The Motion
FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
Regular Meeting, Tuesday, March 15, 2005, 4 p.m.
Location to be announced in the Final Agenda
Tea from 3:30 to 3:55 p.m.
PRELIMINARY AGENDA
...
VIII. Docket Items
1. Professor J. L. Matory will move:
That the Faculty vote:
(1) to register dissent from a series of pronouncements by
Mr. Summers that minimize the social causes of social inequality
and, at times, appear to censor dissenting views on campus; and
(2) to demand a halt to any expansion of presidential
prerogatives that will facilitate the application of these
pronouncements to the governance of the University.
(Explanatory Note below)
2. Deans Kirby and Gross will report on the progress
and schedule of the Curricular Review.
Explanatory note for Item #1 (provided by Professor Matory) :
While the Faculty gratefully acknowledges Mr. Summers' apologies for
remarks minimizing the innate capacities of women and for lapses of
respect in his communication with faculty members, the Faculty also
wishes to register its dissent from a number of public pronouncements
by the President that would otherwise appear to represent us collectively,
and to urge limits on the proposed expansion of presidential prerogatives.
Over the past three and a half years, faculty members have discerned in
the conduct of President Summers a pattern of aggressive communication
and inattention to faculty opinions, both of which are inconsistent with the
principles of free inquiry and the democratic management of the Faculty
of Arts and Sciences. The Faculty acknowledges Mr. Summers' promise
to improve his communication with us, but we remain concerned about
the substance of Mr. Summers' apparently ongoing convictions about the
capacities and rights not only of women but also of African Americans,
third-world nations, gay people, and colonized peoples. We are concerned
that Mr. Summers' latest remarks minimizing the innate intellectual capacities
of women reflect Mr. Summers' tendency to vocalize his speculations
without due regard for either the standards of scholarship or the effect
of careless pronouncements, particularly from the president of one of
the world's leading universities, on the human beings concerned.
Mr. Summers has demonstrated little concern for his role as the foremost
public representative of the University. Yet he has moved to increase the
powers of his office significantly, through, for example, the creation of
"divisional appointments." For these reasons, and in the spirit of freedom
of expression, the assembled faculty members wish officially to register
dissent from Mr. Summers' stated opinions regarding the innate capacities
of subordinate populations, the wisdom of dumping in third-world nations,
the authorized presence on campus of organizations that infringe upon the
equal rights of gay people, and the proposition that the criticism of Israeli
military policy toward the Palestinians is inherently anti-Semitic.
We, the Faculty, vote to dissent from these positions of Mr. Summers,
to demand that they not be employed in the governance of the University
or in restricting the free speech of professors and departments, and to halt
any further expansion of presidential prerogatives that will facilitate the
propagation of these positions.
