Starting at 6pm or roughly thereabouts, I’ll be live-tweeting the IOP Forum with “Game Change” authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. Hopefully they’ve got some juicy gossip that didn’t make it into the book! Check it out at twitter.com/harvardpolitics!
Yesterday, President Drew Faust sent out another one of her overly lengthy and strangely timed emails to the Harvard community, this one ironically entitled, “Diversity and Excellence at Harvard”. She sums up the sad history of faculty diversity at Harvard in 900 words, presenting the following dismal statistics: Approximately 17 percent of Harvard’s ladder faculty … Read more
This hasn’t made the front page of The New York Times (yet!), but I thought it was important to get the word out: Topeka, Kansas has changed its name to “Google, Kansas — the capital city of fiber optics.” This move is part of Topeka’s (I mean Google’s) push to be chosen as one of … Read more
Richard Thaler wrote an extremely important piece in the New York Times this past weekend on wireless spectrum auctions. This may sound like the stuff of fantasy or boredom, take your pick, but selling off archaic TV spectrum could net the US government $100 billion: Professor Hazlett estimates that selling off this spectrum could raise … Read more
Google’s court case in Italy is a big deal. As everyone is saying, if Google can be held accountable for the content it syndicates on its site, that would change the way that information flows through the internet forever. It could close the whole thing down. I thought I’d take this opportunity to throw out … Read more
Last weekend, Harvard’s Model United Nations conference for college students took place for the 56th time, drawing thousands of students from all over the world to Boston Park Plaza. As an uber-important (or not) Assistant Director to the E.U. committee, I got to observe first hand how students acted as delegates from countries they didn’t … Read more
Didn’t want to let this go by without comment. From the Feb. 18 edition (“What’s Wrong With Washington?”): Washington has its faults, some of which could easily be fixed. But much of the current fuss forgets the purpose of American government; and it lets current politicians (Mr Obama in particular) off the hook. America’s political … Read more
In Saturday’s New York Times, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) penned a long article entitled “Why I’m Leaving the Senate,” citing “institutional inertia” and frustration with partisan politics. In that same spirit, let me offer my reasons for leaving the country. People always joke about how lousy everything is here in America. But it’s no laughing … Read more
I was taking a Sporcle quiz the other day (something I do often) on all of TIME Magazine’s Persons of the Year throughout its history. Beyond the predictable leaders like FDR, Hitler, Stalin and Churchill, giants of the World War II era, there was another leader in their midst: 1937, Chiang Kai-Shek, leader of the … Read more
Following Kramer’s comments the other day, an interesting conversation has arisen that compares Kramer’s proposal to end pre-natal subsidies with China’s one child policy. The reason for this debate originates in the UN’s definition of genocide, as found in Article 2 of the Convention on the Preventment and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: “In the … Read more