The Shape of the Race to Come

New York Times:

"And an experienced Democratic operative e-mailed: “Finally, I think [McCain’s] going to win. Obama isn’t growing in stature. Once I thought he could be Jimmy Carter, but now he reminds me more of Michael Dukakis with the flag lapel thing and defending Wright. Plus he doesn’t have a clue how to talk to the middle class. He’s in the Stevenson reform mold out of Illinois, with a dash of Harvard disease thrown in.”

In a close race, that “dash of Harvard disease” could be the difference."

This from William Kristol, a Harvard Ph.D., in a NYT op-ed.

I consider Kristol's column utterly worthless, and the decision to hire him a low point in the history of The Times. I've written several letters to The Times making this point in relation to particular Kristol columns. Unlike William Safire, Kristol's writing is pedestrian at best, he does no real reporting (this column is a joke), and seems utterly incapable of fresh thinking or insight on any issue. I have yet to discover a single redeeming feature. (Safire, the object of a Kissingerian wiretap during his time in the Nixon White House, had the good grace to care about personal privacy of others in subsequent years).

There are, of course, numbers of conservative thinkers and writers doing interesting, well-written, and usefully provocative stuff, who would deserve a place on the rather valuable real estate on the NYT op-ed page and provide a real service to its readership. It is said that the selection of Kristol is due to The Times' publisher, who has been on a rather extended losing streak of late. The publisher can't be fired, but maybe it is time for a nice extended vacation.

And speaking of "Harvard disease", if Obama has "a dash", Kristol is a source of mortal contagion. What a pompous windbag.

Who Founded Facebook? A New Claim Emerges

New York Times: "In an interview at a cafe here this week, Mr. Greenspan said he had mostly made peace with the fact that Mr. Zuckerberg will be the first of his classmates to become a billionaire."

Why Harvard Is Smarting

WSJ.com: By CRAIG KARMIN and GREGORY ZUCKERMAN

Harvard University's endowment fund has graduated some of the most sought-after money managers in the hedge-fund world.

Now one of those stars is teaching Harvard a lesson of its own.

In the past month, the university lost about $350 million through an investment in Sowood Capital Management, a hedge-fund firm founded by Jeffrey Larson. Mr. Larson managed Harvard's foreign-stock holdings until 2004, when he left to set up Sowood, which recently lost more than 50% of its value amid bad bond investments....

While $350 million is a relatively small hit for the $29 billion Harvard endowment, the nation's largest, it highlights the risks as colleges nationwide embrace nontraditional investments such as hedge funds and private equity. Investments like these are less regulated than more traditional options, and often engage in the risky practice of investing borrowed money in hopes of amplifying their returns.

Along with Yale University -- where the roughly $18 billion endowment has achieved annual returns of about 17% in the past decade -- Harvard was among the first universities to embrace such alternative investments. The goal is to seek good returns that don't move in tandem with stock and bond markets, thereby giving diversity to the overall portfolio.

The strategy worked particularly well in the 2000-2002 period, when hedge funds generally did a much better job than other investments in protecting their clients' money from losses in the aftermath of the dot-com stock bust. ...

Harvard Management Co., which manages the endowment, has long been viewed as one of the nation's more successful and trailblazing investment-management firms. It boasts an annualized return of 15.2% in the past 10 years through June 2006. That compares with an 8.9% median return for endowments and foundations over that time period, according to Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service.

As Harvard's returns grew, so did its money managers' paychecks, which soared into the millions of dollars a year. That sparked controversy among alumni and others associated with the university, who argued that investment managers shouldn't be paid better than the school's Nobel Laureate professors, or its deans.

Mr. Larson's $17.3 million in payments in 2003 from Harvard were among the large salaries that drew complaints from alumni several years ago.

In 2005, Mr. Meyer and some of his top staff left the university amid complaints about their pay. ...

Nationwide, university endowments continue to show a greater risk appetite than pension funds and other large institutional investors. The top 53 university endowments, with nearly $217 billion in assets, have invested about 18% of their money in hedge funds, according to data provider HedgeFund Intelligence. The average public pension fund has only about 5% in hedge funds.

Kevin Lynch, a managing director at consulting firm RogersCasey, says there are at least two good reasons why universities have more readily welcomed hedge funds and private equity. Unlike public or corporate pension plans, which make annual payouts to beneficiaries, endowments have longer-term investment horizons, and therefore are more comfortable with the fact that alternative investments generally require investors to stay in for years.

Harvard president tackles first day at work

The Boston Globe: "Harvard University president Drew G. Faust spent her first workday in power yesterday hosting an ice cream social and doing business in a new office that she described as "surrounded with flowers and kind wishes and interesting problems."...

Faust took on many presidential duties months ago. Asked if she'd learned to handle the stress and long hours, she said she was still working on it.

For example, she likes relaxing with detective novels, but these days falls asleep after two paragraphs.

She also dotes on her dog, Clio, who has behavior problems.

'She reminds me that life is not perfect and life is not all about Harvard,' Faust said."

Harvard’s Sort-of Divestment

Inside Higher Ed :

Two years ago, Harvard University became the first major university to announce a policy of selling off stocks in companies that operate in Sudan in ways that support the genocide taking place in Darfur. The announcement was huge for the nascent movement to push universities to take a stand on Darfur. No university has a larger endowment. And Harvard has a well known dislike for using its endowment for any political or social cause — so when it decided Darfur was important enough to make an exception, the divestment movement gained instant credibility.

Dozens of colleges followed Harvard’s lead — with many of them not just selling off a few companies’ stock, but setting general guidelines that would restrict holding stock in companies complicit in the genocide. Harvard was widely praised for being a leader.

But then things got complicated. ...In January, The Harvard Crimson reported that the university continued to hold stock in the companies from which it divested — stock worth more than that the university had sold — when the shares were part of a broad investment fund (like a mutual fund).

This provides a fairly detailed account of the challenges of incorporating divestment with complex investment strategies. Harvard doesn't want to go there; others have.

Harvard Square to be Hogwarts Square

The Boston Globe:

Just when you thought you were safe from iPhone hysteria, a new hype hoo-ha about Harry Potter is heading your way, and helping to amp up the buzz is Harvard Square, which plans to briefly rename itself Hogwarts Square....

Some might think Harvard would be immune to a frenzy that has beguiled fourth graders and reportedly resulted in 1.4 million book 'preorders' at online book-seller Amazon.co.uk, but they'd be wrong.

Not to be outdone by London, where author J.K. Rowling plans a midnight reading for her book's release date, Harvard Summer School and the Harvard Square Business Association are organizing 'the most grand celebration of literature in Harvard history.'...

Plans call for a concert featuring such bands as Harry & the Potters, and there will be a scavenger hunt for owls, bats, and red stones at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, organizers said....

Despite Its Efforts to Retain Female Scholars, Harvard Loses a Top-Ranked Economist to Stanford

From The Chronicle of Higher Education: By ROBIN WILSON

Every year, Harvard University issues a report on how many female professors it has tried to hire, and how many women have accepted its offers. It has also put out two well-publicized reports on what the university can do to attract and hang onto female faculty members.

But the university has just lost one of its top-ranked African-American female scholars, who is part of an academic couple and who says Harvard did very little to try to keep her.

Caroline M. Hoxby is leaving Harvard's economics department for Stanford University this fall, along with her husband, Blair G. Hoxby, who had been working as an untenured professor of history and literature at Harvard since 2005 after spending seven years in the English department at Yale University. At Stanford, both will have tenured posts.

Congratulations to the Hoxbys, and to Stanford.
Harvard needs to do better--much better-- on recruiting and retaining minority and female faculty. (And it should grow some of its own, rather than raiding the rest of us!) Without knowing much about the particular facts here, this doesn't seem to bode well.

Yale expands; take an aspirin

Yale University To Expand Medical and Scientific Research Programs With Acquisition of Bayer Complex

New Haven, Conn. — President Richard C. Levin announced that Yale University’s efforts to expand and strengthen its medical and scientific research programs will take a major leap forward with the acquisition of the Bayer HealthCare complex in West Haven and Orange, Connecticut.

The purchase of the facility — which features approximately 550,000 square feet of laboratory space, as well as office buildings, warehouses, and other facilities — will dramatically increase the University’s ability to launch research programs addressing crucial issues affecting human health and quality of life. Financial details of the transaction will be disclosed at the time of closing.

"Yale is already in the midst of a boom in the expansion of its science and medical facilities," said Levin. "The addition of this ready-made, state-of-the-art research space will allow that growth to accelerate at an unprecedented level — potentially making it possible for Yale scientists to develop new discoveries, inventions and cures years earlier. The availability of Bayer’s science laboratories will enable us to undertake research programs that we would not have had space to develop for a decade or more."

"The heart of the Yale campus will always remain in New Haven," said Levin. "In fact, the University is already committed to building more than 2 million square feet of new facilities in its home city over the next six years. And we are in discussions about the possibility of leasing a significant amount of space in Science Park to help strengthen its role as an incubator for science-based start-up companies."

When they start buying land in Allston, watch out!

Excerpts: 'Dr. Bill Gates' at Harvard graduation

:

Talking about his departure from Harvard to found Microsoft: 'I've been waiting more than 30 years to say this: Dad, I always told you I'd come back and get my degree.' [Bill Gates Sr. was in the audience.]

'I want to thank Harvard for this honor. I'll be changing my job next year, and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume. I applaud the graduates for taking a much more direct route to your degrees. For my part, I'm just happy that the Crimson called me 'Harvard's most successful dropout.' I guess that makes me valedictorian of my own special class. I did the best of everyone who failed.'

'But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got Steve Ballmer to drop out of business school. [Ballmer, now Microsoft's CEO, was also there, sitting in the crowd behind Gates.] I'm a bad influence. That's why I was invited to speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today.'...

His conclusion: "You graduates are coming of age in an amazing time. As you leave Harvard, you have technology that members of my class never had. You have awareness of global inequity, which we did not have. And with that awareness, you likely also have an informed conscience that will torment you if you abandon these people whose lives you could change with modest effort. You have more than we had. You must start sooner, and carry on longer.

Harvard students scalping tickets

Harvard students scalping tickets: AP

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Some of the hottest tickets in town are to Harvard commencement events featuring two famous Bills: Clinton and Gates.

Dozens of Harvard University students sold free tickets to events for as much as $100 a piece, much to the chagrin of university officials.

'We obviously frown upon it and do what we can,' university spokesman Joe Wrinn said.

The tickets, listed for sale on Craigslist.com, were to Wednesday's Class Day talk by former President Bill Clinton and Thursday's commencement address by Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates.

I was scheduled to be there for my "second" 35th reunion. Events intervened. Oh well.

Even Harvard LS grads get it right, sometimes

The Harvard Crimson: Former Classmates Criticize Gonzales:

Fifty-six members of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ graduating class at Harvard Law School signed a quarter-page open letter in yesterday’s Washington Post excoriating their former classmate for his “cavalier handling of our freedoms.”

The letter stops short of calling for Gonzales’s resignation, even as the attorney general comes under rising heat on Capitol Hill. But it is a stinging rebuke to Gonzales, just two weeks after the Law School Class of 1982’s 25th reunion.

“Your country and your President are in dire need of an attorney who will do the tough job of providing independent counsel,” the letter says. It calls on Gonzales to “relent from this reckless path, and begin to restore respect for the rule of law we all learned to love many years ago.”

First good use of a reunion I've heard about in a while.

Reason and Faith at Harvard

From Inside Higher Ed : Harvard Moves Ahead on Curricular Reform:

One of the proposals in the October draft that received considerable attention was the requirement for study of reason and faith, which would have required in some way study of religion. That was amended — first in December and finalized Wednesday — to a requirement on culture and belief. The proposal to focus on religion drew criticism from some prominent Harvard professors, such as Steven Pinker, who wrote in The Harvard Crimson that the proposal was flawed in logically and rhetorically.

“First, the word ‘faith’ in this and many other contexts, is a euphemism for ‘religion,’ ” he wrote. “A university should not try to hide what it is studying in warm-and-fuzzy code words.”

Pinker, a professor of psychology, added: “Second, the juxtaposition of the two words makes it sound like ‘faith’ and ‘reason’ are parallel and equivalent ways of knowing, and we have to help students navigate between them. But universities are about reason, pure and simple. Faith — believing something without good reasons to do so — has no place in anything but a religious institution, and our society has no shortage of these. Imagine if we had a requirement for ‘Astronomy and Astrology’ or ‘Psychology and Parapsychology.’ It may be true that more people are knowledgeable about astrology than about astronomy, and it may be true that astrology deserves study as a significant historical and sociological phenomenon. But it would be a terrible mistake to juxtapose it with astronomy, if only for the false appearance of symmetry.

While the final report of the Harvard panel did change the name and broaden the category, the report still includes a strong argument for the study of religion. “Religion has been, and continues to be, a force shaping identity and behavior throughout the world. Harvard is a secular institution, but religion is an important part of our students’ lives,” the report says. “When they get to college, students often struggle to sort out the relationship between their own beliefs and practices and those of fellow students, and the relationship of religious belief to the resolutely secular world of the academy.

Harvard (finally) enacts new curricular reform

Harvard Faculty of Arts & Sciences: News and Events:

The Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences approved a motion that sets the stage for the implementation of the first complete overhaul of general education for undergraduates in nearly 30 years. By voting to put in place a new program in General Education, the FAS is replacing the Core Program established in the late 1970s.

The goals of the new General Education curriculum are to prepare students for civic engagement; teach students to understand themselves as products of -- and participants in -- traditions of art, ideas, and values; prepare students to respond critically and constructively to change; and to develop students' understanding of the ethical dimensions of what they say and do.

The new program requires students to take a semester-long course in each of the following areas:

Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding to help students develop skills in criticism, that is, aesthetic responsiveness and interpretive ability.

Culture and Belief to develop an understanding of and appreciation for traditions of culture and belief in human societies.

Empirical and Mathematical Reasoning to teach the conceptual and theoretical tools used in reasoning and problem solving, such as statistics, probability theory, mathematics, logic, and decision theory.

Ethical Reasoning to teach how to reason about moral and political beliefs and practices, and how to deliberate and assess claims about ethical issues.

Science of Living Systems to introduce concepts, facts, and theories relevant to living systems.

Science of the Physical Universe to introduce key concepts, facts, and theories about the physical universe that equip students to understand better our world and the universe.

Societies of the World to examine one or more societies outside the United States.

The United States and the World to examine American social, political, legal, cultural, and/or economic institutions, practices, and behavior, from contemporary, historical, and/or analytical perspectives.

Good to know some folks aren't homeless after losing their jobs

Severance pact for former Harvard president Summers includes $1 million home loan, salary deal - From The Boston Globe:

The former Harvard University president, Lawrence H. Summers, received a severance package that could be worth up to $2 million or more, including a $1 million home loan, according to the university's annual Internal Revenue Service filing....

Summers's compensation in 2005-2006, his final year as president, was $611,226, including base pay of $580,115.

Summers, who resigned amidst controversy after five years in office, declined to comment last night. A university spokesman said Harvard does not comment on compensation beyond what it is required to report to the IRS.

"Harvard had a need to make a change, so they did what they did to make it amicable, as distinct from adversarial," said Robert Atwell, former president of the American Council on Education. "I'm not prepared to say this is a bad settlement."...

Summers and his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard English professor, bought a 6,541-square foot Colonial in Brookline last year for $2.53 million.

Harvard A&M?

From Boston Business Journal::
Harvard ponders sustainable farm in Allston

Some Harvard University students and faculty are asking the university to create a farm on some of its holdings in Allston, according to the Harvard Crimson.

The student newspaper reported that Harvard administrators have 'entertained discussions' about a sustainable farm, saying the idea was 'still in the concept phase.'

The Crimson said other ideas put forward to the university include a driving range, a day care facility for Harvard students and staff and a student center.

Maybe a driving range over a sustainable, ethanol-producing sawgrass field? Perhaps with some pot plots, to help with financing? Talk about self-sustaining!

Theorizing Poker at the Harvard Faculty Club

Eye On Gambling : Online Poker is a game of skill, says Harvard expert

Four-time poker champion Howard Lederer makes a plush living playing cards. His scholarly calm at the table has earned him the title 'The Professor,' along with $3.3 million in tournament prize money.

Just don't call him lucky. To describe poker as anything but a game of skill, he says, 'is just wrong.'

Now poker fans in academe are jumping in to help prove that point, most recently with a daylong 'strategy session' at the Harvard Faculty Club bringing together poker pros like Mr. Lederer, game theorists, statisticians, law students and gambling lobbyists.

'The purpose of this meeting,' said Harvard University Law School professor Charles Nesson, kicking things off beneath the dusty visages of long-dead Harvard poets and divines, 'is to legitimate poker.' To do that, Prof. Nesson and his fellows hope to show, statistically, philosophically, legally and otherwise, that poker is a game in which skill predominates over chance.

It is the straight flush of poker theory -- and just about as elusive.

Not my game, but more interesting than most college sports...

One small step for humankind

The Chronicle of Higher Education: "Harvard Economist Is First Woman to Win Prestigious John Bates Clark Medal

By DAVID GLENN

The John Bates Clark Medal, which is awarded every two years to a promising economist under the age of 40, has been given, for the first time, to a woman: Susan C. Athey, a professor of economics at Harvard University. The American Economic Association announced the award on Friday.

Ms. Athey -- who was described by one of her graduate advisers as 'Superwoman' in a 1995 New York Times profile -- joined Harvard last summer, after five years on the faculty at Stanford University. She has done theoretical and practical research in a variety of arenas, including monetary policy and the structure of auctions.

Can someone help me with an appropriate Larry Summers joke to insert here?

The YouTube Defense: Human Rights Go Viral

(Link broken)
A nice Jurisprudence posting on today's Slate, by a law student and human rights worker at Harvard. An excerpt:

As America's civil rights advocates knew well a half-century ago, lawyers are most successful when their legal arguments are attuned to broader social changes. When the NAACP went to court to end segregation in the South, it coordinated with groups staging sit-ins, knowing that the resulting public unrest would help shape Thurgood Marshall's legal victories in the courtroom. This strategy works because, right or wrong, judges keep an eye on the street. Internal notes from the Supreme Court's deliberations in Brown v. Board of Education suggest the justices spent less time discussing law than chewing over the state of race relations in the South. In fact, as law professor Michael Klarman points out, little relevant constitutional law had changed between Brown's ruling against segregation and Plessy v. Ferguson, the case that helped establish the "separate but equal" school regime. What had changed was the social context.

They teach stuff like that at Harvard? What happened with Scalia--did he miss that class?