But this essay is not really about the resignation of Larry Summers. It is about Harvard University, the corporation which has an endowment of at least $26 billion. So fat is Harvard that when Summers made the mistake of saying, “inquiring minds want to know whether there are differences between men and women in regards to their scientific and mathematical abilities”, he had to not only apologise over and over again, but allocate $50 million to help women scientists study how women do science at Harvard. Talk about a boondoggle! The faculty at Harvard, so well-fed and so in love with themselves that they don’t mind the wads of money thrown at them at the silliest pretext, seek to assuage their guilty souls by going round the world proclaiming their interest in alleviating poverty and removing discrimination. They do it well according to their standards: publishing a lot of books and presenting a lot of papers.

Still, what about that $26 billion endowment, and the plans that Summers had for raising another five billion dollars (yes, billion) in the next few years? Harvard has so much money that it paid its money managers about $35 million a year to play the stock market. I have not compared numbers, but that would make it most probably the highest salary any executive anywhere in the world earned in a year. In 2003, with about $20 billion in endowment, Harvard’s top six money managers made about $108 million in salaries. And if you go to the Harvard University website, it says of its budget last year: income, $2.6 billion, expenditure, $2.6 billion. That means the money managers must have earned Harvard about nine or ten per cent dividend on the $26 billion investment. Even a one per cent drop in earnings would have meant $250-260 million less in earnings. Hmm, would it not make sense then to pay the money managers those fat sums? So goes the rationale of many of those with deep pockets who contribute regularly to the fat lady’s well being. So goes the rationale for paying fat salaries to Harvard faculty. Summers’ own salary at Harvard hovered around $500,000, which compared to what the money managers made is a small fraction, but more equitable. Maybe, he should just have played the stock market instead for Harvard.

But again, the issue is complex and problematic. Should people give more and more money to richer and richer corporations (which private universities are)? America is a “class society”, and the gap between the classes has continued to widen, and the economy is getting more and more lop-sided. The rich no