Summers at Tufts: Wow
In the Crimson, Zach Seward reports on Larry Summers' speech at Tufts, where his impending appearance had generated some mild controversy.
If my reading of Seward's article is correct, Summers' appearance should generate far more controversy at Harvard than at Tufts.
Seward notes that
there is also a long Harvard tradition of deposed administrators taking up the role of pesky gadfly.
That may be true, though I don't know Harvard history well enough to say so. (Citing Harry Lewis hardly constitutes a long tradition, and I wonder if it wouldn't be more accurate to call this a "recent phenomenon.")
But whatever is the case with "deposed administrators" becoming gadflies, there is no precedent that I'm aware of for a former president directly criticizing the Harvard faculty.
When Derek Bok left the Harvard presidency in 1991 and took an office in the Kennedy School, he made a scrupulous point of not speaking out on current Harvard affairs. It was unfair, he thought, to his successor, to have the old president lingering on campus and making life difficult for Neil Rudenstine.
Larry Summers is clearly not going to follow that model.
As Seward tells it, Summers...
...criticized the Harvard faculty and the curricular review.
“When university faculties are unwilling to take a stand on what constitutes the undergraduate experience for students, on what, if anything, somebody needs to function in today’s world, they license a position that all ideas are equally valid,” he said.
...criticized the final General Education report, saying...
“
I would have liked a somewhat better defined sense of what the crucial issues were that students needed to grapple with, and I would have welcomed a deeper commitment to faculty-student contact.”
...criticized Harvard professors' teaching ability, saying,
“
I can’t recall a single case when an effort was made to raid Harvard for a candidate who was an outstanding teacher.”
Well, he does speak his mind, doesn't he? (There's more in Seward's article.) I'll have some thoughts on the specifics of Summers criticisms, but all I can say is that if this is going to be Summers' approach to his post-presidency, then look out, Drew Faust!
Things around 02138 just got a lot more interesting.
