… in an Economic Principals post about Harvard professors and lucrative international consulting. The first claims that Lawrence Summers lost Harvard’s presidency in part because of his involvement in the Andrei Shleifer scandal:

After its mission to advise the Russian government on behalf of the US State department collapsed in 1997 amid a welter of conflict of interest charges, Harvard closed its Institute for International Development. After losing a long court battle [and having to pay the government tens of millions of dollars as a result], and partly as a consequence of it, the university relieved Lawrence Summers of his presidency (but made him a university professor) and revoked economics professor Andrei Shleifer’s endowed chair.

This is the first time UD‘s read someone connecting Summers’ loss of the presidency to the Shleifer case. I certainly hope it’s true, because I’ve been baffled for years, reading the details of that scandal, as to why Summers suffered no consequences. But maybe he did.

The second returns us to the much-discussed question of the Harvard-dominated Monitor Group, and its ties to Gaddafi:

In a statement last week, Monitor wrote that “just a few years ago many saw a period of promise in Libya.” That was certainly true in Cambridge. What dissenting Libyans in Tripoli witnessed was a parade of well-paid visitors flattering their half-mad dictator, and a squad of Harvard-connected consultants bent on creating a National Security Organization for the government, designed to augment the existing security apparatus with a new corps of MBA-trained personnel officers.

It does look pretty unseemly… Richly rewarded Harvard professors pumping up an extremely, I may almost say ostentatiously (to quote Lady Bracknell) half-mad dictator…

Oh yeah? What’s so special about ‘academia’? What’s the word refer to at all?

Millions of people scattered over America, in front of their computers, clicking on to a distance-ed course?

That’s what academia is – or is quickly becoming – in the United States. How is that activity taintable?

Or do you have in mind the opposite of this, the high-end of academia? UD‘s friend Janine Wedel calls this group of people the shadow elite. (Laura Rozen elaborates on the idea: “[T]here are people who are transparent [about] working for paid interest and [then] there are people who have reputations as being scholars at universities. It’s not clear that they are being funded perhaps by a consulting firm that is getting paid by [for instance] the Libyan government.”)

Academia is professors like Andrei Shleifer and Benjamin Barber and oodles of others, who span the globe to enrich themselves. What’s taintable about that?

Or maybe you mean our sports programs.

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(UD thanks Dirk for the sports link.)

… delivers a wonderful commentary on tonight’s Marketplace program. Subject: Why doesn’t the American Economics Association have a code of ethics? Especially given all the undisclosed corporate conflicts of interest among economists who advise the government?

An excerpt:

Long before the current financial crisis burst upon us, Harvard economist Andrei Shleifer was taken to court to face accusations of advancing his own financial interests while receiving support from U.S. taxpayers to advise Russians on the best way to develop a stock market.

Both Professor Shleifer and Harvard University agreed to settle the case with no admission of wrongdoing, but paid hefty financial penalties. The case quickly disappeared from sight.

But what could undermine our professional prestige more than suspicion of unethical behavior?

You remember Shleifer. Did Harvard ever come down hard on him!

Harvard University, Shleifer and the Justice department reached an agreement under which the university paid $26.5 million to settle the five-year-old lawsuit. Shleifer was also responsible for paying $2 million dollars worth of damages…

[Shleifer] remains on Harvard’s faculty. However, according to the Boston Globe, he has been stripped of his honorary title of Whipple V. N. Jones Professor of Economics.

Ouch! He doesn’t get to be Mr Whipple anymore!

… reminds us of the two biggest Larry Summers scandals at Harvard.  The blogger reminds us of this because he doesn’t think Summers should be considered for head of the Federal Reserve.  He doubts Summers could even make it through a Senate confirmation.

…He … was criticized for shielding his protégé Andrei Shleifer from accusations of conflict of interest when Shleifer sought lucrative commercial deals for himself as he headed a government-sponsored Harvard team to advise Russia on privatization. The university paid $26.5 million to the U.S. government to settle a lawsuit that Shleifer’s activities violated its contract.

This controversy, too, would resurface in any hearings on Summers’ fitness for the Fed job. Coupled with his own dubious fees from various Wall Street firms who wildly overpaid him for “advice” while he was aiding candidate Obama, the Shleifer affair would raise questions about Summers’ judgment in these matters. …

Both of these sleazy tales have been extensively covered on University Diaries.