Harvard, Meta, and veritas

From The Washington Post (gift link):

A prominent disinformation scholar has accused Harvard University of dismissing her to curry favor with Facebook and its current and former executives in violation of her right to free speech.

Joan Donovan claimed in a filing with the Education Department and the Massachusetts attorney general that her superiors soured on her as Harvard was getting a record $500 million pledge from Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg’s charitable arm.

The detail that really got me:

Donovan says in her complaint that [Harvard Kennedy School dean Doug] Elmendorf emailed her after the October donors’ meeting and asked to discuss her Facebook work and “focus on a few key issues drawn from the questions raised by the Dean’s Council and my own limited reading of current events.”

He wrote that he wanted to hear from her about “How you define the problem of misinformation for both analysis and possible responses (algorithm-adjusting or policymaking) when there is no independent arbiter of truth (in this country or others) and constitutional protections of speech (in some countries)?”

Donovan said in the filing that Elmendorf’s use of the phrase “arbiters of truth” alarmed her because Facebook uses the same words to explain its reluctance to take actions against false content.

That there is “no independent arbiter of truth” doesn’t mean that there are no arbiters, no facts. I like what Robert Caro says about facts and truth.

Harvard’s motto, of course, is veritas. It’s everywhere on the campus.

*

June 11, 2024: At The Chronicle of Higher Education, Stephanie M. Lee revisits this story: “Is This Famous Misinformation Expert Spreading Misinformation?” An excerpt:

Here was a narrative with the kernels of some undeniable truths. Meta does funnel money into higher ed; Harvard is cozy with the 1 percent. But a believable story is not necessarily a true one. Donovan presented no firsthand evidence that Meta was behind her ouster. And when I tried to get to the bottom of what actually happened at Harvard, a different narrative emerged from interviews, documents, recordings, texts, and emails.

Munger mega-dorm nixed?

The dream of a U Cal Santa Barbara mega-dorm, built to the specifications of a billionaire donor. with thousands of students living in single-occupancy windowless rooms, appears to have died with the donor, Charlie Munger. The Chronicle of Higher Education has the story.

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A UCSB mega-dorm

[In truth the rooms wouldn’t have been windowless. Ninety-percent of rooms were to have “virtual windows” with a “circadian-rhythm control system” to simulate daylight. Munger also described the faux windows as faux portholes, likening them to what those on a Disney cruise ship, where a “starfish comes by and winks at your kid.”]

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Words of the year Now with rizz.

Generations and a settlement house

[179 Gold Street, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Just a human interest shot. I think this photograph holds three generations, maybe four. On the stoop, a daughter, I think (are those saddle shoes?), a mother, and a son. At sidewalk level, a grandmother tending to a carriage. I assume there’s a baby in it. (Is the daughter also a mother?) That face in the window: who knows?

Looking at this photograph, I remembered the Robert Caro maxim “Turn every page,” which for purposes of these tax-photograph posts, I’ve turned into “Walk the whole block.” Aha: there are more humans next door.

[179, 181, and 183 Gold Street. Click for a much larger view.]

But what does the signage say? The placard affixed to no. 179 is a For Sale sign. The three placards on nos. 181 and 183 are beyond my figuring out. But Brooklyn Newsstand came to the rescue:

[“Open Memorial to Mons. White; Catholic Settlement Association Holds Appropriate Formal Opening.” The Tablet, May 18, 1918.]

I can find no obituary for William J. White in a Brooklyn paper or in The New York Times. But I did find a few other items about Monsignor White and the settlement house. A brief backstory:

[Handbook to Catholic Historical New York City (1927).]

Two more items:

[The Catholic Charities Review (June 1917).]

[The Catholic Charities Review (September 1918). Reformatted from the original. Click for a larger view.]

And this tribute, a prelude to a motion to pass a resolution to honor Monsignor White’s memory:

[Annual Report of the [New York] State Board of Charities for the Year 1911 (1912).]

The Dr. White Memorial Settlement flourished through the 1940s. Short articles in Brooklyn papers make note of summer camps, summer school, health care, Christmas parties, and clubs devoted to citizenship, dancing, English, music, sewing, and other endeavors. The last mention I can find is from 1947.

Nos. 179, 181, and 183 are no longer standing. Those buildings and many others gave way to the Farragut Houses, a public housing project, begun in 1945, completed in 1952.

[1940 Brooklyn directory listing. From Stephen P. Morse’s website.]

For my friend Fresca: the next listing in that directory is for a Catholic Thrift Shoppe at 195 Court Street.

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More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard) : The settlement movemment (Wikipedia)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Stan Newman, the puzzle’s editor, is a Stumper indeed. I wrote down 8:51 when I started work on puzzle (last night) and when I looked up (finished the puzzle) it was 9:46. The clues that most helped me along the way:

14-D, ten letters, “#5 in continuous Senate longevity.”

15-A, eight letters, “Literally, ’long mountain.’“

24-D, ten letters, “Most populous double-landlocked nation.”

34-D, eight letters, Troilus and Cressida warrior.”

I had 34-D right off — that was my starting point. But those other three clues (and perhaps 34-D, if you haven’t read Troilus) make for a large dollop of arbitrary trivia: ah yes, #5, not #4 or #6. And yes, this puzzle has triple-stacks of eight and triple-columns of ten, and only sixty-six answers.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

3-D, four letters, “Shortening.” Got LARD?

4-D, eight letters, “Rattled.” That’s a past-tense verb, right?

10-D, eight letters, “Pain med brand.” Sorry, but this just doesn’t feel right in a crossword.

13-D, ten letters, “Eleanor Roosevelt, to Edith.” I first thought the clue must be about a lover. Nope.

15-A, fifteen letters, “Negotiation station.” One part of the answer is more obvious than the other.

16-A, six letters, “Roast participant.” I was thinking of Dean Martin and his dais.

17-A, eight letters, “Reviewers’ hangout.” Do they still have one?

20-D, seven letters, “Spin’s #2 ll-time greatest band (2002).” Again with the trivia.

24-A, five letters, “Cheery.” Wut?

25-D, ten letters, “Rhapsody in Blue, as first written.” Yes, okay, but not as first intended.

39-A, five letters, “Queue component.” No idea what the answer means. Now I understand.

44-A, “Word from the Greek for ‘unequal.’” Somehow it seemed familiar, but only after I got it from crosses.

51-D, three letters, “Porcine purloiner of poesy.” Is it possible to misread this clue as referring to a poetry-stealing pig? I am living proof.

53-A, eight letters, “Light work.” Clever.

My favorite in this puzzle: 52-A, eight letters, “Attractions you’ve never seen.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

The Santos vote

Did my member of Congress vote to expel George Santos from Congress?

Of course she didn’t!

Did yours? The Washington Post has the results (gift link).

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All OCA Mary Miller posts (Pinboard)

A 2024 calendar

Free: a 2024 calendar, in large legible Gill Sans, three months per page. The calendar includes all the days, weeks, and months of the year, with days painstakingly distributed across weeks and weeks painstakingly distributed across months. Minimal holiday markings: New Year’s Day, MLK Day, Juneteenth, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas.

You can download the PDF from this Dropbox link.

[I’ve been making calendars in the Mac app Pages since late 2009, when the cost of outfitting my house with Field Notes calendars began to feel unjustifiable.]

Clockwatchers

[Nancy, December 1, 2023. Click for a larger view.]

This panel in today’s Olivia Jaimes’s Nancy brings back memories. In third grade I was accused of being a clockwatcher. And I think it was when the little hand was at 58 or 59, and the big hand was, for all practical purposes, already at 3. Give me a break.

Nancy’s teacher is a more reasonable sort: “But hey, at least she’s practicing the time-telling unit we’re learning.” Also more gullible, as today’s final panel reveals.

My third-grade teacher was a piece of work. It wasn’t until 2020 that I learned about her husband.

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All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

"Orlovius was displeased”

Hermann begins a new chapter:

Vladimir Nabokov, Despair (1966).

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All OCA Nabokov posts (Pinboard)

[If you happen to watch the Fassbinder adaptation of the novel, in which Hermann is a character among characters, not a protagonist writing his story, you’ll discover that this kind of meta comedy is nowhere to be found.]

How to improve writing (no. 116)

On the main page of The New York Times now:

The Sikh activist at the center of an alleged assassination plot said there was no question that India wanted him dead.

No. He wasn’t at the center of the alleged plot; he was its target. So:

The Sikh activist targeted in an alleged assassination plot said there was no question that India wanted him dead.

Everyone makes mistakes, but when you’re The New York Times, the mistakes should not be so glaring.

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All OCA how to improve writng posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 116 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]