Summers Soldier

In the current Boston Phoenix, Reason contributor Harvey Silverglate, co-author of The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses, has a sharp analysis of Larry Summers' embarrassing retreat from intellectual curiosity in the face of criticism from people offended by his comments on sex difference in math and science achievement:

Two iconic images emerge from this unseemly rout: that of a male Harvard president running for cover because he dares ask an "offensive" question, and that of a female professor promoting the sexist stereotype of the weak, vulnerable woman who gets nauseated, throws up, and has to leave the room for her smelling salts when she encounters an idea she finds threatening. Quite a pair of role models!

Silverglate's conclusion is both depressing and inspiring:

Summers's surrender may have quieted the mob in the short term, but in the long term he will rue the day he failed to take on the totalitarians once and for all. He could have called a national press conference and invited his detractors to debate issues of academic freedom, entrenched orthodoxies, intellectual research and inquiry, and modalities that might indeed remedy real gender discrimination in the academy. He could have freed himself and every other academic administrator from a tyranny that has turned our university presidents into captives of groupthink–nothing more than yes-men and -women and, oh yes, fundraisers. He could have restored the role of university president from that of mere administrator and fundraiser to public intellectual–defender of academic freedom and rational discourse.

Harvard's Richard Freeman, the economist whose invitation to Summers triggered the tumult, insisted in a January 23 New York Times article by James Traub that he had invited Summers specifically to touch upon provocative issues, because otherwise "he would have given us the same type of babble that university presidents give." This is a sad comment on what has happened to our academic leaders. Lawrence Summers had an unparalleled opportunity to turn the tide in Cambridge and all over the country. He blew it.