The Ouster of Harvard's Reformer

[thebin]

The extent to which our great universities are dominated by extreme leftists who brook no dissent can never be questioned by the sane again....

"Law professor Alan Dershowitz has argued Summers was done in by a core group of faculty angered over his support for the military, Israel, and for his comments on women in science — the last of which he apologized for repeatedly.

"I'm clearly in the left 20 percent of the country, nationally. I'm a Ted Kennedy liberal," Dershowitz said. "In the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, I'm in the 10 percent side of the conservatives.

"That doesn't show I'm out of sync with the country," he said. "It shows how out of sync Harvard is."

Right-of-center pundits couldn't agree more, at a time when some conservative students say they feel under attack in the classroom for their beliefs. The Wall Street Journal's editorial page wrote: "Only on an American university campus" would Summers "be portrayed as a radical neocon."

Blogger Glenn Reynolds of instapundit.com predicted Summers' fall would help conservatives pass bills monitoring academic freedom — including one currently under consideration in South Dakota's legislature.

More traditionally moderate to left-leaning media have also criticized Harvard's faculty. A Washington Post editorial said "professors, of all people should not require mollycoddling." Peter Beinart in The New Republic Online wrote Harvard's faculty "has just made an ass of itself."



news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060226/ap_on_re_us/harvard_politics

[thebin]

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/21/AR2006022101393.html

The above is the Washington Post editorial on Summers' resignation.

In part... "Mr. Summers fought several well-publicized battles with Harvard's establishment. He refused to rubber-stamp appointees chosen by the faculties, blocking candidates who seemed insufficiently distinguished and pressing for diversity in political outlook. This prompted complaints that he was acting like a corporate chief executive -- as though there were something wrong with that. Next, Mr. Summers had the temerity to suggest that Cornel West, a professor of Afro-American studies, produce less performance art and more scholarship. This plea for academics to do academic work was construed as racist. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Summers criticized Harvard's hostility to the U.S. armed forces and called attention to the cultural gap between elite coastal campuses and mainstream American values. The fact that these commonsensical positions alienated people at Harvard speaks volumes about the cultural gap that troubled Mr. Summers."

[nychoya3]

When it's all said and done, I really don't care what happens at Harvard. They're full enough of themselves already without us obsessing over their various squables and foibles. Still, I think you're giving a pretty half baked version of the events that led to Summers' leaving.

Here's Matt Yglesias's take: www.tpmcafe.com/node/27016 Basically, he argues that Summers pursued a basically apolitical agenda concerning the school's finances that Editeded off the Arts faculty and left him with few friends to weather the various storms he created by being something of a jerk. Summers is well known to be brilliant and driven, as well as acerbic and authoritarian. That was the rap at Treasury and it remains so. What, exactly, was he trying to reform politically? By picking a fight with the oddity that is Cornel West? Please.

Summers is a Democrat, by the way. Just saying.

[thebin]

Yeah I know Summers is a Dem, which is why the Wall St Journal's point is salient in that only at a university could such a man be considered a right wing menace. Its not my "half baked" version of events nychoya3- I have quoted the Washington Post editorial page, that famous right wing rag, as well as famous conservative Harvard legend Alan Dershowitz. I'm not sure what position you are in to better Mr. Dershowitz's estimation that the vast majority of Harvard faculty are left wing radicals who are well out of step with the American population generally, but I'm willing to listen...

[DFW HOYA]

Wow. if Dershowitz considers himself a conservative at Harvard, that school has some real issues...

[nychoya3]

Point is that trying to shoehorn this incident into the liberals run amok versus mainstream conservative framework is quite a leap from the actual incidents that took place. I'm not interested in defending every crackpot prof at Harvard or anywhere else, but I don't this this whole saga is proof of anything other than when egos and agendas clash, someone is going to get fired.

I can agree that the Washington Post editorial page is liberal. I just think they're often stupid and wrong. As they are in this case.

[kchoya]

I love Dershowitz's line about being in the 10% at Harvard.

I don't think bin is painting this as liberals versus conservative. Rather it's liberal on liberal that's the fight, which is always amusing to the more conservative of us out here between the coasts.