Shots In The Dark

Lee Bollinger, who lost the Harvard presidency to Larry Summers, talks about free speech at universities here.

Bollinger was specifically addressing the allegation that the department of Middle Eastern Studies at Columbia is a hotbed of anti-Semitism.

The Columbia president, a First Amendment scholar, strikes a reasonable balance. Just because they have tenure and the right to free speech, he said, professors can't say anything they want, and shouldn't use their classrooms to promote their own political agendas.

Then Bollinger adds this very important caveat: "When there are lines to be drawn," he said, "we must and will be the ones to do it. Not outside actors. Not politicians, not pressure groups, not the media. Ours is and must remain a system of self-government."

People at Columbia tell me that Bollinger's agenda is very similar to Larry Summers' at Harvard: centralizing the president's authority, expanding the campus, building up the sciences, etc.

And yet, for some reason, the Harvard president is embroiled in controversy while Bollinger looks like the public intellectual Summers was supposed to be....suggesting that it's not necessarily Summers' agenda that has gotten him into trouble, but his personality.