This afternoon a good friend sent in the wire story about the leaked survey that documents relative dissatisfaction among Harvard students.

Personally, I’m a little suprised it took this long for that survey to be leaked. I had to sift through it about a year ago -- while between jobs, I worked briefly as a temp in University Hall -- and there’s some pretty damning stuff in there.

Most of that stuff is case-specific, but after looking over the data there were two more general conclusions I came to.

The first has to do with the students themselves, who I'd say have impossibly high expectations when they arrive. Since Harvard enjoys a certain mythic status in our culture, my guess is that at least part of the disappointment has to do with discovering that fair Harvard isn't quite the Edenic academy it's made out to be. (For fear of boring you with percentages and details, please trust me when I say the results attest to this.)

The second conclusion: Harvard is plagued by bureaucratic excess. Across the board, the most consistent cause of dissatisfaction was frustration with departmental and university offices. From my own experience, I can certainly bear that out. Harvard’s facilities may be cutting-edge, but organizationally speaking, the school is stuck in the 17th century. There are so many overlapping boards, committees, and deans that at times you end up feeling like the protagonist in Kafka’s novel The Trial; not only are you getting endlessly shunted from office to office, you're also getting interrogated ab initio at every step of the way. After four years, it's enough to make you paranoid, and not the least bit crazy. (Just ask my family, who are still wondering just what happened to me.)

Yet in my view what needs to be changed most is the school's attitude, which is that the students exist to serve the university rather than vice versa. Harvard can get away with this because in point of fact, the students do need the school more than the school needs them -- there's only one "Harvard," after all, whereas there are numerous qualified students.

However, as I noted two days ago, just because you can get away with something doesn't mean you should. If Harvard truly prides itself on excellence, it surely ought to recognize this.

Nicholas Kristof has an excellent column today on the disturbing role that marriage has come to play in southern Africa's AIDS epidemic.

One key passage:

President Bush is focusing his program against AIDS in Africa on sexual abstinence and marital fidelity, relegating condoms to a distant third...

The stark reality is that what kills young women here is often not promiscuity, but marriage. Indeed, just about the deadliest thing a woman in southern Africa can do is get married.

Take Kero Sibanda, a woman I met in a village in Zimbabwe. Mrs. Sibanda is an educated woman and lovely English-speaker who married a man who could find a job only in another city. She suspected that he had a girlfriend there, but he would return to the village every couple of months to visit her.

"I asked him to use a condom," she said, "but he refused. There was nothing I could do."

Four years ago I spent a few days in the Livingston/Vic Falls border region where Kero Sibanda lives, and unfortunately I can testify to just how common her story is. While there I had conversations with several articulate young women who -- even though they were still adolescents -- already seemed to have given up on life. All listed the same reason for their resignation: the cultural obligations of marriage. Though it remained unspoken, it was no secret that the main obligation in question was the sexual subservience that marriage entailed.

Where America is concerned, the shame of this situation is that its policy is exacerbating the problem rather than alleviating it. For instance, when I was in Zimbabwe, Bush had only just signed into law the bill that barred federal funding from any foreign medical clinics which offered abortion counseling. Alas, what everyone feared then has now, it seems, come true: that bill has served more to intensify the AIDS crisis than reduce abortions. In emphasizing marriage and fidelity so heavily, our remaining medical clinics have simply lent tacit approval to disastrous social norms.

As a result, if I could give one piece of advice to President Bush, it would be this: "even though abstinence remains the one foolproof countermeasure to AIDS, sometimes you need to go with what works rather than what's ideal."

Bush clearly recognizes the wisdom of that latter part when it comes to foreign policy; if would be nice if he did so when it came to foreign aid, too.

Along with the recent F-16 sale to Pakistan, the other significant story from last week which should have received more domestic press was the EU summit meeting in Brussels. At the summit, the euro zone's 12 finance ministers hashed out a new agreement for the "Stability and Growth Pact" -- the beaurocratic euphemism for the fiscal rules all EU zone countries must obey.

The central features of the new agreement were the numerous exceptions it appended to the regulation that any country running budget deficits of greater than 3% be fined. In essence, that 3% mark is now meaningless. Countries can cite anything from "unification" costs to defense spending to avoid the fine.

What troubles me about this is that it marks definitive evidence that the American approach toward deficit spending has now spread to Europe. Unlike in America, however, it seems as though the finance ministers themselves (judging by the quotes which came out of Brussels) aren't sold on the virtues of deficit spending. Rather than reflecting a conscious policy, the new measures appear more reactive in nature. In other words: America hasn't persuaded Brussels to take on more debt so much as it has forced it to. The weak dollar is hurting its economy, and it now believes it has no choice but to mirror the U.S. with a weak-euro policy of its own.

Needless to say, the endgame here could be disastrous. Both U.S. and EU debt is being underwritten by Asia. Likewise, the housing bonanzas currently going on in the major metropolitan areas of both regions are being stimulated in part by Asian central banks, which have been stockpiling dollars and euros in an effort to keep their currencies down -- and now have so much of the stuff that their best play is simply to keep the currencies in their native economies via the real estate market.

Yet neither the debt levels nor the growth in real estate is sustainable. Eventually there will come a point at which Asia is either unwilling or unable to write blank checks. If it's the former, everyone should be able to walk away relatively unscathed. But if it's the latter -- if, that is, Asia stops underwriting American and European debt because its economy isn't stable enough to handle it -- then the global economy will likely suffer far worse repercussions than it did during the crisis of 1997.

If indeed such a scenario plays out, then the financial historians of the future will look back at last week's EU summit as a defining moment. It will be seen as an opportunity lost: one of the best chances the EU had but didn't take to demonstrate to the U.S. that just because someone is offering you a free meal doesn't necessarily mean you should take it.

Anyone struggling to discern a coherent rationale behind our current foreign policy could do far worse than read this editorial today by Henry Nau.

Although I think Nau grants Bush too much credit -- I still get the sense Bush acts more off instinct than anything, and that that instinct simply tends to correspond to a certain school of thought -- Nau nonetheless does a fantastic job of explaining clearly and concisely a school of foreign policy which is notoriously difficult to articulate. Definitely read it if you get the chance.

Given the Shiavo case and the shooting in Minnesota, it's a little unclear to me what kind of press our recent F-16 sale to Pakistan has received domestically. But overseas at least it's been predictably slammed. India isn't a fan for obvious security reasons, while both China and the EU are against it primarily for the principle of the thing: how can the U.S. protest arms sales to China on account of its human rights record, only to then turn around and sell even more sophisticated hardware to a country whose humanitarian record is worse?

The answer is that China has no negative to play against, but Pakistan does. By that I mean no credible internal threats to Chinese sovereignty exist, whereas there is one within Pakistan; public resentment towards Musharraf's current government is high enough that Islamic extremists could plausibly gain the support needed to oust that regime.

If this scenario seems far-fetched, bear in mind that extremists have already come close to ousting Musharraf himself. Fifteen months ago one assassination attempt very nearly killed him -- and if he were to go, it's likely his successor would employ far more draconian measures to secure his authority than Musharraf has. Needless to say, such a military crackdown would invariably exacerbate public resentment and so increase the likelihood of Pakistan resembling more Iran than India. Since Pakistan is already a nuclear power, this is not a comforting thought.

As a result, if Musharraf feels a few F-16s are necessary to secure the internal sovereignty of his government -- let alone his border with Iran -- then I'm inclined to let him have them. As China and India in particular should be aware (they share a border with Pakistan), when dealing with Musharraf's government, we could be dealing with far worse.

Anybody know how to make Internet Explorer adhere to a maximum-width limit on a repeated background?

I've been trying all night but can't seem to figure it out.

As you may have noticed, I've done a bit of redesigning. The bulk of it is done now, but please bear with me as I try to finish up some of the minor details. Enjoy!

Update: Unfortunately, the full re-design works with Firefox but not Explorer. So, until I can figure out why Explorer publishes it wrong -- or until everyone downloads Firefox -- I'm just going to stick with the new body under the old banner.

I didn't have the time or energy last night to get into the religious aspect of the contradictions currently roiling American politics. Frank Rich, however, clearly did; I'd recommend reading his latest column, on "The God Racket, From DeMille to DeLay."

The one thing I would add to what Rich has to say is that from Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield on, there is a very clear pattern in American history of religious and moral awakenings flaming out as soon as they extend themselves into the public sphere. Where religious fervor is concerned, political authority is a kind of forbidden fruit: a tempting instrument for realizing its moral vision, but ultimately one which, if ever grasped and used, ends up exposing itself as morally impotent and even deleterious.

The far-right evangelicals in America are currently discovering this. If what they've done already weren't so disturbing, I would say it should be interesting to watch their reaction.

We Americans may be known for a lot of things, but a firm and abiding commitment to rationality isn't one of them. When faced with a choice between efficiency or logical consistancy, we tend to go for the efficiency.

The upside of this is that we're able to enjoy an unprecedented amount of wealth. The downside is that it inures us to a fair amount of political contradiction: so long as the gap isn't too yawning, our public officials are invariably granted a certain leeway when it comes to matching political rhetoric with political action.

It would seem, however, that the current government has just passed the point at which its contradictions are too obvious -- and the abuses they contain too egregrious -- for the public to continue looking the other way.

Two examples from today's papers should illustrate what I mean.

First, from the NYT story on the detainees who have died in U.S. custody:

In one of the three cases in which no charges are to be filed, the commanders determined the death to be "a result of a series of lawful applications of force."

Second, from the Knight-Ridder story (via Kevin Drum) about the Shiavo law enforcement fiasco:

Hours after a judge ordered that Terri Shiavo wasn't to be removed from her hospice, a team of Florida law enforcement agents were en route to seize her and have her feeding tube reinserted - but they stopped short when local police told them they would enforce the judge's order, The Miami Herald has learned...

For a brief period, local police, who have officers around the hospice to keep protesters out, prepared for what sources called a showdown...

"There were two sets of law enforcement officers facing off, waiting for the other to blink," said one official with knowledge of Thursday morning's activities. In jest, one official said local police discussed "whether we had enough officers to hold off the National Guard."

"It was kind of a showdown on the part of the locals and the state police," the official said. "It was not too long after that Jeb Bush was on TV saying that, evidently, he doesn't have as much authority as people think."

These two stories are the flip side of the same coin. In the first, the question at play is whether an agent of the U.S. government can lawfully effect an individual's death. In the second, the question is whether the U.S. government can lawfully prevent an individual's death.

Yet judging by the government's logic, you'd think it were the other way around. The Army seems to think that it is not an MP's role to prevent 'lawful' deaths from occurring; meanwhile Gov. Bush seems to think that the Florida judiciary is actively trying to kill Terri Shiavo.

The only solace I can find here is that, again, we seem to have passed a tipping point. As horrible as the detainee deaths are and the Shiavo fiasco is, collectively they have at least acted as an alarum for many conservative apologists. Andrew Sullivan, of course, has long since called out the administration on the torture scandal as well as its social-policy federalism, but he's now being joined by a host of others, from Ann Althouse to Glenn Reynolds.

As a result, I get the sense that the present administration is about to learn an invaluable lesson: the average American may be willing to let a lot of things slide, but the biggest thing of all -- abusing the power of life and death -- most certainly is not one of them.

One of the many impressive people I’m fortunate to call a friend is Omar Haque. After majoring in neuroscience and religion at Brown, Omar went on to study Islamic philosophy at Harvard Divinity School and is now at Harvard Medical School.

The following is from an email Omar recently sent:

Does this mean that the Qur'an is "sexist"? Absolutely not. The Qur'an, for its time, was incredibly progressive in the reforms it supported in the lives of women within the tradition. (Wadud makes this argument when she points out that women were allowed to give testimony by the Qur'an, which was quite an advance from pre-Islamic Arabia.) Additionally, "sexist" is an anachronistic term, as we are using the perspective of 20th century standards.

The same is true for the scientific and cosmological worldview of the Qur'an. Epistemologically and metaphysically, the presuppositions the Qur'an upholds and the inflections it maintains all are scientifically true for the time in which it was revealed, the year 632. Now that the world has developed an entirely different cosmology and metaphysics -- different conceptions, that is, of time and space, descent and creation -- does this mean the Qur'an is to be thrown away? Absolutely not. The task Rahman, Ramadan, Wadud, and others all point to is the continuous need for reinterpretation, since in its human manifestation, it is always incomplete and partial and provisional.

I imagine these paragraphs may seem overly defensive when taken out of context. But I'm more interested in the gist of what Omar has to say than any specific arguments, and the gist is this: the Qur'an itself is neither inherently sexist nor antagonistic toward modern culture. Contrary to what a few diehards may believe, the Qur'an can in fact co-exist with (and even potentially support) a modern society, so long as a modern reading of the Qur'an is what Muslims themselves insist upon.

Regarding the recent poll that found 80% of evangelicals oppose federal intervention in the Shiavo case: I'm a bit surprised (and skeptical) that it's quite that high, but I wouldn't at all be surprised if further polls were to confirm it between 45-55%.

As I've said before, 'evangelical' is an incredibly fluid term; it presupposes neither a conservative politics nor a mindless partisanship in favor of 'evangelical' politicians.

What the poll should have examined are those who both described themselves as evangelical and claimed to have voted for Bush. Of that group, I imagine the numbers would be more in line with what conventional wisdom would expect.

Two weeks ago I speculated about why the airline industry is currently so skewed. Afterwards I sought out a response from my uncle, who is pilot for one of the major airlines.

Here’s what he had to say:

Your post “Airline Reform” is on target but your cause and effect relations are skewed; not by your deductions but by the passage of time.

As little as 8 months to a year ago the discrepancy between the 'quality and cost' of one major airline's product and another's indeed had much to do with massive monoliths suffering a post 9/11 fiscal and organizational paralysis. Management teams, including ours to a huge extent, turned to CFO's, bean counting CEO's, and distracted boards who largely believed that huge cash reserves would be the saving grace, along with full frontal assaults on labor costs, mini assaults on productivity and management costs (which were completely off set by your mentioned executive pay schemes), and lip service to actual restructuring. They were wrong.

Well, they were mostly wrong. Labor costs were a major culprit, and the blood letting has been massive and continues … But, the hoarding and raising of cash reserves by hook and crook; fuel hedges that would be gold now being sold off; extremely short sighted cuts in essential maintenance areas that are now costing more to correct because of safety issues; subcontracting out, to the absolute lowest bidder, many of the frontline services; complete gutting of medical and pension plan funding, etc., etc.; all these only gave the appearance of management taking big action. Big on paper, but dead wrong on substance.

It was the same mistake many made during the early 90's recession/depression; instead of initiating the really hard and imaginative work of restructuring the core elements of moving machines from point A to point B (turn times, decentralize marketing, rework hub systems, flexible/floating maintenance teams, cross qualification of employees, information tech upgrading to improve real time feedback of essential scheduling information, on and on) these brilliant management teams decided to hunker down and hide behind cash reserves. It proved to be wrong then, they didn't learn, and it has bitten them again. Probably because all those that made the "easy" decisions, to a person, made themselves very wealthy while the monoliths gathered more dead weight. No penalty, no lesson learned it seems…The airline industry then, and until recently, was being managed by people who were unwilling to do the hard work they were being paid for.

Now with most on the brink of failure, some people are stepping up. This brings me to your Q&C issue. Your first hand experience (USAir vs. BA) wasn't so much 'monolith vs. company extraordinaire' as it was dead monolith reborn, but stripped to an unworkable core (3 different management teams made no core changes, made multimillions personally, and split) vs. partially subsidized, heavily government influenced company that did address core issues with the luxury of cash safety nets. The cores of the other US legacy airlines have been, finally, significantly reworked. Hard decisions have been made. The cost to everyone involved, including yours truly, has been huge. Not all decisions will turn out to be the right ones. The legacy carrier(s) that gets the domestic low cost vs. international/premium long-haul-cost balance right will survive. Your "skewed market" is now going to become an issue of just that; marketing.

Those that match a finely tuned core with the right marketing will make it. Marketing fiascos and absurdities have been a pet peeve of mine for a while. An obvious fix has been evident to me for quite sometime also; decentralize it! We sell a perishable good all over the globe that many others sell. Marketing has to know, real time, where to put that perishable product, at what price, and in what wrapping so you, the customer, knows what Quality vs. Cost factor you're about to get when you push the purchase button on your computer. And that means knowing each little nook and cranny of the globe we serve, day in, day out. Which convention center is hosting what convention? Which university/school system is on break this week? Where are today's festivals? Our marketing, heavily centralized in Atlanta, has failed again and again globally. Hopefully not too late, it has been finally recognized (I can only assume my 20 odd letters to management over the last couple years were being matched by many others and may have had some miniscule effect) and our marketing fiefdom has been toppled, bosses fired, people moved out. Fingers are now crossed…

You appropriately addressed pensions. They can be packaged with the larger issue of what our government is and is not paying attention to. Here people at large do need to be paying attention. The pension issue facing the airline industry will affect every industry in the US. If congress does not address the issue of reasonable funding relief for corporations and, along with the judicial branch, devise a conversion vehicle to individually protected pensions, all tax payers are starring at the largest tax dollar bailout of a failed system ever, dwarfing the Savings and Loan debacle of decades past that we are still paying off.

When you hear a politician say "let market forces do their thing" with respect to today's airline woes (and many are saying it) you're listening to someone who is not paying attention, who is not bothering to really research the issues; the pension plans, the transportation infrastructure, unlevel playing fields with respect to subsidized competition (foreign), and ever increasing costs of a homeland security system (topic for another day) running amok. And now fuel costs…

Where is the intelligent questioning of current energy costs? As you may be aware it's beginning to surface in the Europe -- the Tribune, Wall St. Journal, Financial Times, etc. Journalists are finally starting to get peeks into the fuel speculator's world. But, again, why aren't people paying attention? Easy answer in the US: a current regime that has no rational, intelligent energy policy beyond being very comfortable with oil industry giants making more profits than any corporations in history, literally. Until this very week Washington has been deafeningly quiet with respect to fuel speculators … These are pure and simple money makers doing an incredible job of using fear, skewed science, and speculation to reap incredible profits. Currently the European group is the most aggressive with daily attacks on fuel stability, as they reap the biggest benefit with the strong euro. Just today OPEC has made a statement saying what a few have realized (self included, and I'm by far not an expert -- which implies that experts have wanted to keep this quiet, else all would be aware): "We have lost control of oil pricing" ….

Finally, the rest of this year will see more big changes in the airline industry, no question. Not all expected. Current shifts include:

1) The honeymoon is over for the low cost carriers, the Jet Blues etc. Never called subsidies, the large cost breaks these carriers received around the country (Burlington is a great example, we tax payers paid for Jet Blue's terminal area/jetway) had their intended effect: low ticket prices exist everywhere now, matched buy all carriers, so giving cost breaks to anyone now makes no sense to those communities/cities/port authorities. Example: Jet Blue thought its cost for the very expensive (asbestos, in ground fuel contamination) planned overhaul of JFK's terminal 5 (a key to their expansion plans) was to be minimal with the port authority & New York helping out. NY recently said it's paying zero!

2) Big surprise, regional jets don't work. The real, losing cost of operating regional jets has been hidden by the blistering pace of expansion and the complexities of the parent company's economic woes. This realization is just now hitting home and hitting big. Companies operating and building the RJs are now also in severe trouble.

3) (Misguided) politicians are seriously considering “Cabotage” -- foreign carriers being allowed to operate unrestricted between US city pairs, without complete recipical rights for US carriers. This is incredibly absurd. Congress would wake up one day 5 years from now and wonder why the only premium travel within the US is available on Air France, Singapore, JAL, etc. Would this be called insourcing the outsourcing?

4) An irony is that those, if any, legacy carriers that do get it right and regain health will become the most attractive acquisitions seen in a long time. And once again our brilliant politicians are seriously considering a real helpful policy: allowing foreign majority ownership in US Airlines! In essence, allowing foreign control of an industry that, not the least of which, involves national security at its heart.

5) Fuel costs.

6) Fuel costs.

7) Fuel costs…

There you have today's ranting.

As a few of you have asked me about it, here's my quick take on the Shiavo case:

a) The federal government may resolve social issues only when those issues pertain to constitutional rights (think the ERA) or interstate commerce (think the federal drinking age).

b) There's no discrepancy here between the constitutional rights guaranteed Shiavo by the state of Florida and by the federal government; nor does Shiavo's case pertain to interstate commerce.

c) The federal government has no grounds to intervene in the case.

Simply put, this is a matter for the state of Florida alone, and specifically a matter for its judiciary. Since Florida's courts have already decided whether Shiavo would have wanted to live or die in her present condition, the issue should be closed.

That it isn't begs one central question: why has the Bush administration -- which purports to support small government conservativism -- pressed the federal government to intervene? Answer: because the moment the Republican party began relying on the religiously conservative vote, it opened itself to an inevitable contradiction. Against the politically conservative core of the GOP there emerged a competing faction whose absolutist beliefs centered on social values rather than political process -- thereby setting the stage for conflicts such as this, in which social conservatives insist that the Republican party realize their agenda in any way possible, regardless of specific political process, and political conservatives demand that the party adhere to its more foundational position of limited government. Clearly, the Bush team in this case sided with the social conservatives over the political.

In the end, what the Shiavo case makes me wonder -- and I imagine this differs from most other commentators, since I haven't been exposed to what by all accounts is some rather repulsive political and media exploitation -- is just how wide the social vs. political conservatism divide has to become before the present alliance between the two factions is no longer sustainable.

When I was in high school, I read a brief book excerpt in Time about Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who led the Manhattan Project and who was later accused of passing nuclear secrets to the USSR. The excerpt proved memorable because it was the first time I’d ever given a second thought to the vagaries of national security and foreign policy. Was it safer for the world to have one nuclear power or for it to have two, with the one balancing the other? And if you settled on the latter, did you have a greater moral obligation to the state or to your conscience?

As I found out later, one of the people who helped America resolve such questions was Hans Bethe. A brilliant physicist in his own right, Bethe headed the theoretical division of the Manhattan Project, and then later played an active and instrumental role in getting the Senate to ratify several arms-control treaties.

Sadly, Bethe passed away last week, at 98. If you want to learn more about one of the more interesting lives of the 20^th century, I recommend starting with his obituary in this week’s Economist.

A friend recently wrote in asking just what the phrase "Culture of Life" refers to.

For those who weren't raised within evangelical America, the long answer is as follows: a) it's complicated, b) it's complicated, and c) to get a real understanding of the term, you need to spend a significant amount of time at your local Christian bookstore. I'd recommend starting with the Phillip Yancey titles, if you can find them amid all the Rick Warren and Max Lucado displays.

The short answer, meanwhile, is that the phrase is an umbrella term for a host of conservative evangelical beliefs regarding abortion, euthanasia, and even gay marriage. Since every life comes from God and is valued by God, the "culture of life" is devoted to valuing and defending life in all its various stages, from pre-natal fetuses to the terminally ill to the matrimonial love which allows for procreation.

Where the "culture of life" begins to be problematic -- and, to the media, newsworthy -- is when it starts being defined in opposition to a corresponding "culture of death". At this point, "culture of life" proponents shift from politically affirming one set of beliefs to morally judging another. It is not merely that those who believe in "death with dignity" are politically wrong; it is that they are also morally wrong. By supporting euthanasia, they clearly must be bad people.

Granted, not all who support the affirmative side of the "culture of life" also proceed on to moral condemnation. But there are enough who do that any use of the terminology at all has become troublesome. Which is a shame, because I highly doubt that Jesus of Nazareth, and to a lesser extent the Apostle Paul, would have wanted his message used in this way. To say the least, I can't imagine Jesus would have wanted his followers to feel that verses such as Romans 6:23 ("the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord") granted them license not only to literally equate death with sin, but to use that equation to morally impugn those who favor a "culture of death".

As for my own personal position on the matter: I'm not inherently offended by the phrase, but nor do I think it is very useful. For those holding views such as mine it can lead only to an irresolvable contradiction. I may believe that abortion ought to be legal but rare, that terminally ill patients have the right to determine at which point life is no longer bearable, and that the institution of marriage is far too sacred for us to decide who ought to be allowed entrance to it; but I also believe all this precisely because I deeply and profoundly value all life.

When it comes to a culture of life and a culture of death, where does that leave me?

Introducing the world's latest miracle, Daniel Charles Atwood:

Congratulations to my cousin, Mary Lisa Atwood, and her husband Thomas!

Karen Hughes, who recently became, in essence, America's public relations officer to the world, just picked Dina Powell to be her deputy.

Powell is the current White House personnel director, and by all accounts has done a fabulous job in that role. But when you listen to the following quotes in Elisabeth Bumiller's article about her, you get the sense that that might not be the reason for why she was promoted:

[White House Chief of Staff Andrew] Card: "She is extremely attractive, very competent, well spoken, young, she's got quiet confidence, and she is task-oriented. In other words, she gets the job done."

.

Joshua Bolten, White House budget director: "You can see people really taken by surprise when this young, attractive, really well-spoken person in both English and Arabic makes a presentation on behalf of the president. That sends a really strong message."

The shame of this is that Dina Powell, nee Dina Habib, really does have impressive qualifications. Not only is she the youngest person ever to have served in her present capacity, but even more importantly (given America's new public focus), she was born in Egypt and remained fluent in Arabic even after her family emigrated to the U.S.

Judging by the quotes, however, you get the sense Mrs. Powell was promoted primarily because of her sexual appeal. Which is, as mentioned, shameful. Had Powell been male, can you imagine Card having started off by saying, "He is extremely handsome"?

I understand we need to find common ground with the Arab world if we are ever to change its perception of us, but abasing ourselves by resorting to chauvinism and gender bias is not the way to do it.

Two weeks ago my sister was kind enough to send me her current alumni magazine, which had several articles on moral philosophy. The one which caught my eye was about Peter Singer, the Australian ethicist who is currently a professor at Princeton and who wrote, most famously, Animal Liberation.

What struck me most about the article was not Singer's stance on vegetarianism per se. Rather, what struck me is the way he bases his much more controversial positions -- such as that it may be ethical to commit infanticide -- on the same rationale that supports his argument for vegetarianism. According to Singer, whether we are talking about animals or infants, valuing one form of conscious life over others is logically inconsistent and therefore ethically wrong.

As sympathetic as I am to Singer's main point -- that we humans need to do a better job of valuing all conscious life -- I can't help but disagree with both its specific structure and the general understanding of ethical philosophy underlying it.

The crude version of Singer's argument is as follows:

a) it is ethically permissible to terminate conscious but non-rational life

b) both animals and infants constitute conscious but non-rational life

c) it is ethically permissible to terminate the lives of animals and infants

Against this line there are a variety of counter-arguments. The most compelling is that while neither animals nor infants are capable of rational thought, infants nonetheless contain the potential for rational thought. Feed them, nourish them, and protect them, and eventually they will grow to a point where they begin performing advanced cognitive processes. To privilege a human infant is, therefore, to privilege a future rational being.

Singer's response to this is simply to qualify that the infants in question have severe mental handicaps. Since mental retardation inhibits the cognitive abilities by which humanity has historically distinguished itself, Singer is forcing his opponents to find another standard with which to argue for human uniqueness.

Alas, here the game effectively stops. In his own terms Singer will always win, because it simply is not possible to logically distinguish a severely handicapped human from an animal with lower cognitive abilities. The only two ways to proceed at all are either to define human uniqueness in a circular, taxonomical way (ie, regardless of cognitive ability, every human is unique because every human belongs to the human species), or to venture into ethical theology.

To his credit, rather than killing infants along with animals, Singer refrains from killing either; he rejects the initial premise that it is ethically permissible to end conscious life at all. Yet as admirable as that rejection is, he still provides no other way to distinguish human from animal life. In embracing vegetarianism, he leaves humanity indistinct from bovinity, avianity, felinity, etc.

The trouble with this is that as rationally unassailable as it is, it is also emotionally unappealing to many. Indeed, a majority of people, including myself, prefer to delve instead into some form of theology in order to distinguish human life. Why? Singer and his proponents might consider it a lack of conviction or courage, but for myself at least, it has to do with something else: call it an historical awareness, evidenced most visibly in the Soviet gulags, that living solely by logic is no way to live at all.

______
UPDATE: I first began this post a week ago, but haven't had the time to return to it until today. In the meantime, the issue has gained an unexpected relevance: please see this recent article in the International Herald Tribune, about a Dutch physician who practices infant euthenasia.

On certain issues, I'm somewhat sympathetic to states' rights activists. The abortion debate, for instance, is one issue which I think would be far more effectively resolved on a state by state basis.

Yet when it comes to individual states initiating independent relations with foreign sovereignties, there is no such fine line. Which is why the recent trip of Louisiana's Governor Blanco to Cuba is simply ridiculous. Unlike the previous two trips by U.S. Governors to communist Cuba, Blanco's comments there did not merely stick to the trade relations currently allowed under U.S. law:

"I want to tell you that we're very proud to be here," the governor told a news conference in which the agreements were signed. "The people of Louisiana wish to say to the people of Cuba ... much love and respect is extended across the Gulf of Mexico."

True, Blanco may have been elected to a state government rather than our federal one. But when you're on foreign soil it doesn't matter. No elected official has the right to undermine national foreign policy while traveling abroad, which -- given the present administration's closed stance towards Cuba -- Blanco's comments clearly did.

Note: thanks to KI for the tip.

Ok, so the title of this is a bit much. But I bring it up because of a point I'd like to make about economic theory specifically and the social sciences more generally.

To begin with, on Thursday Alina Stefanescu cited an article which explains complexity theory as follows:

Now science is beginning to support the idea that randomness, not rationality, exerts surprising sway over the markets. The insights have come from researchers who are interested in complexity, where the simple behaviour of many traders in a market governed by various rules can produce highly complex "emergent" behaviour (the waxing and the waning of share prices).

The effect is driven by non-linearity, which abounds in nature. To put it simply, a linear world is an idealised one where one plus one makes two. A nonlinear world - the one we live in - is where one thousand plus one thousand oranges could lead to something quite different from two thousand oranges, such as a marmalade factory.

Although I like this description overall, it errs significantly in its initial conflation of complexity with randomness. Complexity inherently appears random -- it is defined in relation to the difficulty of explaining something rationally -- but that is not at all to say that randomness itself causes complexity.

The reason I'm splitting hairs here is that where the article's mention of traders is concerned, the complex behavior in question is generated not by randomness but by rational agents and rational actions whose aggregate product appears randomly-generated. Indeed, advanced capitalism is, I think, far more appropriately described within the following hierarchy of behavioral states (the appearance of these states are in parentheses):

1) Ultrarational, complexly-coordinated behavior (random)

2) Rational, coordinated behavior (non-random)

3) Irrational, non-coordinated behavior (random)

Without this hierarchy, there's little to stop people from proceeding from the accurate statement "complexity and randomness are similar," to the altogether specious argument, "if complex social behavior is random, then there is no need to analyze it rationally." Such reasoning is dangerous because historically it has been used to undermine the social sciences as a whole and economics in particular. After all, why bother attempting to explain the economic behavior of the past, or predict that of the future, if economic behavior itself is randomly generated?

As I hope has been implied, the answer is that the non-rational quality which complexity and randomness share are not of the same type. The complexity of advanced capitalist behavior is non-rational only because it occurs posterior to rational behavior and because as a subject of analytic inquiry it lies beyond (hence the ultra-) merely rational, or linear, economic models. By contrast, truly random behavior -- such as the proverbial monkeys playing darts -- also has a non-rational quality, but only because such behavior occurs prior to the point at which rational analysis can begin.

So, for any readers currently on Wall St., please continue doing your work. Yes, a monkey may outperform you on any given day. But that is only because you are behaving within a highly complex social group whereas the monkey is merely behaving irrationally. It's a small consolation, I know, but at least it's also to say that we've yet to reach a point where we may as well turn over the keys to the monkeys themselves.

For those unsure whether a democratic Iraq can take hold, you'd do well to consider the following story and commentary about a young Iraqi Policeman (IP) in Baghdad:

...At this point the IP had to know the vehicle was a VBIED [armed insurgent vehicle], and that its target was the approaching Americans. But this man, who had sworn an oath to uphold the rule of law, interposed himself between the VBIED and the convoy and opened fire with his sidearm. We will never know what happened in those next few moments because a fireball reached out like a hungry animal and emptied its scorching rage on the only target at hand, the lone Iraqi Policeman. If the news covered the issue at all it was likely a small blurb on page seven of the international section. And if you read through that blurb at all you probably just shook your head and wondered just what the hell was happening in Iraq.

So what is happening you ask? What is happening in Iraq is people are learning what it means to be free, and Iraqis are paying for that freedom up front with their blood. Have you noticed that the insurgents keep targeting Iraqi Army recruiting stations and killing dozens at a time? Did you just file away the stories in your mental rolodex or pause to read between the lines? If you took the time to critically view the chain of stories it would become obvious that the reason the attacks kept coming is because young men refuse to be intimidated and keep signing up. Despite the bloody threats of the insurgents and their suicidal attacks. If you want to know why I have hope for Iraq you need look no further then the story behind the stories. And the sacrifices of a lone Iraqi Policeman who gave his life for his country… and ours.

As you probably guessed, the author is an American soldier in Iraq. I included his commentary not just because he's earned the right to have it included (I recommend reading his blog further), but also because I happen to agree with the gist of it.

Despite our many mistakes, I truly do believe that democracy will take hold there -- if only because young Iraqis like the IP above are willing to literally fight to the death for it. And they are willing to fight because they know full well that they have no other choice. As the insurgents have made clear, it's either democracy or a reversion to totalitarian rule.

The shame of the matter -- and the real tragedy of the IP's death -- is that after all the money and energy and blood the U.S. has shed, the Iraqis themselves should still, two years on, have to physically fight for it at all.

Yesterday the Senate, in a 51-49 vote, approved drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge. The bill isn't set in stone yet -- it still needs to return to the Senate to be authorized -- but the vote was nonetheless the first major victory for Bush's national energy policy.

Predictably, the bill has generated a fair amount of commentary, with specific arguments for and against running the gamut from national security to environmental conservation. I can't help thinking, though, that such arguments are missing the bigger picture here. As melodramatic as this may sound, it seems to me that domestic oil consumption is, in the end, about one thing: sustaining the American dream.

After all, two essential aspects of that dream are dependent on low energy costs:

• The ideal of a perfectly elastic society, in which individual wealth rises and falls according to individual talent; yet social mobility requires economic opportunity, which requires economic growth, which requires inexpensive energy.

• The ideal of individual home ownership, which today entails a three bedroom, two-story house with a white picket fence; however, that picket fence doesn't happen on a mass scale without mass commutes, and mass commutes don't happen without low gas prices.

Perhaps I may only be stating the obvious in referring the oil debate to the much broader issue at hand. But since I haven't read any reminders of this in the commentaries I've come across, I thought I'd take the initiative to point out again that when debating energy policy, what is really at stake is the specific form that we want the American dream to take.

So just when we thought all was clear, Bush does in fact go for Wolfowitz.

Since I've already written, briefly, about why we can do better than Wolfowitz, my first instinct was to lay a more thorough argument against him now that he's been officially tapped.

But what else could I say that isn't already obvious?

Until I see a thorough argument for why he actually should head the World Bank, I'll save my breathe.

UPDATE: Predictably, the European press is up in arms over this. That Germany would go nuts was obvious, but even Britain is getting in on the action...By no means am I a Europhile, but I can't help but believe that the World Bank still needs Europe behind it to function effectively. As much as the Bank may need a strong and disciplined leader, Bush can't afford to approach installing one in the same way he approached Iraq; unilateralism isn't going to work in an organization as intentionally multilateral as the World Bank.

Two weeks ago, I laid out one case for why criticizing the "Bush doctrine" and celebrating the advance of democracy in the Middle East are not mutually exclusive.

In response to that post, reader GS wrote in with a legitimate question:

Is democracy in the Middle East good for the US at all? If Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya all had free and fair elections -- would the US like who the elected leaders? Take a look at Venezuela, where the people have elected Castro Part II.

So I 100% agree with you -- democracy in the Middle East would be a victory for the people of the Middle East. The US, however, might be better off with the current political make-up of the Middle East.

My answer is that democracy is always worth it, morally and strategically, so long as what we are talking about is liberal constitutional democracy. Importantly, "liberal" here does not derive from partisan politics but political philosophy: liberal constitutions are those which protect majoritarian interests from majoritarian excesses; they contain the minority safeguards which prevent popular rule from ever becoming, in moments of mass fear or religious fanaticism, mob rule.

Unfortunately, the sad reality of modern history is that it is littered with sovereign democracies that either never developed liberal constitutions or never implemented them if they did. GS cites the current case of Venezuela, but a better recent example would likely be the oligarchic democracy of Yeltsin's Russia. The most famous example of all, meanwhile, is Nazi Germany; it rose to power through (crude) democratic processes, and even as it perpetrated its worst horrors it retained broad majoritarian support.

Where Arab states are concerned, replacing relatively stable and (as far as the U.S. is concerned) benign regimes like those in Saudi Arabia with any of the illiberal forms of democracy would indeed be a disaster. In Saudi Arabia's case, you'd likely end up with something that resembled more a Wahhabi theocracy than a modern democracy -- and given that country's oil resources, such a state would indeed pose a significant threat to the strategic interests of the U.S.

If, however, constitutional democracies were instituted in the Arab world, then there is no reason to believe that the policies of those countries would run counter to basic American interests. An Islamic democracy with a liberal constitution would threaten the U.S. only in the way other modern democracies do -- as yet another competitor in an already crowded global marketplace. But because such a state would be primarily interested in preserving all the many legal structures which allow democracy to function properly -- ie, proprietary rights, the freedom to dissent, the rule of law more generally -- then the U.S. would first and foremost align itself as a political ally of that country. Only after it began to compete with significant American financial or military interests would we begin to challenge any one of its particular policies.

Out of all this, the one remaining question is whether it is in fact possible for a closed, totalitarian government to become a constitutional democracy without the inevitable transitional stage severely impairing or even disintegrating that democracy. In any of the current Arab states, could democracy survive a brief era in which a clear majority had not yet ratified a liberal constitution?

I hope to address this further later on, but my quick answer is yes. Through a mixture of trade incentives and quiet diplomacy, the chaotic popular sovereignty of nascent democracies can indeed yield stabilized, constitutional governance. As proof of this one need only look at the current developments in Eastern Europe; if democracy can catch on there, I see no valid reason why it cannot emerge successfully in the Middle East as well.

The only catch will be whether the Bush administration, or the American public at large, have the patience for the decade or two of diplomacy that such development invariably requires.

A friend recently asked my opinion on Bush's plan to revamp Social Security.

My quick take: as Bush is finding out, you can convince the American people of many dubious claims, but no amount of propaganda will convince them that "social security" really means "personal risk."

Bush's plan is doomed by its very language, let alone the faulty economics undergirding it.

The real question is what he's really up to in pushing so hard for something even he (or his advisors) must have been aware would never work.

As someone who has travelled extensively in Africa, and more importantly, as a malaria survivor, I would be remiss if I didn't use the small platform I have to mention events like this weekend's "Africa Live" concert in Dakar, Senegal.

The concert, which featured musicians such as Senegal's renowned Orchestra Baobob, promoted awareness of an epidemic that has gone relatively unnoticed in the West, and America in particular.

For those who don't know much about it, malaria kills a child every thirty seconds in Africa, and affects some 600 million people worldwide. Yet malaria eradication programs continue to be underfunded, even though the disease can be prevented and treated far more easily than epidemics such as AIDS. (I myself recovered from cerebral malaria only because I could afford the $10 of medication it required.)

For anyone interested in more information, please visit www.fightingmalaria.org or www.malaria.org. Meanwhile, for those interested in helping directly, I'd recommend visiting www.massiveeffort.org.

Even if you don't have the time or resources to help, thank you for listening.

I'm not a huge fan of Niall Ferguson, the British financial historian who prompted a bidding war last year between Harvard and NYU. His earlier books on the Rothschilds were fantastic, but I've gotten the sense of late -- especially after sifting through his most recent work, Colossus: The Price of America's Emire -- that he's simply overstretched. No matter how brilliant you are, compelling research and analysis still takes time.

However, Ferguson's article in today's NYT Magazine truly is impressive. He might be a bit more optimistic than myself, but he manages to cut through a lot of the confusion about what running a "double deficit" means with remarkable clarity.

His take: 1) China will continue to prop up the dollar, because if the dollar slid against the renminbi, it would be far worse for them than us; and 2) the best historical corrolary to present U.S. debt levels are those endured by post-war Britain.

Where I depart from Ferguson is in thinking that the second of his points should make his first more worrisome. Whether it happens five or fifteen or fifty years from now, there will come a time when China is no longer dependent on the US as their main consumer. And unlike Britain, which had to incur debt to finance WWII, we can actually avoid this debt if we choose to.

That we have so far chosen not to -- that we have, in the words of a former Treasury Secretary, continued to say to the world, "the dollar is our currency, but your problem" -- disturbs me to no end. It's one thing to be forced into irresponsible fiscal policies, but it's quite another to consciously opt for them.

"I don't think we should be able to kill God's creatures with the click of a mouse," Smith said. "I think hunters are offended by the concept, much less non-hunters."

Mr. Smith is a Republican representative in the Texas legislature. He is referring to Live-Shot.com, which allows members to hunt on-line, using real ammunition in real time.

God help us.

When a headline appears like the one currently running on Slate's homepage -- "Shut Up, You Whiny Harvard Brat" -- it's not difficult to discern the author's take on the subject at hand.

Typically, I'm only somewhat put off by headlines as abrasive as that. But in this case I'm especially so. Not only do I know the "brat" in question, but all that that headline does is mindlessly confirm the stereotypical image of Harvard kids being a bunch of, well, whiny brats. Never mind that Ross Douthat's new book, Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class, is an indictment of just such kids; Ross is complaining about them, and therefore he must be just as bad.

The irony of this is that I, too, don't happen to agree with much of what Ross has to say. His criticism of Harvard is, as other reviewers have already noted, more a symptom than a diagnosis. Yet eviscerating his work from the start -- and in such a spectacularly condescending tone -- only attests to his point about the pseudo-intellectual character of the new "meritocratic" class.

That said, I am as mentioned one of the brats in question, and worse, I'm also personally acquainted with the author being reviewed. But even if I hadn't attended Harvard, and even if I didn't know Ross, I have to believe my take would remain the same: when accusing a writer of condescension, it's best to avoid altogether infantile lines such as, "As with many a promising young fogy, no adults have interposed themselves between Douthat and his first book contract."

After all, substitute "magazine" for "book", and much the same could be said of the reviewer and his review.

____________
Note: Ross and I were never close friends, but I lived in the same hallway with him my freshman year. He struck me as someone who was incredibly brilliant, but also clearly uncomfortable with his new social environs; behind his wonderfully witty, if often caustic, ripostes, there was always a distance I was neither willing nor able to breach.

If I ever get the time, I'd love to sift through the 460-page report released today by the British Parliament's Commission for Africa.

But until then, I'll just stick to the highlighted goals:

• Immediate doubling of foreign aid, to $50 billion
• Improved treatment/prevention of AIDS
• Eventual 100% debt cancellation
• Focus on infrastructure development
• End to the "scandal" of EU and American trade protections

The cynic would say that these goals have all been listed before. But what is different is the context: ever since Blair came to office there has been a remarkable florescence of U.K. - Africa dialogue, and as a result people on both sides have begun to realize that prioritizing African development makes sense for economic as well as moral reasons.

Since Blair is making the report such a cornerstone of his foreign policy, I do expect that this report will produce more results than not. Just how much more will depend on how willing the EU and America are to hear out what he and his report have to say.

I'm not nearly as liberal as Donald Johnson, who just unleashed a rather scathing indictment of the "liberal" media and democratic establishment.

But in the middle of his rant about how complicit the NYT among others has become, I must say Johnson does make one legimitate point:

It's understandable that people ... think that violence is the only practical way to bring about change when even peaceful demonstrations and multilateral pressure on Lebanan are taken by even the "liberal" NYT as evidence that Bush's violence has been successful. And of course the role of Arab media, especially the hated Al Jazeera, goes unmentioned, though they've been broadcasting images of Arabs heatedly arguing about everything under the sun and denouncing various Arab governments. But they're also critical of the US, so they can't be a force for good.

Even here Johnson spews a little more vitriol than I think is necessary, but his point is essentially one that The Economist made a couple weeks ago: the credit the Arab satellite media deserve for promoting democratic principles, even if unwittingly. Every talk show or debate, whether for a conservative or liberal agenda, is an implicit rejection of totalitarianism; such shows demonstrate the impotence of totalitarian regimes to completely control their own cultural space, as well as promote a system of resolution based on dialogue and interaction rather than violence and authority.

Yes, the news on stations such al-Jazeera often appear sensationalist and even reactionary. But that is only in relation to the more liberal media corporations of the West. In their own context, they are quietly introducing some radically liberal principles -- and, to their credit, contributing to some radically liberal results.

So I'm a little cranky at the moment. No doubt a large part of this has to do with a significant lack of sleep, as well as traversing six time zones twice in three days.

But the distemper is also due to what I think is a fairly valid complaint: namely, the ridiculousness with which many major airlines continue operating as if the deep structural problems within their organizations are not of urgent concern to their customers.

At present, that negligence has led to a severe disconnect between quality and cost. The fact that the price is the same for a transatlantic flight on British Airways and US Air is laughable: an economy seat on the former typically entails a personal video monitor and quality-controlled meals, while the same seat on the latter will likely involve craning your neck to see the screen twenty rows up and summoning the courage to eat a slab of bread that seems to have been baked before you were born. If hotels were run like airlines, you'd be paying the same for a room at the Hilton as at a Motel 8.

So why exactly is the market so skewed? As far as I can figure, there are three main causes:

1) The fact that the major airlines are, again, so negligent with regard to their structural problems. These include past overexpansion and flawed executive compensation, but the principal problem is clearly their pension accounts. Regardless of exactly how this problem is resolved, it needs to be resolved soon if the market is to have any chance of being stabilized in the near future.

2) Governmental interference. After 9/11, the government bailout was understandable. But since then it's become fairly obvious that the downturn following the attacks was as much a result of a significant shift in the standard business model for commercial aviation. The major airlines simply cannot continue to be as massive and monolithic as they are if they hope to compete with smaller, more flexible, and more innovative airlines. Congress has begun to realize this, but when it comes to regulating air travel it needs to be even stricter.

3) Fluctuations in the oil market. Since the margins for aviation are so slim to begin with, variations in gas prices can turn a profitable flight into a loss with alarming alacrity. As far as I know, Southwest is the only carrier currently able to hedge against this, by purchasing future fuel at fixed prices. (Small airlines are too small to do this effectively, and large airlines are typically too weakened by the pension deficits mentioned above.)

What the collective solutions to these problems are I'm not sure. But I trust that the industry itself is innovative enough to come up with them -- so long as the government keeps its hands off it and thus provides the airlines with an incentive to do so.

I don't mind lousy service, but I do mind being forced to pay extra for it.

It would seem the Summers’ controversy is something of a dead horse, at least in the press. And rightly so: if Summers had been president of a university other than Harvard, his comments would have prompted a mere blip in a single day’s news cycle, rather than a major media event.

Yet so long as his comments continue to generate debate within the university – in which case what is at stake is the actual truth and value and merit of what he said, rather than any of the more marketable contextual angles to his comments – then that more focused debate is worth following.

In that vein, a little before I received yesterday’s letter from Dean Kirby, I also received this note from a former (female) classmate who is now a researcher in psychology:

i just went to a meeting about larry summers's commentsyesterday afternoon with lots of (male and female) psychiatrists, psychologists,and phd researchers from columbia, cornell, and ny hospital. these people study human development and how genes and environments interact. while some of them argued that summers's comments were beneficial in that they reopened a dormant, but still very relevant, issue for discussion, all agreed that it was not only inappropriate and offensive for summers to say these things, but it was reckless. just for starters (yes it's extreme), we now know that gender isn't even necessarily determined by genes! Of course there are many differences, on average and with huge variability, between males and females. this isn't about "blind devotion to equal abilities", this is about relying on this variable to explain and excuse something affected by many, many more variables.

summers is an economist. he knows little of the literature and research looking into cognition, development, evolution, and sex differences. the sad truth is that many researchers try to avoid studying sex differences because of the fear that pop science and lay people like summers will twist any findings into rationalizations for inequalities.

What I find so interesting about that last remark is that it implicates Summers in a cultural trend which goes far beyond mere chauvinism. Outside of the inaccuracy and carelessness of his comments, the real sin Summers committed was in contributing to the popular ignorance which leads researchers to shy away from the truth altogether. In this light, the effect of Summers’ remarks is little different from the effect of the good Dr. Dobson’s comments on homosexuality: the result of each is that it discourages talented people with the relevant expertise from examining questions which are no doubt socially contentious but are also of potentially greater social value and relevance.

Unfortunately, unlike the harm his comments caused himself and the university, this damage cannot be undone by a public retraction or apology. In fact, because the self-censorship it leads to is so often unconsciously performed, I’m not sure it’s reparable at all.

Nonetheless, Summers needs to at least contemplate how to ameliorate this damage, if only so that qualified people like my classmate will not hesitate next time before following their instinct, especially when it leads them into areas they know to be publicly complicated but scientifically straightforward.

On a recent school trip to Prague, I stopped in at The Globe, an English-language bookstore and cafe. Two of the three writers featured prominently in the store were to be expected: Milan Kundera, the exiled author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Franz Kafka, the celebrated short story writer.

The third author featured, however, was Ivan Klima, a writer I'd never encountered before.

After reading Klima's Judge on Trial, I'm a bit curious as to why he hasn't received the same acclaim as Kundera within America. All I can come up with is that although Klima is a contemporary of Kundera, he is far less experimental and much more in line with the straight-forward, realist tradition of Slavic writers like Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. As a result he doesn't really fit into any of the neat divides along which university literature classes are arranged: too old-fashioned a writer for any contemporary literature classes, but too contemporary (chronologically speaking) for any pre-modern literature classes.

Whatever the reason, the oversight is a shame, because Klima's book is about as good a novel as it gets. Judge on Trial is epic in both historical scope and philosophical theme -- a throwback to the days of the serialized novel, when authors had the incentive and patience to create entire social worlds, as well as the courage to leave their readers impotent in the face of its problems.

I'll spare you a full book review, but very briefly the narrative revolves around Adam Klima, a judge in Communist Czechoslovakia who is also a Holocaust survivor; his life and career illustrate just how insidiously good intentions can yield horrific repercussions.

For anyone searching for their next read, I'd clearly recommend it. You'd be doing yourself a favor, if only because it will re-introduce you to the value and meaning of freedom through numerous lines such as this:

He also knew by now that one would never find freedom in this world -- however perfect were the laws and however great one's control over the world and people -- unless one found it in oneself.

William C. Kirby, Dean of Harvard's FAS, just emailed this out:

March 1, 2005

Dear Alumnae and Alumni,

As you are no doubt aware, there has been considerable public discussion in recent weeks about gender diversity at Harvard, particularly in the sciences and engineering. President Summers and I have sought to turn the heightened attention on issues of gender into an opportunity to make concrete progress in the time ahead. Towards this end, the President has announced the formation of two task forces, one focused on women in science and engineering, the other focused on broader issues affecting all women faculty, and has asked that they develop concrete proposals and recommendations that can be acted upon in the coming months. I welcome this step, and will work closely with the task forces to ensure that we succeed in addressing the concerns of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

I write today to tell you what we are doing, right now, in the FAS, to address these issues. I want to look forward, not backward. I write in the hope that you will share with me your comments, suggestions, and criticisms as we move ahead.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences is fully committed to supporting and advancing the careers of our women faculty, and to encouraging our female students to pursue careers in every discipline. As Dean, and as colleague to so many outstanding women faculty, I truly believe that the strength of the FAS, and our collective effectiveness as mentors, depend on a faculty that is talented and diverse.

The FAS is similar to its peer institutions. We share, and not to our glory, records of less than stellar achievement in recruiting, supporting, and promoting women faculty. Academia has its own long history of discrimination, complacency, and even well-meaning, but insufficiently effective efforts at genuine change. The institutional temptation for self-reproduction in faculty hiring is strong.

I believe in change; the quality of our collective intellectual endeavor depends on it. Not just in the past month, as public debate has swelled, but in the past two years, my colleagues and I have worked hard to change the policies and the culture of hiring, support, and promotion of faculty in the FAS.

Let me describe the actions we are taking to ensure that we create in the future a faculty that is more diverse along many dimensions. As the list below indicates, we are instituting policy changes at the departmental, divisional, and decanal levels. Beyond policy, there are sizable cultural issues to address.

At the departmental level, we have revised our search procedures to encourage faculty to throw the net far and wide, to keep a "watching brief" for talent in any field, in every search. If Harvard seeks the best faculty, we can only find them through the most thorough and open searches, not by looking only in narrowly-defined subfields.

My colleagues who serve as divisional deans (for Humanities, Social Sciences, and Physical Sciences) and the chair of the Life Sciences Council are monitoring search procedures at every level. If a non-tenured search is not sufficiently broad or thorough, we will not authorize the appointment. They and the larger body of academic deans are reviewing every tenured search, with the same purpose in mind. Women scholars will also serve on every ad hoc committee for tenure appointments in the FAS.

I have asked the Academic Deans to review FAS policies in several important areas: maternity leave, parental teaching relief, extension of the "tenure clock," increased support for child care, and related issues.

The FAS already offers strong programs in these areas. For instance, a colleague may be excused from teaching obligations for a semester or a year following the birth or adoption of a child. Non-tenured colleagues with substantial parenting responsibilities may delay the "tenure clock" for up to two years. Even so, we know that the demands of balancing work and family are great, and we wish to support our colleagues as much as possible.

We also know that cultural pressures can affect our colleagues' ability to flourish. Departmental attitudes can discourage women and men from "breaking" their career trajectory. In addition to family considerations, non-tenured faculty deserve other forms of support that will help to make them successful candidates for tenure at Harvard. Thus, I am asking each department chair to convene a departmental meeting to discuss best practices in the mentoring and career development of non-tenured colleagues. We aim to create, for the FAS as a whole, practices that are more consistent, transparent, and respectful - and, within each department, a culture that conveys in every way the stake that we have in seeing our non-tenured colleagues flourish as teachers, scholars, and citizens of the University.

In the longer run, building a faculty that is diverse as well as strong demands the rejuvenation of the faculty. Over nine percent of the FAS are at or beyond the age of 70. Almost every colleague who retires is male. As I announced in my Annual Letter, two-thirds of our growth will occur in the non-tenured ranks over the next decade, and assistant professorships are now considered "tenure-track" positions. We aim to give every assistant professor the time, support, and advice she or he will need to be competitive for tenure at Harvard. There are many strong institutional reasons for hiring more scholars who are just beginning their careers, but I should note in this context that there is considerably greater diversity in younger cohorts of applicants. Thus, last year, even as we had an unimpressive record in recruiting senior women to tenured positions at Harvard, we were very successful at the non-tenured level: 40 percent of non-tenured appointments last year went to women.

Leadership opportunities, not just membership in the Faculty, deserve our serious attention. I will continue carefully to consider female colleagues for every department chairmanship, center directorship, and academic deanship. At present, 20 percent of our department or degree-committee chairs are women. Thirty percent of tenured colleagues serving as FAS deans and associate deans are women. Thirty-nine percent of the Faculty Council members are women. But I also know that service in these positions places extraordinary demands on the time of a small number of colleagues, many of whom serve in multiple roles.

We know that we can make progress because we have done it before. In 1988, women represented 14 percent of all assistant, associate, and tenured faculty. They now comprise 23 percent. In 1988, women formed 7 percent of all tenured faculty. They now form 18 percent. In 1988, minorities represented 8.7 percent of all assistant, associate, and tenured faculty, and 6.8 percent of senior faculty. As of January 1, 2005, 20.2 percent of our non-tenured faculty, and 9.2 percent of our senior faculty are members of minority groups.

Take the case of my own department. When I joined our History Department in 1992, we had one tenured female colleague out of a tenured faculty of 31. Less than a decade later, there were 11 tenured women in History. This did not happen by itself, waiting for applications to fly over the transom. It was the result of a department determined not simply to replicate itself, but dedicated to searching aggressively for excellence in every field.

In recent weeks, I have personally spoken to many faculty members - both current and prospective - to assure them of Harvard's commitment to diversity in general, and to each of them as individuals. The measures I describe above must be part of a larger, ongoing effort, one that is embraced by all of us in the FAS - every faculty member, department chair, and not least, this Dean - in our greatest collective interest. If the FAS strives to be second to none, richest in its intellectual resources, keenest in cutting that "edge" of knowledge, we can only do so if our faculty honors the contributions of all. In this effort, Harvard should lead, not follow.

Yours sincerely,

William C. Kirby
Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Edith and Benjamin Geisinger Professor of History

More later.

One of my many peccadilloes is that I try not to read the Wall Street Journal. Yes, I know it's a great paper, and yes, I'm aware it has a different business model than the other major dailies. But a) it really bothers me that they make you pay for their internet site, and b) their little dot-portrait things really creep me out. (Don't ask.)

Today, however, I caved. Call it fate or destiny or what have you, but there on the seat next to me during my morning flight was a copy of WSJ Europe. And much to my chagrin, buried in the "What's News" section of the frontpage, I even discovered a rather interesting lede:

Berkshire Hathaway earnings fell 10% last year to $7.31 billion, though fourth-quarter results were strong. Chairman Warren Buffett blamed himself for the decline in 2004.

The story caught my eye for a rather simple reason: when was the last time a major corporate or political leader blamed themselves for organizational failure? I'm sure there are other examples, but nobody of Buffett's stature immediately springs to mind.

And further, since when does $7 billion-plus even warrant blame? Those kind of earnings would make Buffett's apology almost comical if it weren't so obviously earnest.

All of which reminds me: the whole reason I started this post in the first place was actually in relation to two earlier ones on the World Bank's executive search.

After reading the article on Buffett's annual shareholder letter, my thought is that the Bank's board might want to stop flirting with HP-bust Carli Fiorina and consider making inquiries over at Berkshire's headquarters instead.

Granted, I doubt Buffett would even want the job, and I also imagine that the sheer volume of cash he has tied up in currencies would present a significant conflict of interest. But still. Who else has so dramatically demonstrated that increasing wealth and acting responsibly are thoroughly compatible?

Well, I'm exhausted. The Lions and Lady Lions of AIS-Salzburg hosted their fifteenth annual Jamboree basketball tournament this weekend, and officiating or coaching 14 games in 36 hours is about as much as I can bear.

Congratulations are in order to the Lady Lions, who finished in a strong second-place.

On another note, in a couple hours I'm flying home for a job interview, so I may not be able to post much for the next day or so.

Hope you all are well.

So long as I'm mentioning German controversies, I might as well bring up Richard Berstein's excellent commentary on Friday about the inherent problems in banning all neo-Nazi expression.

Bernstein doesn't come out either in favor of the ban or in support of lifting it. But in articulating the inevitable futility involved with banning expression, he makes a persuasive case that that at least is how the issue should be framed.

Interesting story today in Deutsche-Welle.

Evidently there's a new art exhibition in Berlin which looks at the lives of various members of the Red Army Faction, or RAF.

For those unfamiliar with the group, the RAF was a socialist guerilla group in the former West Germany which carried out numerous terrorist attacks over three decades. The predictable debate is whether the forum of an art exhibition necessarily dignifies terrorist activity, or whether it might be possible to hold the exhibition in such a way that dignity is withheld even as an "understanding" of that activity emerges.

Not sure where I stand yet on the question. But it's certainly interesting, especially if you transfer it to an American context. What if someone tried to hold an art exhibition devoted to understanding the lives of the 9/11 hijackers? Or to the life of Timothy McViegh? Or to the lives of those, say, who bombed abortion clinics?

Is there any context in which such an exhibition would be deemed acceptable? If so, where do you draw the line?

At the close of my first post, I posed the question of whether the "religious equals conservative" mindset was due less to the fact that liberal religious leaders weren't speaking up or more to the fact that the media wasn't reporting their voices because they didn't coincide with that mindset.

Today, Amy Sullivan, a contributor at the Washington Monthly, rather ardently stated her position on the matter:

You've heard me say it before, but apparently it needs repeating: A good many people are Democrats not despite their faith but precisely because of their faith. I don't want to read "religious" when what you mean is "right-wing." I don't want to read "evangelical" when what you mean is "conservative evangelical." And I don't want to read "moral values" when what you're really referring to are hot-button, right-wing sexual morality issues. The conflation of those terms with those specific definitions is NOT a neutral decision; it's part of a very conscious strategy. It's understandable that some news outlets have been taken in by the spin. Repeating the spin, however, is irresponsible.

I can testify to much of what Amy has to say. My father is an evangelical pastor, and my brother, sister and mother are all devout evangelicals. Each would describe themselves as socially or morally conservative, yet none of them voted for Bush -- exactly the opposite of what you would expect if you had read any election coverage.

What I would add to what Amy has to say is that I think the blame needs to be extended beyond the media and onto liberals themselves. After all, the media wouldn't keep repeating the story if it didn't sell so well. And why does it sell? Because the sad truth of the matter is that there are many on the left who are plainly antagonistic to all things religious. If the New York Times were to suddenly start running with a "religious means liberal" storyline, you can bet that they'd be threatened with more than a few cancelled subscriptions.

This does not vindicate the press for sticking to the traditional story, but it does suggest that the problem is much more diffuse than Amy's post might suggest. Not only does the press need to report the voices of more liberal leaders, but liberals themselves need to be open to what they have to say.

Anyone interested in just what to do about Iran ought to read this post/essay by Jeremy Reff.

There's a lot of ins and outs when it comes to Iran: for instance, the fact that the EU has adopted the country as its first big test case for a unified foreign policy, or that Russia has real economic and political incentives to ally itself with the country, or that the Bush administration, by its involvement in Iraq, has made the country vital to our national interest but has left us largely impotent to deal with Khomeni's regime by either finance or force.

Reff's essay elaborates all these factors at length, and comes to a conclusion I very much agree with:

Rather than shrinking from the eventuality of a nuclear Iran, we should think of ways in which to make proliferation contingent on the development of a liberal Iran. This is not to dismiss security concerns. But ... the West's best defense against nuclear proliferation is with state engagement rather than criminal interdiction.

If Iran truly has Russia on its side, then isolating it does nothing. Fostering its liberal development is the only way to go.

So Wolfowitz is, thankfully, out, but now Carly Fiorina is apparently in.

For those unfamiliar with her, Fiorina was the CEO of HP until a few weeks ago, when HP's board of directors effectively gave her the boot. The reason: her attempt at "synergizing" HP was a disaster. Aside from all her marketing wizardry and the Compaq merger, evidently all she actually delivered was a string of dismal sales and more than a few disgruntled executives.

I'd still put her one step above Wolfowitz -- as far as I know, she never condoned the torture of, say, any Dell sales reps -- but she still doesn't fit the bill.

As I mentioned earlier, for all its flaws the World Bank is still one of the world's most important organizations. Its policies and directives touch as many lives as pretty much any other institution, save perhaps the IMF.

For that reason it needs someone who can deliver substance rather than style. Fiorina may be a marketing wiz, but she has yet to demonstrate she can deliver a high standard of corporate performance. The head of the World Bank needs to be someone who has.

I first considered this post a few days ago, when I saw the NYTimes picture of the Pope after his surgery. I held off because if I don't tread lightly, the implications of what I have to say are going to seem insensitive at best and diabolic at worst.

Yet the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that both the Pope and the Chief Justice need to resign.

Just so there's no confusion, let me be clear: I am not saying this because each is ailing in extremis. Illness does not preclude productivity, and I have no doubt that John Paul can still accomplish wonderful things for Catholicism or that Judge Rehnquist can continue to make significant contributions to the American judiciary.

The problem is that for better or worse, both the Papacy and the Chief Justiceship are highly symbolic positions. As the heads of their organizations, they are not merely the mouthpieces for the Catholic Church and the Federal Courts, respectively; their own personal image and persona reflects a good deal on the vitality and health of those organizations themselves.

For the Courts, this is not as significant because Justices are typically low-profile, and the image of even the Chief Justice only rarely appears in the press.

But for the Church, the Pope's illness is especially salient. The Catholic hierarchy is already seen as too detached and/or inept, and now, following Pope's tracheotomy, their leader is quite literally speechless to comment on the world. It is difficult to conceive of a more telling symbol.

For that reason, John Paul needs to step down. He can still illustrate the resilience of faith and the dignity of human life from a position other than the papacy. But what he cannot continue to do -- if only out of respect for the many good works of the Church's members -- is to obdurately project to the world an undeniable image on their behalf of the Church's frailty and impotence.

I'll comment more on this later, but in my opinion the most important European legal ruling of the year was just handed down in Britain. As the London Times reports, a British Court of Appeals ruled that "Denbigh High had breached the Human Rights Act" in prohibiting Shabina Begum from wearing a headscarf in school.

Prior to this ruling, it had seemed that even Britain was heading in the direction of France, which for very liberal reasons takes an incredibly conservative stance towards religious expressions in the public realm.

Like I said, more later on this. But for the time being, congrats to the British courts for having the courage to allow religious expression, regardless of the religion in question.

After the mass email I just sent out, a friend quickly replied that although he liked the site, he had to confess he didn't agree with much.

I'd like to take a minute and just encourage that.

Obviously I enjoy flattery more, but if this page is to work in the way I hope it will, I need to hear the many valid arguments which go against what I have to say.

Please help keep me honest, either by emailing personally or (even better) commenting beneath a post.

Thanks!

It would seem the Summers controversy is finally something of a dead horse, at least in the press. And rightly so: had Summers been president of a university other than Harvard, the actual core of what he said would have provided a mere blip in a single day's news cycle, rather than becoming a major media event.

Yet so long as his remarks continue to generate debate within the university itself -- in which case what is at stake is the actual truth and value and merit of what he said, rather than one of the more marketable contextual angles to his comments -- that more focused debate is worth following.

In that vein, a little before I received yesterday's e-letter from Dean Kirby, I also received this email from a former (female) classmate who is now a researcher in psychology:

i just went to a meeting about larry summers's comments yesterday afternoon with lots of (male and female) psychiatrists, psychologists, and phd researchers from columbia, cornell, and ny hospital. these people study human development and how genes and environments interact. while some of them argued that summers's comments were beneficial in that they reopened a dormant, but still very relevant, issue for discussion, all agreed that it was not only inappropriate and offensive for summers to say these things, but it was reckless. just for starters (yes it's extreme), we now know that gender isn't even necessarily determined by genes! of course there are many differences, on average and with huge variability, between males and females. this isn't about "blind devotion to equal abilities", this is about relying on this variable to explain and excuse something affected by many, many more variables.

summers is an economist. he knows little of the literature and research looking into cognition, development, evolution, and sex differences. the sad truth is that many researchers try to avoid studying sex differences because of the fear that pop science and lay people like summers will twist any findings into rationalizations for inequalities.

What I find so interesting about that last comment is that it implicates Summers in a cultural trend which goes far beyond mere chauvinism. Outside of the inaccuracy and carelessness of his comments, the real sin he has committed is contributing to the popular ignorance which so often discourages researchers from seeking out the truth altogether. In this light, the effect of his comments is little different from the effect of the good Dr. Dobson's comments on homosexuality: the result of each is that talented people with the relevant expertise are now shying away from applying their skills to questions which are socially contentious but also potentially of greater social value and relevance.

Unfortunately, undoing this kind of damage is not as easy as offering a public retraction or apology. In fact, because the self-censorship it leads to is so often unconsciously performed, I'm not sure that that damage is reparable at all.

Yet Summers needs to at least begin looking into how he can ameliorate the problem, if only so that qualified people like my classmate won't hesitate quite so long before following their instinct, even when that instinct leads them into areas they know to be publicly complicated but scientifically straightforward.