The conviction that American higher education is a ship far off course and heading for the rocks was strengthened last week with the announcement that Harvard’s president Larry Summers had been pressured into resigning.
Since Summers assumed the post in 2001, the faculty – composed mainly of professors whom Roger Kimball accurately calls “tenured radicals” – had repeatedly quarreled with Summers because he didn’t fit their idea of a modern university president. They had already voted “no confidence” in him once and were preparing to do so again. Why?
A modern university president must – absolutely must! – bow down before the idols of the leftist thoughtworld. Those idols include the abhorrence of the American military, acceptance of the idea that the historical grievances of blacks entitle them to special treatment today, and the belief that discrimination is the only possible explanation for group differences. Not only did Summers not bow down to those idols, but he said and did things to indicate that he rejects them.
As he has learned, the university faculty has a zero-tolerance policy for heresy.
To the tenured radicals, the military is a barbaric atavism. Summers painted himself with a scarlet (make that crimson) H for Heretic when he had a few words of praise for the military and sought to reverse the long-standing ban against ROTC on campus. At faculty meetings, many a conversation no doubt began, “Can you believe what Summers just said….?”
Another of Summers’ sins was to criticize – privately – Harvard’s superstar Black Studies professor Cornel West. West had been spending most of his time doing things in the realm of politics and entertainment. Summers had the effrontery to suggest that he ought to devote more of his time to academic matters.
Well! Just who is that white overseer to tell a black intellectual what to do? West went public with this unspeakable abuse and huffed off to do his thing at Princeton. Summers apologized for his indiscretion, but to no avail.
Blunders like those had put Summers’ head in the noose, but what sprung the trap door was his questioning of a central tenet of feminist orthodoxy: All statistical disparities between men and women are evil, unjustifiable, and due to discrimination. Summers angered the keepers of the faith when he carelessly advanced the hypothesis that the comparative shortage of women in hard science faculty positions might be due to something else – like biology and the choices many women make.
The howls of indignation were ceaseless. University presidents are supposed to know that it’s nothing but discrimination – the glass ceiling – that keeps women from achieving parity with men. Summers might just as well have said that he thought we should discuss whether the earth is flat.
Taken aback by the paroxysms of rage occasioned by his “insensitive” speculation, Summers apologized for his transgression and pledged to start a new “diversity” campaign on campus. Ah, but you just can’t apologize for words so heinous and hurtful as those.
Larry Summers will leave the Harvard presidency rather than face bitter opposition to his program for restoring some of the university’s lost academic integrity. Does it matter?
A crucial point to understand is that in the governance of colleges and universities, the fault line does not lie along the liberal versus conservative divide. Rather, it is between those who are educational traditionalists and those who want to use education to further their ideological visions. People in the former camp believe that students should learn critical skills and master bodies of knowledge. People in the latter want to ensure that students adopt the right attitudes about “social justice,” the environment, cultural oppression, and so on.
Alas, most of the people who are positioned to run educational institutions at any level are from the ideological vision group. Most professors want to work for someone of their own tribe.
Summers had impeccably liberal political credentials, but educationally he was a traditionalist. What the fight for control of Harvard tells us is that traditionalists have an extremely difficult task in front of them. Even the slightest, most innocuous or inadvertent criticism of the hallowed beliefs of the visionaries will trigger furious protests, denunciations, and “no confidence votes.”
Following the defeat of Judge Robert Bork’s Supreme Court nomination, a new verb entered the language – “borked.”
Similarly, the language may now get another new verb – “summersed” – meaning to hound out of office a university president who doesn’t accept the faculty’s view on the purpose of higher education.