Harvard University is at the centre of an academic and political scandal after three prominent members of its psychiatry department were accused of breaking conflict-of-interest rules by failing to declare millions of dollars in consulting fees from drugs manufacturers.

harvard's humanitarian hawks:Should a human rights center at the nation’s most prestigious university be collaborating with the top US general in Iraq in designing the counter-insurgency doctrine behind the current military surge?
(...) It’s not that counter-insurgency Harvard-style has been effective, as proven by the continued suicide bombings, sniper activity and increasing casualties among US forces since the “surge” began. It is an academic formulation to buttress and justify a permanent engagement in counter-terrorism wars.
(...) If that is the limit of legitimate debate at Harvard, the Pentagon occupation of the academic mind may last much longer than its occupation of Iraq, and may require an intellectual insurgency in response.

harvard needs a living wage, testimony two:
I clean 8am to 4pm at MIT and then 6pm to 10pm at Harvard. I've been cleaning at Harvard about 5 years now. I came to Cambridge from Barbados in '83, and ever since I first come here, I was always working two full0time jobs. 80 hours a week. I always do cleaning. always liked cleaning. The thing lots of work places try to do now is they try to get away from paying a lot of full-time workers. They see if they can cut the staff in half and get the same quantity of work done. and then they want part-tie people, because then they don't have to pay the benefits. That's just like what Harvard do.
I leave my house at about 6:30 in the morning every weekday. and I don't get back until 10:30 at night, so that's a lot of time from home. Sometimes it's not enough sleep. Depends on how the body feels. In the morning, your body wants to sleep but your mind tells you, you got to go, you got to go. I have three kids - 4, 9, and 21. On the weekends, I do spend a lot of time with my kids. I try not ot give to myself, to improve my kids.
Harvard is great as far as school is concerned, but in our department, it's not great for working. We work for a company - Harvard is a company. Sometimes a name fools a lot of people. When you say Harvard or MIT, you have a great name, but when you see the environment and you seewhat's going on, you're not happy just to have a good name. When people hear you're working at Harvard, they think you get a ot of money because it's a big college. But as far as I'm concerned, the working environment is bad. Right now, one guy's out sick, nearly seven weeks and he didn't get a paycheck yet. Every day they tell him, it's in the mail. How long will it take a paycheck to go from one part of Cambridge to another? You have to work with the worker to make him happy in the environment he's working.
You have people who don't want to talk because they scared to lose their job, or scared the supervisor is going to put more work on them. And you get treated sometimes different depending on where you come from. The boss is no going to say, because you from Haiti, I don't like you. I give you more work, but his actions speak louder than words. The money here in Cambridge is better than in Barbados, but I didn't really come here from the money. I come here because my family lives in this country. My grandfather lived in this country from the time he was a boy, so he sent for my mother and she brought me here. I used to live in Cambridge with my grandfather, but now I live in Malden.
It's bettter at MIT, because MIT is a better environment than Harvard. Sometimes my supervisor here talks to me, live we were talking about how to clean this desk, and I tell him so and so and he said, If you don't like it, you can go home, meaning to quit. He just talk down to me, so sometimes I get so mad. MIT pays better than Harvard. Other placdes for part-time pay more money than Harvard. Harvard needs to pay a little bit more money, because they want the work done nice and clean. No specks. As I say, I don't mind that, but pay me something to do that.
I haven't gotten a good raise since I've been at Harvard. I still don't get $10/hour. They freeze our raises for three years. You never get enough money, but you try to live with that, and you try to make ends meet. I put my money togethter with my wife to pay the bills. But other guys whose wives don't work or who don't make a good salary at their other job, I know they have a hard time. Sometimes they don't have money to buy groceries. I know one individual that works here - sometimes he can't buy any meat because he's back on his rent. But we try to strive to be thankful. We can't do no more.
-- Neil, Law School Janitor

harvard needs a living wage, testimony one:
I work at Harvard from 7:00 'til 4:00. Then I go to the Supermarket - that's my second job, bagging groceries. I do that 'til 10:30pm. I'm home by 11:30pm. In bed by midnight. Yeah, I'm tired physically, and I;m tired up here, in the head. I'm at the point where things start to bug me that normally don't. Sometimes I just need to back off and cool down a little bit before it's too much. I don't need to be a 50k man. All I'm talking about is a living. Basic stuff - a roof over my head, a meal. Right now, I've got that, but only because I'm at the supermarket 'til 10:20 each night... Of course, sometimes you have a day that's not too bad. But boy, I'll tell you, there are a lot of days when you're walking around in a fog. You're just pooped out. You just can't think on it too much. You just go. You run like hell... See, managers always try to cut expenses, and they see wages as expenses. They're trained that way. They get trapped in that mindset, and they forget that it's people they're talking about. It's a person, a guy, trying to live on that.
--Lewis, Harvard Custodian

hezbollah and the media:
Kalb claims the media gave Hezbollah, which he calls "a closed sect" (that doesn't sound too good) "total control of the daily message of journalism and propaganda" and this fact "victimized Israel" because the latter is 'an open society" whereas Hezbollah is " a closed society, that engages in " undemocratic control of the media", is militant, secretive, a religiously fundamentalist sect, a state within a state, subnational(not good)'Party of God", , resisting 'the infidel' and seeking 'divine victory' and supported by Iran and Syria (!) )and, if that is not enough, is similar to the Madhi army. Kalb never mentions that Israel is supported by the US to the tune of 15.1 million dollars a day or 300 times more than the CIA claims Hezbollah gets in foreign aid each year and receives 83% of its weapons from the US.
(...) The same job the UN has been tasked with doing since 1978, as it has documented more than 18,000 Israeli violations of Lebanese territory including its air and sea space.The Harvard study complains that the UN did not report on Hezbollah movements, thereby exhibiting anti-Israel bias. Fact check: Excuse me Marvin but if the IDF with the latest US technology and night vision equipment, scores of cameras mounted on Israeli Heron, Searcher Mk II, or Hermes 450 drones, and close up satellite imaging could not find Hezbollah fighters the UN observers along the blue line dodging Israeli shells were unlikely to. (On July 26 Israel did bomb the UN post near Khaim killing four UN observers-Canadian, Chinese, and Finnish) Moreover, the UN mission is to report crossings of the 'blue line' (only Israel was doing that), not to survey what is going on inside Lebanon.
(...) Kalb's research found that "the media showed too much destruction of Lebanon and in its reporting did not credit Israel's argument that international law allowed Israel to bomb civilian areas if soldiers were hiding within these homes." Israel used this same argument during its 1978, 1982, 1993, 1996, invasions, as it does in Palestine today. In the summer of 2006 it was very easy for the media to find evidence in Lebanon. 950,000 civilians were bombed out of their villages and the 32,000 homes destroyed and were crowded into public parks in Beirut and schools and all over north Lebanon and Syria. The media had lots of eye witness sources regarding the destruction of Lebanon and they properly reported what they learned. Kalb cites Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni's statement to the The New York Times, following the slaughter at Qana, "When you go to sleep with a missile, you might find yourself waking up to another kind of missile" as authority. Israel later admitted there were no missiles fired from Qana, and no Hezbollah in the area, but that it had made a mistake in killing those 28 civilians hiding in the shelter. Kalb might want to inform diplomat Livni that none of the 10 adults or 18 children had gone to sleep with a missile at Qana.
(...) Hezbollah was not hiding from Israeli forces among the civilians. Contrariwise, they were eager to engage Israel every chance they got. Typically Hezbollah fired their missiles from camouflaged areas such as banana groves, orchards, dense foliage, bunkers, holes in the ground, sides of rocky hills and valleys not from houses or towns. They knew very well that Israel would not hesitate to bomb civilian houses which they have been doing since the late 1960's. After a particular mission, Hezbollah fighters would ditch their weapons and try to sleep. Only rarely making their way back to their villages to check on their families or property.
(...) With respect to Israel's admitted mistake of bombing the Qana shelter, according to NGO-Lebanon, Israel made 6,979 'mistakes' in bombing during the 33 day July War. Maybe Kalb finds that statistic acceptable given that Israel launched more that 17,000 attacks at more than 8,000 targets, including 300,000 artillery shells and approximately 4.8 million cluster bombs. The juggernaut international Israeli press operation did. Most of the media did not.
(...) When one side trespasses, captures soldiers or commits a hostile act that does not allow the other side, in retaliation, to slaughter hundreds of civilians and destroy much of the country. The related principle of international law is the obligation to discriminate between civilian and military targets. Israel's responsive killing of more than 1,250 civilians, nearly 1/4 of them children, many fleeing in convoys waving white flags, or following Israeli orders to flee, or hiding in cellars with no fighters in the area, was indeed disproportionate to the capturing of the two soldiers. The international media properly reported these war crimes.
(...) Kalb fails to mention the reams of available material on the subject of Israel's illegal "disproportionate" bombing, which he denies occurred, including many testimonies from the Israeli military to the effect that Israel "lost it" early in the conflict, after being repeating ambushed and not being able to locate Hezbollah fighters and in a vengeful frenzy carpet bombed much of south Lebanon creating a free fire killing zone.
(...) "What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombswe fired 1,800 cluster bombs, containing over 1.2 million cluster bomblets" (IDF head of just one rocket unit quoted in Ha'aretz on 9/12/06)
(...) "In the last 72 hours we fired all the munitions we had, all at the same spot, we didn't even alter the directions of the gun. Friends of mine in the battalion told me they also fired everything in the last three days-ordinary shells, clusters, whatever they had." (Israeli reservist in an artillery battalion, quoted in Ha'aretz on 9/8/06)
(...) The reason is that Hezbollah films most of its battles live because over the years Israel undercounts its causalities and over counts Hezbollah's (Kalb uses Israel's claim of 600 Hezbollah killed in the July war when the actual figure is 264).
(...) Al Manar viewership is often higher in Israel during conflicts than Israeli stations because Israelis have greater confidence in Al Manar for truthful reporting than their own government fed stations. Despite this well known fact, scholar Kalb, perhaps recalling his days as a reporter in the USSR, smears Al-Manar: "for reports and information about the war, Al-Manar was to Hezbollah what Pravda was to the Soviet Union." Israeli TV viewers don't agree.

on "sacco and vanzetti" teaching us about our own time (zinn):
The case of Sacco and Vanzetti revealed, in its starkest terms, that the noble words inscribed above our courthouses, “Equal Justice Before the Law,” have always been a lie. Those two men, the fish peddler and the shoemaker, could not get justice in the American system, because justice is not meted out equally to the poor and the rich, the native born and the foreign born, the orthodox and the radical, the white and the person of color. And while injustice may play itself out today more subtly and in more intricate ways than it did in the crude circumstances of the Sacco and Vanzetti case, its essence remains.
(...) When Eugene Debs and a thousand others were sent to prison during World War I, under the Espionage Act, was it because they were guilty of espionage? Hardly. They were socialists who spoke out against the war. In affirming the ten-year sentence of Debs, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes made it clear why Debs must go to prison. He quoted from Debs’ speech: “The master class has always declared the wars, the subject class has always fought the battles.”
(...) A study showed that 70% of the people in New York state prisons came from seven neighborhoods in New York City—neighborhoods of poverty and desperation.
(...) At the beginning of the trial, Judge Thayer (who, speaking to a golf acquaintance, had referred to the defendants during the trial as “those anarchist bastards”) said to the jury: “Gentlemen, I call upon you to render this service here that you have been summoned to perform with the same spirit of patriotism, courage, and devotion to duty as was exhibited by our soldier boys across the seas.”
(...) Sacco told the court, on sentencing: “I know the sentence will be between two classes, the oppressed class and the rich class…That is why I am here today on this bench, for having been of the oppressed class.”
(...) Sacco wrote to his son Dante: “So son, instead of crying, be strong, so as to be able to comfort your mother…take her for a long walk in the quiet country, gathering wild flowers here and there, resting under the shade of trees…But remember always, Dante, in this play of happiness, don’t you use all for yourself only…help the persecuted and the victim because they are your better friends…. In this struggle of life you will find more love and you will be loved.”
(...)When Vanzetti was arrested, he had a leaflet in his pocket advertising a meeting to take place in five days. It is a leaflet that could be distributed today, all over the world, as appropriate now as it was the day of their arrest. It read:

You have fought all the wars. You have worked for all the capitalists. You have wandered over all the countries. Have you harvested the fruits of your labors, the price of your victories? Does the past comfort you? Does the present smile on you? Does the future promise you anything? Have you found a piece of land where you can live like a human being and die like a human being? On these questions, on this argument, and on this theme, the struggle for existence, Bartolomeo Vanzetti will speak.

That meeting did not take place. But their spirit still exists today with people who believe and love and struggle all over the world.

on "sacco and vanzetti" teaching us about our own time (zinn):
The case of Sacco and Vanzetti revealed, in its starkest terms, that the noble words inscribed above our courthouses, “Equal Justice Before the Law,” have always been a lie. Those two men, the fish peddler and the shoemaker, could not get justice in the American system, because justice is not meted out equally to the poor and the rich, the native born and the foreign born, the orthodox and the radical, the white and the person of color. And while injustice may play itself out today more subtly and in more intricate ways than it did in the crude circumstances of the Sacco and Vanzetti case, its essence remains.
(...) When Eugene Debs and a thousand others were sent to prison during World War I, under the Espionage Act, was it because they were guilty of espionage? Hardly. They were socialists who spoke out against the war. In affirming the ten-year sentence of Debs, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes made it clear why Debs must go to prison. He quoted from Debs’ speech: “The master class has always declared the wars, the subject class has always fought the battles.”
(...) A study showed that 70% of the people in New York state prisons came from seven neighborhoods in New York City—neighborhoods of poverty and desperation.
(...) At the beginning of the trial, Judge Thayer (who, speaking to a golf acquaintance, had referred to the defendants during the trial as “those anarchist bastards”) said to the jury: “Gentlemen, I call upon you to render this service here that you have been summoned to perform with the same spirit of patriotism, courage, and devotion to duty as was exhibited by our soldier boys across the seas.”
(...) Sacco told the court, on sentencing: “I know the sentence will be between two classes, the oppressed class and the rich class…That is why I am here today on this bench, for having been of the oppressed class.”
(...) Sacco wrote to his son Dante: “So son, instead of crying, be strong, so as to be able to comfort your mother…take her for a long walk in the quiet country, gathering wild flowers here and there, resting under the shade of trees…But remember always, Dante, in this play of happiness, don’t you use all for yourself only…help the persecuted and the victim because they are your better friends…. In this struggle of life you will find more love and you will be loved.”
(...)When Vanzetti was arrested, he had a leaflet in his pocket advertising a meeting to take place in five days. It is a leaflet that could be distributed today, all over the world, as appropriate now as it was the day of their arrest. It read:

You have fought all the wars. You have worked for all the capitalists. You have wandered over all the countries. Have you harvested the fruits of your labors, the price of your victories? Does the past comfort you? Does the present smile on you? Does the future promise you anything? Have you found a piece of land where you can live like a human being and die like a human being? On these questions, on this argument, and on this theme, the struggle for existence, Bartolomeo Vanzetti will speak.

That meeting did not take place. But their spirit still exists today with people who believe and love and struggle all over the world.