…isn’t that a black Harvard professor was arrested by police.
The real story–one that you won’t see on Anderson Cooper 360–is that Harvard is going broke. (Thanks Farai for dropping it on me.) Quick college finance 101–colleges and universities like Harvard are run off of the interest from their endowment. Harvard’s endowment was once the largest in the Academy–some $35+ BILLION. Equipment, offices, buildings, faculty salaries, all come from the interest.
Why is this important?
Take this in tandem with the crisis that California, with the fact that state revenues from taxes are dropping like stones, and unemployment benefits are drying up?
Folks are touting higher education as the way out. But what happens if institutions of higher education are themselves bankrupt?
I swear, Anderson Cooper 360 should be Anderson Cooper 60. What would be fascinating would be taking this story about Gates, and attaching it to the story about the budget. These stories–how the Philly kids were treated, how Gates was treated, Sotomayor, are all politicized personal interest stories. I suggest that these stories ARE important, but only really important when attached to the types of stories that enable us to deal with the enormity of the economic crisis we currently face.
In as much as I wrote some 2000 words about the Gates issue without dealing with the economy, I’m to blame as well.
We have three observations about the Harvard professor incident:
1. We find it interesting that the fact that this was the professor's home was evidently not established early on way before the dispute escalated;
2. We find it fascinating that the versions of two members of society, who most would ordinarily view as responsible and honest citizens (this obviously does not include politicians), would vary so dramatically from a factual point of view.
3. Finally, considering that the reading and viewing public were not present at the scene (and thus have no first hand knowledge), and that there is no video tape to our knowledge of the sequence of events and what was said, how so many have formed conclusions, and made assumptions, about who did what and who was wrong.
There are some things which Professor Gates might have considered upon the arrival of the police, no matter how incensed he may have been.
After Obama modifed his statement from the Cambridge Police Department “acted stupidly,” to a vague, “there was an overreaction” I wrote a post about it:
http://hnicwatch.blogspot.com/2009/07/i-hate-ch…
Good point. I'm coming to see this story as a splendid distraction.
Funny: was reading about Obama on my Kindle this week, about the president complaining that people didn't get good information about his health care ideas. I looked up to see CNN trumpeting Michael Jackson's chef, unpopular athletes, and the Gates story.
This is certainly a peculiar incident. I have read a lot of commentaries about it and there are varying responses. However this is the first time that I've heard that Harvard is getting broke…that was a real shocker.