Free Republic

According to a university colleague, former president of Harvard and current White House economist Larry Summers once asked for help to "f--- up" one of the school's conservative professors.

Even Timmy is slowly realizing that the Administration will need to find a way to deflect Main Steet's anger at Goldman and keep it focused exclusively on Wall Street instead of equating it with Obama et al. The problem is - you make some very serious, tentacled enemies in the process. Geithner also flip flops on his prior position on the transaction tax. While before he was more opposed to the transaction tax than even Marla, his new "windsocked" position on the topic may now provide a challenge even to Nitric Oxide inhibitors. But here is the clincher for the...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 3 A new national poll by Harvard's Institute of Politics (IOP), located at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, finds a majority (58%) of America's 18-29 year-olds approve of President Obama's job performance generally but disapprove of the President's handling of specific issues including the economy (52% disapprove), health care (52% disapprove) and Afghanistan (55% disapprove).

Harvard Study: Planned Parenthood is an Abortion Business and Business is Bad Despite profits of $85 million in 2008, Planned Parenthood is facing serious financial difficulties. Difficulties such as these are driving down the number of Planned Parenthood affiliates, from 163 15 years ago to 91 in late 2009. And according to the Harvard case study, this consolidation is expected to continue with several of the remaining affiliates discussing mergers. http://www.LifeNews.com/nat5714.html

It happened at least once a year, every year. In a roomful of a dozen Harvard University financial officials, Jack Meyer, the hugely successful head of Harvard’s endowment, and Lawrence Summers, then the school’s president, would face off in a heated debate. The topic: cash and how the university was managing - or mismanaging - its basic operating funds. Through the first half of this decade, Meyer repeatedly warned Summers and other Harvard officials that the school was being too aggressive with billions of dollars in cash, according to people present for the discussions, investing almost all of it with...

Women now hold 26 percent of the ladder-faculty positions (professor, associate professor, assistant professor) at the University—395 positions out of 1,507—and minorities 17 percent—258 positions—according to the 2009 annual report of the Office of Faculty Development and Diversity (FD&D), published today. The report and accompanying exhibits are posted at the FD&D website. According to the report, the number of ladder faculty members rose by 96 (7 percent) during the past six years; senior appointments rose from 888 to 997, and the junior-faculty census declined from 523 to 510. Two-thirds of Harvard’s ladder faculty members are full professors, and just one-third...

As the dean of Harvard Medical School I am frequently asked to comment on the health-reform debate. I'd give it a failing grade. Instead of forthrightly dealing with the fundamental problems, discussion is dominated by rival factions struggling to enact or defeat President Barack Obama's agenda. The rhetoric on both sides is exaggerated and often deceptive. Those of us for whom the central issue is health—not politics—have been left in the lurch. And as controversy heads toward a conclusion in Washington, it appears that the people who favor the legislation are engaged in collective denial... Speeches and news reports can...

The Dean, Jeffrey S. Flier, decimates the the fairytale from the Obama camp: In discussions with dozens of health-care leaders and economists, I find near unanimity of opinion that, whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health-care spending rather than restrain it. Likewise, nearly all agree that the legislation would do little or nothing to improve quality or change health-care’s dysfunctional delivery system. Meanwhile, another Harvard alumni weighs in: Joseph Stubbs, President of the American College of Physicians -- the second largest doctors' group in the country -- confirms that "the supply...

Seems like Obama's homies are not impressed: "In discussions with dozens of health-care leaders and economists, I find near unanimity of opinion that, whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health-care spending rather than restrain it. Likewise, nearly all agree that the legislation would do little or nothing to improve quality or change health-care's dysfunctional delivery system. The system we have now promotes fragmented care and makes it more difficult than it should be to assess outcomes and patient satisfaction. The true costs of health care are disguised, competition based on price...

Hopefully this piece on CNN helps people relate how difficult it is to find a job to something many people have had experience doing: applying to college. The 650,000 jobs created or saved by the stimulus package so far make up only a small step toward correcting the gap between the tens of millions of unemployed people and the few openings that those people are fighting over. Even the administration's goal of creating 3.5 million jobs is far below what the economy really needs. With an official unemployment rate of 10.2 percent, the gap between the number of full-time job...

From: DGiannotti@eth.state.ma.us FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 6, 2009 Contact: David Giannotti, Communications Division Chief 617-371-9505 Ethics Commission's Enforcement Division Alleges that Town of Harvard School Superintendent and a Former School Committee Chairman Violated the Conflict of Interest Law Allegedly Used Official Positions to Secure Reimbursement of Private School Tuition by Harvard Public Schools The State Ethics Commission's Enforcement Division, in two Orders to Show Cause ("OTSC"), alleged that Harvard Superintendent of Public Schools Thomas Jefferson ("Jefferson") and former Harvard School Committee Chairman Paul Wormser ("Wormser") violated G.L.c. 268A, the conflict of interest law, by using Jefferson's official position as Superintendent,...

In 1934, the Harvard class of 1909 held its 25th reunion—then as now an occasion for members of the American elite to parade in public and celebrate their achievements. But this year the star attraction was a German: Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl, the son of a Munich art dealer and publisher who had joined the Nazi movement and enjoyed personal access to Hitler (Hitler liked hearing him play the piano, as had his Harvard classmates, for whom he composed football fight songs). In the early 1930s he served as foreign press chief for the Nazi party. Ernst Hanfstaengl (center, with raised...

very ironic announcement that I just got in my Harvard email announcing a forthcoming lecture: HARVARD UNIVERSITY EDMOND J. SAFRA FOUNDATION CENTER FOR ETHICS Eliot Spitzer, former Governor and Attorney General of New York, will deliver a public lecture as part of the 2009/10 Labs Lectures on the Question of Institutional Corruption. Thursday, November 12 at 4:30pm Emerson Hall, Room 105 25 Quincy Street, Cambridge This is a ticketed event.

A recent Harvard Law School graduate has been accused of setting fire to a New York City chapel that houses the remains of unidentified victims of the 9/11 attacks, leading to public outrage from the victims’ families. Classmates of Schroeder at the Law School contacted by The Crimson either did not return repeated requests for comment or declined to comment. But according to media reports the act surprised those who know Schroeder, who served as co-president of Lambda, the school’s LGBT student organization, during his time as a student.

Harvard students will be able to watch the “The Wire” for class credit next year. At a panel last night, stars of the HBO hit series joined Harvard professors in discussing the applications of the show—which depicts the struggles of urban life in Baltimore—in understanding and combating real urban social issues. “‘The Wire’ has done more to enhance our understanding of the systemic urban inequality that constrains the lives of the poor than any published study” Sociology Professor William J. Wilson said. African American studies chair Professor Evelyn B. Higginbotham said that there would be a new course in which...

A Harvard law grad surrendered to cops yesterday after allegedly setting fire to an East Side chapel that houses remains of 9/11 victims as part of a drunken dare, sources said. Brian Schroeder, 26, originally from Texas, walked into the 13th Precinct station house at about 7 p.m. in connection with the blaze at Memorial Park, on East 30th Street. Charges were pending, police said. None of the remains, which are destined for a memorial at the World Trade Center, were damaged but "mementos and candles left by family members in honor of 9/11 victims were destroyed or possibly stolen,"...

Anti-establishment aging hippies from the 1960s are now the Czars having a field day with a Marxist agenda. In the upside down world that comes with Barack Obama in the White House, everything is a prop—including Old Glory. “One of the 20 finalists in health care video contest run by Barack Obama’s campaign arm features a mural of an American flag splattered with health care graffiti until it’s covered completely by black paint.” (politico.com, Oct. 28, 2009.) “The video is accompanied by the sound of a heart monitor pumping and then flat-lining—words such as “pre-existing conditions”, “homeless” and “death panel”...

BOSTON (AP) -- Six Harvard University medical researchers were poisoned in August after drinking coffee that was laced with a chemical preservative, according to university officials. In an internal memo first reported in the Boston Herald's Sunday editions, the school said the coffee came from a machine near their lab that later tested positive for sodium azide, a common preservative used in labs.

BOSTON — Six Harvard University medical researchers were poisoned in August after drinking coffee that was laced with a chemical preservative, according to university officials. In an internal memo first reported in the Boston Herald's Sunday editions, the school said the coffee came from a machine near their lab that later tested positive for sodium azide, a common preservative used in labs. The six reported symptoms after drinking the coffee Aug. 26, ranging from dizziness to ringing in the ears, and one passed out. They were treated at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and later released.

'Safe School Czar' Kevin Jennings has helped fund an ACT UP! exhibit open through December 23 at Harvard University. The exhibit is filled with anti-Catholic and pornographic displays at Harvard's Carpenter Center for Visual Arts. A paragraph from the program at the exhibit shows that Jennings condones this.

"Fierce P*ssy" are now "Artists in Residence" at Harvard University.

Harvard University’s failed bet that interest rates would rise cost the school at least $500 million in payments to escape derivatives that backfired, reports Bloomberg. Harvard paid $497.6 million to investment banks during the fiscal year ended June 30 to get out of $1.1 billion of interest-rate swaps intended to hedge variable-rate debt for capital projects, the school’s annual report said. Harvard said it also agreed to pay $425 million over 30 to 40 years to offset an additional $764 million in swaps. The transactions began losing value last year as central banks slashed benchmark lending rates, forcing the university...

Verbotten. story here.

How Harvard Nearly Went Bankrupt After A Rogue Interest Rate Swap Went Very Sour Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/16/2009 17:45 -0500 The school that epitomizes the dangers of groupthink (especially by very intelligent people) and tends to get caught in both the virtues and vices of its own ingeniosity, saw just how expensive hubris can be in 2009. Harvard's endowment dropped 27.3% in 2009 to $27 after hitting roughly $10 billion higher the year before. /snip Yet most notable in the entire report is an interesting story for all those who claim that representing the $200 or so trillion...

Robert Barro, Professor of Economics at Harvard University, criticizes the recently passed federal stimulus package as a "terrible piece of legislation," and calls for permanent changes to the tax structure to spur economic growth. In a discussion with Tax Foundation Vice President for Economic Policy Robert Carroll in this week's edition of the Tax Policy Podcast, Barro strongly disapproves of both the expenditure and tax provisions within the stimulus legislation. "What they call tax reductions in this bill are really transfer payments, particularly redistribution of income from the rich to the poor," says Barro. "I don't think it's really attractive...

Harvard University last year lost nearly $2 billion in the cash account it uses to pay for daily operations, by investing the money with its endowment fund instead of keeping it in safer, bank-like accounts. The loss, disclosed today in the university's annual financial report, resulted from Harvard financial executives taking the unusual step of placing a large mount of the university's cash with Harvard Management Co., the entity that runs the school's endowment and invests in stocks, hedge funds and other risky assets. Typically, companies and institutions manage their cash accounts conservatively in order to have funds readily available,...

Minuteman Project Founder Jim Gilchrist News Release     For Immediate Release October 15, 2009  Media contact: Tim Bueler (530) 401-3285   Anti-Free Speech Fanatics at Harvard Threaten Disruption and Violence       Cambridge , Ma.-Harvard University seems to be resigned to suffer the same embarrassing fate as Columbia University in 2006 as they scamper to rescind their previous invitation to Jim Gilchrist, founder and president of the Minuteman Project, to participate in its immigration symposium scheduled for this Saturday, October 17 in Cambridge , Ma.         Despite appearing at last February’s symposium at the Harvard Law School on immigration law...

Three-steps-from-crazy-cat-lady WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan is teaching at Harvard. Our spies report: "Peggy's a ridiculous, hilarious person to speaking with any authority on anything at all." They've provided us with her awesome quotes. We're presenting them emoticon-contextualized them for you...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Gone are the hot breakfasts in most dorms and the pastries at Widener Library. Varsity athletes are no longer guaranteed free sweatsuits, and just this week came the jarring news that professors will go without cookies at faculty meetings. By Harvard standards, these are hard times. Not Dickensian hard times, perhaps, but with the value of its endowment down by almost 30 percent, the world’s richest university is learning to live with less. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard’s largest division, has cut about $75 million from its budget in recent months and is planning more....

In his new book, "Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage," Best-selling celebrity journalist, Christopher Andersen, has blown a huge hole in the Obama genius myth without intending to do so. Relying on inside sources, quite possibly Michelle Obama herself, Andersen describes how Dreams came to be published -- just as I had envisioned it in my articles on the authorship of Dreams. With the deadline pressing, Michelle recommended that Barack seek advice from "his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers." To flesh out his family history, Obama had taped interviews with various family members. Andersen writes, "These...

With growing pressure for decisions on life-or-death issues in Afghanistan and Iran, this morning the White House announced that President Obama will soon travel to…Copenhagen. Obama will be in Denmark for just a few hours -- he leaves this Thursday and returns Friday -- which is just enough time to make a pitch for Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympic Games. He'll be following First Lady Michelle Obama, who is also going to Copenhagen as part of the promote-Chicago team. Here is the White House press release:.....

August 5, 2008 SOLZHENITSYN…HE TRIED TO WARN US By: Pastor Bill Randles ”“Wisdom cries out loud in the streets, she raises her voice in the squares…" Proverbs 1:20 Harvard’s motto is “Veritas”. Many of you have already found out, and others will find out in the course of their lives, that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate our attention totally on its pursuit. But even while it eludes us, the illusion of knowing it still lingers and leads to many misunderstandings. (From Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 Harvard address “A World Split Apart”) Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a Nobel Prize winning author, Soviet...

Although terrorist emeritus Bill Ayers claims not to have met Barack Obama until the mid-1990s, there is reason to believe that he not only knew Obama much earlier, but that he helped get him into Harvard Law School. The evidence, substantial if speculative, can be found in an unlikely source, Barack Obama's 2006 bestseller, Audacity of Hope, and it may have been provided by Ayers himself. In the way of background, I have made the argument on these pages that Bill Ayers wrote the better part of Obama's acclaimed 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father.

Words, words, words In Uncategorized on September 10, 2009 at 9:21 pm Finally we have it. After months of empty rhetoric, after being careened through the depths of space and time and reality by our Commander-in-Chief and his spinster sidekick Robert Gibbs, we can finally claim a modest understanding of President Obama’s objectives for healthcare reform. As far as speeches go, the president earns high marks for turning a policy wonkish lecture on health reform into a soaring bit of oratorical brilliance. From the tragic stories of Americans lacking adequate coverage to Obama’s fiery vilification of the evil insurance industry...

Harvard’s endowment tumbled 27.3 percent in its latest fiscal year, largely because of problems with its private equity and hedge fund portfolios, lopping off $10 billion and shrinking its portfolio to $26 billion. The loss is the biggest percentage decline at Harvard in 40 years and has prompted a review of how it manages its money and allocates assets. Jane Mendillo, who took over the endowment on July 1, 2008, intends to manage more of the school’s assets directly instead of using outside money managers and to hire additional people to oversee the management by outsiders. In her letter describing...

More Teachable Moments by: Malcolm A. Kline, September 09, 2009 The latest poll from the Chronicle of Higher Education shows that conservatives make up only 15 percent of faculty and staff at surveyed colleges and universities while most polls show that more Americans than ever before are identifying themselves as right-leaning. Given this dearth of Tories, it is hardly surprising that in the Washington Post outlook section on Sunday August 30, 2009, found two profs—One from Occidental College and the other from Harvard—who observed that “Ted Kennedy passed the liberal torch to Obama” and then urged “Let’s run with it.”...

Watching the seemingly endless line of people parading past the flag-draped coffin of the late Edward M. (Ted) Kennedy, one wonders what it’s all about. Yes, liberals and Democrats are fond of conjecturing about “what might have been” had JFK and Bobby Kennedy not been assassinated, or “what might have been” if Kennedy had not driven his mother’s Oldsmobile off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island that fateful night in July 1969, killing Mary Jo Kopechne in the process. For most objective observers the attraction of Ted Kennedy will always remain a great mystery. Throughout history, those men and women whose...

Poor, poor Harvard. The prestigious institution has once again found itself in the embarrassing position of defending a push for campus censorship. This round’s sad irony: student leaders are now the ones trying to throw the First Amendment out the school bus window. The Harvard Law Review, a student-edited publication claiming President Barack Obama and four current U.S. Supreme Court justices as alumni, recently endorsed a major screw up on its own pages after it ran an eight-page factually-void analysis of the nation’s latest First Amendment case law. The piece, authored and edited by unnamed students (consistent with the journal’s...

Then a freshman, Kennedy was forced to withdraw from Harvard for two years after cheating on a Spanish final. According to “The Education of Edward Kennedy,” by Burton Hersh, the future U.S. Senator and presidential candidate had the roommate of one of his football teammates take the exam for him.

Why are these Obama documents off-limits to Americans? 1. Certified copy of original birth certificate 2. Columbia University transcripts 3. Columbia thesis paper 4. Campaign donor analysis requested by 7 major watchdog groups 5. Harvard University transcripts 6. Illinois State Senate records 7. Illinois State Senate schedule 8. Law practice client list and billing records/summary 9. Locations and names of all half-siblings and step-mothers 10. Medical records (only the one page summary released so far) 11. Occidental College Transcripts 12. Parent’s marriage Certificate 13. Record of baptism 14. Selective Service registration records 15. Schedules for trips outside of the United...

Cute, and gratifying that they got along well enough that he can be light-hearted about what happened, but this reminds me of what his daughter said about Crowley’s daughter’s “heavy and charmingly untrained amount of green eyeliner.”

CHILMARK, Mass. — A black Harvard scholar said Sunday he has been able to joke about his arrest by a white police officer that led to a national debate on race, but he also has received death threats and bomb threats. In his first public appearance since meeting with Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley at the White House, Henry Louis Gates said he and the officer found some humor in the incident and have since discussed going out to eat or taking in a Boston Red Sox or Celtics game.

Harvard University's moves to seek U.S. trademarks for everyday phrases such as "Ask what you can do" are defensive measures, a school official says. The university has poured a lot of money into basing its promotional and advertising campaigns on such phrases as "Ask what you can do," which was famously uttered by President John F. Kennedy in his 1960 inaugural speech, as well as "Lessons learned" and "Managing yourself," The Boston Globe reported Saturday. So, Rick Calixto, director of the Harvard Trademark Program, says the university needs to move aggressively to trademark the phrases to protect the investments it...

No more than five or six minutes elapsed from the time the police were alerted to the possibility of a break-in at a home in a quiet residential neighborhood and the awful clamping of handcuffs on the wrists of the distinguished Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. If Professor Gates ranted and raved at the cop who entered his home uninvited with a badge, a gun and an attitude, he didn’t rant and rave for long. The 911 call came in at about 12:45 on the afternoon of July 16 and, as The Times has reported, Mr. Gates was arrested,...

The final suspect in the fatal pot robbery at a Harvard dorm has been hunted down in New York City. Jason Aquino, 23, of Manhattan was arrested yesterday on a Massachusetts warrant for first-degree murder, armed robbery and other charges relating to the May murder of a Cambridge man.

You need to watch the video. In it, Sutton (aka Mansour) suggested that he was only a middle man for the Saudi Prince. http://www.sodahead.com/question/265758/did-obama-seal-his-harvard-records-because-of-ties-to-khalid-al-mansour/?psort=recent I suggest that these are the 2 of the men who masterminded the cover ups for obama. They are very dangerous and powerful and, could well be involved in much more sinister actions on behalf of obama. I suggest that obama's Harvard records will show his ties to Khalid al-Mansour (percy sutton) and the Saudi prince!!!!

HOW ABOUT A NATIONAL CONVERSATION ON RACE HOAXES?July 29, 2009 You could not ask for a more perfect illustration of the thesis of my latest book, "Guilty: Liberal Victims and Their Assault on America," than the black president of the United States attacking a powerless white cop for arresting a black Harvard professor -- in a city with a black mayor and a state with a black governor -- as the professor vacations in Martha's Vineyard. In modern America, the alleged "victim" is always really the aggressor, and the alleged "aggressor" is always the true victim. President Barack Obama planted...

The situation in Cambridge, Mass., surrounding Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s arrest has been analyzed and reanalyzed from nearly every angle. The character of police Sgt. James Crowley has been dragged through the mud, then polished, then dragged through the mud again. But Gates has, for the most part, escaped scrutiny. At worst, he has been described as a racialist, a man who sees every aspect of American life through the lens of ethnicity. At best, he has been described (by racialist and full-fledged polysyllable-babbling idiot Michael Eric Dyson) as the "Rosa Parks of racial profiling.” But Gates is more...

An aide to Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer has resigned after reportedly posting comments on her Facebook account defending racial profiling in the recent arrest of a Harvard professor and calling President Obama "O-dumb-a." Lee Landor, who had been Stringer's deputy press secretary since May, posted a series of comments on her Facebook page over the weekend criticizing Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the president, the weekly newspaper City Hall News reported on its Web site today.