The Death Of Free Speech, Apparently
In his New Republic blog, Marty Peretz rips into J. Lorand Matory's motion regarding free speech on the Harvard campus.
(Imagine...if any humanists in FAS blogged, they could stick up for Matory! Or criticize him. Whichever.)
Peretz argues that Matory is really gunning for Larry Summers, and after Summers, Israel.
I know Matory's reputation, especially among his colleagues, one of whom dismissed him as "simply a crackpot." He's also an obsessive. And one of the people with whom he is obsessed is Larry Summers. This obsession, one would think, had reached its satisfying fruition when a prior resolution introduced by Matory, a withdrawal of confidence from Summers as the president of Harvard, passed and resulted in the latter's resignation. There are four direct references (and at least two indirect allusions) to Summers in the Crimson piece. If it is aimed against anybody in particular the person in the cross-hairs is Summers. If anybody's right to "express their reasoned and evidence-based ideas" has been violated it has been Summers. First, in a resolution introduced by Matory himself and passed by the F.A.S. that directly made a certain view of things verboten and pushed Summers out of his job. Second, in the scandal perpetrated by the Board of Regents at the University of California by withdrawing an invitation for Summers to speak at one of its meetings. But for Matory, it appears, that Summers's primal sin is defense of Israel....
There's more—and it doesn't get any nicer. But it appears that Marty Peretz (who, full disclosure, hired me as an intern long ago at TNR, and with whom I've had occasional contact since then) will not have to worry; Matory's motion was apparently roundly rejected.
