Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith just said that his conference is going vote Martha Stark for comptroller.
Here’s a snippet of the exchange Smith had with a radio reporter who asked why they’re backing Stark.
Smith: “It’s a conference decision.”
Reporter: “But why is she more qualified than the other two?”
Smith: “Because Martha Read More
The power of Louis Begley’s Matters of Honor sneaks up on the reader softly. The story is told with a quiet control that deepens into silence, which is to say that it is as much constructed from suppressions and elisions as from anything actually stated. The sentences never deviate from their subdued precision, no matter Read More
Simkhe accuses me of ignoring a lot of other leftwing Jews’ critiques of the neocons, and assuming I’m the first Jew to notice. I’m sure you’re right; it’s not a discourse I’m that familiar with. One thing I’d note is that I talked to Phyllis Bennis a couple years back and, yes she knows the Read More
I’ve just gotten a copy of a 79-page paper called “Setting the Record Straight: A Response to Critics of ‘The Israel Lobby‘” by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. The scholars began circulating the rebuttal privately in December but have not published it on-line, I gather, because they are working on a book about the Read More
I’m actually shocked that Niall Ferguson, a Harvard professor, used Tolstoy’s opening line from Anna Karenina, “All happy families are alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” as the lead of his review of a book about business dynasties in my latest New Republic. It’s shocking that Ferguson would display such laziness Read More
Harvard Law School dean Elena Kagan has a message for New York lawyers.
“Like New York City,” she said in an annual state-of-the-school speech in September, “Harvard Law is in large part described by its scale and scope, and the energy and vibrancy that come with them.”
Harvard is the New York City of law Read More
Harvard Law School dean Elena Kagan has a message for New York lawyers.
“Like New York City,” she said in an annual state-of-the-school speech in September, “Harvard Law is in large part described by its scale and scope, and the energy and vibrancy that come with them.”
Harvard is the New York City of Read More
Author photos are never on oath, but George W.S. Trow’s make you wonder. Trow, who died last week in Naples at 63, possessed one of the more indescribable sensibilities to adorn The New Yorker, that most sensibility-driven of magazines. He was snob, moralist, wit, cultural critic, aesthete, nostalgist, lost boy, citizen. “Wonder was the grace Read More
Rep. Charlie Rangel, speaking at a Crain’s breakfast in midtown this morning, shared his thoughts on the draft and some Ivy League students.
“I spoke about the draft at Columbia, Harvard and Brown. These kids don’t even know there’s a war in Iraq.”
It doesn’t sound like he’s ready to let go of the issue Read More
In Esau’s Tears, a study of antisemitism, UCal/Santa Barbara prof Albert Lindemann quotes Harvard scholar Ruth Wisse as saying that antisemitism functions “independent of its object.” That is, it’s a malady that has nothing to do with the reality of Jews. But then Lindemann notes that Wisse herself says that the “dynamism” of Jews in Read More
