Day: November 12, 2002

Nick Will, editor of The Harbus, the student newspaper of the Harvard Business School, now resigned after (he claims) University officials threatened to hold him personally responsible for any “questionable” content which appears in the paper.
The kerfuffle has been going on for a few days, well covered by InstaGuy and the Volokh Illuminati. But now it appears to have passed the strong-words stage and entered into a new phase of actual consequences.
It goes without saying that the University’s behavior — assuming the editor’s allegations are accurate — is thuggish in the extreme here. It’s a damned shame Will has chosen to resign rather than stand and fight, although I can’t blame him. I would certainly think that there would be plenty of lawyers willing to aide him in any defense that would be required. (A Reynolds-Volokh Dream Team? )
This particular controversy strikes near and dear to my heart, as in a former life I too was a reporter and erstwhile editor at an Ivy daily. And indeed, we managed to piss off our administration quite a bit once by publishing an extremely controversial political “advertisement”.
Happily, though, they respected the paper’s independence, and confined their criticism to just that — criticism. (Matter of fact, they took out a half-page ad in the paper itself denouncing us. That was a nice touch, I had to admit). But anyway, it was an interesting few weeks — we pissed off more than a few students and alumni as well — I can recall actual protests with people shouting about how evil we were and everything. (I was there, of course, skulking in the crowd of demonstrators — along with basically every other staffer on the paper. You couldn’t throw a rock in the crowd without hitting an editor who couldn’t resist showing up to see themself being shouted about.)
At any rate, I wish Mr. Will good luck, and hope perhaps he’ll reconsider his decision. But for now, especially if you’re a Harvard alum, drop Larry Summers a line and tell him to smack some heads around there and get folks to quit being idiots.
PS – No, I haven’t decided if I’ll tell you what the actual advertisement was, but I will tell you this: my support of our decision to publish it annoyed Meryl quite a bit at the time, and I’ll bet she still disapproves…

Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of Nation, spoke on WBUR radio’s The Connection this morning. Here’s part of what she had to say about her vision for the Democrat’s message:
“…the Democrats need to ready with a coherent alternative, a positive one. If there is a war, and it goes badly, you know, I think the Democrats can speak to how they supported multilateral action and speak to how the war in Iraq… undermines the real fight against terrorism.”
Hmmm. So the ‘positive’ alternative is the ability to say “we told you so” if America suffers a military defeat?
Mighty helpful, that…

This piece can also be found at
I like Boston Public, really I do. It’s not on my A-list of must-watch shows (*cough* Buffy! *cough* Angel! *cough*) but it’s a solid drama that I find strangely compelling, and catch when I can.
The first rule for enjoying Boston Public is to recognize that the standard dictat of television applies: that something interesting must happen every episode — preferably multiple somethings — and that therefore far, far more noteworthy events happen to the characters than would ever occur to real-life counterparts.
Boston Public takes this philosophy to the extreme. It’s Apocalypse School: a bizarre and chaotic vision of public-school life in which every single possible crisis, controversy, and calamity that has ever happened in any school all happen in one school.
The writing is good, and the acting is stellar. So: fine stuff, as long as you know how to approach it.
But last night, Boston Public irked me by subtly, but powerfully, arguing the case for the state-as-nanny. The scenario:
In the basement of the school lies the Senior Study Lounge, a room reserved for seniors-only where they can go to study and relax between classes. By unwritten agreement, the lounge is off-limits to faculty, reserved as a space for students.
Goober, the assistant principal, however, finds that it is being used for more than studying, uncovering an intricate scheme in which a student has set the lounge up as a ready-to-use motel room for couples seeking a spot for sex. For $25, he finds, students can receive clean linens, condoms, student lookouts and decoys to ensure the couple does not suffer any unexpected interruption.
Naturally, the straight-laced Goober is apoplectic. But restraining his martial urges to expel every last student who ever came near the place, he decides to instead put the student entrepreneur on trial — enlisting a prosecutor, defense attorney, and jury from the ranks of the student body itself.
Now, it would be hard to argue with the show had Goober simply punished the ringleader — whose name I forget, so let’s call him X — with expulsion or suspension on his own. But by staging the trial, Goober’s direction to the students was to consider themselves as a society unto themselves — and to ask them to determine whether X’s behavior should be punished.
And that’s where the show veered wildly off course. By putting the decision in hands of the students; by asking those students to determine what morality they would choose for themselves — the equation had changed. No longer was it a case of adults guiding the behavior of juveniles, where the restriction of certain freedoms might be accepted as a normal part of preparation for adulthood . Now, we had a society of equals, determining how to judge the behavior of their own.
To its credit, the show upheld its traditional flair for ambiguity in morally questionable situations to the very end. The argument for the defense — that X was providing a safe, clean place for students to engage in behavior they would have undertaken anyway, and that no harm was being done — was presented in as compelling a fashion as that of the prosecution. (The fact that X was donating all the profits to an AIDS-charity was a nice touch, if a bit overdone). And other than the legally-unusual sequencing of allowing the prosecution to have the final closing argument, there was no real hint as to which way the jury would rule until the close of the episode.
But rule it did: X was found guilty of… something. It’s never quite said what, exactly, which is one problem. And he’s sentenced to a two-week suspension for his crime.
While some murkiness remained, it was clear that the verdict was intended to be seen as the “right” one, with the principal congratulating Goober after the fact for his visionary strategy.
But the vision Goober evoked was hardly a new one: he gave the students the power to create their own nanny state, and they yielded gleefully to the temptation. The Serpent couldn’t have done a better job itself.
Consider the central argument for the prosecution — that by creating his lair, X “encouraged sex”, and furthermore, made students who were intending to remain celibate feel more pressured to have sex — and it becomes clear. There it is, at the core: certain individuals behavior was making other individuals “feel” uncomfortable. And therefore, that behavior must be stopped; banned; punished.
Orwell wrote of “thoughtcrime”, and indeed, the PC nanny state punishes that violation severely. But we also must recognize this other, nameless trespass — the crime of behaving in a way that others do not wish you to; of making someone feel bad. Of acting in a manner which offends. Lacking Orwell’s flair, I can only suggest “offensecrime.”
I’d like to think that last night’s episode was a cautionary tale, using youth as a proxy for wider society a la Lord of the Flies. But all indications were that it was not; that the outcome of the trial was indeed the “right” one. Justice had been served.
I’ll keep watching Boston Public, to be sure. But last night’s episode reminded me once again — should I have needed it — that the real world requires watching as well.
PS – I don’t even want to think about the Google hits I’m going to get for this one…

The Times’ reality-distortion field just keeps getting odder and odder.
Exhibit A is Neil MacFarquhar’s dismal news story yesterday which bore the headline ” Leaders Vent at U.N., but Are Open to Its Terms.”
MacFarquhar makes the bold assertion (or perhaps his editor did) that the Parliament is “open to [the UN’s] terms”, and then studiously spends his entire article failing to present evidence that supports that statement. It’s truly weird stuff, relying on limp wisps of phrases like “outright rejection seemed unlikely” and “ultimately Parliament was expected to follow its past practice.”
I was considering a full Fisking, but it’s not worth it, as events have overtaken the hapless Times: Parliament rejected the resolution today, according to a report bylined by — you guessed it — Mr. MacFarquhar.
His lead?
“In a surprising public display of rejection, the Iraqi Parliament today voted against cooperating with a United Nations Security Council resolution on resuming arms inspections…”