"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
At the height of the Cold War in 1953, editors of the Harvard Crimson stole the copper ibis from atop the dome of the rival Harvard Lampoon's castle and presented it to a Soviet dignitary at the UN as a gift from American college students, with the suggestion it be placed atop the spire of Moscow University.
The Lampoon managed to get the ibis back after some diplomatic wrangling. The episode, recalled in a Harvard Magazine feature on campus pranks, represented neither the first nor last time the pince-nez-wearing copper bird was heisted: After the ornament went missing during a roof replacement in 1996, it was believed actually stolen. The "bird of parody" – or a likeness – returned to the tower two years ago.
Elsewhere in the Ivies:
The reparations committee has begun its work at Brown, where President Ruth Simmons, descendant of slaves, ponders the fates whereby her great-grandparents came in bondage to this land where she now is a university president (not an entirely unhappy progression, one might think, but someone must be made to pay).
This is no time for half-hearted measures: the university should be urged to really Do It Up Brown and give all of College Hill back to the Narragansetts.
Meantime, a Silicon Valley CEO, T J Rodgers, Dartmouth Class of '70, is making a noteworthy bid for a seat on his alma mater's board of trustees:
Plainly his is the insurgent candidacy. In contrast to the other three candidates, who were nominated by committee, Mr. Rodgers has his name on the ballot only because enough alumni petitioned for it. And he says that he is running because the college has lost its sense of mission as a small, liberal-arts college. In a nutshell, he proposes a re-emphasis on excellence, open debate and a diversity based on merit rather than gender or skin color.