Harvard University
Chicago Politics At Its Grubbiest!
John McCormack at the Weekly Standard has a splashy headline today: "Obama Now Selling Judgeships For Health Care Votes?" The story turns out to be that Obama is nominating Scott Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Matheson's brother is a member of Congress whose health care vote Obama would very much like. So now he's giving his brother a federal judgeship! So, let's meet this hack: Scott M. Matheson currently holds the Hugh B. Brown Presidential Endowed Chair at the S.J.
Erich Segal Z”L
I met Erich Segal in 1959, in a Harvard University graduate-school dorm. It was in Richards Hall, designed in the early ’50s by Walter Gropius, which Erich said only proved that “great men” could do desultory work. He was doing his graduate work in classics and comparative literature, and I in government. Of course, he knew more, much more, about my field than I did about his. In fact, he was rapacious in his pursuit of knowledge. And cheerfully intent about music and song. He was a man of traditional culture ...
Harold Pollack is a professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and Special Correspondent for The Treatment. At a low moment of the Second World War, a breathless young aide barged in on Winston Churchill to report some bad news.
Erich Segal, Z"L
I met Erich Segal in 1959, in a Harvard University graduate-school dorm. It was in Richards Hall, designed in the early fifties by Walter Gropius, which Erich said only proved that "great men" could do desultory work. He was a Ph.D. candidate in Classics, and I in Government. Of course, he knew more, much more about my field than I did about his. In fact, he was rapacious in his pursuit of knowledge. And cheerfully intent about music and song. He was a man of traditional culture ...
Burying the Lede on Detroit
A few weeks ago, I noted that the cause of regionalism seemed to be on the rise in Detroit, because newly-elected Detroit council members seemed interested in reaching across the city border and making common cause with their suburban neighborhoods. Some new polling by the Washington Post, Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University, suggests that there is even more reason for optimism on this front, although you wouldn’t know it from the dreary headline in the Post: “Stark Divisions Found Between Detroit and its Suburbs.” The paper thinks it’s glum news that “one in five poll respondent
The Ideal and the Real
The Idea of Justice By Amartya Sen (Harvard University Press, 467 pp., $29.95) In his introduction to The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen asks the reader to imagine a scenario that will figure prominently throughout the book. Three children are arguing among themselves about which one of them should have a flute. The first child, Anne, is a trained musician who can make the best use of the flute. The second child, Bob, is the poorest of the three and owns no other toys or instruments. Clara, the third contender, happens to be the one who, with hard sustained labor, made the flute.
The Firebrand
Trotsky Robert Service Harvard University Press, $35 When Leon Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico City by an agent of Stalin, in 1940, the American novelist James T. Farrell took to the pages of Partisan Review to memorialize him. “The life of Leon Trotsky is one of the great tragic dramas of modern history,” Farrell’s obituary began, and it only gets more idolatrous from there. “Pitting his brain and will against the despotic rulers of a great empire, fully conscious of the power, the resources, the cunning and cruelty of his enemy, Trotsky had one weapon at his command--his ideas.
Seeing and Believing
Are representations of the Prophet Muhammad permitted in Islam? To make or not to make images of the Prophet: that is the question I will try to answer. It is an unexpectedly burning question, as the newspapers regularly demonstrate. But both the answer to the question and the reasons for raising it require a broader introduction. There have been many times in recent years when one bemoaned the explosion of media that have provided public forums for so much incompetence and ignorance, not to speak of prejudice. Matters became worse after September 11, for two additional reasons.
The Race Man
Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington By Robert J. Norrell (Harvard University Press, 508 pp., $35) I. Once the most famous and influential African American in the United States (and probably the world), Booker T. Washington has earned at best mixed reviews in the decades since his death in 1915. Black intellectuals and political activists, from W. E. B.
Playing the Race Card (But Not the Way You Think)
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) has released a public letter concerning HR3200, the main House health reform bill. Many people have framed health reform as a civil rights concern. More than one-fifth of African-Americans, and more than one-third of Hispanic Americans, are uninsured. Race/ethnic disparities in access to high-quality medical care are profound. Disparities in health status and lifespan are even larger, and must be counted among the most serious structural inequalities in American society.
