Watching quick breaking events unfold at Harvard where President Lawrence Summers is being skewered due to an inaccurate generalization about women is like truly watching a car careening in slow motion off a cliff.
We are now smack-dab in the age of PC, which will not die, no matter how many stakes critics drive through its heart. No matter: Count PCula rises again.
A pronouncement by an official that is considered insensitive and upsets a group can no longer be neutralized by an apology or clarification. Once the words are uttered, the utterer must pay. And so it is with Summers, now at the center of a furor that may dismay Middle America and possibly hurt Harvard’s long-run image. The latest twist (aside from the twist of Sanders slowly in the wind):
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — In a symbolic but stunning rebuke, Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences passed a motion Tuesday saying it lacked confidence in President Lawrence Summers — the first such action in the nearly 400-year history of the university.
The arts and sciences faculty is one of 10 that comprise the university. Summers reports to the Harvard Corporation, the university’s governing board, which has expressed its support for him.
But the 218-185 vote supporting the motion — which even supporters had expected to be defeated — was a significant setback to Summers’ efforts to rebuild his standing with Harvard’s faculty in the wake of the uproar over his comments about women in science at an academic conference in January.
At the very least, the vote seemed likely to prolong the period of divisiveness among faculty and hinder Summers’ efforts to return focus to his agenda for remaking the university.
The measure stated simply: “The Faculty lacks confidence in the leadership of Lawrence H. Summers.”
The faculty also passed, 253-137, a milder rebuke of Summers’ comments and “managerial approach.”
“As I said to the faculty, I have tried these last couple months to listen to all that has been said, to learn from it, and to move forward, and that’s what I am going to do,” Summers said afterward.
J. Lorand Matory, a professor of anthropology and African and African-American studies, introduced the lack-of-confidence motion. He had expected it to be supported by no more than 30 percent of attendees.
Matory said Summers should quit. “There is no noble alternative to resignation,” he said.
Summers, however, has given no indication of stepping down. He has now met three times with the faculty group since his controversial remarks that intrinsic differences in ability partly explain why there are fewer women in the pool of applicants for top science jobs.
None of his efforts will probably make much difference. The politically incorrect words that came out of his mouth will forever define him as a caricature…by people who were upset because he used words that defined a group of people as a simplistic caricature.
On the other hand, those who want Summers out say there is a good case against him. Aaron Schwartz presents considerable food for thought here.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.