It Takes A Student
Want to know why the Harvard faculty can't stand and don't trust Larry Summers? Crimson columnist J. Hale Russell has written
the best explanation—well, other than a certain book—of the Kafka-esque nature of Harvard life these days.
Allow me to quote a couple of paragraphs:
"A parable has it that an old man was attacked by a group of bandits. He burst into tears, and they mocked him as a childish cry-baby. But the man cut them off. 'I am crying,' he said, 'not from fear. I'm crying because I pity what you and the world are losing from your behavior. The bandits, as the story goes, were so struck by his words that they immediately reformed their ways.
"Harvard has bandits. They're bundled between the pages of cryptic, bland reports about the curricular review; they lurk behind the provost's wresting away faculty control of grants; they laugh as departments defend themselves after falling out of favor with Mass Hall. The secretive, non-participatory, top-down processes brought to Harvard by the current administration threaten a key principle of university governance: those who lead the University's intellectual life, the tenured men and women of Harvard, are best suited to make decisions affecting that intellectual life."
I know that some of you Harvard alums and others outside 02138 find this hard to believe, because—well, because who wants to believe that such a state of affairs could exist at such an important university?
Read the rest of the column and make up your own mind.
