BY THIS RECKONING, WE'RE ESTABLISHING THE FRONTIER. Vanity Vair reports on Harvard's cash crunch.

Ignoring the agitators as best he could, Michael Smith, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard’s biggest division, called the meeting to order. Sitting casually on a desk, wearing jeans and a short-sleeved polo shirt, Smith, a professor of engineering and applied sciences, and a former competitive swimmer, looked more like an athlete than an administrator. He got straight to the point: his division—which includes Harvard College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences—was facing a budget deficit of $220 million.

I approve of agitators who make a banner with

AV AR

ICE

inside the shield with the three books.

It is, however, that $220m I wish to address. The organization chart is different at Northern Illinois University, but the operating budget of our College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, inclusive of external funding, is on the order of $100m, if memory serves. Their deficit could cover our expenses, and we may have more students on probation than they admit, to boot.