Harvard Faculty vs. Academic Freedom: I know which one I'd pick...

As many of you know, Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences (a subset of the University faculty, which excludes all of the grad schools like Law, Business, Medicine, Education, Kennedy School of Government, etc.) narrowly voted on Tuesday evening for a non-binding resolution of "no confidence" in President Larry Summers' leadership. Of course, the vote is meaningless, since only the seven members of the Harvard Corporation can vote to remove President Summers. But it was still a black eye for a man who many people believe is doing a great job at Harvard.

Harvard undergraduate Brian Goldsmith (writing in his column in today's Crimson), put his finger on the major problem Larry faces; the faculty don't like him:

Let’s be clear about one thing: 218 Faculty of Arts and Sciences professors (out of 690) secretly voted lack-of-confidence in Larry Summers because they think he’s a schmuck.

His speech about “intrinsic aptitude,” the supposed source of the Faculty’s moral outrage, is rarely mentioned anymore. Arguing about Cornel West and Israeli divestment doesn’t work for the Larry-haters because even though some may think he chose the wrong words, a majority at Harvard knows Summers has the right policy: an accountable faculty, and zero tolerance for prejudice.

What he has accomplished as president—the biggest expansion of low-income aid since the GI Bill, the Crimson Summer Academy to prepare disadvantaged high school students for college, the greatest investments in science and technology ever, recruiting extraordinary new faculty like Louis Menand and Steven Pinker, expanding study abroad, defending affirmative action, making ours a “Green Campus”—all of that is irrelevant to the one-third of professors (of one out of Harvard’s nine faculties) that voted to kick the bastard when he’s down.

A friend who was close to Summers in Washington summed it up better than most: “He’s always been brilliant, competent, unusually good at getting things done—but there’s something about Larry that pisses people off.”

After Tuesday’s meeting, Anthropology and African and African-American studies professor J. Lorand Matory—fiercest of the Faculty’s warriors—strode outside in triumph to tell the press that “there is no noble alterative to [Summers’] resignation.” In case you hadn’t gotten the message, Matory added a TV-ready soundbite: “Larry Summers should resign as president of Harvard University.” Pardon me for asking, but: resign for what, exactly?

Because outside our ivy-covered walls, when presidents or CEOs are pushed out, it happens for a reason. Either they have crossed some ethical or moral line or, far more commonly, they haven’t accomplished what they were hired to do. Nobody can seriously claim that Summers’ performance violates the first shibboleth. And, reviewing the 2001 reportage about the Corporation’s goals for a new president—stronger leadership, higher standards, an aggressive curricular review, and Allston expansion—it is hard to argue that, in terms of substance, Summers has not lived up to expectations.

And so we are left with what one professor described to me as “Larry’s personality problem.” Rumors and gossip abound on this subject—and most sound like they came straight from a middle school cafeteria: Larry ignored me while I was talking, Larry was mean to me at lunch, Larry made fun of my idea, Larry excluded me.

While I agree with Goldsmith that most of President Summers' problems with the faculty are due to superficial personality issues and "management style," there are more important principles at stake.

Harvard Winthrop Professor of History Stephan Thernstrom put the issue in its proper context in his remarks at Tuesday's faculty meeting (which were reprinted in today's NY Sun):

Many of the criticisms of President Summers involve his personality and management style. But I will focus exclusively on the issue raised by his remarks at the National Bureau of Economic Research in January.That is the issue because it raises crucial questions about something I thought we all cherished — academic freedom. Academic Freedom is on trial here, and a victory for President Summers’ critics will be a deadly blow to academic freedom in American higher education. A previous speaker has claimed that the comments made by Professor Summers have set back the position of women at Harvard by 40 years. I emphatically disagree, and suggest that a vote to censure him for his speech will set the university back by 50 years, back to the days of Mc-Carthyism. . . .

Read the whole thing. It is a sobering reminder of just how intolerant our universities have become of independent thought and genuine scientific inquiry.