We will pass with little notice or comment the weird exploits of Eldo Kim, the 20-year-old Harvard University sophomore accused of emailing a bomb threat that cleared out Harvard Yard this week during exams, apparently because be wasn’t ready for his. How completely devoid of ethics does one have to be to do something like this? And how dumb! He undermines the efforts of all his fellow students who are prepared for their exams, causes fear and panic on campus, causes disruption, inconvenience and expense to the university, and all because he either didn’t study sufficiently or wasn’t prepared to fake his way through an exam like most students, all while risking arrest, trial and conviction for a serious crime that will harm his future prospects far more than any poor exam performance might. Today we learned that Kim was a psychology major studying partisan taunting. He was worried about passing an exam in partisan taunting?

Adding to the strangeness, a controversy erupted this week when veteran Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield expressed his outrage that a recent study had revealed that the most common grade given to Harvard students is A, a practice, he says (and correctly so) that penalizes genuinely outstanding students and allows slackers to slide through Old Ivy without breaking a sweat. Jeff Neal, the hapless Harvard spokesman assigned the job of spinning this revelation, confirmed the accuracy of the Mansfield’s claim, and said, maybe without giggling: Continue reading →