The Tempest in the Ivory Tower

I know that this is old news but I can't resist commenting... heck, I got so angry, I created this button. I don't know if anyone else cares about how this man is the subject of an intellectual witch hunt but, if you are interested, you can post one, too. Post the button and link back to this post and I'll link to you, too. Just let me know by e-mailing me: a r m y w i f e l i f e at h o t m a i l.



You can also buy t-shirts supporting Summers at: http://www.vivasummers.com/
You can write to Larry Summers at: Lawrence_summers@harvard.edu

The Tempest in the Ivory Tower

Summers said he wouldn't rule out the possibility that innate gender differences might help explain why there aren't more women in the hard sciences. Offered tentatively, his comments set off a fierce debate, at Harvard and beyond. Summers apologized to the faculty and vowed to ''temper'' his ''words and actions.'' But that wasn't enough for members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, who passed a no-confidence vote in Summers at a faculty meeting on March 15 - the Ides of March.

I do not understand this one bit. How can intellectuals be against discussion of ideas? On another level, what is so terrible about the idea that men and women are innately different? I like our differences. He didn't say, "Girls can't do maths." Summers is just pointing out that innate differences might account for the imbalanced representation. What is wrong with throwing out a theory for exploration? There have been so many faculty and student quotes about how he is too controversial--shouldn't a scholar be constantly testing boundaries? Last time I checked, there is significant evidence that men and women not only have bodies that function differently but brains that function differently as well. Calling for more exploration and research seems logical to me... there's that "logic" again. At the same time, he called for an exploration of ways to increase that representation. I'm still not seeing what was so awful here.

To some, however, the outrage was also a sign of trouble in academia - which, as the critic Stephen Metcalf recently observed in Slate, ''has devolved into a series of now highly routinized acts of flattery, so carefully attended to that one out-of-place word is enough to fracture dozens of egos.''

Sarcasm alert: ...which is just so conducive to intellectual development.

In some ways, it recalls the campus turmoil of the 1960's. Only this time around, the protesters aren't the undergraduates; they're the faculty, who to some extent remain immersed in the values and pieties of the 60's and are clashing with a president intent on bringing Harvard in line with today's political and economic realities.

Here's another fun one... the liberal biases of professors. In the old days, they called conservatives dinosaurs and asked them to notice that the times they were a changing. Now that the times are once again readjusting, and they are the dinosaurs, these radicals simply won't let go of their glory days.

He is a liberal, but of a particular kind. [Summers] was a leading proponent of globalization when many other liberals were lamenting its discontents. Summers also hews to a kind of bottom-line market-driven thinking, which can seem deeply at odds with the humanistic values of the academy. And he is unapologetic about American power on a campus steeped in post-Vietnam ambivalence about such things.

He vocally supported bringing R.O.T.C. back to Harvard from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where it had been exiled after Vietnam-era campus protests and where it remained because of later protests over the military's discrimination against homosexuals. And he supported Harvard's honoring the Solomon Amendment, which ties federal funding to universities' allowing military recruitment on campus, something students and faculty had protested. In this way, as Bradley writes, ''Summers explicitly linked the future of the United States in its fight against terrorism with the success of Harvard.''

In another effort to address the global situation, Summers delivered a speech on campus in September 2002 in which he criticized a campaign calling on Harvard and other universities to divest from Israel. ''Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent,'' he said.

This is MY KIND OF LIBERAL!!! Let's see... Free market (check), support for our military (check), willing to accept the realities and responsibilities of being a leader in the world's sole superpower (check), and calling for support for our DEMOCRATIC ALLIES WHO ARE NOT TRYING TO BLOW US UP (check). If Harvard doesn't want him, I hope he runs for office.

It's not altogether surprising, then, that Bradley's book includes descriptions of Summers that echo familiar characterizations of President Bush. Summers ''is not an intellectual, because intellectuals know the power of doubt,'' a professor and signer of the divestment petition tells Bradley. In Bradley's view, that's only one of his shortcomings. Among many cartoonish characterizations in ''Harvard Rules,'' he dwells on Summers's table manners and often disheveled appearance.

Just like our President, Summers is intelligent. Because he doesn't play by the same rules of the Northeastern liberal academic elite, however, he is a barbarian. If you attack Republicans however (Michael Moore comes to mind immediately), then your slovenly appearance is a sign that you prefer substance over style. HYPOCRISY ALERT!

Beyond that he emphasizes that Summers happens to be the first Jewish president of Harvard, and notes that that might inform his views on Israel and foreign policy.

This part REALLY got to me. The only reason for someone to support Israel is because they are Jewish? How anti-Semitic is that? I really thought we were over this.

And hence Summers's efforts to crack down on grade inflation at Harvard, where in 2001 about 90 percent of students graduated with honors, compared with 50 percent at Yale that year.

A little off topic from this post but I just wanted to say "thpt" to those who think Yale is "easier" than Harvard... just because Yalies have more fun!

Anyway, longer post than I intended... but I hope others will join me in supporting Summers' First Amendment rights and his obligation as President of one of our preeminent colleges to promote debate--even if it isn't "popular."