One would have thought that, having produced this paper, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation from re-education camp ("I deeply regret . . . apologize . . . I have learned a great deal . . . I was wrong") — and having apologized on three separate occasions — Lawrence Summers would have done sufficient penance for suggesting scholars study further the relative paucity of women in science.
But Tuesday Summers had to appear before what the Harvard Crimson described as a "firing squad of faculty" in order to apologize again. According to the Crimson’s account:
At the meeting, an unusually stoic Summers reiterated his apology, saying he "made a serious mistake" in his remarks on women in science last month. . . . "I deserve much of the criticism that has come my way," Summers said.
(Unusually stoic — that’s always the way they look when they emerge from re-education camp).
But even the fourth apology was not enough. The
Professor Theda Skocpol turned around Summers’s 2002 statement on anti-Semitism that professors calling for divestment from Israel were taking actions that were ”anti-Semitic in their effect, if not their intent."
”By supposedly apologizing, but not releasing [a transcript of] his remarks, the president is going along with the campaigns to smear his critics and his own university," she said. ”He is doing this in effect if not in intent."
Two professors spoke up in Summers’ defense:
Ruth Wisse, professor of Yiddish literature, said she told the faculty yesterday that the reaction to Summers’s remarks on women ”was the closest thing to a Soviet show trial that we are likely to see in our lifetimes."
Economist Richard Freeman also spoke in defense of Summers’ comments at the NBER [National Bureau of Economic Research conference] conference, which Freeman organized.
The 90-minute Harvard faculty meeting was attended by 250 members of the faculty and concluded with a "unanimous vote" to hold an "emergency meeting" next Tuesday:
Though the format of next Tuesday’s meeting is still unclear, many say it will include a vote measuring Faculty confidence in Summers — and they say such a vote would probably not go in Summers’ favor.
First schedule the trial. Then establish the format. And isn’t the "unanimous vote" a nice touch? Maybe they can arrange a trade for a former Department Head.
Lawrence Summers is, in Andrew Sullivan’s words, the "best thing to happen to American higher education in a very long time." Readers who wish to express an opinion can use the following email addresses:
lawrence_summers@harvard.edu (Lawence Summers)
nmaull@harvard.edu (Nancy Maull, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences)
UPDATE:
In today’s Crimson, three of its editors — Michael B. Broukhim, Hannah E. S. Wright, and Adam M. Guren — write in a "staff dissent" that a "misguided faculty needs to find its bearings:"
The Faculty meeting was not an impromptu eruption of tensions, but a planned show trial. Rumors and anonymous comments about possible motions to dismiss Summers from the meeting do not spread on their own, and New York Times reporters do not show up at University Hall because they want to see John Harvard. The media should not be a tool to further an agenda on university governance. . . .
Surely a collection of the most brilliant academics in the world should be able to avoid the temptation to flaunt their credentials in a petty power-trip. . .
Or maybe not. Send the emails. We don’t want to see this movie again.