suggesting that "the secretive Corporation, which is Harvard’s highest governing body, is indifferent to faculty concerns and has shied away from confronting difficult questions regarding Summers’ leadership."

Sounds about right to me, from what I hear.

A quick digression: I'm enjoying the fact that the default adjective the Crimson uses to describe the Corporation is "secretive." Not "influential," not "wise," not "respected," not even "powerful." But "secretive." The Crimson is correct: its secrecy is the most salient fact about the Harvard Corporation...and it is also part of the dynamic by which the Corporation's very legitimacy is eroding. It fascinates me that a consequence of the Harvard Corporation secretly choosing Lawrence Summers to be Harvard's president will ultimately mean a choice it doesn't want to make: becoming more transparent, or losing its moral authority over Harvard. Are the alumni paying attention?

Okay, back to the faculty meeting.

Apparently an even hotter discussion revolved around the fact that FAS dean Bill Kirby announced that FAS is going to slow the hiring of new faculty. It's not a freeze, Kirby insisted, just more modest growth to give FAS finances a chance to breathe.

Huh.

Here's a question for some enterprising Crimson reporter: What is the real state of the university's finances and fundraising?

Some relevant facts:
1) Harvard Management Corporation head Jack Meyer is quitting, and Harvard can't seem to find a replacement for him.
2) Vice-president of finance Ann Berman is leaving Harvard to spend more time at her home in Italy.
3) The University reported that its fundraising last year was the highest since Larry Summers became president, which sounded, let's say, counter-intuitive to me, because....
4) Harvard fundraisers simultaneously announced that they are postponing a long-planned capital campaign for another couple of years. The campaign was supposed to have started by now, but President Summers' controversies have delayed its inception, and Harvard fundraisers say now that the delay is intended to help prioritize the Allston development.
5) And...FAS is slowing hiring, despite very public pledges by Bill Kirby to increase the size of the faculty. It would be interesting for someone to go back and look at his statements to this effect over the years and see how they jibe with his current announcement. It would also be interesting to see how many of those new hires are senior faculty, how many are part-time or junior, and how many more faculty are taking leaves of absence under the university's recent, more generous leave policy.
6) Meanwhile, as some at the faculty meeting apparently pointed out, the university is spending $50 million in diversity efforts as a result of Summers' unfortunate remarks about women in science.

Sounds to me like there's a story there...and an important one. I suggest a three-part series.
__________________________________________________________________

P.S. I'm grateful to the Crimson for reporting on the faculty meeting, but it's a little hard to tell from your relatively brief stories what really goes on. Can't you guys post a transcript? Or at least the minutes?   ¶ 7:55 AM 0 comments   

  Some Giant Squid with Your Coffee? Two Japanese scientists filmed a giant squid 900 meters underwater off the Ogasawara Islands in the North Pacific. How cool is that? No one's ever photographed a giant squid before. And to make it even cooler, "Architeuthis"—that's the squid—"appears to be a much more active predator than previously suspected, using its elongate feeding tentacles to strike and tangle prey."

Excellent!

Here's their report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.  ¶ 7:43 AM 0 comments   

  Rumsfeld: What, Me, Worry? The Times reports that the Army whistleblower pursuing the exposure of detainee abuse believes that the Army is more interested in harassing him and his fellow truth-tellers than in rooting out torture.

"I'm convinced this is going in a direction that's not consistent with why we came forward," Captain Fishback said in a telephone interview from Fort Bragg, N.C. "We came forward because of the larger issue that prisoner abuse is systemic in the Army. I'm concerned this will take a new twist, and they'll try to scapegoat some of the younger soldiers. This is a leadership problem."

(Credit to reporter Eric Schmitt for getting Fishback on the record for the first time.)

As if to confirm his supicions, this is what Donald Rumsfeld said when asked about the torture.
"All I know is that the Army is taking it seriously. To the extent somebody's done something that they shouldn't have done, they'll be punished for it."

Let's deconstruct that response a little bit, beginning with the phrase, "All I know is..."

Mr. Rumself is the secretary of defense. If all he knows is that the Army "is taking it seriously," then he is profoundly ignorant of extremely serious allegations regarding the men under his charge. It is hard to know what's worse: whether Rumsfeld is telling the truth about his ignorance, or whether he's lying in an attempt to cover his own ass and disassociate himself from the horror of Americans torturing their prisoners.

Okay. Let's move on to the "Army is taking it seriously" part. It amuses me, in a dark sort of way, that Rumsfeld says this as if it is meaningful. To take allegations of torture seriously is not an accomplishment. It is a responsibility; it is a minimum. It is not something to be proud of. But in any event, the Army's response—trying to root out the whistleblowers—suggests that it is taking the matter seriously not because torture is wrong, but because it is bad public relations.

Finally: "To the extent that somebody's done something wrong, they will be punished for it." Implicit in Rumsfeld's statement is that any misdeeds are merely the work of wrongheaded individuals, and a little jail time will take care of the problem. (Reinforcing Fishback's concern that younger soldiers will be scapegoated.) There's no acknowledgment of Fishback's charge that this torture was systemic. Until he at least addresses that issue, Rumsfeld isn't dealing with the problem of torture.

But one can see why he's dodging: Because if the torture is systemic, then it has to do with the culture of the military which he leads, and the very nature of this war, which he promoted.

Would it be too much to suggest that Capt. Fishback and Donald Rumsfeld trade places? Fishback could run the Pentagon, and Rumsfeld could go fight in Iraq....  ¶ 7:20 AM 0 comments   

  Some Ice With Your Spirituality? Ashley Smith, the Georgia woman who persuaded her murderous captor to release her by reading him excerpts from "The Purpose-Driven Life," has now admitted she also gave him some of her crystal methamphetamine.

What a fable for our times! Nothing is simple anymore. Rafael Palmeiro takes steroids and Viagra; Kate Moss does blow; Lance Armstrong may or may not have taken hormones; Ashley Smith snorts a little meth. (You do snort it, don't you?) Everyone, apparently, is medicated, and the line between the legal and the illegal never seems to make sense.

Me, I like some good strong coffee in the morning....  ¶ 7:12 AM 0 comments   

  Vote for Your Favorite Brainiac What do Pope Benedict XVI, Camille Paglia, and Lawrence Summers have in common? No, it's not their hair. They're all on a list of Foreign Policy magazine's top 100 "public intellectuals," and you can vote for your top five.

The list is a little bizarre; you can see the biases of Foreign Policy's editors pretty clearly. A quick scan, for example, shows about a dozen Harvard people (Henry Louis Gates, Niall Ferguson, E.O. Wilson, etc.)...and, by my count, a whopping six women.

Is that really an accurate reflection of women's intellectual contributions to our public debate? Or is Foreign Policy just sexist? You make the call....  ¶ 7:00 AM 0 comments   

  Yale vs Harvard The Yale Daily News has an interesting profile of President Richard Levin, contrasting his management style with that of Larry Summers.

The two men really do represent different styles of leadership. Levin is quiet and low-key; Summers, um, isn't. Outside of New Haven, no one knows who Levin is; everyone seems to know who Larry Summers is. You could argue that Levin has been a better president than Summers has, and that one of the reasons is because he's avoided the kind of controversy Summers keeps provoking in favor of the university's substantive needs. On the other hand, proponents of an activist university president, a "public intellectual," might argue that provoking such controversy is part of the job.

It may also be the case that each president is suited to the particular environment in which he's working. Levin needed to focus on Yale's finances, the condition of New Haven (so much improved under Levin, it's really impressive), and labor strife. Summers, meanwhile, leads a university which doesn't have to worry about money but has been, perhaps, intellectually lethargic....  ¶ 8:56 AM 0 comments   

  Is Bill Keller on Crack? Have you been following the brouhaha about Allessandra Stanley* and Geraldo Rivera? I'm a little late to the story, but I'm fascinated by it. Stanley's the TV critic for the Times, and Geraldo is, of course, Geraldo.

In a September 5th column on reporters in New Orleans, Stanley wrote this sentence: ""Fox's Geraldo Rivera did his rivals one better: yesterday, he nudged an Air Force rescue worker out of the way so his camera crew could tape him as he helped lift an older woman in a wheelchair to safety."

Geraldo went ballistic, loudly proclaiming that he'd done no such thing and announcing that if Stanley were a man, he'd challenge him/her to a fight. Rivera demanded a correction; Times managing editor Bill Keller refused to give him one.

The Times' public editor, Byron Calame, subsequently disagreed. After watching the videotape upon which Stanley based her allegation, he said, "My viewings of the videotape - at least a dozen times, including one time frame by frame - simply doesn't show me any 'nudge' of any Air Force rescuer by Mr. Rivera." As if to drive home the point that Stanley won't stand behind her reporting, Calame added that "Ms. Stanley declined my invitation to watch the tape with me."

Calame is obviously right; Keller and Stanley are obviously wrong. How do I know that? Listen to Keller's reasoning, in a widely distributed e-mail, in defense of Stanley.

Keller writes: "It was a semi-close call, in that the video does not literally show how Mr. Rivera insinuated himself between the wheelchair-bound storm victim and the Air Force rescuers who were waiting to carry her from the building. Whether Mr. Rivera gently edged the airman out of the way with an elbow (literally 'nudged'), or told him to step aside, or threw a body block, or just barged into an opening - it's hard to tell, since it happened just off-camera."

Let's use the kind of linguistic precision that a Times editor ought to use and deconstruct that a bit. Start with the first sentence: "...the video does not literally show how Mr. Rivera insininuated himself....."

In fact, the word "literally" is a fudge that any decent college newspaper editor would know better than to rely upon. The video either shows something, or it doesn't. Obviously, it doesn't. The correct way to write that sentence: "The video does not show how Mr. Rivera insuated himself..."

I could go on—"a semi-close call"..."it happened just off-camera..."—but you get the point. Keller's indulging in weasel language.

According to Calame, Keller then added that "'frankly,' that in light of Mr. Rivera's reaction to the review, Ms. Stanley 'would have been justified in assuming' - and therefore writing, apparently - that Mr. Rivera used 'brute force' rather than merely a 'nudge' on Sept. 4. "

In other words, the Times can run an allegation about someone that it has no proof of—and then declare its correctness based on the person's reaction to the smear. In fact, the Times can actually embellish the original charge.

Huh.

I don't think they teach that technique in journalism school.

At the end of the web version of Stanley's story, you will now find this wan disclaimer:

"The editors understood the 'nudge' comment as the television critic's figurative reference to Mr. Rivera's flamboyant intervention. Mr. Rivera complained, but after reviewing a tape of his broadcast, The Times declined to publish a correction.

"Numerous readers, however - now including the newspaper's public editor, who also scrutinized the tape - read the comment as a factual assertion. The Times acknowledges that no nudge was visible on the broadcast."

The editors understood the "nudge" to be figurative? Oh, bullshit. If the "nudge" was figurative, then it simply wasn't a story, and no editor would have allowed it, because if it was figurative, then it had no point.

The Times should just admit that Stanley made up an assertion about Geraldo Rivera because she wanted to juice up her story and Rivera's an easy target....and Bill Keller should lay off that pipe.


* Full disclosure: I've had my own issues with Stanley, who once included me in a trend story about "underlings" who write "revenge" tell-alls about their former bosses, despite the fact that American Son couldn't fit that description less. I've also had issues getting a correction from the Times, such as when Style section writer Bob Morris included me in a trend story about the return of "gall" for writing a book about John Kennedy after criticizing others who spoke out about him after his death (long story, this isn't the time)—without mentioning that he was one of those publicly slammed (not by me) for his on-air milking of his (slender) connection to John. This would seem an important thing to disclose to the reader, no? Try telling that to the Times editor who told me to "write a letter," and then refused to print that part of the letter.....  ¶ 8:02 AM 0 comments   

  What Constitutes a Harvard Education It would appear that Harvard is finally making some progress on its long-delayed curricular review: a committee of five professors is preparing a report of recommendations on general education, the most central aspect of the undergraduate review.

As the Crimson reports, "The report recommends replacing the Core’s 11 fields of study with three broader disciplines—Arts and Humanities, Study of Societies, and Science and Technology. Students would be required to take three courses in each of the two areas most distinct from their concentration."

I am underwhelmed. It took four years to say, well, let's just divide up the world of knowledge into three categories and make students take two courses from each? Truth is, any serious member of the Harvard faculty could have done that in about twenty minutes. It's not exactly rocket science.

What's interesting about this report—and to be fair, the Crimson saw only a draft—is the essential abdication of any educational philosophy. At least the Core, for all its flaws, had a view of the world, a sense of what a Harvard education was supposed to accomplish. A curriculum this broad, and this loosely structured, doesn't seem to have an opinion on anything, except perhaps that the Core is bad, and that Harvard students feel they labor under too many requirements.

Well, it's early yet; there's a long way to go with this curricular review. But is this really the best the finest minds in the nation can come up with?  ¶ 7:40 AM 7 comments   

  Writing about the Kennedys Janet Maslin reviews the new memoir by Christopher Lawford, the son of Peter Lawford and JFK sister Patricia Kennedy, this morning. It's called Symptoms of Withdrawal, and it actually sounds pretty good.

I read the review with particular interest, and perhaps self-interest, because, having written a book about a Kennedy, I follow the genre. Next out is Carole Radziwill's "What Remains: A Memoir of Life, Love, and Loss." Carole is the widow of Anthony Radziwill, who was one of John Kennedy's closest friends and died of cancer just a few weeks after John, his wife Carolyn, and her sister Lauren died in a plane crash in July, 1999. My heart goes out to her; she has had a rough time.

Having gone through a trial by fire to publish my book, and receiving some pretty tough and personal criticism for doing so, I'm slightly bemused by the fact that these books—which are much closer to "tell-alls" than American Son was—aren't raising an ethical eyebrow. Where are the media ethics police now?

But more than bemused, I'm supportive of these books. This idea that writing about the Kennedys is somehow morally wrong is just silly. (Well, not always.) If people have a legitimate story to tell, they should tell it, and in the best, most honest, most serious way they can. I was even supportive of Robert Littell, whose book, The Men We Became: My Friendship with John F. Kennedy, Jr., came out not long after Littell publicly criticized me for writing American Son.

Anyone who's had close contact with the Kennedys knows that it's a wild ride; we need to be understanding that people process that experience in different ways. For some, that means spewing bile; for others, that means trying to make sense of the experience through a book. I happen to think that one way is preferable to the other, but I understand that both are aftershocks of grief.

So good for Christopher Lawford and Carole Radziwill; I wish them luck with their books. I don't know if I'll be able to read Carole's—that's a little close to a still-painful memory for comfort—but I hope that the act of writing gave the authors some much-needed peace of mind. I know it did for me.  ¶ 8:34 AM 0 comments   

  Kate Moss: Hot or Not? It's a fair question, and a very important one. At least to the British, who are, apparently, in the midst of a heated debate on whether or not Kate Moss is particularly attractive.

I mention this because I've never felt that she is, and so I've watched fascinated as she has been constantly described as a beauty icon. To me, she represented the disconnect between the world of fashion, populated by gay men who see women's bodies as objects to manipulate and control, and the world of male heterosexuality, which is much more catholic in its tastes. One simple example: Every time I hear a female friend complain about her weight when she's not even close to being overweight—which happens way too much—I remind her that straight guys like curves. If you asked straight men whether they'd rather spend a night with Anna Nicole Smith or Kate Moss, Anna Nicole would take about 90% of that poll...

Those are two extremes, of course. But if you look at the magazines that cater to heterosexual guys with babealicious photos—FHM or Stuff or Maxim, all those rags—you won't ever find the heroin chic look on the cover. And those magazines know their market.

The fact is that if fashion designers were straight, Kate Moss would never have become a supermodel in the first place...and she probably wouldn't be a cokehead now. And more important, millions of women wouldn't feel that they have to weigh under a hundred pounds to look beautiful.  ¶ 8:21 AM 2 comments   

  New York Politics The Times has a think piece on how African-American voters lack a consensus on this year's NYC mayoral race, suggesting, the Times says, that the black vote is becoming harder to predict.

Well, kinda. Does this mean that African-American voters are less affiliated with the Democratic Party than they used to be? On a national level, I doubt it. Especially not after Hurricane Katrina.

Does it mean that Freddy Ferrer is such a weak candidate that he can't even hold on to the Democrats' core voters?

Why, yes, it does....  ¶ 8:05 AM 0 comments   

  Women in Science, cont'd.... A new paper published in Science holds that the reason there are fewer women than men in the sciences is because of discrimination, not because of innate differences in aptitude between the sexes, as Larry Summers proposed last winter.

The Associated Press runs this quote: "We're not too stupid to do science, but there are real structural and attitudinal impediments to the advancement of women that create an unfair playing field," says Jo Handelsman, a University of Wisconsin microbiologist who is lead author of the paper.

But not everyone thinks the paper is good scholarship.

"It's simply a political statement. I don't see any evidence of original research," said Stephen Balch of the National Association of Scholars.

But then, the NAS itself seems like a political group, judging by this "Open Letter to Lawrence Summers" posted on its website, which begins:

"As badly as Nancy Hopkins and her ilk behaved in berating Lawrence Summers for his provocative remarks about male-female aptitudes...."

Nancy Hopkins and her "ilk"? What exactly are you trying to imply there, NAS? Doesn't sound very scholarly to me....  ¶ 7:54 AM 0 comments   

  Bare-Ack? Some of those readers who didn't like Harvard Rules, or thought that it was too tough on President Larry Summers, faulted my emphasis on his social graces, or lack thereof. They missed my point. My opinion about Summers' manners wasn't the issue; Harvard's opinion was, and Summers' boorish manners had repeatedly handicapped his ability to lead the university. That's why I wrote about them at length.

In today's Globe, Marcella Bombardieri reports on a classic example: At this weekend's reunion of Harvard's African-American alumni, Summers repeatedly mispronounced the name of law school alumn and U.S. senator Barack Obama (Bare-Ack instead of Buh-rock).

As I wrote in the book, that fact that Summers' mispronunciations occur primarily with ethnic-sounding names doesn't help him when he's trying to reach out to minority constituencies.

Obviously, enough people remarked on this for it to make the Boston Globe, and for Obama himself to make a joke about it at another speech when Summers wasn't present.....  ¶ 4:42 PM 2 comments   

  Not the Good War The heart sinks when reading the headline from today's New York Times: " 3 in 82nd Airborne Say Beating Iraqi Prisoners Was Routine. The soldiers told a human rights group that prisoners had been beaten and abused to help gather intelligence and for amusement."

For amusement.

Americans aren't supposed to commit such heinous acts; we're supposed to be better than that. It's the terrorists who torture for amusement. Right?

I can't help but think that this kind of moral corruption stems from the fundamental dishonesty of this war; that it was predicated on a premise its most informed proponents knew to be very probably untrue, the existence of weapons of mass destruction. A war predicated on lies is immoral, and that immorality seeps down to every level. How can soldiers act honorably when they're acting at the orders of a dishonest president? (It's to their great credit that most of them, probably the vast majority, do.)

I suspect that history is going to be very tough on this war, and that it will be seen as the time when, even more than Vietnam, America really lost all its illusions about its own place in history, its self-proclaimed moral standing. I am having a hard time being proud of my country these days, and the reality of that fills me with a sadness greater than I can describe. One gets the feeling that more and more of the country would like a new leader who fills us with an honest pride, not a chest-beating, macho, "mission accomplished" false pride. That's a start. But what happens for the next three years?


  ¶ 7:56 AM 0 comments   

  The Human Being and Fish Can Coexist Is it a sign of President Bush's sagging political fortunes that people are starting to make fun of his appalling speech habits again?

Take a look at this short film, a little bit of political genius.....You'll laugh. But you'll cry more. Oh, trust me. You'll cry.  ¶ 12:17 PM 2 comments   

  Dan Shaughnessy Recants The Boston Globe columnist who wrote that the Red Sox would win like Secretariat going away at the Belmont in 1973 has recanted.

Too late, Dan Shaughnessy!

The Curse, it would appear, is back.

Whatever happens, it's nice to see some gnashing and wailing in Red Sox nation. Those... those...people have gotten far too cocky for a team that won one (which is to say, one fewer than the Florida Marlins) World Series in the past 87 years.  ¶ 10:23 AM 0 comments   

  Narcissus, Meet Narcissus What is it about the media that it can't help but ask the profoundly unimportant question—over and over again—who is the real "media star" of Hurricane Katrina?  ¶ 7:02 AM 1 comments   

  The Differences Between Boys and Girls Over at DailyKos, there's a heated debate going on about a new study downplaying genetic differences between boys and girls and its applicability to the socio-scientific theorizing of Larry Summers. Check it out.  ¶ 6:59 AM 0 comments   

  Go Yankees! Very quietly now, so as not to disturb the baseball gods while elevating yourself into a higher state.....

goyankeesgoyankeesgoyankeesgoyankeesgoyankees
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goyankeesgoyankeesgoyankeesgoyankeesgoyankees!  ¶ 6:49 AM 3 comments   

  What's Wrong With This Picture? ...in today's Times story about Texans fleeing Houston?

Well, two things, really.

One, every single visible car in the photo is an SUV...which would help explain why lots of people are running out of gas.

And two, is there such a thing as public transportation in Texas?

I don't mean to sound like Campbell Scott in Singles, but maybe it's time to start thinking of public transportation not just as an energy-saving measure, but as a public security issue. (Come to think of it, these days, that's the same thing.)

Could there be a less efficient way to evacuate people from a city than by having everyone pile into their SUV and head onto the highway? Didn't any of these people see War of the Worlds?  ¶ 6:42 AM 0 comments   

  Another Good Book, Another Plug Since it's the beginning of fall and school's back in session, I feel compelled to report on my summer reading; it's one of those back-to-school rituals that never seem to leave the bloodstream. (If only I could take to the soccer field at 3 PM, five days a week, like I used to....)

One of the most fun and clever reads I enjoyed this summer is a book called Man Camp. The author is Adrienne Brodeur, the founding editor of Zoetrope literary magazine and a friend. (That's why I read it, but not why I'm plugging it.)

Man Camp revolves around this terrifically clever premise: two New York women get so fed up with the ineptness of the men in their lives that they start a camp where said inept men can go to learn manly skills, such as how to change a tire, fix a fence, milk a cow, and so on.

As a guy who enjoys doing all those things (all right, maybe not milking a cow) but never feels wholly confident that they'll come out right, I connected to the underlying theme: an anxiety that we citydwellers have lost the ability to perform rudimentary survival skills. (I have a hunch that the TV show "Survivor" operates on the same anxiety.)

But Adrienne never hits you over the head with her message. Instead, she's written a beach read (for all seasons!) with surprisingly deep and likeable characters, snappy dialogue, great comic situations, and happy endings. She has a particular gift, I think, for conveying human interactions that go wrong when one person hits an off-note, sends the wrong signal, and two people who were in sync fall out of rhythm.

Anyway, take a look at Man Camp. You'll probably see it on the big screen in a couple of years, so now's your chance to get in ahead of the curve.  ¶ 1:55 PM 1 comments   

  Stolen Entirely from AndrewSullivan.com I have to admit, this is entirely lifted from Andrew's site...it's just exactly the right point to make. Thanks, Andrew—we're on the same side on this one.

<



This is a picture of Father Mychal Judge, the pastor for New York City's fire-fighters, an openly gay priest who died with those he served in the ashes of the World Trade Center. According to the new Pope, he should never have been ordained.>>

  ¶ 1:42 PM 0 comments   

  Oh, What a Night (At the Stadium) Thanks to my friend Dan—congrats on the new job, buddy!—I went to the Stadium last night to see the Yankees and Randy Johnson take on the Orioles. It was a gorgeous night for baseball—warm, clear skies, a light breeze. All was indeed right under the heavens, as Johnson pitched beautifully for eight innings, with only a flash of the temper that got him thrown out of the last game he started. The Yankees led 2-1 in the top of the ninth when Mariano Rivera came in to relieve Johnson. He promptly hit a batter, and one out later gave up a single, putting the winning run on first. Yikes. But the next Oriole whiffed, and the next after that lined out to first, and just like that the Yanks had won their ninth out of their last ten games.

And to top off the evening...as we 50,000-plus fans (Yankee attendance will be over 4 million this year) filed out of the Stadium, the scoreboard flashed that the pesky Devil Rays were beating the Red Sox, 6-4. A huge roar went up from the crowd, and the Yankees who were leaving the field turned to look—if the Sox lost, the Yanks would be in first!

By the time I got out of the Stadium, it was 7-4; by the time I got home on the D train, it was a final.

The Yankees are in first. The Yankees are in first. The Yankees are in first.

This is a crazy season, and anything could yet happen. There are still those three games up at Fenway. And the Sox are too good to count out.

But still...if only for a day...I'm just going to enjoy this moment. New York needs this....  ¶ 8:55 AM 0 comments   

  The Catholic Inquisition The Vatican is launching a ban on gays in the priesthood, whether or not they are celibate, as part of the new pope's desire to "purify" the church.

Well, as Mike Dukakis used to say, the fish rots from the head.

Naturally, the pope, who appears to be a bigot, is using the child abuse scandal as an excuse for anti-gay discrimation. That's a mistake. It was never clear how many of those priests were gay, or simply straight men whose normal sexual desires were perverted by the priesthood.

The child abuse scandal could have been such an opportunity for real, enlightened reform in the Catholic Church—permitting women to become priests, getting rid of the celibacy requirement, opening the way to honest discussions of human sexuality.

What a shame that it has instead become a venue for launching a whole new wave of abuse.

And perhaps I am paranoid, but it makes me nervous when a former soldier in Hitler's army starts purging an entire swath of people from the ranks of the holy....

P.S. And speaking of gay stuff...apparently ever since Renee Zellwegger listed "fraud" on her divorce petition after her quickie marriage to country singer Kenny Chesney, the rumors have been flying that Chesney is gay. (In my opinion, one would have to be gay to marry Renee Zellwegger, but that's not really the point.) Of course, everyone in Chesney's camp is denying like mad, because the red states feel about gay country music singers the way the Vatican feels about gay priests. Me, I think it has some commercial possibilities—talk about cross-over! Especially with New York magazine reporting that local gays are getting into frat-style hazing....  ¶ 8:43 AM 0 comments   

  The Beat Goes On The Harvard faculty will be discussing the circumstances of Conrad Harper's resignation from the Harvard Corporation at its meeting next week, the Crimson reports.

J. Lorand Matory, the anthropologist who initiated the vote of no confidence in Larry Summers last spring, is also responsible for putting this conversation on the faculty meeting agenda.

Good for Matory. Though I sometimes differ with his politics, I admire him for having the guts to continue to initiate important discussions at Harvard. With the Board of Overseers irrelevant (by its own lack of initiative) and the Corporation in the president's pocket, the faculty has to step up. A member of the Harvard Corporation resigned over the summer, calling on the university president to resign. What happens? Nothing. That is a failure on the part of Harvard's constitutional system. Whatever the outcome of this discussion, it needs to be held, and publicly.  ¶ 8:32 AM 2 comments   

  And Speaking of Sex Congratulations to my friend Elizabeth Hayt, whose new book, "I'm No Saint," is just out and attracting loads of attention. I went to her book party last night at The Modern, and (aside from me, at least) everyone who is anyone was there. I'm No Saint is a brutally honest memoir of Elizabeth's life, and particularly her sex life. It's definitely a book that people will be talking about. But it's not just the graphic recounting of sexual adventures—and misadventures—that makes this book conversation-worthy. (She really had sex with a bridesmaid an hour before the wedding?) It's the honesty that Elizabeth brings to the inner workings of families—both the one she was born into, and the one she married into. I haven't finished the book yet, but there is such raw honesty on its pages that I kept thinking, Jesus, how could she write this? To be honest, I don't think I could do it. But I admire Elizabeth that she has; it's not easy, putting yourself out there like this. (Read that first review on Amazon, linked to in the book title above, if you don't believe me.) How many people have secrets like Elizabeth...had?

  ¶ 11:21 AM 0 comments   

  Poor Kate Don't you just love the story about H & M firing Kate Moss because she got caught on film doing coke?


Imagine...a model who snorts coke. And then is fired for setting a bad example for young women.

I think this sets an important precedent. Next, clothing makers and sellers ought to fire every model who is anorexic. (After all, images of Kate Moss being super-thin have probably made more women become anorexic than images of Kate Moss doing blow will make women start tooting up.) Or drinks before the age of 21. Or is just incredibly superficial and sends the message that the most important thing in life is to be beautiful, thin, rich, under-fed and under-read, and just generally dumb as a bag of rocks (although weighing considerably less).

Honestly, the hypocrisy here is incredible. It's not like everyone hasn't known that Kate Moss has done coke for years. Not to mention that her boyfriend is a heroin addict. And frankly, virtually everything about your typical supermodel sets a bad example, not just for young women, but for pretty much everyone. Isn't that kind of the point of supermodels? To suggest that they are counterculture, and you want to be like them? I mean, the message is kind of lost on me, though I like to look at supermodels as much as the next guy...but apparently it's an effective pitch.

I love the irony that a supermodel has fallen from grace after being photographed for doing something wrong, when virtually every time a model is photographed, they're sending out equally unhelpful imagery?  ¶ 9:16 AM 0 comments   

  But First... One reason to love the blogosphere is that it's so good at making fun of the idiocies of big media. For example: Check out this montage of CBS' Julie Chen repeating the same catchphrase over and over, with the exact same inflection every time, and throwing in some cute gestures to go along with it....

Too funny.  ¶ 9:09 AM 0 comments   

  To Cook, or Not to Cook Slate's Jack Shafer blasts yesterday's Times story on college women's changing ambitions. He faults reporter Louise Story for not having any hard data on the alleged trend among Ivy League women to downplay careers in favor of motherhood, and relying upon the word "many" instead.

So how did this story make it onto the front page of the Times?

According to Shafer, "I suspect a Times editor glommed onto the idea while overhearing some cocktail party chatter—"Say, did you hear that Sam blew hundreds of thousands of dollars sending his daughter to Yale and now she and her friends say all they want in the future is to get married and stay at home?"—and passed the concept to the writer or her editors and asked them to develop it."

Shafer may be right about this, but I still suspect that Story was onto something. After spending a year and a half at Harvard as a reporter, I found the attitudes she reported on pretty commonplace among women.

My question remains, so what? Is it really such a bad thing to want to balance work and family? Certainly the story has public policy questions, and educational policy ones as well. But the young women interviewed in the piece came across as perfectly healthy and normal to me...certainly more so than women who think they "can have it all." No one can have it all.

And again, to me the more interesting question is why men don't seek out that balance.  ¶ 8:55 AM 2 comments   

  Yesterday, Poetry...Today, Poetry
In my continuing effort to promote the beauty of marine life, I present these breathtaking photos taken by Henry Kaiser, a friend of a friend and an accomplished diver, photographer, and guitar player. Henry took these shots of dolphins and sperm whales on a dive trip off Pico Island in the Azores, and they are just miraculous. How could anyone even think about killing an animal so beautiful? And yet, they do...





  ¶ 11:54 AM 0 comments   

  Must-Cry TV Here's that piece on Anderson Cooper I mention below.

Sample sentence: "Anderson Cooper isn’t the anchors of not-so-long ago. He’s more like Oprah, with richer parents and no weight problem."

As tropical storm Rita "charges toward the U.S.," as CNN put it yesterday, you might find this interesting....  ¶ 10:22 AM 3 comments   

  A New Gender Dilemma In his controversial women-in-science remarks last spring, Larry Summers said that one reason—he ranked it first—why women don't rise to the top levels of science in the same numbers that men do is because they are less willing to devote the enormous amount of hours it takes to succeed. The reason he gave was their greater commitment to family, and in particular, child-rearing.

President Summers may find confirmation of that thesis in this article from today's Times about the goals of women today at elite colleges: Many of them are already planning to have their careers take a back seat to their maternal duties.

Here's one interesting quote: "It really does raise this question for all of us and for the country: when we work so hard to open academics and other opportunities for women, what kind of return do we expect to get for that?" said Marlyn McGrath Lewis, director of undergraduate admissions at Harvard, who served as dean for coeducation in the late 1970's and early 1980's.

A fair question. Because surely if far more men than women plan to make work their primary activity, that raises questions regarding the allocation of resources, and indeed, the very point of an education. When men and women seem to have such different ideas regarding what they intend to do with their education, should the education colleges provide really be gender-neutral?

I'm not sure...but I think it'd be an interesting conversation.

Myself, I think the truly interesting question is not why so many women want to have a real balance between work and family, but why so many men do not. I'm not married, but if one day I have kids, I certainly want to spend more time with them than my father was able to spend with me. The real problem here lies not with women's outlook, but with men's work obsession....  ¶ 9:22 AM 0 comments   

  Go Yankees! The blogger wrote nervously, hoping not to anger the gods of baseball with his over-the-top enthusiasm...but this fall pennant race is shaping up to be a classic. Last night the Yanks beat the O's, 3-2, in the bottom of the 9th, when rookie Bubba Crosby hit only his third home run in the major leagues. (You have to root for any baseball player named Bubba.) Meanwhile, the Red Sox were losing to the actually pretty talented Devil Rays, 8-7, despite the heroics of David Ortiz, who drove in four runs. That guy is singlehandedly keeping the Red Sox in the division race.

And over in the AL Central, the surging Indians—they've won 13 out of their last 14, yikes—beat the division-leading White Sox, 8-7, to pull within two and a half games.

As Phil Rizzuto would say, Holy Cow!

(By the way, is Phil Rizzuto still alive? Anyone?)

Regarding the Red Sox...I will not cheer too loudly at their decline, as they're still in first and the Yanks have to play them three times at Fenway, which is going to be tensetensetense. But I will remind everyone that Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy wrote back in June that the race was going to be a laugher for the Sox. "Don't worry about the Yankees..." he opined. "It's not even going to be close."

Thus ensuring the return of The Curse to Fenway Park....  ¶ 7:49 AM 3 comments   

  CNN's Hurricane Addiction I wrote a little piece for TomPaine.com on Anderson Cooper's tear-filled hurricane reportage for CNN. (Hint: I'm not a fan.) I'll link to the piece when it's up. Meantime, I wanted to take another shot at CNN.

In the past few days, the news network has been splitting its screen to provide more hurricane drama. On the right side, reporters talk about New Orleans, etc. On the left, CNN provides a steady stream of names, ages, and photographs of children reported missing in Hurricane Katrina. Watching this, I was bothered by it, though I couldn't quite put my thumb on why. It only occurred to me when I realized that the network doesn't have pictures of many of the children, so it just runs a generic black profile of a child.

What possible good could it do to run the name and age of a missing child without running a picture? Try to think of a scenario where knowing that seven-year-old Rhonda Owens (to make up a name) is missing is actually going to help you find her.

In fact, what really is the chance that, even when the network has a photo of the missing child, any good will come from the network's milk carton-like strategy?

Let's say you're wandering through an abandoned house in New Orleans and you happen to come across a child who's somehow been living there for the past two weeks. You probably don't need CNN to tell you that something's wrong. So what's the point?

And I realized that the missing child slide show bothered me because, under the guise of helping kids, CNN is just trying to milk this story for all the melodrama it's worth, exploiting the fact that there are numerous missing children, some of whom are probably dead.

It's a little gross, when you think about it....  ¶ 7:30 AM 0 comments   

  The Crimson Defends Its Reporting Yesterday I noted that departing Harvard professor Mark Rosenzweig had challenged the Crimson's reporting of the explanations for his escape to New Haven. The Crimson originally reported that Rosenzweig was leaving the Harvard Center for International Development because he was frustrated over President Summers' lack of support for the center. Rosenzweig promptly penned a letter to the Crimson saying that this was not the case, and suggesting that the Crimson had unfairly edited his e-mailed responses to their questions.

In his letter, Rosenzweig said this: "This is part of the statement I sent to The Crimson reporter when he was writing the article: 'I believe in CID, and I did not go to Yale because of unhappiness with Harvard, but because of the more assured and superior resources and somewhat more agreeable intellectual directions at Yale, where I was once a faculty member.'"

So what's the real story? I contacted the Crimson to find out, and got the following response from reporters Zachary M. Seward and Daniel J. Hemel. The first part is their statement in response to Rosenzweig's letter; the second is the full transcript of their on-the-record e-mailed questions and Rosenzweig's un-edited responses. So you can decide for yourself if the Crimson was unfair, or if Rosenzweig is just backtracking:


Professor Rosenzweig's letter is a helpful addendum to our story on CID that ran last Wednesday. Were we to write the story again, we would have included the sentence he highlights ("...I did not go to Yale because of unhappiness with Harvard...") to give a more complete view of the situation. So we're glad he pointed it out in his letter.

That said, it does not change any of the substance of our story, from the
lede on down. Professor Rosenzweig submitted several lengthy answers to
our questions via e-mail, of which that sentence is a small part. Asked,
"Why did you decide to leave Harvard/CID?" he responded, "Both Harvard and
Yale have extraordinary faculty and graduate students. The Yale Economic
Growth Center, however, has a permanent endowment; CID does not." In
answer to a later question about the possible disbanding or reorganization
of CID, Professor Rosenzweig pinned the blame for the center's scarce
resources directly on President Summers, criticizing him in passages we
quoted extensively in Wednesday's story.

Our story was based on the totality of Professor Rosenzweig's two e-mails
to us on Monday, Sept. 12. The following are all of our questions and all
of his answers. Everything was on-the-record.

[CRIMSON] Why did you decide to leave Harvard/CID?

[ROSENZWEIG] Both Harvard and Yale have extraordinary faculty and graduate
students. The Yale Economic Growth Center, however, has a permanent
endowment; CID does not. Its funds run out in two years. The Yale Economic
Growth Center has enormous resources and relatively more independence from
administration bureacracy, and has a more than 30-year history of
distinguished scholarship. Nevertheless, I had tremendous colleagues and
great staff support at Harvard; I am giving up a lot.

[CRIMSON] In your statement upon being named director of the CID, you
said: "Harvard has a unique opportunity to pull together the multiple
disciplines needed to address development issues that are faced both
within the U.S. and internationally." What opportunities does Yale/EGC
offer that Harvard/CID did not?

[ROSENZWEIG] Yale has resources; CID does not. The center at Yale is more
narrowly focused on the economics of development, and on advancing the
scientific foundations for understanding the development process. CID is
interdisciplinary and more focused on policy. These are great attibutes.
And in a short time (one year) at CID we had begun to realize some of the
potential. We had the opportunity to begin a program on indoor air
pollution (a major source of ill-health in low-income countries that
requires knowledge of health, economics, energy polciy, and environmental
science to understand) and researchers from multiple schools and
disciplines associated with CID won two awards this past year, from NIH
and NSF, totalling more than 2 million dollars. My own interest and
participation in this initiative, and a large component (but not all) of
this money, would not have arisen without CID. Thus, the faculty resources
were getting together. The faculty talent and willingness to collaborate
across disciplines are there, but there is little support provided by the
Harvard administration.

[CRIMSON] I've heard that you'll still be teaching a course with Professor
Rodrik at the Kennedy School. Is that correct?

[ROSENZWEIG] Yes. The MPAID program is a great program and is unique to
Harvard. The course taught by Dani and I is a keystone in the program. It
is also fun to teach.

[CRIMSON] Before your appointment, President Summers said that he would
consider reorganizing the infrastructure for development studies at
Harvard -- and possibly eliminating the CID altogether. Do you think it's
necessary for the CID to remain in existence, or would an alternate
arrangement work better?

[ROSENZWEIG] I still believe in the sentiments I expressed when I took
this job and that the CID structure is the corrrect way to go about
accomplishing the mission. President Summers considers himself an expert
in this area. Some think that President Summers wants to (perhaps
sub-consciously) organize the study of development around himself, and
that is why little or no resources are provided to CID. Having Larry
Summers as a collaborator within the framework of CID, instead, would be a
great plus, but he has not indicated while I was around any interest in
CID's vision or accomplishments. CID's unique policy-oriented,
interdisciplinary mission grounded in science and led by Harvard faculty
(rather than the short-term outsiders doing piece work that is the norm in
other centers) is well worth preserving. I believe in CID, and I did not
go to Yale because of unhappiness with Harvard, but because of the more
assured and superior resources and somewhat more agreeable intellectual
directions at Yale, where I was once a faculty member.

[FROM A FOLLOW-UP E-MAIL LATER THAT DAY]

[CRIMSON] We have heard that President Summers never met with you before
or after appointing you to be CID director. Is that correct?

[ROSENZWEIG] Yes (nor talked with me). So no one can say that he
interfered with the Center!

[CRIMSON] You wrote: "Some think that President Summers wants to (perhaps
sub-consciously) organize the study of development around himself, and
that is why little or no resources are provided to CID." Does that mean
that President Summers is pushing his particular perspective on
globalization/development? Or that he simply wants personal control over
grants? Or both? (Or neither?)

[ROSENZWEIG] I don't know - I doubt he wants control over grants.

[CRIMSON] Additionally, when you say "some think," does that include
yourself?

[ROSENZWEIG] I do not understand the reasons for failure to commit, one
way or another. Larry Summers did help bring to Harvard some very large
and important projects in recent years. Perhaps he had not yet had time to
turn his attention to CID, although CID focuses on issues which he does
care about.

[CRIMSON] Do you believe that Dani Rodrik should be named as your
successor? We have heard that political differences between him and
President Summers have kept Professor Rodrik from the directorship. First,
do you believe that is true? Second, can you help us understand what those
political differences are? I do not know if it is true.

[ROSENZWEIG] Dani should be the one to define those differences, but there
are real, and well-known, differences in perspective on determining the
appropriate policies that will succeed in increasing economic growth. One
other difference I see is that Dani is a currently active scholar who
continues to study and add significantly to the understanding of the
development process and to evaluating development policy. Larry Summers
has not been an active researcher in the field in many years, but does
have strong views on economic development. Dani would be a great director
of CID. Larry Summers can be a great President of Harvard.

[CRIMSON] Finally, you say that the CID's money runs out in two years.
Where does that money come from? Has President Summers made any effort to
raise additional funds for the center? (And do you know -- exactly or
approximately -- what the CID's annual budget is?)

[ROSENZWEIG] The money is the endowment that was shifted from HIID to CID
at the dissolution of HIID. Since that time, almost all of the expenditure
by CID has been from that endowment. The process is decapitalization - one
of the rare instances in which endowment is spent down rather than just
the income from the endowment. Given the current expenditure of CID the
endowment will be spent down completely in two years. As far as I know
(and I think I know), no effort has been made to raise money for CID.
Aimee Fox can tell you what the annual budget is - remember that a large
portion of the budget is spent just renting space (none of the Yale EGC
budget goes to renting space, or paying "overhead" to any school - at
Harvard, 20% of the income is taxed by KSG. So for every dollar spent on
rent or on providing resources to students or faculty to pursue projects
or engage interesting speakers, $1.20 is taken out of the endowment. This
is standard practice at Harvard, not a special tax on CID).  ¶ 7:15 AM 0 comments   

  Some Poetry with Your Coffee One of my closest friends from my time at Harvard is a woman named Adrie Kusserow, a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School with a Harvard doctorate in anthropology. We met in Widener Library, bonded over the usual grad student aggravations, and have remained friends ever since. In addition to being the mother of two wonderful children, Adrie has gone on to become a remarkable teacher at St. Michael's College in Vermont who's known for her work with modern-day slavery and refugees. (Her husband, Robert Lair, is working to start a micro-finance bank and an orphanage in Sudan.) Adrie is also a poet, and one of her recent works came out in the HDS alumni magazine. It's lovely, and with her permission, I'm reprinting it here. (If you like it, check out her book, Hunting Down the Monk.)


LADYSLIPPER, RED EFT


As a child I awoke
to the furiousness of bees.

All morning my mother and I combed the woods
for red efts, trout lily, trillium.

I learned young
the smell of God and soil.

The first time I saw a ladyslipper
I felt embarrassed, the pink-veined pouches,

simultaneously ephemeral and genital,
floating toad-balloons,

half scrotum, half fairy,
half birth, half death.

Without the formalities of church and school
lust and spirit first came to me

as one --
through the potent hips of spring.

But flowers, like fear, once inside me
never lay still --

amidst my restless
stalking of the woods,

I wanted something bulky to thank,
to name, to explain all the impossible grace.

So I dragged my thirsty body
over the hills, into the trees.

I let the plump red efts, orange fingers tiny as rain,
crawl across my neck, onto my cheek,

half reptile, half elf,
half earth, half magic.

Years passed,
spring after spring cycled through me,

again and again I arrived in heaven
through touch,

lust, even, for the wrinkled pouches of ladyslipper,
the soft lemon bellied efts

that waddled pigeon-toed across my palm.
Now I walk my daughter through April’s black mud.

It’s been a long winter,
she hasn’t quite unfurled.

Still, she sticks her ear into the cacophony of crows
above us, the way a dog sniffs

at a tight current of scent.
Across the meadow the peepers

gossip in their giant cities,
salamanders toddle

over the black soil,
back into the cold ponds they think of as mother.

awake, awake

what if, what if

What if God is walking through us,
picking seasons, histories, humans off himself

like milkweed from a sweater,
wading through us,

a slow giant through warm ponds,
feeling the odd tickle of religions

like tangled weeds at his feet.
I watch Ana now in full bloom,

despite the rain, running outside barefoot,
setting up dolls’ nests in the fields,

collecting moles, covering them in leaves,
naming them even though they’re dead.

She skitters across the garden, singi