February 25, 2006

HARVARD AND SUMMERS: WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

Peter Berkowitz writes eloquently about the missed opportunities:

"...What should Summers have done? From the beginning he should have stuck to his guns, and failing that, he should have come to his senses after summer vacation last year and uttered words similar to those supplied by attorney Harvey Silverglate, writing in the Boston Phoenix two days after Summers's resignation:

This was about more than whether I speculated in an area in which I am not a recognized expert. It was about whether the modern American academy is any longer a safe haven for true diversity of thought and opinion, and whether some subjects are so toxic to a subsection of the academic left that they are taboo. We extol the virtues of diversity in a wide variety of programs--including mandatory freshman orientation and "sensitivity training" programs that come perilously close to being exercises in thought-reform--but we penalize diversity of knowledge and opinion. I was not immune to these forces, as exhibited in my shameful attempt to buy off my critics with a $50 million bribe for a laundry list of senseless initiatives compiled by two women's task forces that will do little more than further expand an already bloated administrative structure. I hereby declare that initiative dissolved. The unspent money will go to endow a much-needed and long-overdue chair in academic freedom at Harvard Law School.

The utterance of these or some such words might not have been the height of prudence. But Summers could have made himself a hero. Public opinion was with him last year when the story first broke after MIT biologist Nancy Hopkins told the Boston Globe that she walked out of the private, invitation-only session because, if she hadn't, "I would've either blacked out or thrown up." Imagine a no-nonsense Summers tactfully refraining from pointing out the 19th-century Victorian female stereotypes in which Hopkins was trafficking, while remarking on the oddity of a biologist protesting the consideration of biological factors as part of an explanation of human behavior..."
See the rest here.