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When we heard this afternoon that controversial Harvard President Larry Summers announced he'll leave the university's top office at the end of the semester, we knew something significant had happened. Lacking any Ivy in our backgrounds, however, we also knew we'd never be able to make any sense of it. This is clearly the sort of thing one will be expected to know about when one travels in smarty-pants media-y circles in this city, and we realized we needed help. We turned to Gawker's I-Went-to-School-Near-Boston Correspondent — a Harvard grad of our acquaintance who wants to be called Magnus — to tell us, and you, what happened.

After the jump, Magnus explains why Summers was right and everyone else is wrong.

For those of you who care, Harvard President Larry Summers agreed to resign today after a bunch of academics got their panties in a twist over the fate of Dean William Kirby, who some have accused Summers of forcing out of office. This episode comes on the heels of the whole Larry-Summers-says-girls-can't-do-math thing, which itself followed soon after the whole Larry-Summers-says-Cornel-West-is-full-of-shit thing. When not stirring up public fracases, Summers also managed to privately piss off a lot of the other smug, self-satisfied Harvard types you just love to hate if you didn't go to Harvard (and, need I remind you, chances are you didn't).

But as any Harvard grad making his or her way in the real world will tell you, the true reason people didn't like Summers because he had the balls to speak with eloquence and conviction of the reality that lies waiting for Harvard and those of its children who can't spend the rest of their lives in graduate school. But no one at in Cambridge cared to listen. Now Harvard can finally return to the cherished delusion that people actually give a fuck what anyone there has to say about anything. (Unless it has to do with female aptitude for numbers.) And with any luck, happy parents get to go back forking over forty grand a year to make their kids unemployable English majors. Unless, of course, they're minority types, in which case they'll probably end up going into medicine or finance.

Me, I'm sending my kids to Yale.

Embattled President of Harvard to Step Down at End of Semester [NYT]