Bad news for Harvard: It invested $500 million in Sowood, a hedge fund that just announced it has lost more than half of its assets.

From CBS Marketwatch:

Harvard Management Chief Executive Mohamed El-Erian suggested in December that the endowment was keen on investing more in Sowood.

"Harvard's endowment has benefited from its long-term association with Sowood Capital Management through its investments in the Alpha product and commodity funds," he said in a statement. "We look forward to deepening this relationship."

Are you worried yet?

I'm fatinated—whoops, fascinated—by the new Harvard study showing that obesity can be spread through social networks.

Obesity appears to spread from one person to another like a virus or a fad, researchers reported yesterday in a first-of-its-kind study that helps explain -- and could help fight -- one of the nation's biggest public health problems.

..."It's almost a cliche to speak of the obesity epidemic as being an epidemic. But we wanted to see if it really did spread from person to person like a fashion or a germ," said Nicholas A. Christakis of Harvard Medical School, who led the study, being published tomorrow in the New England Journal of Medicine. "And the answer is, 'Yes, it does.' We are finding evidence for a kind of social contagion."

Of course, this makes perfect common sense. If you hang out with fat people, you're likely to do what they do—eat more, exercise less, etc. Or at least, you're more likely to do that stuff than if you're hanging out with mountain bikers, yoga practitioners, and marathon runners.

There's some debate over whether this survey just proves the obvious. (Answer: Yes.) I also assume that fat people self-select and hang out with each other because they're less likely to feel social judgment about their weight. And, if they feel like eating a lot, then they'll have company likely to do the same, and that's just more fun than eating a lot around someone who's having a hot water with lemon.

The Washington Post concludes its article on the survey with this paragraph:

The researchers cautioned that people should not sever relationships with friends who have gained weight or stigmatize obese people, noting that close friendships have many positive health effects. But the results do support forming relationships with people who have healthful lifestyles. Hmmm. Sounds to me like those two sentences come close to contradicting each other. If you spend more time hanging out with healthy people, aren't you likely to spend less time hanging out with fat people?

Cornel West gave an online interview via the Washington Post the other day to talk about race, politics, the 2008 campaign, and his new album, "Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations." Other performers on the record include Prince, Andre 3000 of Outkast, Jill Scott and KRS-One.

Asked to describe the album, West said...

This CD is a danceable education. It's aim is to keep alive the spirit and legacy of Curtis Mayfield. We want to bring together the spiritual and the social, the personal and the political. We want to contribute to an awakening in our culture, especially youth culture.... Here is the most interesting and, to me, most Harvard-related exchange:

Washington: Prof. West, You have blended your scholarship with pop/mass culture quite a lot over the past several years. Do you have any concerns that, unlike WEB Dubois, you are aligning yourself with lesser rather than greater cultural traditions, and that you are leading promising young black students to ignore more intellectually challenging art and music in favor of what they already frequently see on TV and hear on the radio?

Dr. Cornel West: I appreciate the question. I do not believe in an either/or approach between high culture and popular culture. Instead, I adopt a both an approach that highlights the John Coltranes, Stephen Sondheims, Beethovens and Ellingtons as well as Common, Lauren Hill, Chuck D and Talib Kweli. I continue to think that, the more time passes, the more those people who blasted West during the Larry Summers dust-up for making a "rap" cd will have to reconsider the attitudes that caused them to deride such a project and deem it unworthy of Harvard. Some apologies are owed.....

[Harvard economist—and blogger!—http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/business/18leonhardt.html?ei=5090&en=f8b7fd159e5e7985&ex=1342411200&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1184943669-rtbVy8AOhLjYOVrvT8xZGg Gregory Mankiw is becoming an occasional columnist] for the New York Times. But he's not sure he's happy about it—or at least about the ideological composition of the Times' new economics columnists. He writes on his blog:

Here is my proposed topic of discussion for the comments section: Is this a "fair and balanced" group? In particular, one might ask two more specific questions. First, if you count the number of these eight economists who lean left and the number who lean right, perhaps leaving out a few without any particular political viewpoint, what ratio do you get? Second, is this group representative of the range of views in the American Economic Association? Bonus question: What economist would you to have seen added to this list? I'm not saying this to be snarky—promise—but Mankiw gets a lot of suggestions about which economists should be added. And not one person suggested Larry Summers. Serious question: Why not?

The Jerusalem Post reports on a controversy swirling around Israel's Deputy Chief of General Staff Maj.-Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, who is taking a two-month "senior management" course at Harvard which is being paid for by the military—even though Kaplinsky hasn't committed to rejoiining the military on its completion.

But here's the real obscenity. The cost of Harvard's two-month course? $56,000.

The Post doesn't say what school the general is studying at, but one presumes this is the business school. On the other hand, the general already has an MBA, with honors, from the University of Tel Aviv.

Stories like this that really make you wonder about Harvard's non-profit status.....

The university has granted Denzel Washington permission to film part of his new movie inside Sanders Theater.

According to the Boston Globe,

The director/star of "The Great Debaters" -- about a debate team from a tiny, all-black college that ate Harvard's lunch back in 1935 -- will be allowed to film the debate scene at Sanders next week .

Actually, sounds like wonderful movie material.

So why do you think the university allowed Washington to film when it routinely says no to other productions?

1) What Joe Wrinn says is true: "Sanders is regularly rented out as a music venue, so it's outside the rules that forbid filming on campus," said Harvard spokesman Joe Wrinn.

2) Big Denzel fans.

3) Jealous of Yale, where scenes from the next Raiders of the Lost Ark movie have been filmed this summer.

4) Reluctant to say no to a movie about a black debate team coming to Harvard. (Imagine the publicity: "Harvard Evicts Film about Black Heroes," etc.)

5) Under Drew Faust, glasnost.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/07/12/harvard_medical_dean_is_named/ The Boston Globe and Harvard Crimson report that Drew Faust has chosen Jeffrey Flier to be the next dean of Harvard Medical School, replacing Joseph Martin.

According to the Globe...

Flier was selected after the head of the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, Dr. Elizabeth Nabel, a cardiologist, withdrew as a finalist, two Harvard officials said, citing a desire to stay in Washington, where her husband works. Just as Faust is the first female president of Harvard, Nabel could have been the first female dean of the medical school.

The Crimson concurs, stating...

The search seemed to be nearing an end in late May, when Elizabeth G. Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and reportedly a top candidate for the Medical School deanship, traveled to Cambridge for a series of search-related meetings. But several weeks after Nabel's under-the-radar visit, Faust named Barbara J. McNeil, a professor of health care policy, to lead the school on a temporary basis while Faust rushed to find a permanent leader.

Now a New Orleans madam says that Republican senator David Vitter, Harvard class of '83, also patronized her establishment.

"As far as the girls coming out after seeing David, all they had was nice things to say. It wasn't all about sex. In fact, he just wanted to have somebody listen to him, you know. And I said his wife must not be listening," [former madam Jeanette] Maier said.

Meanwhile, the Houston Chronicle (via the New York Times) reports that Vitter's problem—well, his political problem—may be that he's presented himself as a moralist. (We've heard this story before, no?)

Vitter called for the impeachment of Bill Clinton, opposes gay marriage, and supports abstinence-only programs. He has also supported the legalization of prayer at school board meetings.

And finally, David Corn in the Nation has the best Vitter headline: A Blast from Vitter's Past. One could interpret that several different ways....

The phone number of U.S. senator David Vitter has turned up in the phone records of the D.C. madam.

Vitter is a Louisiana Republican, which is a mixed blessing for him at the moment. Republican: Not so good. Louisiana: If any state doesn't care....

Vitter is married, by the way.

"This was a very serious sin in my past for which I am, of course, completely responsible," Vitter, 46, said in a statement, which his spokesman, Joel DiGrado, confirmed to the Associated Press.

Oh—he's also a Harvard grad (Lowell House, class of '83) and a Rhodes Scholar.

The Stanford Daily reports upon Caroline and Blair Hoxbys' decision to leave Harvard for Stanford.

The incoming professor said she was “positively thrilled” to join Stanford and wants to “contribute to this campus,” but she left some parting shots for Harvard.

“Stanford and other universities have strong leaders and they’re moving forward,” she said. “It’s hard for Harvard to move ahead if they’re in constant crisis mode.”

Meanwhile, Hoxby elaborated on the controversy she was once embroiled in, and the Crimson's report that she had criticized her critic by playing the race card.

In an interview with The Daily, Hoxby firmly denied ever making the controversial remarks, saying that the “inexperienced reporter at the time,” Javier Hernandez, had made a mistake.

“The reporter made that up or attributed someone else’s quote to me,” she said.

“That’s not my style,” Hoxby added. She also said that she disputed the quote with The Crimson in a letter to the editor and that the newspaper subsequently ran a correction.

Javier Hernandez stood by his reporting.

At her ice cream social the other day, Drew Faust was apparently not asked about the Hoxbys' departure....

With his characteristic eloquence and understatement, John Rosenberg profiles Drew Faust in this month's Harvard magazine.

Rosenberg's thesis, which would provide the theme for an interesting book:

Scholarly curiosity has motivated her research and writing, aligning her own career experience closely with that of the professors she will now lead. But her subjects and discoveries, unlike those of most of her former peers, bear an almost uncanny relevance to thinking about the culture of elite research universities. For after a century of intellectual and institutional preeminence, universities have entered an era when their assumptions and performance face questions both from within and from the wider society.

Other nuggets from the article:

—Faust was treated for breast cancer in 1988 and thyroid cancer in 1999. (Has that been reported elsewhere? If so, I missed it.)

—Faust credits Neil Rudenstine as being the driving force in her transition from scholarship to academic administration

—Faust calls "This Republic of Suffering," due from Knopf next spring, her "scholarly denouement."

—Faust wants to restart university-wide academic planning

—Faust wants the arts at Harvard to be comprehensively reconsidered, saying that this is "a world in which the arts are taking on much more importance in undergraduate life in our peer institutions."

(I think this is a nice way of saying that the arts at Harvard are lousy; so far as I can tell, there's no great shift in the importance of the arts at Yale, Princeton and Stanford.)

Faust is circumspect, as always. And as you might expect, so is the article.