Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Universities and Class, Part 82 (J. Stanley)

In the Sunday Times, there was a short article about Harvard's new magazine, "02138". As the article makes clear, the purpose of 02138 is to further associate Harvard with Cartier watches and second homes in the Hamptons:

In the magazine trade, 02138, which receives financing from Atlantic Media, the parent company of The Atlantic Monthly, is what is known as a luxury lifestyle book. Luxury lifestyle books, like Hamptons Magazine, Palm Beach Illustrated and the subtly titled Rich Guy, are magazines that are essentially about the people who subscribe to them (or, in many cases, who are given complimentary subscriptions) and are easily identifiable by their thick, glossy paper and ads for Polo, Prada and the kind of diamond jewelry that is usually called “encrusted.”

As a child of immigrants rejected from Europe, I have always been extremely proud of various facets of America's self-image that were distinctively non-European. Generally, American society has looked down upon inherited wealth, and our political rhetoric eschews social class. But now, America is developing one of the most impenetrable class hierarchies in the first world, and I find that the institutions I serve are non-trivially involved in furthering just the value system I find most abhorrantly un-American.

UPDATE: Here is a brief Time Magazine interview with Daniel Golden, author of “The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates”, and here is a brief comment on the social value of an Ivy League degree, also from the same issue of Time Magazine (thanks to Ruchira Paul for the pointer).
UPDATE: Here is an excellent article from this week's Economist on the "new gilded age" in America -- scroll down ("Pushy Parents, Driven Brats") to see a good discussion of the culpability American Universities have in the matter (thanks to  Axel Gelfert for the pointer).

Partisan favoritism sinks to disgusting new low (Hellie)

You're doubtless familiar with the K Street Project, in which the GOP encouraged business groups to fire Dem lobbyists and replace them with Republicans; with the GOP's purging  of Dems from the CIA; with the GOP's political requirements on working for the Coalition Provisional Authority; with the GOP's differential response to hurricane protection for blue and red areas; etc.

Now we learn that Republican, but not Democratic, congressional pages were warned against child sex predator ex-congressman Mark Foley. How disgusting is that?

When Woodward attacks (Hellie)

Apparently the Washington establishment is washing its hands of the GOPs insanity, corruption, and chaos, and pushing for a return to sane (if of course always elitist!) policy. Watch Bob Woodward's brutal series of revelations on the flagship 60 minutes here: the Bush gang is revealed to be constantly lying to the public, totally self-deluded and out of touch, paralyzed by infighting and misplaced loyalty (viz Cheney's famous "gratitude" to his first boss, Rumsfeld), disconnected from the military, etc. Not like that's news to us of course. Certainly this sort of rhetorical fusillade against the Cheney adminstration has not been seen before in such a high profile setting, to my knowledge -- especially not from the author of the hagiographic and enabling Bush at War. Perhaps Woodward has recently started reading this blog.

9/11 ... 68 B.C. (Edmundson)

The New York Times has run an interesting Op-Ed, "Pirates of the Mediterannean" (Sept. 30).  Nothing to do with Johnny Depp.  It draws the parallel that I've been ransacking Gibbon to find, between the post-events-of-9/11 West and the Decline of the Roman Empire.  Historical novelist Robert Harris writes:

In the autumn of 68 B.C. the world’s only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome’s port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped....

in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their democracy and their liberty. One cannot help wondering if history is repeating itself.

Consider the parallels....

and off we go.  "Alia iacta est," so to speak.