Hot! Hot! Hot!
As
the Cure would say.
The New York Times
reports on a new poll of Harvard alums commissioned by a new alumni magazine called
02138.
Of 402 alums surveyed, 63% said that Summers "should keep his job"—the Times headline suggests that this means they don't think he should resign, though it might mean that they don't think he should be fired, an important distinction. Just over 50% think that he's doing a good job as Harvard president and that he's a "victim of political correctness."
Not surprisingly, the older the alum, the more likely he was to fall into this group. (And I think it's safe to use the masculine pronoun here.)
Anyway, that's the good news for Summers. That, and the headline: "Alumni in Poll Say Harvard President Should not Resign."
A more accurate headline would read: "Poll Shows Mixed Support for Harvard President."
Because, as the article goes on to note, 42 percent of those surveyed think that Summers has damaged the reputation of the university. Fascinatingly, only 28% said no, while a huge 30% said they didn't know or refused to answer the question.
I know a little bit about polls from my work in politics, and I think you can safely conclude from this that a majority of Harvard alums think that Summers has damaged their university's reputation.
Given the natural tendency of Harvard alums to rally around their president, these numbers are not all that encouraging for Summers. By Washington standards, they're not so bad. By Harvard standards, they're unprecedentedly so.
And a final point: It's remarkable that a poll by an alumni magazine on the fate of Larry Summers makes the pages of the New York Times.
As Nelly would say, it's getting hot in here.
