Reporters' Notebook

It is no secret that important people, particularly academic important people, like to hang out together. And, of course, they also like to go home sometimes for a little vacation. So when former Harvard President Derek C. Bok was looking for a little R&R after his two-decade tenure here, he fled to his ancestral undergraduate home on the West Coast--Stanford. Specifically, the school's Center for Advanced Study.

Last week, the Dean of Yale College Donald Kagan decided to take a one-year leave after he made some particularly controversial remarks about his comrades in the humanities. Of course, Kagan couldn't flee to just any old center for advanced study. He is heading west to Stanford's Center for Advanced Study as well.

One can only imagine: Bok and Kagan, sitting by the pool together, sipping tropical drinks and trading old Ivy League administration stories. The Center could well become the new vacation hot-spot, a kind of intellectual rest home. Let's just hope we don't start hearing news stories about Neil Rudenstine taking a much-needed version in the Crimea.