I’ll be in Cuba doing some reporting for the next couple of days. Not sure if it’s possible to blog from there, but if it is, I will.
And thanks to all of you for your kind words below.
I interviewed the Nobel Prize-winning economist, who spoke about his rival, the non-Nobel Prize-winning economist (among numerous other topics).
Here’s a part Harvardians may find especially interesting (questions in bold):
In criticizing the economic policies of Alan Greenspan, Bob Rubin and Larry Summers back in the 1990s, you were fighting “the committee to save the world,” as Time famously described them. Is this round two?
It’s the same set of battles. It was about their conception of how the global market economy worked. It was their conception of the nature of the market economy. The intensity of some of the battles I had with these guys was quite strong.
For example?
As Russia was approaching its [financial] crisis in 1998, the Russians asked me to give them some advice on what to do. Summers didn’t want me to go. So he called Rubin, who ordered [World Bank president James] Wolfensohn to order me not to go. In the end I had to get Boris Yeltsin to say he wanted me to come. That trumped Rubin, and I went.
This kind of thing happened over and over again
What was Summers afraid of?
You could say that he was afraid that his ideas would not win out in an open marketplace of debate. Maybe he was aware of the intellectual incoherence of his views and the extent to which they were really special interest pleadings of the financial markets.
Stiglitz is a fascinating guy, and if you’re interested in his views on politics and the economy, read the full interview.
Apologies for being a haphazard poster the past couple of days. I’ve had a lot going on. At Worth, also known as “the real job,” we’re closing our April/May issue. (It’s going to be great!)
And on the home front…yours truly got engaged last night.
I enjoyed writing that sentence so much that I’ve been staring at it for about five minutes.
My fiancee isn’t a blogger like me, so I won’t go into a lot of details, but her name is Sarah and she’s a dream come true for me. I’m a lucky man.
She’s even supportive of me sharing our engagement with the world on my blog.
I will tell you one funny coincidence: I popped the question in a suite at the Algonquin—we had our first date there—and after some champagne and a lot of phone calls, we went downstairs to hear Eric Comstock and Barbara Fasano in the Oak Room.
And who was there waiting to enjoy the music—which was wonderful—but Cornel West?
Who was, as always, charming and gracious and very kindly sent us two glasses of champagne. Quite sweet of him.
Anyway…before I get too maudlin, I’ll sign off. But when you have news this good, you want to share it. Thanks for listening.
The Harvard honoree is in hot water for possessing and e-mailing a naked picture of his former manager, Lisa Ellis, and neither she nor Jean’s wife sound very happy about it.
Ellis, who recently resigned her job with Jean, told the Daily News that the photo was an artsy shot that someone leaked.
A friend described Ellis, who has a boyfriend, as “mortified.”
“She resigned because she just was not happy with the way Wyclef was conducting himself. He wasn’t listening to her advice,” the friend said.
Ellis told the NY Post, “I quit being Wyclef’s manager just because I don’t like the way he does business.”
Jean’s rep, Ken Sunshine, told the Post, “Wyclef is spending all his time trying to rebuild Haiti and will have no comment on any of these false rumors.”
He gave the same quote to the Daily News but omitted the word “false.”
…for scamming free Yankees World Series tickets.
The New York governor has that going-to-resign smell all over him.
Listen to their new album, Plastic Beach, in its entirety here.
Fun.
Here’s New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl talking about the Whitney Biennial, which I saw on Saturday. It’s a curious take: He calls it underwhelming but concludes by saying that you’ll be glad to have seen it. I’d err a touch more on the side of underwhelming.
(Full disclosure: Your dog knows more about modern art than I do.)
There were two exhibits in particular that struck me as powerful, but in the context of the Whitney, borderline offensive. One was the work of photographer Stephanie Sinclair, who documented Afghan women who’d set themselves on fire to protest abuse from their husbands and/or families. It’s heartbreaking.
But even more so is the work of photographer Nina Berman, whose pictures you may have seen reported on in the New York Times. In “Marine Wedding,” Berman chronicles the story of an American soldier whose face was blown off by an IED in Iraq (I think). You can see some of the photos here—they’re not for the faint of heart; the visage of this man challenges our conception of humanity. Berman’s story is of the man’s return to civilian life and subsequent marriage to his high school sweetheart. It’s powerful and tragic and inspiring and devastating all at once. I found it overwhelming.
But is it art? That question bothered me when considering both Sinclair’s and Berman’s work. Somehow even to discuss such photojournalism in artistic terms seemed trivializing, offensive. Berman’s work was shown on the walls of a room which also contained a couch made of papier mache on top of which sat two urns—some random piece of artwork whose meaning was utterly lost on me. At one point a guide leading a group of visitors entered the room and began talking about the couch, and I just thought, really, who gives a fuck about the couch? Was it supposed to make some glib statement about domesticity amidst the horror of war? I don’t know. Even the idea appalled me. And the idea that the curators might have been going for just that shock value appalled me further. Real-life horror overwhelmed art, relegated it to a trivial place, made the curators seem like gerbils scurrying on a wheel that never moved.
Put those photos in a museum of photography, or in the Newseum in Washington. Put them in a cemetery or a church. Put them in Arlington. Put them in the Smithsonian. Create from them a memorial. Tell people what war is really like, what it does to us, what it steals from us.
Just don’t put them in a museum of modern art on the Upper East Side of New York City.
He’s releasing an album of covers of other people’s songs—done entirely with stringed instruments. (No guitars, no drums.)
Weird.
You can listen to it here. Check out his version of Bowie’s Heroes. It’s unorthodox, and very cool.
President Ruth Simmons is in hot water for making millions “serving” as a board member for Goldman Sachs--and no one’s very happy about the fact that, in return, she helped dole out millions and millions and millions of dollars in bonuses.
It is a remarkable reversal for Dr. Simmons, 64, and, indeed, for the stature of corporate directorships. A spot on a board, particularly at a moneymaker like Goldman, used to be considered a plum job. The demands were relatively modest compared with the rewards. Dr. Simmons, for instance, was paid $323,539 last year for her work on the board, and will soon leave her position at Goldman with stock that is currently worth about $4.3 million. That was on top of her salary at Brown, which was $576,000 this year.
Simmons told the Times that she was stepping down from the board, but not because of any controversy related to her Goldman Sachs-digging.
Dr. Simmons, whose ascension at Brown, part of the Ivy League, was seen as a triumph for African-Americans and women, defended her role at Goldman. In a telephone interview, she said she was used to lively debate around the university and that the public controversy surrounding Goldman had no influence on her decision to withdraw from the board. Instead, she said, she stepped down after 10 years because the job was taking up too much of her time, particularly in the wake of the financial collapse….
This explanation invites a raised eyebrow. Because, you know, for $4 million bucks, Ruth Simmons would make the time. She has, after all, been on the board for a decade.
I’ll admit a bias here: I’ve never bought into the “isn’t Ruth Simmons great?” parade, largely because a) I never seen sign of said greatness, and b) when I tried to interview her for Harvard Rules, her staff was strikingly rude and arrogant, and as any journalist will tell you, the staff is invariably a reflection of the leader.
But beyond that, it’s stories like this that challenge one not to be cynical. Why did Goldman Sachs want Simmons, a humanist who likely couldn’t tell the difference between a derivative, a credit swap, and a checking account, on its board?
Let’s just say that Goldman Sachs can probably use—and I do mean use—all the African-American women in visible positions it can get. Because it doesn’t have very many of them.
And until recently, Ruth Simmons was happy to cash the checks.
Simmons could make the case that Brown, which is chronically (if relatively) poor compared to its Ivy League cousins, needs all the financial connections it can get. Strangely, she doesn’t. She could also point to financial benefits Brown has accrued from the relationship (as opposed to those she herself has accrued). But she doesn’t do that either. And when asked about Goldman’s role in the financial crisis, she sounds downright bought and paid for.
Dr. Simmons, a professor of French and a former president of Smith College, said history would judge Goldman and Wall Street. But she declined to comment on whether outsize pay on Wall Street contributed to the crisis, as some have suggested, by giving banks and traders the incentive to seek short-term rewards at the expense of long-term prosperity.
“There are going to be lots of books written. I think people will make their own decisions,” Dr. Simmons said. “It’s easy to look back and say, ‘Gee, that was a lot,’ but you have to look forward and see how people react.”
You have to look forward and see how people react?
Really? Why? And what does that even mean?
Oh, wait, sorry about that—Harvard isn’t actually doing anything to help Chile.
At least, not that I can tell. There’s nothing on the president’s page, nothing in the Crimson, nothing in the Gazette.
Yet just one earthquake ago, Harvard hosted a concert to help Haiti, asked its alumni for money for Haiti, established a relief fund for Harvard employees affected by the quake, gave an award to a Haitian who may funneled money from a Haiti charity into his own bank account—not that you’d find any mention of this in the Crimson—and hosted a Drew Faust web page for Haiti. Among other things.
Does Harvard have earthquake fatigue already? Did not enough people die in Chile to merit Harvard’s attention? Are there no Chilean students at Harvard and no Chilean employees? Or is it that the Harvard College dean is African-American and the Harvard president a scholar of slavery, so they feel a greater connection to Haiti? Would things be different if the president of Harvard were Latina?
After all, it’s not like a Harvard president recently visited Chile.
Of course, the Haitian earthquake was considerably more devastating than the one in Chile. So wouldn’t that mean that Harvard, if it wants to help in cases of tragedy, should help Haiti considerably more than it helps Chile?
As opposed to, you know, not helping Chile?
I’m just trying to figure out the logic here. But maybe the implicit assumption of that question is in error.