The Continued Persecution of Lawrence Summers
By wmoriarty Posted in User Blogs — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Poor Larry Summers isn't done taking grief over what he said about underrepresentation of women in the scientific fields. The Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, no doubt a fine example of intellectual diversity and independence, is preparing two "motions", one a no confidence vote in Summers, the other a "milder rebuke" for not being a proper knee-jerk liberal.
The AP story I link to explains that the two motions don't actually "carry any official weight". In fact, it looks like the only power these two motions have is to allow liberal academics yet another outlet to remind the rest of us of their moral and intellectual superiority.
At the end of the AP article, we have this sparkling gem of a paragraph:
The [second] motion, put forward by professor of government and sociology Theda Skocpol, also states the faculty "regrets aspects of the president's managerial approach" but appreciates his "stated intent to address these issues, and seeks to meet the challenges facing Harvard in ways that are collegial and consistent with long-standing faculty responsibilities in institutional governance."
Translation: We, the Enlightened Few in the Holy Faculty of Arts and Sciences, condemn Mr. Lawrence Summers for engaging in improper mental exercises such as disrespect for Received Progressive Wisdom and noncompliance with Progressive Speech Regulations. We hope that, in the future, Mr. Summers will learn his place and not pretend that Harvard University tolerates such heresy.
I open the floor for dicussion.
Cross-posted at my personal blog.
If they read the kind of subversive stuff we say here at RedState, that boxcar's coming around awful fast for an awful lot of us.
And make sure everyone understands that we're an educational foundation and not a pressure group.
The Leftist faculty at Harvard have been looking for a way to bring Summers to heel (at the very least!) ever since he was hired and started making the changes he was specifically brought to Harvard to undertake. He was chosen specifically because of the differences in his temperament, background, intellectual style, etc. But the entrenched Leftists on the Harvard faculty have given him the evil eye since the moment he crossed the threshold. He's an economist by training, and an MIT economist at that! Imagine, someone who believes in capitalism as the President of the richest university in the world! (Note: I am saying t
And that really is a part of the problem for the Arts and Sciences faculty there. Harvard is the richest and most influential university in the world. Its 2003 endowment was over $19 billion, and it has the sheer power to be able to establish its own stem cell research laboratories and institutes with utter independence from federal funds.
It may astonish people who don't know to learn that Summers could not be described as a political conservative, big C or small, as far as I've been able to tell from everything that I've read. His biography tells you everything about Summers' background that you need to know.
And yet this man, who was once an assistant to Lloyd Bentsen, apparently does not meet with the ideological, characterological, intellectual, psychological, personal or moral approval (or whatever else goes into Leadership Ability as it applies to the President of Harvard University) of half the Harvard Arts & Sciences faculty. I don't know what else there is to say.
One of the main reasons that this vote passed is because the leftist faculty at Harvard doesn't have confidence that Summers will protect them from the backlash that they believe has begun against them because of the firestorm they created when they took righteous umbrage at Summers' remarks.
You see, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard is the victim here. That is why it has been so important for Summers to not only apologize but make all of the new pledges that he has made to create a more welcoming and nurturing and supporting environment for women on the Harvard campus. Because, you see, they are being persecuted there -- and when Summers let slip those highly tentative, not-for-accreditation, speculative and qualified remarks, he was actually showing part of his unconscious, institutionally-established sexism.
You see, it wasn't what Summers actually SAID that is leading the Leftists on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to have No Confidence in his leadership -- it was the kind of PERSON he is -- his psyche, his mental firmament, his socially-constructed intellectual undergirding. The kind of unconscious processes that would allow him to make such a statement to begin with. The very seat of his being.
That is what the Tenured Radicals at Harvard are objecting to. Because it simply goes without saying that a white male in a position of power who could even conceive of saying what Summers said might harbor other dangerous thoughts that should not be permitted to exist in Academia. Summers, you see, don't know who the real victims are, geddit, buddy?
That's because he has not yet had the tour of the feminist re-education camp yet. But they're getting the boxcar ready for him. And for the rest of us.