Anne Lieberman posted a startling summary of academic anti-Semitism yesterday, commenting on recommendations by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to protect Jewish college students from anti-Semitic harassment.
Meanwhile, the Harvard faculty held its first post-Larry Summers faculty meeting last month. Professor J. Lorand Matory — the person who introduced the no-confidence motion last year against Summers — told The Harvard Crimson that “It was almost a love fest.”
Except for one part. According to The Crimson’s account of the March 7 meeting:
Tensions between University President Lawrence H. Summers’ supporters and opponents lingered at yesterday’s Faculty meeting, with one of the outgoing president’s critics, mathematician Wilfried Schmid, telling the pro-Summers Yiddish scholar Ruth R. Wisse to “stop poisoning the atmosphere at this University.”
Wisse told The Crimson last week that anti-Semitism was “one of the factors at play” in the run-up to Summers’ resignation, and she made similar remarks to The
Globe. . . . Boston
A longstanding Faculty rule allows campus publications to send reporters to all Faculty meetings. But the chair of the Faculty Council’s docket committee, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, told The Crimson on Sunday night that “there are occasions when meetings need to be in camera, and this is one of them.” Reporters were barred from the session. . . .
Diana L. Eck, the Wertham professor of law and psychiatry in society, said after the meeting that Wisse’s remarks “don’t make much of an impression on the Faculty” because of their “extreme” nature.
That caused Professor Wisse to write the following letter to The Crimson. It is a succinct summary of the atmosphere at Harvard (and perhaps beyond), as well as the obvious (but unlikely) solution, reprinted here in its entirety for current and future reference:
In your report on the March 7th meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) (“Tensions Linger at Closed FAS meeting,” news, Mar. 8), you quote Professor Diana L. Eck to the effect that “Wisse’s remarks ‘don’t make much of an impression on the Faculty’ because of their ‘extreme nature.’” This, in a nutshell, is the tactic of political correctness, never to confront the content of a divergent opinion, but to dismiss it as “extreme” or out of bounds. Through their attacks on me, my colleagues during the meeting and after were warning others not to step out of line lest they invite the same contempt. Imagine the fate of any junior faculty member who might share my point of view on such issues as the importance of ROTC on campus, the pernicious effects of group preferences for women in hiring, or the dangers of anti-Semitism in its latest anti-Zionist manifestation. (I know of only two who hold such views and I shall take their secret to the grave.)
FAS is currently at pains to convince itself and the world that it ousted President Summers solely because of his style of governance. Yes, and Jack Abramoff was only trying to promote Native American culture. Alas for the spinners, the minutes of faculty record the nature of the attacks against the President: complaints about his governance were merely the more decorous finale of a sustained and exceptionally nasty political onslaught. That Lawrence Summers refused to confront his critics has made it that much harder for those who shared some of his views. More than his departure, I regret that he failed to set students a better example of how a person can stand up for his opinions.
My colleagues say they are now eager to get on with the business of curricular reform that they subordinated for several years to the task of expelling President Summers. The most crucial reform would require ensuring greater intellectual diversity among those who teach the students. The dearth of conservative views (most of which were liberal views when I was an undergraduate) affects the nature of what is being taught, as well as the intellectual mettle of those doing the teaching. Students, irrespective of their own views, are being short-changed by a faculty that does not even acknowledge, much less wish to tackle, diverse opinions.
Ruth R. Wisse
Cambridge ,Mass. March 12, 2006
Veritas has its limits in today’s academe. It is not prudent to hold certain views, much less to express them in public (even in a church) or in private (even at an academic conference, or a faculty meeting from which the press is barred). They may show up in a future motion of no-confidence, or lead to one’s castigation in the Harvard paper of record, or result in a life dependent on a colleague’s promise not to reveal your thoughts.
On the other hand, perhaps the noteworthy point is that even in today’s academe there is a person of Ruth Wisse’s courage still standing, still standing up, even after Larry Summers has fled the field — a one woman example of the intellectual integrity so conspicuously gone.