More Backlash
Meanwhile, over at the Weekly Standard, Peter Berkowitz (who was once denied tenure at Harvard, and sued) writes that Summers' end is part of an attack on free speech, and that Summers should never have apologized for his remarks on women-in-science.
Berkowitz sounds like a reasonable man, and he makes about as strong a case for this argument—it's something of an old saw by now—that can be made. But his argument suffers from the lack of a broader awareness of Summers and the question of free speech. Because as I've written before, the greatest threat to free speech at Harvard was, ironically enough, Larry Summers himself.
It was Summers who tried to control and manipulate the press, rewarding favored journalists (James Traub, Daniel Golden) while cutting off others (yours truly, the Financial Times reporter he threw out of his office, etc.). It was Summers who created a climate of fear on campus which made professors and staffers afraid to talk to journalists, and sometimes even their peers. Summers who squelched debate about Israel when he pronounced that all those who favored divestment from Israel were anti-Semitic. Summers who criticized Cornel West for his political support of Al Sharpton and Ralph Nader. Summers who refused to support the law school's suit against the Defense Department, which charged that the Solomon Amendment was, in effect, a prohibition on free speech. Summers who refused to speak against the Patriot Act, not even the section of it which allows the government to track what books students checked out of Widener Library. Summers who made his own deans nervous about talking to the press, and Summers who insisted that press releases from around the university be vetted through Mass Hall. Summers who forbade anyone who worked for him to say anything on behalf of embattled Commencement speaker Zayed Yasin.
I could go on...but you get the point.
What free speech under Summers seemed to mean was that, while the speech of others was limited, Summers could say anything he wanted, no matter how offensive or just plain inaccurate—and then, if criticized for it, he and his defenders would retreat to the "I'm being attacked by the politically correct" line.
Of course, even without knowing the big picture, you could still argue that the reaction to Summers' women-in-science remarks was an attack on free speech. But in my opinion, even that is a weak argument. If you vehemently disagree with something—and you think it's just the latest in a series of leadership gaffes—you're going to express yourself passionately, and you might even come to the conlusion that you lack confidence in the speaker.
No one was saying that Summers didn't have the right to make those remarks...but the expression of strong opinions has consequences.
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P.S. I was disappointed to see these remarks from Andrew Sullivan:
Peter Berkowitz blames
the Harvard president's refusal to stand up resolutely enough for free speech, including his own. He was cashiered because he was too apologetic. Appeasement never works. They get you in the end.
Andrew's defense of free speech in other contexts is laudable. But here, it's just misguided, glib and wrong.
