Break out the siren GIFs! Barron’s reports (behind a paywall) that the IRS is investigating Harvard Management Co., the embattled organization responsible for Harvard’s ever-dwindling finances in the era of the Allston boondoggle.

The Boston Globe indicates that the investigation, which includes a variety of institutions, may indeed be simply routine. Says a Harvard rep:

“The university has no reason to believe that the examination will have an adverse effect on the tax-exempt status of the university or any other aspect of the university’s operations.”

However, Harvard was chosen — one of only forty schools in the U.S., reports the Crimson – for further investigation after a routine “compliance questionnaire,” and there’s been a great deal of eyebrows raised over fiscal mismanagement (including, per the Crimson, executive compensation) at Harvard, as chronicled in Vanity Fair and here.

In the wake of public outcry post-bailout, Harvard’s tax-exempt status could potentially become a flashpoint — Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) has been criticized the University’s financial practices, and the compensation issue has shades of Merrill Lynch. Harvard could become an easy whipping boy for conservatives if the IRS report blows up.

Which we, of course, hope it does. We’re going to dig deeper on the Harvard financial issue on the days to come — know anything about Harvard’s finances, or the IRS’s decision to investigate? Email us at ivygate@gmail.com. All tips held in strictest confidence.

Boldly we Ivy Leaguers stride forth into the 2010s, leaving in our dust the dregs of this lame, lame year. Pause, though, to recall all those things that befell the Ivy League that we’re hopefully leaving in 2009 — and some good things, too! But when the fact that Amy Gutmann hasn’t found any time for impromptu photoshoots for the third year running is a good thing, we know we’re in trouble.

Yalies were told to repent for their (sexual, mainly!) sins, but it was the staffers of the Crimson who seemed naughtier to us. Cornell’s fiendish ticklers were the naughtiest of all! Hopefully they learn what “off-the-record GChat” means in 2k10. The raunchy Princetonians—now, you know, having nightly orgies in their dirty mixed-gender rooms—are the Cornelians’ spiritual heirs. Worst of all, their coed rooms are unaffiliated with eating clubs.

After the jump, big celebrity scoops of 2009, whose very “bigness” depends on how much you love Harry Potter films or voting Democratic.

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For those of you who love gory details, Bloomberg has a long-ass article about the imperiled state of Harvard’s finances, and it doesn’t look good for the school so recently reduced to peddling its prestige on polos. After pouring millions into the rat-plagued land deal known as Allston, Harvard made bets (under Lawrence Summers’s leadership) that national interest rates would go up. But, per Bloomberg, Harvard was instead stuck with a nearly $1 billion dollar bill, as well as an unfinished construction site across the Charles that seems more and more like a white elephant. Beyond the swaps debacle, the school’s endowment took a 30 percent hit — from $36.9 billion to $26 billion — and its cash account lost nearly $2 billion, Bloomberg reports. We all knew that Harvard’s finances were effed, but it still stings to see the raw numbers.

So how’d all this happen? One possible reason: the Harvard atmosphere of clubbiness and yes-man-ism. Bloomberg notes that other Ivy League schools, which tend to manage their funds through “corporations” that take major risks, have had similar crises recently:

Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, posted $38 million of collateral on $1.5 billion of swaps, according to a Moody’s report on the Ivy League School. Hanover, New Hampshire-based Dartmouth College, also in the Ivy League, didn’t post collateral on their swaps because their investment banks agreed to waive the requirement to win the business, according to a person familiar with the contracts.

That’s just great leadership and decision-making all around! Hilariously, the article sneaks in a description of current Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust as a “Civil War historian,” seeming to imply that without an economics background she’s in over her head. Given that the worst of this dates to the reign of Summers — former Treasury Secretary, current Obama economic butt-boy – that seems rather rich.

Scott McLemee has some harsh words for Princeton’s Cornel West. In reviewing West’s new memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, McLemee dissects West as a celebrity academic whose emphasis has long since shifted to the “celebrity” and not the “academic”.

McLemee dredges up all the lowlights of West’s recent career—(the spoken-word album, the Matrix cameos—almost unsportsmanlike, by the second paragraph

West described his projects as “bold,” “challenging” and “exciting.” These are adjectives, it must be said, better left in someone else’s hands…

Cornel West’s work was once bold, challenging, exciting. The past tense here is unavoidable.

West’s memoir sound like a bizarre piece of work, for sure. McLemee looks at one section on marriage terrifying to any and all students with crushes on Prof. West:

I will not let life or death stand in the way of this sublime and funky love that I crave!

One of the critic’s main grievances with the work itself: West’s choice to work with a coauthor in crafting what West calls a “‘conversational’ voice.” (Oh snap!) McLemee devotes an entire paragraph of his review to a strangely drawn-out comparison of West to David Hume, who “published numerous very popular essays with the help of a writer from Entertainment Weekly.”

After the jump, deep analysis and videos of insane professors.

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On Friday, top presidential economic advisor and Harvard ruiner Larry Summers said that the economy is improving. It’s a bold statement to make in the current climate. But Larry Summers had justification for his brave conclusion, according to the Associated Press:

Back in January, Lawrence Summers said, Google searches for “economic depression” had increased by a factor of four. Today, the searches are back to pre-crisis levels.

Palms, meet faces.

Lost in the hullabaloo over the recent Vanity Fair profile on Sarah Palin and her subsequent, if unrelated, resignation was the magazine’s article “Rich Harvard, Poor Harvard” by Nina Munk. The spread chronicles the massive expansion of Harvard’s wealth, which grew from $4.8 billion in 1990 to $36.9 billion and the rapid pace Harvard opened new buildings. But since October the endowment has lost $8 billion dollars, with President Faust warning it could lose as much as $11 billion by the end of fiscal 2008. Now trash cans overflow, shuttles are fewer, and athletes have to suffer through continental breakfasts.

“Rich Harvard, Poor Harvard” is full of blind quotes pointing fingers at which administrator screwed which pooch. No matter who is responsible, though, one thing is clear:

“They are completely fucked.”

To find out just how fucked Harvard is you have to buy the August edition of Vanity Fair. That is, unless you read our recap after the jump.

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Larry Summers, former Harvard president and current National Economic Council director, fell asleep in another meeting this afternoon. This time it evidently happened during one of President Obama’s boring, hope-laced orations. Now who says he lacks social skills?

Tonight, the audience of a free student showing of Watchmen in Cambridge erupted in applause at a line that Nixon actually sort of did deliver:

“Let’s see those bastards at Harvard figure a way out of that one.”

Oh crap, it’s coming true. The movie is f’ing long, almost an hour per upcoming year of recession according to one Harvard drop-out. At least this country’s last depression was also Prohibition, and anyone with gumption could run rum for money.

What are recent graduates supposed to do now? There are absolutely no jobs, and don’t even think about grad school. Finance positions, Ivy gravy until painfully recently, are down more than 70 percent. Which is poetic justice: the hotshot genius “quants” were playing Jenga with the world economy, and they were drunk. And yet, who is supposed to save us? Harvard’s Larry Summers and Dartmouth’s Tim Geithner (among others). Maybe that explains why Geithner’s own government is pulling the rug out from under him. That, or they know the truth.

The Watchman reference makes more sense after the jump.

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The Larry Summers saga is one for the ages.  Like a young Anakin, this son of economics who rose from the deserts of New Haven now casts his (rotund) shadow on the universe once again.  A recent New York Times retrospective depicts Summers and his new position at the helm of the Obama economic team as a phoenix rising from the flames of defeat to save a broken nation.  (Star Wars references stop here.)  Sure, Summers said some rather distasteful things about women.  Yeah, he was never the popular kid at school.  But as one fellow president has shown, bullies get jobs whether people shake their hands or not.

Just like in the Simpsons episode where Nelson falls for Lisa, Larry Summers has shown some signs of rehabilitation.  (Summers’ wife, a professor in Harvard Department of English and American Literature Department, is named Elisa.)  As the Times praises the man and the Crimson keeps up their Larry-guard, nobody really knows whether to welcome the man back to powerful office or just cower in the corner of the playground as usual.

So what’s the deal with the boy genius turned girl-bashing old man who chased away half of Harvard’s Af-Am Department?  He’s actually a pretty good economist and kind of a decent guy.  His John Bates Clark medal, an award up there with the Nobel in the field of economics, should grant the man some credibility.  Meanwhile, Summers tossed buckets of Harvard’s hefty endowment at a financial aid overhaul program—a move matched by many elite universities—while his predecessor at the Treasury, Robert Rubin of CitiBank failure fame, just made buckets of money.  And descriptions like this of Lawrence the Terrible turned Pal from Mass Hall are downright sad:

After his five-year Harvard presidency, Mr. Summers at first seemed to have trouble letting go, colleagues and staff members say. He was on sabbatical but still roamed campus, especially the residential houses and pizza parties of undergraduates, who adored him so much they gave him a standing ovation at the next year’s graduation.

Praise granted, Larry Summers does sort of upset people.  No-Drama-Obama surely knows this and anticipates a proper performance when Summers makes the move back inside the Beltway.  Read why it might be a match made in heaven after the jump.

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After this post on the twisted lives of Ivy League power couples, we realized we had a situation on our hands. An L-Word “The Chart” sort of situation, revealing for the first time exactly how close Anne-Marie Slaughter is to Heidi Fleiss, connecting the dots all the way from Larry Summers to Kevin Bacon. Kevin Bacon, people! That means we win.