ROGER SIMON COLUMN
FEBRUARY 28, 2005
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - - I have been here only a few weeks, but I have already developed the Harvard "umm."
It goes like this: A friend calls me on my cell phone and asks why he has not seen me at this or that Washington press conference.
"Actually, I am, umm, sort of out of town," I say.
"Where?" he says.
"Umm, Boston," I say.
"Boston?" he says. "What the hell are you doing in Boston? Have you switched jobs?"
" No, no," I say. "I still work in Washington, but I am away on a fellowship for several weeks. In, umm, Boston."
"What fellowship?"
"Umm, the Institute of Politics fellowship at the John F. Kennedy School of Government," I say.
"Is that at the Kennedy Library?" he says.
"No," I say. "The Kennedy Library is in Boston, but I, actually, I am at, umm, Cambridge."
"Cambridge! Where in Cambridge?"
At this point I usually break down.
"Harvard," I say. "I am spending a semester at Harvard."
Laughter always follow. "How can you be at Harvard?" my friend says. "If you are bright, you have been hiding it effectively all these years. Didn't you get thrown out of high school?"
"Not actually thrown out," I say. "I was voted Most Likely to Commit a Felony, but they let me graduate."
"And now you are a student at Harvard!" my friend says.
"Umm, actually, I am conducting a study group primarily for undergraduates," I say. "We discuss politics and the media and stuff like that. And I get to monitor classes."
"Isn't the president of Harvard in big trouble right now for saying something about why women don't do better in the sciences?" my friend says.
"To quote Henry Kissinger," I say, "academic fights are so vicious because the stakes are so small."
"What does that mean?" my friend says.
"I don't know," I say. "But people spend a lot of time quoting other people up here."
"Don't you feel a little out of place?" my friend asks.
"No, I feel a lot out of place," I say. "And I already have proved to everyone how dumb I am."
"That didn't take long," my friend says. "What did you do?"
"I had a choice between coming up here in the Spring Semester or the Fall Semester and I chose Spring," I say.
"What's wrong with Spring?"
"Nothing except for the snow, sleet and freezing rain," I say. "It is the 'spring' semester in name only. The weatherman said on TV the other day that the Boston area has had 29 storms so far this year. Twenty-nine and the year is barely two months old! Smart people pick the fall semester."
"But are you enjoying yourself at least?"
"Enormously," I say. "I knew I would. When I was out of college a few years and working at the Chicago Sun-Times, we hired a guy who had just graduated from Harvard and so, naturally, I was prepared to hate him."
"Naturally," my friend says.
"So he shows up at work on his first day and we are chit-chatting and he asks me where I went to school and I say the University of Illinois and he asks if I worked on the school paper and I say yes and he asks if anybody famous ever worked on the school paper and I say, 'Roger Ebert!' And then I ask him, 'Anybody famous every work on your school paper?' And he says, 'Franklin Delano Roosevelt.' "
"Ha!" my friend says. "Pretty smart kid!"
"Yeah," I say. "After all, he went to, umm, Harvard.