A Summers Myth
In the Los Angeles Times,
David Greenberg wonders whether the media isn't too quick to judge men who make gaffes.
In recent years, this hysteria has exacted apologies, resignations and other pounds of flesh...The sloppy, sexist remarks that former Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers made about women and science deserved a reprimand, but they didn't justify the loss of his job, which came fast and furious last spring.
I know and like David, but he's wrong about something here—a mistake I want to point out since it's become so common, it's now conventional wisdom.
Most commentators who write about Summers' exit from Harvard now conflate it chronologically with the women-in-science comments, as if the former hastily followed the latter—it came "fast and furious."
The conflation creates a causality that isn't accurate.
In fact, as we on this blog all know, Summers left Harvard more than a year after "the troubles," and could very well have survived "women in science" had he not begun making more missteps.
This matters for two reasons.
One, the suggestion that Summers was fired for exercising his right to free speech makes him an unjustified martyr.
Two, it obscures the fact that there were many other issues involved in Summers' resignation, some of which are ongoing at Harvard. (Debates over centralization and executive power, for instance.)
I don't expect that pointing this out will make any real difference, since this conflation has now become the conventional wisdom about Summers' ouster. (As Michael Kolber might say, sometimes the media is lazy.)
Perhaps I will rename this blog "Tilting at Windmills"....
