Regina Herzlinger Comes to Summers' Defense
In an article in the New Republic, HBS professor of business administration Regina Herzlinger comes to the defense of Harvard's departed president.
Ms. Herzlinger's article would appear to be HBS' way of rolling out the welcome wagon for Summers. It is generously reasoned.
I'd like to deconstruct a bit...beginning at the beginning.
Early last month Harvard University's President Lawrence Summers revealed his true feelings about the continued absence of a ROTC program on the campus. "I look forward to the day when it will be a matter of routine, and not a matter for comment when a president of an Ivy League university is a strong and active supporter of the ROTC program; that will be a great day for our universities and for our country." His remarks underscore a triple tragedy: that Summers could not come out of the closet on ROTC until after his "resignation" in February; that Summers was forced to "resign"; and that the Harvard University faculty refuse to permit an ROTC program. All three can be traced to one root cause--the absence of presidential leadership at America's premier colleges and universities.
Curious that Herzlinger deems this remark remarkable. The comment itself is self-serving on Summers' part, since it is entirely routine for a president of an Ivy League university to support ROTC. (Could Herzlinger name one who opposes ROTC?) Now, if an Ivy League president came out and blasted ROTC—that would be news.
What would be more admirable would be for such a president—Summers, for example—to explain why he thinks it's acceptable for an employer who discriminates to recruit at Harvard. This discrimination is the only obstacle to ROTC's return—it's not a lack of patriotism, nor hippie opposition to the military—and yet, Summers never addressed it, not once. Professor Herzlinger might note that the law school, which she seems to admire, has vigorously fought military recruiting on its campus. And one wonders if this HBS professor would support recruitment at HBS by businesses which refuse to hire gays, or blacks, or women....
(Incidentally, is Hertzlinger's use of the phrase "come out of the closet" deliberate? If so, it's gay-baiting masquerading as bad writing, or vice-versa, perhaps.)
And finally, won't someone please, please mention that for all his carping about ROTC, Larry Summers never actually did anything to bring it back to Harvard? (Oh, all right....)
To call a man a hero simply for issuing soundbites feels like grade inflation.
And speaking of which....
Lawrence Summers was a throwback to a prior era of university presidents--men with big egos who had big ideas about the world and the appropriate roles of institutions of higher education within them. In an era when politically correct, genteel, and deferential college and university leaders live in big houses from which they beg for money, Summers was an intellectual and personal brawler.
I'll grant that Summers was a brawler, perhaps even a bully. And I'll concede that he had a big ego. Maybe even an enormous one. I'm just not sure that he had big ideas about the world and the role of institutions within it. What were they? Well...
Some might call Summers's ideas about higher education radical--he wanted to reintroduce rigor to the undergraduate curriculum, to the process of determining student grades, to how the place was run...
This phrase—"some might call.."—is what some might call a straw man, a term I learned in 12th grade logic class. Because let's face it, no one would call reintroducing rigor to the curriculum or cutting down on grade inflation "radical." I would call it boilerplate, or perhaps common sense. But if it is to be the dangerous lefties who toppled Summers, then their aversion to rigor and excellence must be—well, not established—but asserted, disingenuously, early on.
He was aggressive too, firing deans he viewed as ineffective and chastising faculty who missed their classes....
That would be one of each, actually, though Herzlinger uses the plural to buttress her argument. (That 12th grade logic class does come in handy.)
True, he fired dean Bill Kirby...whom he hired in the first place. Oops. And he only fired Kirby a year after he intended to, because his own remarks about women in science made it impossible for him to fire the dean when he wanted to. Ooops.
And true, he yelled at Cornel West for missing classes...although he was wrong, and as I wrote in my book, West hadn't missed classes, and was a beloved teacher.
But what are facts?
Summers's most important initiative was to raise billions to integrate the famously decentralized units of the university--every tub of which stands on its own bottom--to form hands-on, interdisciplinary laboratories to help unlock the biggest scientific puzzle of the twenty-first century, medicine.
Billions. Hmm. Where, exactly, are these billions? (Ask Larry Ellison.) Does Herzlinger have any idea? Does she even care?
And what does, say, creating a new stem cell center have to do with integrating the ETOB system? (Nothing, of course.) It's not as if interdisciplinary centers didn't already exist at Harvard. And how's that capital campaign going? (Oh, wait....)
It was also his biggest mistake. The grandees at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences gave him no-confidence votes because they feared that this initiative would draw support away from them to the biological and chemical sciences and Harvard's professional schools of business, law, and medicine. They wanted no part of a president who actually dared to lead.
Here, at last, are our villains: the "grandees" at FAS. Those "grandees" are both scary—watch it, they'll get you!—and scared. They fear a "leader"! Although, in truth, I don't think that even Larry Summers' defenders—well, other than this one—would call him much of a leader. The results would seem to suggest the converse. But never mind. These grandees don't seem to fear Derek Bok. Does that mean Bok isn't a leader?
There's more—Herzlinger goes on to compare Summers to Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson—but what's the point? Herzlinger isn't interested in logic or facts. (Because no one who cared about facts could write the article she did.)
What seems to motivate her is a contempt for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences—a contempt whose motivation I can not know, but which appears to be based on ignorance. Larry Summers, who shared that contempt, is going to fit right in at HBS.
