Stalemate
Another fascinating meeting yesterday at Cambridge. But first, I want to point out something in the papers this morning. In today's
New York Post, columnist Andrea Peyser sums up the problem with Larry Summers' remarks on women in science thusly: "The offense Summers has committed...is not a mere violation of political correctness. He's committed a sin far more egregious. He has used his lofty perch to promote junk science."
I think that's about the fastest, most accurate way of limning the problem with what Summers said about women's intellectual abilities. Since the
Post editorial page has been consistently beating the Summers-is-a-victim-of-political-correctness drum, I'm surprised to see such independent thinking there. Good for Peyser.
Okay, on to faculty meeting number two.
The media swarmed around Harvard Yard yesterday hoping to witness fireworks that never occurred. By all accounts, the tone of yesterday's meeting, the second public referendum on Summers' leadership of Harvard, was courteous and civil, probably the consequence of a week-long cooling-off period and faculty concern about being caricatured in the media. It's also true that the most extreme supporters and opponents of Summers did not get the chance to speak. (You can be sure that this was no accident—Summers controls the agenda of the faculty meetings, and he would have wanted to avoid polarizing figures.)
That doesn't mean the meeting was without drama. Economist Caroline Hoxby—one of two women in what is probably Harvard's most powerful department—stood and talked powerfully about how Summers has corroded the bonds of trust between faculty members. "Every time you humiliate or silence a faculty member, you break ties in our web," Hoxby told Summers. Hoxby's an African-American woman in a white-male-dominated department, but her work can't be politically pigeonholed. She spoke with credibility and impact.
Physicist Daniel Fisher recited a litany of criticisms he had of the way Summers has planned for the advancement of the sciences at Harvard, arguing essentially that Summers set up committees which were supposed to give him advice, and then ignored them. (A complaint that has the ring of truth—as I write in
Harvard Rules, Summers has a habit of doing exactly that.) Fisher then called on Summers to resign "for the good of Harvard."
But before subsequent speakers could respond to that issue, Faculty of Arts and Sciences dean Bill Kirby, whom Summers was allowing to direct the meeting, called on former FAS dean Jeremy Knowles. Completely unexpectedly, Knowles stood and offered a plan for a three-person board that would serve as a liason between the faculty, the president and the governing boards, primarily the seven-person, ultra-secretive Harvard Corporation. The other members would be Theda Skocpol, a respected scholar who's a critic of Summers, and Sidney Verba, a respected scholar who's a Summers supporter.
Knowles plan didn't go over well, for several reasons. One, the move felt orchestrated. Two, how exactly this group would work was unclear. And three, the faculty doesn't trust Knowles. (Full disclosure: Knowles was quoted in the
New York Times as saying that
Harvard Rules lacks the "kind of balance and analysis that we like to see from graduates of Harvard College," his way of saying that I'm not really a Harvard man.)
A little background on Knowles: He was the FAS dean under Neil Rudenstine, Summers' predecessor. He's extremely smart, quite witty, highly charming, and utterly political. As dean, Knowles had a reputation for being a faculty advocate, but also for telling people what they wanted to hear, even if it wasn't what he really believed.
Still, if Summers were to lose his job, Knowles would probably be the most viable internal candidate to replace him—and you can be sure that Knowles knows this. So his attempt to propose this three-member panel, with him at its head, could be seen as positioning himself as a conciliatory figure, acceptable to all constituencies of the university...and waiting in the wings should Summers fall. And from what I hear, that's pretty much how the faculty did see it.
No matter. The plan died fast when historian Stanley Hoffman, who's been at Harvard for about fifty years, rose and compared the idea to insider attempts to prop up Napoleon. Sometimes you really have to love Harvard.
But if the intention of the plan was to derail anger at Summers and throw off track a proposal to hold a vote of confidence, it worked. The meeting ended with a sense of uncertainty—nothing was resolved, and no one's quite sure where things go from here. It still seems likely that someone will move for a vote at the next faculty meeting, scheduled for March 15th. But at the moment, I doubt that such a vote would pass. Enough venting has occurred to take some of the steam out of Summers' opposition. The problem is that the faculty doesn't really believe Summers' claims that he'll change his style. They've gone down that road with Summers before, only to discover that it's a dead end. Many faculty members simply don't believe anything that a conciliatory Summers says, and they're unlikely to let him off the hook just because he says he's going to change.
On a side note, I'm struck, looking at recent photographs of Summers, by how much the man has aged in recent months. He looks exhausted. His hair seems to have gone almost completely gray. (There wasn't much, until recently.) He has deep bags under his eyes.
Summers has always looked young for his age. He doesn't any more.
