Boston's Channel 5 reports that Massachusetts state representatives are weighing a plan that would impose a 2.5% tax on university endowments of $1 billion or more.

Currently, seven Massachusetts universities have endowments over that figure: Harvard, MIT, Boston University, Boston College, Smith, Tufts, and Wellesley.

The endowment tax is a popular idea among house lawmakers who have already voted to send it in a study proposal to the Department of Revenue.

The plan strikes me as a silly one on principle. Why punish a non-profit institution for raising, saving and investing its money wisely? It's like the state saying, well, we can't manage our money as well as you do, so we're just going to take yours.

Nonetheless, as long as these universities are ostensibly tax-free and getting richer and richer, pols are going to look at the piles of cash they're sitting on and think about skimming from it.

Unlike her predecessor, Drew Faust is said to have good relations with Boston mayor Menino. (Who is rumored to have passionately disliked Larry Summers.)*

But how are her relations with Beacon Hill?

This might be one of those situations where it'd be helpful to have a Corporation member [other than Faust] who actually lived in Massachusetts......

*Correction: I'm informed by someone who would know better than I that I've got the relationship between Larry Summers and Mayor Men ino exactly wrong, and that in fact the two had a very good relationshp.

A few weeks back, Drew Faust endured probably the only controversy (and a small one, at that) of her first year when she was quoted in Business Week as suggesting that smaller private universities and many public ones could not afford to compete with wealthy universities such as Harvard in the realm of scientific research, and should consider cutting efforts in that area while beefing up work in the relatively cheaper humanities.

After a flurry of how-dare-she retorts from presidents of such places, Faust insisted that she had been misquoted by the magazine, and Business Week kinda-sorta issued a retraction.

In fact, Faust's only mistake really was in telling the truth. It's unfortunate that she didn't have the courage of her convictions, because she was right. In fact, the situation for many public universities is more dire than that, thanks to funding freezes and budget cuts.

As Chronicle of Higher Education reports (subscription only), public universities such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison are so hard up for money, they're losing both scientists and humanists to Harvard and its peers.

The problem is money. Wisconsin's stagnating state higher-education budget has forced the university to keep faculty salaries far below average. When professors get feelers from elsewhere, they learn that a move can easily mean a whopping 100-percent salary increase—sometimes more.

The departures have hit the College of Letters and Science hardest.....

What universities are leading the salary charge? Rockefeller University has an average professorial salary of $191, 200. After that is Harvard, at $184, 800.....

Well after numerous other schools have received nine-figure donations, Harvard has finally landed its first from an alumnus, David Rockefeller. The money will go to support study abroad and for new "study centers" at the Fogg Museum.

Rockefeller's gift is a big deal for Harvard, and the university is making a hullabaloo about it, as it should. (The Globe gets so excited about it that the paper simply prints the entire Harvard press release. Bold journalism, Globe!)

But the real impact of this gift, at least in the short term, has nothing do with fine art or study abroad. The greatest impact of Rockefeller's gift for the foreseeable future is this:

1) It breaks a psychological barrier. Harvard has lagged behind other universities, such as Yale and New York University, in landing truly large gifts from alums. Rockefeller's gift can be portrayed as a vote of confidence in Harvard and an example that other grads should emulate.

2) It's a watershed, unofficial kickoff to the fundraising campaign that has been planned, and postponed, for most of the '00s.

3) It signifies the closing of one final door on the Summers era. According to published reports, Rockefeller had been preparing to make a similar donation in 2006, then decided not to after the forced resignation of Larry Summers. Conservative news outlets portrayed that as a show of anger at Harvard and support for Summers; it almost surely was not. People making contributions of that magnitude want to maximize its, and their, influence. Giving the gift during a transitional presidency (Derek Bok's) would hardly have accomplished that. By waiting, Rockefeller increased his influence during the presidential search process and gets the pleasure of yet another Harvard president kissing his ass.

So this gift is terrific news for Harvard and very, very good news for Drew Faust. It is not a ringing endorsement of Faust; the gift would have come sooner or later. But at the same time, Harvard presidents get blamed for things that they have not done or are not their fault, so who can begrudge them taking credit for things which are not entirely their doing?

The question about Drew Faust, I would suggest, is whether she's becoming a second Rudenstine: great fundraiser with little national voice. Harvard wasn't satisfied with that the last time. Would it be enough (Plus: she's a woman! the first one! History!) this time?

The Times of London reports today that it gained exclusive access to the cache of personal papers relating to Norman Mailer that Harvard recently bought from his former mistress, Carole Mallory.

Mallory, a former model and actress who met Mailer at Elaine’s restaurant in New York in 1983, suspected him of having an affair with a male friend, was worried that he might contract Aids and refused to indulge his fantasy of three-way sex with a gay man.

At another point she writes: “He asked me to wash his bottom. So SAD. He is so ashamed of what he likes.” On October 24, 1990, Mallory scribbled in a black spiral notebook: “I think Rick Stratton is his lover. One of them.”

Stratton, a novelist and convicted drug dealer, laughs off the suggestion, according to the Times.

“The outlandish claims of scorned women never surprise me,” he said.

Regardless of whether Mailer wanted to sleep with men or not, the narrative of Mallory's papers is tawdry and a bit depressing; their relationship never seems emotional, and as Mailer ages, and his sexual prowess declines, their sex seems more like unpleasant body work, a basic function that must be done but isn't as natural or enjoyable or even successful as it once so easily was.

The sexual marathons of the early encounters – “One orgasm down. Two more to go? I hope so” – soon turned into tawdry sprints as Mailer, who by then was wearing a hearing aid and suffering from gout, dropped by for sex once a week. In return he got an earful.

“Why don’t you get me an apartment?” Mallory complains in one draft letter. “You are using me and conning me just to get laid . . . If you cared about me you’d pay my rent.”

From the pleasures of the flesh to the prerequisites of survival...

It proved extraordinary and occasionally painful reading in a hushed library full of Harvard scholars, one of whom was poring over a volume of 15th-century sermons.

Financial News Online reports that Mohamed El-Erian has rejoined Pimco as co-chief executive and co-chief investment officer, and will also head a new bond fund.

Co-chief executive?

The title gives some indication of why El-Erian, who replaced Jack Meyer as head of HMC in early 2006, left Harvard at the end of 2007—a considerably shorter job tenure than Harvard had hoped. El-Erian had previously been a senior portfolio manager and head of the emerging market portfolio group at Pimco. Now, he seems poised to run the firm in the not-so-distant future.

El-Erian also left Harvard because of family concerns; his wife, Jamie, reportedly didn't like Cambridge and wanted to return to southern California. But his timing could hardly have been better—for him, if not for Harvard. Given the current recession, it seems unlikely that Harvard's endowment can this year match the double-digit returns to which the Harvard community has grown accustomed.

The New York Post reports that Harvard has bought an archive of papers relating to Norman Mailer collected over a decade of amorous couplings by the late writer’s erstwhile mistress, Carole Mallory.

The storied Ivy League institution - where the Pulitzer-winning author received a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering - has purchased a treasure trove of books, papers and letters relating to Mailer from his longtime mistress, Carole Mallory, including X-rated descriptions of their red-hot bedroom sessions.“There’s a 20-page sex scene from an unpublished memoir I wrote called ‘Making Love With Norman,’ ” Mallory told Page Six. “It’s very steamy. Norman was a real man and he knew what he was doing.”

Other Mallory lovers, according to the New York Observer, include Robert De Niro, Warren Beatty, Sean Connery, Rod Stewart (she must like Scots) and Richard Gere.

One senses a memoir in the (love-) making….

Is academia the dreariest (white-collar) profession?

On the Atlantic.com, Megan McCardle proposes several explanations for why so many academics seem so unsatisfied with their lot.

They include (I'm paraphrasing):

—low pay relative to professions they might have gone into

— constant awareness of your place in the academic ecosystem

—low job mobility

—insufficient time for other, status-reassuring pursuits due to demands of career

I'd offer another: a nagging sense that the social status of professors, particularly those in the humanities, has declined substantially in recent decades.

It's an important debate for lots of reasons, not least that it may help to explain the Summers debacle. Already sensitive about their (sagging) place in the world, professors won't like taking marching orders from someone who's come from the world of politics to tell them what they're doing wrong.... What say you?

In The New Republic, literary editor Leon Wieseltier has accused Andrew Sullivan, the magazine's former editor, of anti-Semitism for writing this sentence about Bill Kristol, after Kristol questioned Barack Obama's faith:

"A non-Christian manipulator of Christianity is calling a Christian a liar about his faith."

Those words prompted Wieseltier to write,

Ponder that early adjective. It is Jew-baiting. I was not aware that only Christians can judge Christians, or that there are things about which a Jew cannot call a Christian a liar. If Kristol is wrong about Obama, it is not because Kristol is a Jew. So this fills me with a certain pascal wrath. Nice litle blog you have there, Obama boy. Pity if frogs or locusts should happen to it. Let me people be!

To which Sullivan responds,

To be called a “Jew-baiter” in the pages of a magazine I was once proud and honored to edit, and which I love and support, is an extremely wounding blow. It is also untrue and unfair.

…I agree wholeheartedly with Leon that, “if Kristol is wrong about Obama, it is not because Kristol is a Jew.” It is because he is a cynic about faith, and a ruthless partisan indifferent to the truth when it cannot be harnessed to the wielding of power.

….when accusing someone of “Jew-baiting,” a writer might be a little more careful in his own use of language. I am 44 years old, a former editor of the magazine Wieseltier works for, married, and adult. And yet this is the tone of Leon’s scorn: “Nice little blog you have there, Obama boy.”

Little? Boy? African-Americans and gay men have had one thing in common over the decades and centuries. When we are being put in our place by our superiors, we are called “boys.”

Just for the record, I’ve had my tiffs with both of these writers. But on balance, I think Andrew is a very sweet guy who truly wants to do what he can to make the world to be a better place, while Leon, for all his many gifts and a truly remarkable mind, is not particularly interested in improving the planet, and moreover, can be one of the meanest people I’ve ever encountered, particularly when he harnesses the power of his pen to conjure insult.

Not for that reason, however, I’m going to take Sullivan’s side on this one. Perhaps his criticism of Kristol was inartfully phrased, but Andrew’s no anti-Semite, and any hint therein was certainly not deliberate.But Wieseltier’s “Obama boy” language was artfully phrased—a play, of course, on YouTube’s “Obama girl,” and at the same time deeply patronizing, and, yes, possibly homophobic—and its double meaning was very much deliberate. All of the double meanings in Leon’s prose are deliberate; he does not leave accidents within his work.

That said, I think Andrew was wrong in his criticism of Kristol, whose column doesn’t seem so objectionable to me. I disagree with it, but I don’t find it offensive….

The conclusion? It’s Hillary’s fault. The nastiness with which she has infused this campaign is spreading; she is dragging all of us down into her gutter.

I’m half-joking about that. But I’m half-serious, too…….

At a Richmond luncheon for Harvard alums last week, Drew Faust was introduced as not just the first woman to be Harvard president, but the first Southerner, which is actually kind of interesting. I'd like to hear or read someone's thoughts about how that side of her persona might affect her leadership style.

Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star columnist Ed Jones, himself a Harvard alum, liked what he saw from Faust.

She has a way of mixing the funny with the weighty. And she's a good listener, a description that didn't fit her predecessor.

Asked if her gender helps shape her presidency, Fausted noted with a smile that some have said that her strengths match those often associated with female leaders. But then she suggested that her brother in the audience might want to comment on whether she really is "kinder and gentler."

Isn't it interesting how Faust can ascribe specific qualities to a gender without getting in trouble?

(As opposed, of course, to her predecessor.)

The New York Times is reporting that Facebook is settling its lawsuit with the founders of ConnectU, for whom Mark Zuckerberg once worked.

The ConnectU people, brothers Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and their friend Divya Narendra, had hired Zuckerberg to work on a social networking site, but charged that Zuckerberg stole the idea from them and created Facebook.

As the Times reports,

They say that he stalled on the project for months while nurturing his own idea and ultimately starting TheFacebook.com. The case cast doubts on Mr. Zuckerberg’s ingenuity, and discovery efforts turned up some embarrassing material — like his diary. Facebook clearly needed to make the suit go away before a widely expected initial public offering that could come as early as next year.

Most commenters treated the case as if the Winklevosses and Narendra were just gunning for some easy money. But in 02138's investigation of Facebook's origins, I got the impression that they were genuinely pissed off at Zuckerberg and sincerely believed that he had done them wrong.

I imagine they feel vindicated by this settlement....