This Week with Larry Summers
The Harvard president for five more days appeared on "
This Week with George Stephanopoulos" yesterday, making his case that the reason for his ouster as Harvard president was because he wanted to change an institution that did not want to change.
George Stephanopoulos, the struggling host of the struggling show, announced that this was Summers' "first and only network interview." Curious. Does that mean that if Tim Russert picked up the phone and called Mass Hall, Summers would say no? And if Summers was only going to do one interview, why do it with the lowest-rated Sunday morning chat show?
A couple of guesses. First, maybe no one else asked. Second, Summers and Stephanopoulos surely know each other from the Clinton administration, so maybe their preexisting relationship was a factor.
(It would have been nice to hear Stephanopoulos throw in even a token disclosure: "Summers, with whom I worked in President Clinton's administration...." But no.)
The interview went fine for Summers, I'd say; if I were he, I would be pleased. But that's more because of Stephanopoulos' embarrassingly uninformed questions and reverential attitude than Summers' (much improved) interview skills; Stephanopoulos always comes across like the altar boy he used to be, trying to please his elders with his good manners.
Thus, his questions weren't softballs; they were tee-balls. What went wrong at Harvard? Summers said, "Maybe I pushed too hard." Stephanopoulos' amorous follow up? "Where did you push too hard?"
Summers, as political as he is, wouldn't answer even that gentle question. "Oh, a university like this has been around for 370 years and it may be resistant to changing too rapidly," he answered.
Stephanopoulos' next challenging question: "You were also pushing against political correctness on a number of fronts." He mentioned ROTC, grade inflation, women in science. "Were you a victim of political correctness?"
Summers said no, then, basically, yes. "That's much too simple a characterization. There are a lot of things that went on here. I do believe that universities like this one must be open-minded to every perspective, be prepared to take on every subject...and I did speak out on those things."
A key to decoding Summers: When he says "universities like this one," which he says a lot, he means "Harvard." It's a way of implicitly criticizing Harvard while trying to make it look as if he's making a general point about higher education.
Stephanopoulos' next question: "Isn't one of the lessons of your tenure that you can't engage in that kind of inquiry?"
Summers spoke, as he has often done, of turning "heat into light." Then he ruefully conceded that "there may be some people who were deterred from my experience from doing studies they otherwise would have done."
Stephanopoulos: "A majority of students said they didn't want you to go. A majority of the Board of Overseers say they didn't want you to go. Why did you resign? Why not stay and fight."
It was, I think, at this point that I began savagely beating my head against the wall.
First off, no one has ever taken a count of the Board of Overseers that I know of, but from all I'm told they were more anti-Summers than the Corporation was at the end. So where did Stephanopoulos get this factoid, which is not only wrong but also misleading, in that most viewers will not know that Harvard also has a Corporation, which did want Summers to go? (Stephanopoulos thereby created the impression that Summers's resignation was contrary to the wishes of the university's governing board.)
It's such a weird thing to say that someone must have fed it to him...because you'd never have seen that fact in print.
But more important, the whole theme of this discussion—Summers as change agent, taking on the insidious forces of political correctness—is, frankly, just asinine. (And it shows why Stephanopoulos, for all his pat-me-on-the-head smarts, really doesn't think very deeply.)
Fine, Summers was a change agent. But political correctness had nothing to do with what happened at Harvard in the last five years.
Which is more "politically correct" these days, opposing ROTC or calling for its return to campus?
Is it politically correct to question the reality of grade inflation? Or is it politically correct to decry it?
(I always thought that the truly politically incorrect voices in this debate were those like Stephen Greenblatt, who said, Of course Harvard students get good grades, they're really smart. Surely that's more likely to offend than simply saying, We must lower grades.)
Is it politically correct to be offended when the president of the world's most important university makes off the cuff remarks about women's genetic capabilities? Or is it politically correct to say that people who take umbrage at genetic insinuations are just being politically correct?
Perhaps what goes on at universities is simply too complicated to discuss on TV; perhaps Summers is too complicated a figure to explain on TV.
But please...can we discard this paradigm of bold intellectual warrior versus inert, change-hostile, politically correct faculty? That paradigm is reductive, tired, and wrong.
It's one reason why Stephanopoulos' show isn't doing better: The man is too afraid to make anyone angry to challenge conventional wisdom, and as a result, even when he lands what should be a good interview, like Summers, he does nothing with it.
Note that I say "should be a good interview." One thing about Summers that disappoints me these days: For a man said to speak with such candor and intellectual energy, he sure does mouth a lot of platitudes.
"Be willing to change, be willing to move forward....Ask what that institution is not doing today that it can be doing.....if Harvard could find the courage to change itself, it could make a significant contribution to changing the world." Etc., etc.
Summers is constantly on message; he has his soundbites down. I suppose you can't blame him for that. But I wonder if the outside world, which doesn't know what Summers is like in private, would watch that interview and think, "What's all the fuss about? This guy's just a politician like all the rest of them...."
