The Summers Presidency on WGBH Tonight
Posted on June 28th, 2006 in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »
Professor Richard Thomas, the chair of the classics department, has posted something two items below that is worth putting on the main page (and if you have a chance to look at that item, the first post is quite interesting as well).
WGBH is doing a piece on the Summers presidency at 7 p.m. tonight (on Greater Boston). Professor Ed Glaeser of the Economics Dept. was to represent the positive side of the Summers presidency, and I was approached by Jeff Keating of WGBH and agreed to go on and give what would have been a moderate but generally more qualified point of view. I was to have gone to their office at 4:00 p.m. today. At 3:30 p.m. today WGBH called me and asked if I would go on with Harvey Silverglade since Prof Glaeser had “time issues” and couldn’t make it. Yeah, sure, as we’ll see.
I said I wouldn’t go on unless it was to balance an altenative FAS faculty positon (i.e. Prof Glaeser’s), which had been the plan all along. They said they would get back to me, but did not do so.
At 4:15 I called them, and surprise, surprise, Prof. Glaeser’s “time issues” had been resolved, he had arrived, and was about to tape the show. I said, “I’ll be right over,” but was told Prof. Glaeser had said he would not do the show if any other faculty member was put on. I said I thought WGBH might have refused to proceed in such circumstances.
So tune in at 7 p.m. for a fair and balanced back and forth, with Prof. Glaeser responding to previously taped pieces with Profs. Daniel Fisher and Judith Ryan which he has presumably had the opportunity to see prior to his remarks.
Tricky move, Prof. Glaeser and WGBH.
Richard Thomas
5 Responses
6/28/2006 9:03 pm
Prof. Glaeser has no class. He’s shown it time and again with his comments during the Summers controversy. He’s an embarrassment to Harvard, along with half of his department (particularly Shleifer).
6/28/2006 9:38 pm
On that show Prof. Glaeser talked about differences of “language” (from discipline to discipline) in accounting for different views about the degree to which Lawrence Summers’ presidency has been successful. I don’t like to say this about a colleague, but after today’s experience I have to disagree. In my view it ultimatly comes down to ethics, character, etc. as Peter (the good) Ellison said. Sorry but there we are.
6/29/2006 8:11 am
Glaeser’s argument may have some truth, but it’s not sufficiently explanatory. Certainy LHS had a tendency to see the world in purely economic terms and framed his conversations in economic language. But we all know that wasn’t his only problem with communication, and certainly people from other disciplines (e.g., law) have managed to steer clear of this issue.
What Glaeser’s argument may really show is his isolation from the rest of the university. And, of course, the economics department probably never witnessed the Summers that other departments less favored by the president witnessed routinely.
6/29/2006 3:02 pm
Jeff Keating has informed me that WGBH only informed Prof. Glaeser of the intended set-up (he and I both to be interviewed together) shortly before he arrived at the studio, and that at that point he refused to go along with that set-up.
6/29/2006 6:56 pm
Henry Rosovsky and Michael Spence were both economists and deans of FAS. While Spence was not as successful as Rosovsky it was not because of his relations with FAS faculty. Faculty did not dislike Summers because he is an economist, but because he was an arrogant, unprincipled, unethical and ultimately ineffective leader. But why did so many economists rally around him? Perhaps because he put his friend David Cutler in charge of the social sciences? Perhaps because economics increased its number of faculty appointments by a very large percentage even while other social sciences with large enrollments did not grow at all (Psychology) (History is the other social science to grow a great deal, I wonder why History and Economics grew so much?). Perhaps they liked Summers so much because he made such a big deal about “improving undergraduate education” but did nothing about the economics department which has very unsatisfied undergraduates? Perhaps it is because there is a dirty secret that the economists teach much, much less than other social scientists and humanists. They doctor their teaching loads with team taught classes where they show up a few times a semester and a lot of professors get credit for the same course and they make it look like they are teaching a normal load? Perhaps it is because he said out loud what the economists must believe about women not being smart since they had until this year only two tenured women? Or perhaps it is because he defended their friend Shleifer even while it deeply shamed the university? Or perhaps there are other skeletons in that closet? If Larry Summers had cared one iota about undergraduate education he would have gone after people in his own department and he would have asked them to teach a full load, to hire some women to tenured posts, to pay attention to their undergraduates, to show up in their offices instead of working at the NBER. If he cared about Harvard’s bottom line he would have stopped the process of economists running their grants through NBER and giving them the overhead instead of Harvard. Glaeser is a smart guy, unethical and sleazy, but smart. That is why he did not want to be on the radio with Richard Thomas, who is both smart and ethical and who could counter some of Glaeser’s self serving lies about Larry Summers.