Shots In The Dark
Thursday, June 07, 2024
  These Degrees Are Getting Hotter
As a poster below first mentioned, Harvard is giving Larry Summers and Conrad Harper honorary degrees today.

I presume this is an attempt to make them both feel better about the university that, for various reasons, each felt forced to leave, even if only temporarily. An act of healing. And, of course, the better Summers and Harper feel about Harvard, the more likely they are to keep quiet about what really happened during the Summers' years.

Think I'm being too cynical? Surely it can't be coincidence that Harper and Summers are getting honorary degrees the same year.... Wouldn't you have loved to have been a fly on the wall for those meetings?

Lots of fun questions surround this one. What exactly will that honorary degree commendation to Larry Summers say? How do you finesse the fact that you're giving an honorary degree to a man who was forced to resign from the presidency of the university? And why not wait a little longer to do it?
 
Comments:
Not cynical enough, perhaps. Don't you think the honorary degree for Summers was part of the "resignation" package? Harper then a response to that.
 
I think if you check the records you'll find that Harvard always gives its presidents honorary degrees a year after the end of their tenure. Which is not to say they shouldn't have made an exception to that practice in the case of Summers! And I think they also give honorary degrees to retired Fellows, so the Harpur recognition is also just part of established practice. But it was a pretty amusing group -- I wish they'd seated Summers between Harpur and the woman mathematician!
 
Anon 7:07 That's Conrad Harper.
Watching the morning commencement exercises, it was great to see the wonderful ovation that most in The Theatre gave to Larry.
 
The commendations were formulated and the degrees awarded with remarkable grace. Kudos to everyone involved!
Judith Ryan
 
Actually, they should have seated Summers between Karen Uhlenbeck and Jocelyn Bell--two women scientists who have been outspoken about the lunacy of his NBER comments....It's as if the whole honorary degree list was chosen as a rebuke to Summers.
 
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Name: Richard Bradley
Location: New York, New York,
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