Harvard Heats Up
Yesterday's protest at Harvard over the return of military recruiting drew about 150 people,
reports the Crimson.
One of them was law professor Alan Dershowitz, who said this: “We are the wealthiest university in the world. We can afford to fight bigotry in ways other universities cannot. And if we don’t take the lead, no one else will.”
Classic Dershowitz: He says something true enough, and then adds some unnecessary bit of hyperbole that just irritates.
Yes, Harvard is the world's wealthiest university, by about eleven billion dollars. And yes, Harvard can afford to fight bigotry in ways that other universities cannot.
But if Harvard doesn't take the lead, someone else will—for example, the coalition of universities called
FAIR, which already has taken the lead in opposing the Solomon Amendment.
What we will assume Dershowitz is saying is that Harvard's opposition could have an impact that other universities' actions would not, and at least in public relations terms, if not in legal ones—and Dershowitz may know even more about the former than the latter—this is likely true.
That's why this quote from law student Ashley Filip is so telling: “I would like to see more of a personal stand taken by the University...just in terms of doing more to encourage discussion of the issue."
However one feels about the Solomon Amendment and military recruiting, this is exactly the kind of issue where the president of Harvard should stand up and make his feelings known—or at least take advantage of the situation to explain Harvard's stance and how it was arrived at. By all accounts, Summers was an excellent teacher, and this is a moment where he could draw upon those skills to promote education about a real-world issue.
But he has been silent, whether because he's trying to lay low or because he suspects that his feelings on military recruiting will not be popular....
In other Summers news,
the president has decided to contribute to the funding of the Center for International Development, whose director recently left in protest of Summers' apparent malign neglect.
This incident reminds me of the incident detailed in
Harvard Rules, in which Summers funneled a million-dollar contribution to the university to court professor Skip Gates, who was thinking of leaving after the departures of Cornel West and Anthony Appiah. Along with the $50 million diversity fund, there is a pattern here, of Summers using Harvard's money to try to buy goodwill or recover from self-inflicted wounds. It's certainly possible that these expenditures are worthwhile, but somehow the budgeting process seems a little...arbitrary, perhaps?
