The High Cost of Education

The story of the day on the Iran front is the publication of what its authors titled “An Open Letter to the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

It was signed by 47 Republican senators led by freshman Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, who, as reported by LobeLog, received nearly $1 million in advertising support from Bill Kristol’s Emergency Committee for Israel in the closing days of last November’s campaign. The basic thrust of the letter is to warn the recipients that once President Barack Obama leaves office, any deal that he and his P5+1 partners may have reached with Iran regarding the latter’s nuclear program could be revoked “with the stroke of a pen.”

There are already lots of arguments breaking out over whether the basis of the letter was an accurate statement of U.S. law.

One prominent Harvard law professor who also served as a top Justice Department official under George W. Bush, Jack Goldsmith, called at least one of the letter’s assertions about the ratification process “embarrassing.” It was especially embarrassing not only because Cotton graduated from Harvard Law School, but also because Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who earned a M.A. and PhD in international law at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver — Condoleezza Rice’s alma mater — felt compelled to correct Cotton’s understanding of Washington’s international legal obligations.

It would be interesting to hear more from Sen. Tom Cotton's profs at Harvard Law School about their prized graduate.  I wonder what they would say about him?  Off the record, of course.

I don't think enough credit is given to how institutions like Harvard, Yale, et al, protect their own.  I imagine it is akin to the way a public university protects its prized athletes.  That is, you'd have to be a blithering imbecile to fail if you simply show up every day and make an effort in class.

In the same way the public school will protect its investment in its gifted "student-athletes" to maintain status in the business of big-time college football, an elite private school will protect its rich-dunces in order to maintain a role in power politics.

Athletes are helped to survive college to exert their gifts in the name of the institution, thus enriching it; talentless rich kids survive college to pass their present/future gifts of money to said institution, thereby maintaining its wealth.


TS