Here's looking at you, Casablanca
Correction: Because of a reporting error, this column in the Living/Arts section misidentified one of the investors in the Casablanca restaurant. Nick Mitropoulos holds a position without a title at the Monitor Group consulting firm.
The line of charming, defunct eateries in Harvard Square grows longer each year: Tommy's Lunch; Elsie's; the Tasty Diner; Wursthaus. Et tu, Casablanca?
Owner Sari Abul-Jubein won't comment on the restaurant's future, but he does admit that it has been on the block for several months and has found no takers. Three of Abul-Jubein's associates say he is being squeezed by high rent payments, but his landlord, William Poorvu denies that. ''Sari and I have always had a good relationship," Poorvu says. ''There will probably have to be adjustments to the rent, but we want the restaurant to continue. There is no point in discussing the rent until we know who's going to be occupying the space."
The restaurant is practically ready for landmark status. The original ''Casa B," as Harvard undergrads used to call it, was a seedy bar that attracted the likes of Jack Lemmon, Julia Child, Norman Mailer, Globe columnist George Frazier, and '60s ''It" Girl Edie Sedgwick, who ''set up court underneath the Brattle movie theater in the Casablanca bar, where everybody went," according to a family memoir authored by Edie's cousin, John Sedgwick. ''She had her first legal drink there the day she turned twenty-one and came into her grandmother's trust fund." (Sienna Miller will play Edie Sedgwick in a forthcoming movie, ''Factory Girl.")
Abul-Jubein started out as a waiter at the old Casablanca and eventually bought the place. In 1990, he assembled a Who's Who of financial backers, including Au Bon Pain founder Louis Kane, Monitor Company chief executive Nick Mitropoulos, developer John Hall, and Charlie Davidson of the Andover Shop, to transform the down-at-the-mouth watering hole into an attractive, midprice restaurant with excellent cuisine. ''We got our money back after three years," says investor Buell Hollister. ''After that, it was all gravy."
In the restoration process, Abul-Jubein saved David Omar White's famous Casablanca mural, which is now the backdrop for the main dining room, the ceiling fans, and wicker furniture, and even the jukebox that plays ''As Time Goes By." Ever since the Country Life Vegetarian Restaurant closed, the Casablanca has become my favorite Boston eatery. Like many, I would hate to see it go.
Promotional materials for the book, scheduled for publication in May by PublicAffairs, make this clear. ''Lewis evaluates the failures of this grand institution from the hot button issue of grade inflation to the recent controversy over Harvard's handling of date rape cases and makes an impassioned argument for change." In an accompanying note, Lewis writes: ''In recent years the university has had its head turned ever more by consumerism and by public relations imperatives, to the detriment of its educational priorities for its students. In short, money and prestige rule over principle and reason."
Wait, Lewis isn't finished: ''The anecdotes, examples and historical background in this book focus on Harvard, but the same broad trends exist at the other great research universities. Harvard is a case study of how the greatest universities have lost their educational souls at the same time as they have achieved dazzling excellence." ''There's no question that the book takes aim at Larry Summers," says Richard Bradley, author of ''Harvard Rules." ''It's remarkable a dean Summers ousted has written a book that implicitly calls Summers 'soulless' -- and so far as I can tell, unprecedented in Harvard history."
Lewis, the Gordon McKay professor of computer science, says he won't talk about how his book will be received: ''You are not asking the right person if you want to know how the book is going to be perceived. I have no control over that."
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist.His e-dress is beam@globe.com 
