Rack 'em Up, Let's Break
Here's InsideHigherEd.com's take on the Summers talk regarding Native Americans.
Just so everyone can keep track, let's sum up whom exactly Larry Summers has offended during his four years as president of Harvard.
1)
African-Americans. (The Cornel West incident, stated doubts about affirmative action.)
2)
Latinos. (Rejecting calls for a Latino studies department, Summers explained that the reason there was an African-American studies department—but shouldn't be a Latino studies department—was because of the importance of the Civil War.)
3)
Muslims. (Summers argued that people who felt Harvard should divest from Israel over human rights issues were anti-Semitic; he treated Muslim commencement speaker Zayed Yasin with contempt.)
4)
Native Americans. (See above.)
5)
Asians. (Summers repeatedly recounted an inaccurate story about the number of teenage prostitutes in Seoul, South Korea, which suggested that there were more teenage prostitutes in Seoul than there were teenager girls.)
6)
Women. (The women in science remarks, among other things.)
7)
Gays. (Summers repeatedly called for the return of ROTC to campus, despite the military's anti-gay discrimination; he refused to fight enforcement of the Solomon Amendment, which mandated military recruiting on campuses receiving federal monies, on the grounds that the issue of anti-gay discrimination was not important enough to merit jeopardizing federal dollars.)
The only major ethnic group or other constituency at Harvard that Summers has not insulted or offended in some way, as far as I can tell, is his own—white Jewish men. Which helps to explain some of his troubles. Politicians—and the president of Harvard has to be a politician—are supposed to broaden their base of support by reaching out to different constituencies, rather than pissing them off.
It continues to fascinate me that the members of the Harvard Corporation saw Summers as the man who could unite and lead this university....
