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Harvard in the NewsSeptember 23, 2008Bailing Out Finance: How Will It End?Writing in today’s New York Times, Safra professor of economics Jeremy C. Stein and University of Chicago economist Anil Kashyap outline the options, as they see them, for the federal government’s promised $700-billion bailout for financial firms. Above all, the op-ed by Stein and Kashyap underscores how little is known about what form the bailout will take. Will the government simply buy distressed assets at their current value and hold them until the crisis passes and their value rises again? Will it overpay for these assets to subsidize failing firms, and thus provide them with the capital they need to stay afloat? Will it act as a “bankruptcy judge” for these firms, negotiating firms’ debt down in exchange for government assistance? Will it restructure mortgages to help troubled homeowners (a more aggressive intervention)? “For now,” the authors write, “all we can do is make educated guesses.” Read the full op-ed here. September 15, 2008Thoughts on an Obama Win, or LossWriting in Sunday’s Washington Post, Klein professor of law Randall Kennedy argues that Barack Obama’s nomination as a major-party candidate is a milestone in itself—it “has opened the public mind to the idea of a black president and made that idea broadly attractive,” he writes. But Kennedy also believes an Obama loss is a distinct possibility, due at least in part to lingering prejudice. He writes:
Read more about Kennedy’s work and, specifically, his latest book, Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal, in this article from the November-December 2007 issue of Harvard Magazine. September 15, 2008I Cook, Therefore I Am?The “Meeting the Minds” column in today’s Boston Globe introduces Moore professor of biological anthropology Richard Wrangham and explores the controversy around Wrangham’s argument that cooking food is what allowed for the enlargement of the primitive human brain and, consequently, for humans to break away from the rest of the animal kingdom. The column also quotes Maccurdy professor of prehistoric archaeology Ofer Bar-Yosef, who finds Wrangham’s hypothesis less than convincing:
Harvard Magazine covered Wrangham’s cooking hypothesis back in 2000; read that article here. September 12, 2008Facebook Profile Before First Steps?It really is a brave new world. This week’s New York Times Thursday Styles section had an article about websites that let infants and toddlers set up profiles. OK, so it is actually mom and dad setting up the profiles on sites such as Totspot, Odadeo, Lil’Grams, and Kidmondo. The sites seem to operate somewhat like on-line baby books: places to record milestones such as first solid food, first steps, and first tooth. Relatives interested in tracking these details can simply log on; the sites allow parents—and, eventually, the children themselves—to remember and reminisce. But these sites are not without their dangers, the article notes:
The author quotes John G. Palfrey, faculty co-director of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and Ess librarian and professor of law at Harvard Law School, on the sites’ potential pitfalls. “Whether or not they realize it as such,” Palfrey says, “parents are contributing to their child’s digital dossier. And who sees that dossier later on may be of concern.” Read more about Palfrey and his new book Born Digital, coauthored with Urs Gasser, in this article from the March-April 2008 issue of Harvard Magazine. August 27, 2008A Startling Achievement in Regenerative MedicineDouglas Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, has figured out how to transform one type of cell in a living animal into another, using a new process his research team has dubbed “direct reprogramming.” More >> August 22, 2008Harvard Tops U.S. News RankingsU.S. News & World Report released its annual college rankings today, with Harvard at the top—the first time the University has ranked number one, by itself rather than tied with another school, in a dozen years, according to the Boston Globe. As the Globe’s Peter Schworm notes, in grandiose language, Harvard has finished second to Princeton for the last two years, but “today, order has been restored to the universe, with Harvard University again master of all it surveys.” (Princeton and Yale rank second and third this year, respectively.) While there may be rejoicing in some corners, University spokesman Robert Mitchell gave the Globe a tempered response: ”It’s always nice to be recognized in this way. However, our admissions officers always tell prospective students that they should select a college that best suits their needs, not by its position in a ranking.” U.S. News does not explain why it moves individual schools up or down, but gives a general explanation of how it formulates the rankings. The criteria include financial resources, alumni giving, graduation rate, selectivity in admissions, and evaluation of the institution by administrators at peer institutions. Harvard had the lowest acceptance rate of any school on the list, admitting just 9 percent of applicants. The rankings are based on the admissions cycle for the class that entered a year ago; as Harvard Magazine previously reported, competition for this fall’s freshman class was even stiffer—the College received 27,278 applications, up 19 percent over the previous year. View the list of schools by rank on the U.S. News & World Report site, or read the Boston Globe article about the rankings. August 19, 2008Bearer of Bad NewsThis week’s New York Times Magazine has a profile of New York University economist Nouriel Roubini, whose gloom-and-doom predictions have been startlingly spot-on. Roubini, Ph.D. ’88, predicted the U.S. economy’s current conditions with chilling accuracy. Roubini’s pessimistic prognostications have won such supporters as Cabot professor of public policy Kenneth S. Rogoff; Jeffrey Sachs ’76, Ph.D. ’81, who was the founding director of Harvard’s Center for International Development but left in 2002 for Columbia University, where he heads the Earth Institute and teaches sustainable development, health policy, and management; and Eliot University Professor Lawrence H. Summers, all quoted in the article. (Summers’s own views about the U.S. economy will appear in the September-October issue of Harvard Magazine; Web publication is imminent.) But Roubini has critics, too: one is quoted as saying, “Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.” So what does he foresee in the coming months and years? Roubini says the housing crisis is far from over, and predicts that defaults on mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, student loans, etc., will drive numerous banks into bankruptcy. “A good third of the regional banks won’t make it,” he told article author Stephen Mihm. And Roubini says the U.S. national debt will bring international tensions to a head and force the United States to accept a different role on the international stage. “Once you run current-account deficits, you depend on the kindness of strangers,” he says. “This might be the beginning of the end of the American empire.” Harvard Magazine examined the hazards of the current account deficit last year in “Debtor Nation,” an article that also quoted Rogoff and Summers. August 19, 2008Eye on Iran and IsraelBemis professor of international law Noah Feldman ’92, JF ’02, sees trouble brewing between Israel and Iran. Given President Bush’s practically unconditional support for Israel, and the potential for the United States’s position to change with the next administration—particularly if Barack Obama is elected—”[T]his autumn may be Israel’s last and best chance to go after Iran’s nuclear capability,” Feldman wrote in the New York Times Magazine recently. His logic is elegant, if tortuous:
Feldman is the author of The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State. You can read the rest of his essay here. August 19, 2008A Call for Credit-Card DisclosureProposed amendments to the federal Truth in Lending regulations would be a welcome change, Richard Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein argued on the Wall Street Journal opinion page last week. Sunstein, who earned his A.B. at Harvard in 1975 and a law degree in 1978, has taught at the University of Chicago Law School since 1981, but returns to teach at Harvard Law School this fall. (He married Lindh professor of practice of global leadership and public policy Samantha Power in July.) Thaler teaches at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. His work figured in The Marketplace of Perceptions, in the March-April 2006 issue of Harvard Magazine. Even though the proposed rules would require credit-card companies to disclose the terms of agreements in a format more easily understandable for consumers, Sunstein and Thaler recommend taking the rules a step further: to require disclosure in a standardized format that could be aggregated and analyzed by a third party—for instance, a website allowing consumers to compare different card-issuers’ rates and fees side by side. The authors also suggest expanding the disclosure mandate to the mortgage and cell-phone industries. Those with access to wsj.com can read the piece in its entirety here. Gottlieb professor of law Elizabeth Warren issued a similar call for requiring clearer disclosure in Making Credit Safer, in the May-June 2008 issue of Harvard Magazine. August 18, 2008Harvard Twice Strikes Gold and Silver in BeijingHarvard rowers and a fencer competing in Beijing won a total of two gold and two silver medals over the weekend. More >> |
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