A Crucial Issue
One of the biggest political questions implicit in Larry Summers' presidency is that of the university's relationship to the federal government. Without question, Summers has weakened Harvard's identity as an institution apart from, and often in opposition to, the government. For many students and faculty members, this drive to closer ally Harvard with Washington is worrisome, and represents a subversion of the university's role as an enlightening force in society. Summers, they charge, is interested only in power—primarily his own—and thus he's willing to compromise the university's independence to make himself more politically palatable to Republicans who might appoint him to, say, the job of Federal Reserve chairman. Probably a pipe dream now, but it wasn't always.
Let me give a quick example of how Summers' desire to bond Harvard closer to the government has created tensions on campus.
The president gets a lot of credit from conservatives for wanting to bring ROTC back on campus; conservative pundits bash faculty and students who oppose that as being un-patriotic and hostile to the military. (In fact, Summers himself has said pretty much the same.)
These conservative arguments rest upon a caricature of the Harvard community, which is not nearly as leftist as portrayed. The student body in particular is hardly a bunch of riotous left-wingers. I never got any sense of real dislike of the military on campus.
Everyone supports our troops.
What they don't support is the military's ban on gays. That bigotry offends a humane and open-minded intellectual community, as it should. Consequently, people are troubled by the idea of restoring a military presence to the Harvard campus.
The bottom line: If the military lifted its ban on gays, the Harvard faculty would vote to bring ROTC back to campus the next week.
This tension also manifested itself in the debate over the Solomon Amendment, a federal law mandating that universities which accept federal money must also accept military recruiting. After 9/11, the Pentagon began to enforce the amendment, threatening the loss of Harvard's hundreds of millions in federal aid, and Harvard collapsed like a bad souffle.
With both ROTC and the Solomon Amendment, Summers refused to speak out on behalf of gays, essentially saying that other goals of the university were more important than this issue of fundamental human rights.
I say "essentially" because Summers has never publicly articulated his position on this matter. It's a shame; I'd like to hear Summers address how the university should balance the imperative of its moral independence with the reality of its dependence upon the federal government. Particularly as Republicans in Congress are cracking down on the autonomy of private universities, that is an urgent question. If Larry Summers really wants to ignite important public and political discussions, this is a much better place to start than whether women are dumber than men in science and math.
