| Topic: |
Sociology > Education |
| User: |
"Dom" |
| Date: |
27 Feb 2006 02:36:25 PM |
| Object: |
D.C. Kicked Out Of Harvard |
It is truly amazing to see how pseudo-conservatives have embraced a
"limousine liberal" like Lawrence Summers. DR
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http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-harvard0227.artfeb27,0,5130484.story?coll=hc-headlines-oped
D.C. Kicked Out Of Harvard
Richard Bradley
February 27 2006
Just five years ago, when he became president of Harvard, Lawrence
Summers was hailed as the man who could bring the decentralized
university under control - his control. But things didn't quite turn
out that way, and last week, Summers announced that he was resigning.
Some commentators inside and outside academia are pointing to Summers'
brief and contentious tenure as evidence that Harvard - and
universities in general - have become ungovernable, thanks to
out-of-control, left-wing faculties. They argue that Summers was
unfairly pilloried by blacks for allowing African American studies
professor Cornel West to leave for Princeton, by peaceniks for
encouraging the return of the long-banned ROTC to campus and by
feminists for questioning whether "intrinsic aptitude" rather than sex
discrimination explained the lack of female professors in science and
math departments.
But the real lesson of Summers' failure at Harvard is very different.
Summers was ousted not because of a clash of conservative vs. liberal
ideologies. After all, Summers was Bill Clinton's former Treasury
secretary. He is a liberal. The real problem was that Harvard's faculty
rejected the encroachment of Washington politics.
Back in March 2001, Summers' D.C. experience was a big reason why
Harvard's presidential search committee chose him. He'd served in the
Clinton administration for the better part of eight years, and when he
returned to Harvard in June 2001, he carried the culture of his adopted
city with him. He hired a press secretary fresh from the employ of
British Prime Minister Tony Blair. That raised eyebrows; no Harvard
president had ever had a personal press secretary. He hired so many
Clintonites that when the ex-president visited campus, Clinton joked
that he couldn't count all the D.C. alums. Summers rode around in a
stretch limo frequently seen illegally parked all over campus, with the
chauffeur standing by.
Worse yet, many professors thought Summers spent too much time
positioning Harvard to suit prevailing political winds rather than
advocating for the university's traditional separation from the
corrupting worlds of politics and commerce. When Summers urged the
return of ROTC, for instance, some professors suspected he was trying
to score points with conservatives.
This issue - the politicization of American universities - is one that
goes well beyond Harvard. Universities across the country are becoming
more politically engaged and savvy in part because of the increasing
need to fundraise. They can't survive without federal aid; Harvard
receives more than $400 million a year in federal grants. In a time of
war and budget deficits, that aid can't be taken for granted.
Meanwhile, congressional Republicans, who have little affinity for
generally liberal campuses, use their bully pulpits to blast campus
priorities and politics. So it's the rare university president who
ignores the political powers-that-be and jeopardizes the precious
lifeblood of his university.
These days, every university president has to be concerned about the
conservative critique of academia as a hotbed of left-wing radicalism.
Bill O'Reilly is quick to jump on any perceived left-wing campus
outbreak. Conservative activist David Horowitz has launched a
nationwide campaign to combat liberal bias at colleges.
Meanwhile, social conservatives campaign against university research
into stem cells and the teaching of evolution. The intellectual freedom
that university presidents are supposed to defend has increasingly come
under attack - and university dependence on federal cash makes the
temptation to compromise all the greater.
If any university can hold out against the pressures of big money and
national politics, it is Harvard, with its enormous $26 billion
endowment. Professors there still remember when, in 1954, President
Nathan Pusey publicly lambasted Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who saw a Red
under every Crimson Ph.D. Yet Summers never articulated how Harvard
could retain its independence from Washington; he didn't seem to care.
The very fact that he'd been chosen as president suggested that his
university, and by extension all universities, needed to be more like
Washington.
In the end, that suggestion helped doom Summers. The faculty sent a
message: Our way of doing business might not be perfect, but if you
replace it with Washington-style politics, what does the university
stand for? Summers may be gone, but that question remains.
Richard Bradley is the author of "Harvard Rules." He wrote this for the
Los Angeles Times.
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| User: "Robert Cohen" |
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| Title: Re: D.C. Kicked Out Of Harvard |
28 Feb 2006 07:51:05 AM |
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re: The gender & Cornell West v Larry Summers et cetera phenomena
I read the Bradley column, as my b.s. detector picks-up the distorting
rhetoric in the essayist.
My interpretation:
Summers, according to Bradley, politicizes the university to a
Washington politico-animal mode, whereas an independent university is
ideally separate--not a Joe McCarthy etal asss-kissing place.
Horse-shite:
This firing/resignation WAS indeed about "liberal v. conservative"
university politiks, and the liberal establishment faculty has
manifestly prevailed.
Summers' problem in seeking to re-make what the university oughtabe
wasn't politically tactful.
He obviously rubbed the faculty wrong.
The chauffeuring around campus bit is to apply unsubtle distateful
characterization/flavor to Summers controversial presidency.
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| User: "Dom" |
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| Title: Re: D.C. Kicked Out Of Harvard |
28 Feb 2006 12:01:46 PM |
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Robert Cohen wrote:
re: The gender & Cornell West v Larry Summers et cetera phenomena
I read the Bradley column, as my b.s. detector picks-up the distorting
rhetoric in the essayist.
My interpretation:
Summers, according to Bradley, politicizes the university to a
Washington politico-animal mode, whereas an independent university is
ideally separate--not a Joe McCarthy etal asss-kissing place.
Horse-shite:
This firing/resignation WAS indeed about "liberal v. conservative"
university politiks, and the liberal establishment faculty has
manifestly prevailed.
Summers' problem in seeking to re-make what the university oughtabe
wasn't politically tactful.
He obviously rubbed the faculty wrong.
The chauffeuring around campus bit is to apply unsubtle distateful
characterization/flavor to Summers controversial presidency.
I really don't see all that much b.s. in Bradley's piece.
I realize that Summers' comments about the "intrinsic aptitude" of
women were taken out of context and blown out of proportion. However,
he could have used his soap box to discuss more factual issues--such as
why so many women were denied credit for their contributions. Last year
he delivered his speech around the same time that I saw a rebroadcast
of the NOVA program at:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3009_photo51.html
concerning Rosalind Franklin's contributions to the discovery of the
structure of the DNA molecule. By using X-ray crystallography, Franklin
obtained an image of the double helix. The photograph can be seen at:
http://www.cas.astate.edu/draganjac/Franklin.html
Several months ago, another PBS documentary examined the contributions
made by Mileva Maric, Albert Einstein's first wife, to the papers that
were published in 1905:
http://www.pbs.org/opb/einsteinswife/
DR
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| User: "Robert Cohen" |
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| Title: Re: D.C. Kicked Out Of Harvard |
28 Feb 2006 02:09:01 PM |
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The truth is I don't know what to think:
I have posted semi-profound thoughts, and rushed-into holy ground
where less imprudent observers tread litely in due fear of paranoia
itself.
Here's NEWSWEEK's write-up, while NEWSWEEK doesn't seem to be slanting
either way.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11571096/site/newsweek/
The Harvard faculty & students are considered to be (some of) the very
best minds in modern American civilization:
Luv it, or resign from it, because there's probably a place awaiting
the outspoken resigned teacher in a junior or senior college nearly
everywhere.
Surviving presidents of universities HAVE to be political in all of its
smarmy & leadership connotative senses.
I am supposing there's similar phenomena all over the USA.
For example in my backyard, 17 miles from Athens, Georgia:
The President of the University of Georgia, Michael Adams, has (so far)
won a major battle/war with an old guard alumni foundation
committee/football establishment/traditionalists/funders, though I
perceive he's been seriously wounded.
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| User: "Stan de SD" |
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| Title: Re: D.C. Kicked Out Of Harvard |
28 Feb 2006 10:55:26 PM |
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"Robert Cohen" <robtcohen@msn.com> wrote in message
news:1141157341.059579.313830@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
The truth is I don't know what to think:
I have posted semi-profound thoughts,
Well, they were semi-something, but I was thinking that "coherent" would
have been a better description than "profound"... :O|
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| User: "Robert Cohen" |
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| Title: Re: D.C. Kicked Out Of Harvard |
01 Mar 2006 07:39:00 AM |
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re: high & mighty nonsense
Schmuckes have something to say, while kibbitzers bait--or maybe that's
a vice-versa.
I gave my opinion of an interesting on-going story: It's not my worst
of all time, though I can't give a flying shite if somebody thinks it's
stupid.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: D.C. Kicked Out Of Harvard |
01 Mar 2006 02:34:38 PM |
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re: Summers' arrogantly parked limo at Harvard yard
Essay by somebody who claims a firsthand gossip privilege of the
dust-up:
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20060306&s=diarist030606
CAMBRIDGE DIARIST
Summers's End
by Martin Peretz
Post date 02.23.06 | Issue date 03.06.06 Discuss this article (78)
Printer friendly
E-mail this article
I know something about the Harvard academy's propensity for
self-pampering and self-importance. And the problem with Larry Summers
is that he never joined what the American cultural critic Harold
Rosenberg devastatingly called "the herd of independent minds." I'd
encountered Summers a few times before his return to Cambridge--most
memorably when both of us skulked around a Nashville hotel suite on
November 7, 2000, waiting for NBC to decide whether Al Gore or George
W. Bush had been elected president. Summers's arrival at Harvard was
bracing. The Harvard Corporation had finally decided to bring the
university into modern times, and it had chosen an at once dazzling and
sober intellectual to do it. You could feel the walls of the faculty
club tremble. Well, the walls of the club that serves the Facul...
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| User: "Robert Cohen" |
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| Title: Re: D.C. Kicked Out Of Harvard |
02 Mar 2006 09:09:43 AM |
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The NY TIMES call-u-mist David Brooks apparently thinks he knows better
than ye, me, and/or Stan de.
I sorta like this call-yum, except vat-the-h is the gifted geek saying
(?).
It's copyrighted, and despite that I pay 'em $49 a year for their
"select" things plus their index, i dunno if such gives me the license
to fairly utilize it, and so, tuff-shitsky, comrades.
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/03/02/opinion/02brooks.html?hp
Op-Ed Columnist
Harvard-Bound? Chin Up
E-Mail This
Printer-Friendly
Save Article
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: March 2, 2006
I've got great news! You're young and you're smart and next year you're
beginning college. Unfortunately, I've also got bad news. The only
school you got into is Harvard, where, as Peter Beinart of The New
Republic notes, students often graduate "without the kind of core
knowledge that you'd expect from a good high school student," and
required courses can be "a hodgepodge of arbitrary, esoteric classes
that cohere into nothing at all."
Skip to next paragraph
Send Your Comments About This Column
The columnist posts about issues that shape his perspective and
addresses reader feedback.
=B7 Read Other Readers' Comments
=B7 Columnist Page
Audio Versions of Op-Ed Columns
TimesSelect subscribers can now listen to a reading of the day's Op-Ed
columns.
Related:
"Failing Grade", by Peter Beinart. The New Republic, March 6, 2006.
TODAY IN TIMESSELECT
Op-Ed Podcasts
The Opinionator
Times Preview
But don't despair. I've consulted with a bevy of sages, and I've come
up with a list. If you do everything on this list, you'll get a great
education, no matter what college...
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| User: "Robert Cohen" |
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| Title: Re: D.C. Kicked Out Of Harvard |
28 Feb 2006 05:09:06 PM |
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re: A side little $candal makes cause-effect reality less simple, and
this n.g. is supposed to be about "history" after all
Complicating, dynamic factors do happen in cause-effect phenomena.
Take, for instance:
The sources of income & the pay itself of a president of a
university--private or public--can attract resentment & ridicule when
the press or enemy feels like mentioning/emphasizing such.
For example in the Summers situation on top of his unpolitik anti--p.c.
outspokeness:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/27/business/media/27mclintick.html?ex=1156654800&en=df330c055d11ce26&ei=5087&mkt=bizlink1
So, the history lecture for today is:
Nuances & subtleties in causations do have ways of clouding clearcut
dichotomies/rationales, and thus I now suggest to the reader such is
what our complex social culture truly is (often ambiguous &
muti/dual-faced).
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| User: "Stan de SD" |
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| Title: Re: D.C. Kicked Out Of Harvard |
28 Feb 2006 10:56:31 PM |
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"Robert Cohen" <robtcohen@msn.com> wrote in message
news:1141168146.741212.266910@p10g2000cwp.googlegroups.com...
re: A side little $candal makes cause-effect reality less simple, and
this n.g. is supposed to be about "history" after all
Complicating, dynamic factors do happen in cause-effect phenomena.
Take, for instance:
The sources of income & the pay itself of a president of a
university--private or public--can attract resentment & ridicule when
the press or enemy feels like mentioning/emphasizing such.
For example in the Summers situation on top of his unpolitik anti--p.c.
outspokeness:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/27/business/media/27mclintick.html?ex=1156654800&en=df330c055d11ce26&ei=5087&mkt=bizlink1
So, the history lecture for today is:
Nuances & subtleties in causations do have ways of clouding clearcut
dichotomies/rationales, and thus I now suggest to the reader such is
what our complex social culture truly is (often ambiguous &
muti/dual-faced).
Interesting - so, how many bong hits did you take before logging on again?
.
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