Deval Patrick just announced that he wants to overturn the restrictions on stem cell research promulgated by his predecessor, Mitt Romney.

It may be the first smart thing Patrick has done since he became governor.

The Democrat has not exactly impressed to date. He's gotten mired in mini-scandals over his use of government funds to redecorate his office and his phone call to Bob Rubin on behalf of a mortgage lender on whose board he sat.

And he's also been sidetracked by his wife's serious struggle with depression.

For Patrick supporters, it's all been disheartening.

Patrick needs to remind those loyalists that, for all his problems, he could be worse; he could be...Mitt Romney. The former governor's approval ratings were in the low 30's when he left office a couple months ago.

So this move to junk Romney's ideologically-motivated restrictions on stem cell research is a smart one. It's right on policy, and it's right on politics—and it's the first thing I've seen Patrick do that suggests there's a functioning brain in his head.

Let's hope the new governor is beginning to get his sea legs....

Larry Summers' most recent column in the FT is not the most vivid op-ed you'll ever read. When talking to the world of finance, Summers adopts a far more sober tone than when lecturing to academe. Truth is, if you didn't see that famous byline at the top of the column, you probably wouldn't get very far into prose like this....

While it would be premature to predict a US recession, there are now strong grounds for predicting that the US economy will slow down very significantly in 2007. Whether in retrospect 2007 will prove to have been a “pause that refreshed” a nearly decade-long expansion like the growth slowdowns in 1986 and 1995 or whether it will see the end of the expansion is not yet clear.

Tough sledding, eh?

Summers' main argument is that a number of events prophesied by economic naysayers are now coming to fruition: mortgage crises, diminished foreign lending to the U.S., lessened consumer confidence and spending. These and other phenomena could lead to "further downward pressure on investment in plant, equipment, and commercial real estate."

In other words, a recession.

But Summers' more original point is the question of how to respond to such a potentiality—and I wonder if, as he writes, he isn't also talking about events in Cambridge.

Good economic policies operate counter-cyclically, slowing booms and mitigating downturns. It follows that when the dominant risk changes from complacency and overheating to risk aversion and economic slowdown, the orientation of policy must change as well.

Economic policymakers who seek to correct past errors by doing today what they wished they had done yesterday actually compound their errors. They are in their way as dangerous as generals fighting the last war. We do not yet know how much economic conditions will change or whether current concerns will prove transitory. But if recent developments mark a genuine change, let us hope that policymakers look forwards rather than backwards.

In warning of fighting past battles, is he talking about the economy...or is he giving advice to Harvard?

After all, the choice of Drew Faust is generally seen as a response to FAS complaints with Summers, and her leadership style is seen as a 180-degree reversal from his. As Morton and Phyllis Keller write in their history, Making Harvard Modern, the choice of each Harvard president seems to be a reaction to his (now her) predecessor. If that cycle is now coming true again, Harvard needs to be careful not to go too far.

Summers' FT column may be dryly written...but I think within that dryness, Summers is actually presenting a dramatic warning to Harvard: Don't turn your back on what I was doing. Don't fight the last war. He's using the economy as an allegory and the FT as a Trojan horse. Clever man!

Only a few more months till Summers is back at Harvard full-time....

What's wrong with this, the first sentence of Robert Drago's essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education, titled "Harvard and the Academic Glass Ceiling"?

Drew Gilpin Faust's appointment as president of Harvard University has seriously dented the academic glass ceiling.

Well, the assumption that there is an academic glass ceiling, of course—the existence of which, given the number of female university presidents in office before Drew Faust came along, seems questionable.

And that's just the start of Drago's problematic argument, in which he alleges that the real sexism at universities pertains to adjunct faculty members.

Recall the 2005 event that triggered Faust's appointment. The university's president at the time, Larry Summers, suggested, among other claims, that relatively few young women were prepared to make the "near total commitments to their work" required of successful academics. He also suggested that men may hold a biological advantage in the pursuit of science and engineering careers. The anger generated by those comments almost certainly contributed to his resignation.

About the biological comment, yes. But Summers' remarks on the challenges of juggling work and family manifested, by his standards, Oprah-like sensitivity, and I don't recall anyone being particularly upset by them.

Drago, a professor of women's and labor studies at Penn State, has a new book coming out, Striking a Balance: Work, Family, Life, which is certainly an important topic. But he loses me when he writes,

...Norms surrounding our ideas about motherhood...[lead] us to expect women to bear and rear children, to take care of the ill, elderly, and those with disabilities, and to do so for low or no pay, and without public recognition.

Without public recognition? Really? Has there ever been a time in history when mothers were more fussed over, talked about, and self-congratulatory than they are now?

What Summers missed are [women's] sacrifices. Indeed, the way he broached the subject of family commitments represented a significant threat to the careers of female faculty members everywhere -- an accusation that women are really "just moms."

In fact, that's just not true. As I recall, Summers detailed the challenges facing women in academia, and suggested that the greatest challenge was the problem of balancing work and family. He may not have waxed empathic about the difficulties of being a mom, but that wasn't Summers' topic.

Drago's heart is in the right place, but his solution—a part-time tenure track—doesn't really address the question of how you can maintain Harvard's standards of excellence and make a balanced life viable for women (and men) who have children.

Harvard Law School dean Elena Kagan just landed a $25 million donation from the Wasserstein family, whose best-known member is probably financier Bruce Wasserstein.

The timing of this announcement is interesting: Kagan recently lost the contest to become Harvard president to a woman whose ability to raise large sums is uncertain.

That $25 million gift, by the way, is about 50% larger than the annual budget of the Radcliffe Institute.

It's possible to consider this gift as another show of support for Kagan. (The first, a week or so after Faust was named, came in the form of a party thrown by law students in her honor.)

Faust is said to have terrific relationships with Radcliffe alums, but one of the question marks about her announcement is how the mega-rich finance guys like Wasserstein will respond to her.

Rumor has it that the development folks are worried....

In the Globe, Marcella Bombardieri profiles Robert Brown, the new president of Boston University.

See if this sounds familiar...

Brown is following in the wake of the high-profile and highly controversial John Silber, Bombardieri points out.

Brown, many observers say, is trying to be the un-Silber, transforming the university's culture so that faculty, students, and alumni feel that their opinions are heard and they have a stake in the university's future. Former president John Silber took BU to new heights of success, but was accused of sowing fear among faculty and ignoring concerns of students and alumni.

Not all professors are yet convinced, but here's one idea that a certain other university across the river might want to consider.

Under Brown, BU created a blog inviting feedback on the university's goals....

So far, I have heard of only two Harvard professors who write blogs. By contrast, when BU Today asked members of the BU community to submit nominations for best campus blogs, they got 150 nominations. What does this say about the popular willingness to speak freely at Harvard?

I feel about this the way that the Crimson feels about poor attendance at faculty meetings: There's just no excuse.

So here are several questions I'd like to hear Drew Faust answer:

1) As a historian, you depend on free and unfettered access to historical documents in order to pursue your scholarship. Do you support the Corporation's 50-year-rule, which keeps secret the records of the Corporation for 50 years after they are created?

2) Do you support the ouster of students from Massachusetts Hall?

3) Do you believe that blogs are an important part of creating a forum for intellectual discussion and debate at Harvard? Do you read any blogs, and if so, which ones? Would you create a blog similar to the one Robert Brown has created at Boston University? And what measures would you recommend to your incoming FAS dean to encourage Harvard faculty to write blogs of their own?

President-elect Drew Faust has persuaded Alan Stone, Harvard's v-p for government, etc., to stick around for another year, even though Stone had previously tendered his resignation.

“It was a very plausible decision at the time, but on reconsideration I was delighted to stay,” Stone told the Crimson. “You make decisions based on your latest information.”

Chalk this up as a wise move on Faust's part.

In my experience, Stone has not impressed; in my dealings with him, he's been—how can I put it?—unhelpful.

But a number of people whose opinion I respect say that Stone is really talented and a huge asset to the university. They tell me that he does excellent work with community relations and that he's a savvy adviser to the university's higher officers.

So with that in mind, I think you have to consider this a third consecutive smart personnel move by Drew Faust. The consensus opinion seems to be: Good move to keep Steve Hyman, good move to let Donella Rapier go, and it's important to have Alan Stone around to help with the transition, if not beyond.

Which indicates something interesting about Faust: She doesn't feel an inherent need to "shake up" the university, which was one of Summers' mandates from the Corporation. She's making her decisions on a case-by-case basis. Smart. There's still no sign of her doing anything bold, but perhaps when the appropriate time comes, we'll see that from her.

And it's also possible that boldness is overrated....methodical, steady progress could be just what Harvard needs right now.

In Slate, David Silbey argues that as we fight the war in Iraq, we could learn from the lesson of Teddy Roosevelt and the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902.

In the Philippines, the United States won with relatively few casualties. A little more than three years after the start of the war, President Theodore Roosevelt could declare victory and, unlike George W. Bush, not be undercut by a continuing insurrection. America succeeded less by waging war and more by waging politics, politics that co-opted much of the Filipino population and isolated the revolutionaries. That victory offers a central lesson for our current involvement in Iraq: Counterinsurgency is less about conquest and more about persuasion.

It's a fascinating piece, and it also suggests that a crucial difference between the two conflicts is the men in the Oval Office. GWB, in short, is no TR.

It also suggests at least one disturbing continuity: the use of torture. Now, we water-board. Back then, we used the "'water cure'—in which a captive was forced to drink gallons of water and then vomit it back up...."

And, of course, it raises the question of whether either war was really necessary....

The Boston Globe reports that supporters of Massachusetts governor (and Harvard alum) Deval Patrick have been issued talking points for use in rebutting charges that his two-month-old administration is flailing.

These talking points, according to a copy obtained by the Globe, include statistics on the corporate tax changes Patrick has proposed, his concerns about children affected by the New Bedford immigration raid, and his efforts to lower premium costs under the state's new healthcare law.

Patrick has had a spectacularly bad two months. First, he decided to spend taxpayer money redecorating his office and hiring a pricey aide for his wife. Then his wife turned out to be suffering some serious depression. Finally he was revealed to have made a phone call to Bob Rubin at Citigroup on behalf of a troubled mortgage lender on whose board he had once sat.

In other words, you pretty much couldn't ask for a worse start to your administration. As a result, Patrick's approval numbers are down 20%.

In modern politics, the answer to such a thing, of course, is "talking points." But that won't fool anyone. There's still a reservoir of goodwill toward Patrick. People voted for him; they want to see him do well. What Governor Patrick has to do is get his act together and start governing. Truth is, if you look at those talking points, they're not very impressive—even the propaganda isn't convincing.

So far, Deval Patrick is failing at both the substance and the presentation of governing. If he concerns himself more with the former, the latter will follow.

The Crimson reports on yesterday's faculty meeting, at which the primary subject was the discussion of the Task Force on Teaching and Career Development's report on teaching at Harvard.

Just a month ago, professors packed into University Hall to discuss the final report on general education. Yesterday, at the Faculty’s first chance to hold a formal discussion on this winter’s undergraduate-teaching report, professors addressed a half-empty room.

The Crimson op-ed page has strong feelings about attendance at faculty meetings, and this lede suggests that that feeling has carried over into the pages of the news. (Wouldn't be the first time that's happened at the Crimson.)

Nonetheless, the paper is right to suggest that the report on teaching has been "overshadowed" by recent events at Harvard, and that's too bad—its recommendation that faculty salaries be linked to the quality of their teaching would make for a radical and welcome change at the university.

The fate of this report really depends on incoming president Drew Faust, who was at the meeting yesterday.... If she decides to press for it, her support would make a huge difference. But pushing for the report might alienate some members of FAS, which is her political base. This will be an early test of Faust's willingness to challenge her most supportive constituency—and possibly to demonstrate that, as president, she won't be in anyone's pocket.

If she lets the report slide into oblivion, then those who fear an FAS run rampant will have more evidence for their argument...

The New Republic launches its new biweekly format this week, and it sounds...as uninspired as the magazine has been in recent years (despite this big wet kiss from the Times, which writes of the magazine's "bold idea").

The magazine has an odd painting of Barack Obama on the cover, and its controversial article alleges that Dick Cheney's intelligence may have been affected by his heart problems.

An article saying that Dick Cheney isn't the brightest bulb in the book. It's a provocative piece, but it comes late in the day; that article would have been controversial, oh, back in the 2000 presidential campaign.

You know what would be controversial now? Seriously. An article, written in the context of Cheney's recent health problems, saying that it would be good for the country if Cheney died. (Bill Maher recently made pretty much this argument on his terrific HBO show.) That would stir up a storm.

The magazine also includes a "gentle 'gotcha'" about David Sedaris, and pieces by Michael Lewis on "a post-Katrina visit to his childhood vacation home in Mississippi" and Andrew Sullivan trashing D'Nesh D'Souza's new book, which blames the American cultural left for 9/11. Not exactly a sacred cow. And I don't know about you, but if I read another writer going home to post-Katrina fill-in-the-blank, I'm going to scream.

Michael and Andrew are great writers, but these assignments feel predictable and lazy.

TNR editor Franklin Foer talks about the ongoing relevance of print journalism, and that's fine, and, I hope, correct. But at the same time, he needs to recognize that eht journalistic envelope is being pushed by bloggers and non-print media like Maher's show. What is candid and courageous for TNR is yesterday's news in the world beyond its pages.

The New York Times reports that historians are fighting President Bush to gain access to presidential papers after he signed a law restricting said access.

In December 1989, one month after the fall of the Berlin Wall, President George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev met in Malta and, in the words of a Soviet spokesman, “buried the cold war at the bottom of the Mediterranean.”

The Russian transcript of that momentous summit was published in Moscow in 1993. Fourteen years later American historians are still waiting for their own government to release a transcript.

Fourteen years! Why, that's outrageous.

Except...oh....wait...that's actually 36 years fewer than it would take to gain access to papers of the Harvard Corporation. And Harvard is a university, which theoretically believes in scholarship, free speech, access to archival materials, and so on and so on...

Well, Harvard now has an historian as president. Perhaps Drew Faust will change the Corporation's noxious 50-year-rule?

The Times today has a story that does some real damage to Obama's pristine image. (I'm sad to say.)

The paper reports that...

Less than two months after ascending to the United States Senate, Barack Obama bought more than $50,000 worth of stock in two speculative companies whose major investors included some of his biggest political donors.

One of the donors, by the way, was one of the major backers of the Swift Boat Group, and had previously only given to Republicans. Since 2004, he has given $100, 000 to the Republican National Committee. His name is Jared Abbruzzese, and he is a subject of an FBI investigation for allegedly paying off New York senate majority leader Joseph Bruno in exchange for Bruno funnelling taxpayer money towards one of Abbruzzese's companies. A quick Google search shows that is not a guy any politician—especially one who prides himself on his ethics, as Obama does—should be even seen in public with.

Obama, who doesn't comment for this article—I wish he would, instead of doing the politics-as-usual move of letting his flacks deflect the heat—puts out word that he had no knowledge of the investments, which were made by a broker in the process of setting up a blind trust for the new senator.

Sorry, but that doesn't pass the smell test. In the midst of doing something whose purpose is to be ethical, what broker would make an investment in two extremely obscure companies whose major investors are donors to the senator? Obama is either hedging the truth, or he's a liar.

The Times writes, There is no evidence that any of his actions ended up benefiting either company during the roughly eight months that he owned the stocks.

But this is missing the point, which is: Were these investments supposed to be a way to funnel more cash to Obama? One made a small profit; one wound up losing money, as such dubious schemes (cf., Whitewater) often do. But was the idea to help a young politician and father, once saddled by law school debt, worry a little less about paying his bills?

Also, as the Times points out, this is the second mini-scandal in which Obama has tried to profit off a curious arrangement with a political donor; the first involved the sale of a parcel of land to a Chicago developer who also contributed to Obama.

Mitt Romney once said that his father told him that you shouldn't go into politics if you need money—the temptation is too great, and politicians ought to be disinterested.

Well, Obama clearly needed cash. He has said that he wrote his second book, for which he got a two million-dollar advance, because he needed the money, and these investments feel like ethical compromises he made due to financial pressures.

Meanwhile, at the same time that Barack was starting to cash in, his wife Michelle got a promotion that suddenly tripled—tripled!—her salary.

Huh.

One of the companies in which Obama invested was working on treatments for avian flu. Two weeks—two weeks!—after Obama bought stock in the company, he started pushing for an increase in federal financing to fight avian flu. It was, he said, "one of my many top priorities since arriving in the Senate."

If anyone can find a single mention of avian flu in Obama's 2004 campaign for the Senate, I will send you $20 right now. (Sorry, I'm cheap; only the first person who finds this gets the money.)

Greater federal funding for the disease would surely have helped the company in which he'd invested, thus paying off some campaign contributors with taxpayer money—in politics, the payoff always comes with taxpayer money, and it is always in sums much greater than the bribes required to get it—while increasing the value of Obama's investments.

Sigh. The bloom is off the Obama rose.

A Tufts sophomore decries the trend toward "censorship" at that university and criticizes the protests against a forthcoming Larry Summers' appearance.

Don't get me wrong; I am no fan of Larry Summers' view of women or Shelby Steele's opinion on innate ability. I do believe, however, that we should be open to having controversial speakers on this campus. The answer to these types of events is not to stop them from occurring, but to use them to stimulate a conversation. Much like a racist cartoon, divisive events can raise issues that would never have been openly discussed while also serving to show us what we will be facing when we leave this place.

"Much like a racist cartoon..."

Honestly, it's almost enough to make you feel sorry for Summers.

The Harvard News Office has posted its daily list of news items pertaining to Harvard. Today there are four, and the funny thing is, none of them really have that much to do with Harvard.

But guess which Boston Herald story and which 02138 magazine story aren't listed?

Hey, I can understand that this story is embarrassing for Harvard. But come on, people—you're a university. Your president is a historian. Don't you feel some small obligation to be honest about the news, even when it isn't what you'd like?

Boston Herald reports today on my forthcoming article about Harvard's presidential search, which, by the time you read this, will probably be posted somewhere on this site...

I expect the article will generate some discussion, so I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it.

By the way, I'm not sure I'd agree with the second sentence of Gayle Fee's and Laura Raposa's column....

Before starting my current book, I used to toy with the idea of getting into ultimate fighting. I know, that sounds like a joke, but I was fascinated by the subculture of this bizarre and violent sport, and I thought it'd be a great thing to write about from a Plimpton-like perspective. But after actually watching some ultimate fighting, I realized that I'd get the daylights beaten out of me in about 15 seconds, and wouldn't really have very much to write about.

Anyway, turns out that a Harvard grad named Sam Sheridan had the same idea, except he actually had the guts/requisite degree of insanity to pursue it. Now he's written a book about the process of training to learn to fight, "A Fighter's Heart."

Here's part of the book description from Amazon:

In 1999, after a series of wildly adventurous jobs around the world, Sam Sheridan found himself in Australia, loaded with cash and intent on not working until he’d spent it all. It occurred to him that, without distractions, he could finally indulge a long-dormant obsession: fighting.

And a bit more from Boston Globe article on Sheridan:

By the time he finished researching "A Fighter's Heart," Sheridan had logged time in Rio de Janeiro with jiujitsu champions, in Oakland, Calif., with Olympic boxing gold medalist Andre Ward , and in New York with a tai chi master. The account of his travels gradually reveals itself as a kind of spiritual quest, albeit one that came at the expense of a rearranged nose and a chronic rib cage injury.

Sounds very macho, no? And probably wholly uninteresting to women, who don't seem to feel this urge to prove oneself through physical combat that men do. But it's nice to see that some Harvard grads still long for a life more adventurous than deciding which investment bank to sign up with....

Former RNC chair Ken Melhman , HLS class of '91—Barack's year—is going to start giving "strategic advice" to hedge funds, "political intelligence" to hedge funds regarding their investment strategies.

This is a sure sign that the hedge fund boom is over—when people from politics are getting in, then it's really all about the money and has nothing to do with intelligent investing.

Now that he's left the RNC, Melhman is promoting bipartisanship, dropping that he and Barack are friends—not a good sign for the GOP in 2008, when your party chair feels a need to demonstrate his friendship with a Democrat—and saying that we need to get back to the time "when you argued during the day and had a beer after work."

Did Melhman ever believe that while he ran the party for George Bush and Dick Cheney?

Since this is the first post I'm writing that will also be featured on the 02138 website, I know I should be cheery and welcoming. Hello, new readers! Welcome!

Like that.

And in fact, I am delighted that I'll be blogging for 02138 on the subject of everything Harvard. I like the magazine a lot—and not just because they give me money—and so blogging for its website makes perfect sense.

But I'm also writing to say farewell. The New York Times reports today that Marty Peretz, the longtime owner of The New Republic, has sold his remaining share in the magazine to a Canadian company (that no one has ever heard of). For the first time in three and a half decades, Marty, who got his Ph.D. from Harvard and taught there for many years, won't own TNR.

Almost ten years ago I wrote a magazine article saying that it was time for Peretz to sell the magazine. Now that it's actually happened, I'm sad to see him go.

Let me explain why.

Some of you may know Marty; some of you may hate him. He can be a real pain in the ass, and he has no shortage of enemies. I've certainly had my differences of opinion with him: TNR's steadfast support of Joe Lieberman, for example, was probably the final sign that the magazine was no longer vital. And in the past few years, the magazine has been deadly bland and seemed to have lost its muckraking sensibilities. The times have changed; it did not.

Nonetheless, Marty gave me my first real job in journalism, and I'll always be grateful to him for that.

There's a good story about how I started work there. I applied for a position as what's called a reporter-researcher, and Marty summoned me for an interview. I was very nervous. He sat me down in his office with its view of 19th Street in downtown Washington, looked at me and said, "So, Richard, tell me: Is there anything a WASP would die for?"

Like I said, I was nervous. I hemmed and hawed. No one had ever asked me a question like that before.

So, Marty, 20 years later, here's the answer that I was too tongue-tied to produce at the time: "Yes—his family and his country, but not his God."

And as I look around the world today, I think that's about right.

Marty must have seen other nervous candidates before, because I got the job. Okay, it wasn't exactly a job; it was an internship. $200 a week from September till June, doing all the shit work that needed to be done. But I loved it. I was 22 and working closely with veteran journalists such as Fred Barnes, Michael Kinsley, Charles Krauthammer, Andrew Sullivan and Dorothy Wickenden. I learned something every day. Nor was the experience entirely intellectual. My fellow intern, Ari Posner—now a screenwriter in Los Angeles—became one of my closest friends. It was a fantastic environment in which to learn, and Marty was the guy who created it, funded it, fostered it. All my subsequent work has been informed by the climate of rigor and debate that Marty loved and encouraged.

And the best thing about it was that he wanted you to write! Partly because having the interns write saved the magazine money, sure—when we wrote a piece, we didn't get paid extra for it. But more important (I'm pretty sure) was the fact that Marty was truly egalitarian; he didn't care if a great article came from his editor or from an intern six months out of college. And if it stirred up a fight, so much the better; Marty would back you all the way. If I'd worked at a magazine in New York at that age, I'd have been fetching coffee for the male equivalent of Anna WIntour, if there is such a creature. At The New Republic, I was only limited by my own inexperience and immaturity, which was a wonderful incentive to start to leave those things behind.

Later on, after I left TNR, Marty would help me get accepted into Harvard for graduate school (I don't know this, but I believe it), and welcomed me to the Cambridge community when I arrived. And when I was writing my book about Larry Summers' presidency, Harvard Rules , Marty agreed to talk to me, even though he was a great defender of Summers' and I was not. Marty did it to try to help two friends—Summers and me. I think he was successful on both counts.

He's 68 now and says it's time for him to move on. Who am I to argue? Thirty-three years is a long time to own a magazine. Still, Marty has been important, and he will be missed. Let us hope that this departure, this passage, is just a prelude.