And, in Other Harvard News
Posted on February 16th, 2006 in Uncategorized | 8 Comments »
…the Faculty Council called for a halt in the FAS dean search. This is a dramatic step, but if you think about it, it’s also a logical step. How could any dean possibly be chosen in the current atmosphere? After all, many people on the faculty don’t think that Larry Summers will be president for much longer. So what would be the point in working with him to choose a dean he could work with? And who would take a job working with Summers suspecting that Summers is about to leave and his successor might promptly choose a new dean?
It’s nuts…and the decision to call for a halt to the process shows that the faculty gets this, even if Larry Summers and the Corporation don’t.
Nonetheless, it’s a dramatic move that shows how the current crisis really is paralyzing the university. And if you think that the faculty isn’t getting any work done, you can imagine that Mass Hall isn’t exactly a beehive of productivity these days. And I wonder how that fundraising stuff is going?
In an accompanying Crimson article, Lois Beckett and Johannah Cornblatt write that the “Summers storm could sidetrack the [curricular] review,” which surely falls into the category of stating the obvious.
The last two paragraphs of the story carry what seems to me like the real news valueâthis quote:
<<âI think with Kirby resigning, the future is very much up in the air,â said Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology Steven Pinker, a member of the reviewâs Committee on General Education. Pinker said that he and some of his colleagues arenât disappointed by the reviewâs derailment. âFrankly, I wouldnât shed any tears if it didnât pass,â Pinker said. >>
Pinker might just as well have poured gasoline on the review and tossed a match on it. He helped write the thing, and even he can’t support it.
Of course, if he wouldn’t shed any tears if it didn’t pass, why should it make any difference whether Bill Kirby was remaining dean or not?
The answer that, with Kirby or without him, it’s a lousy review, and Harvard should just accept that and move on.
And Crimson folksâwhen you get a quote like that from an architect of the review and one of Larry Summers’ most vocal supporters (well, at least he used to be)âthat’s your second paragraph, not your second-to-last. IMHO, anyway.
8 Responses
2/17/2006 12:32 am
Pinker is bailing out because he didn’t want a distribution requirement, rather a set of limited, large-course requirements, and is particularly interested in the one to be taught by himself. That is also what Summers wants, so I wouldn’t read into this any separation between Summers and his favorite academic-lite “public intellectual” poodle
2/17/2006 10:52 am
Crimson writers:
Please stop writing and trying lamely to defend your pathetic, biased publication. No one is writing in defense of it except you (and even some Crimson reporters are reporting on how troubled the editorial board is). You may be happy to destroy Harvard College for your own self-satisfaction but are you really doing your fellow students any favors as you break up the faculty’s good will to students. My dad went to Harvard in the late 60s and early 70s and he remembers how the faculty withdrew when the students gratuitously attacked them. Wow, that’s a really great plan for improving undergraduate education. I have had a lot of faculty be really generous with their time and interested in my work. They don’t deserve the snotty treatment the Crimson is dishing out.
2/17/2006 11:07 am
Death Throes. Signs of last ditch efforts to save the president.
- Rumor circulating that Kirby orchestrated the 13 speakers at the Feb. 7th faculty meeting. Not likely Kirby could orchestrate anything at this point. Source of rumor likely Summers’s friends. Mike Sandel his co teacher in globalization is said to be one source.
- Another desperate rumor-the opposition is anti semitic. Of the 13 speakers, none were Jews (Is this true?). Hillel dinner and other hints of a last ditch ugly campaign.
- Some say Summers was trying to round up support from deans, calling one dean of a major school to get her faculty to rally round. Starting a fight between FAS and some of the schools seemed like a good idea.
2/17/2006 11:13 am
The supporters are abandoning the sinking ship. Those closest to Summers personally like Zeckhauser and Glaser are saying privately it is time to go for his own good. Mansfield, Thernstrom and such are defending an abstract cause not Summers himself.
Even his own Provost was heard at a dinner party Feb. 11 to say Summers misled the Corp — the terms of the Broad gift, for example.
Notice that no one in the law school is coming to his rescue except Dershowitz. That is a bad sign.
2/17/2006 11:47 am
I want to make it clear that the Crimson does not speak for all, or even for most, students. Who is it who really spends time with students, besides other students and coaches? It’s the faculty. I’ve had several professors and T.A.s who were very accessible, happy to talk to me about my ideas, and genuinely interested in teaching me how to write better papers. But a lot of what faculty do is basically at their discretion. They can be more or less accessible. If we seem like we value their efforts to teach, they might value our efforts to learn. But if we come off as a bunch of ungrateful and self-satisfied little brats, are they really going to be eager to do all the work involved in overhauling the curriculum, etc.? Part of the problem with Larry Summers as president is that he never treats anyone with respect, and now the Crimson has gotten the idea that that’s the way to behave. It’s not.
2/17/2006 11:53 am
Lots of Summers’ critics are Jewish: Everett Mendelsoln, Daniel Fisher, Arthur Kleinman, Stanley Hoffman, etc. Just check out the minutes of the meetings from last year and this year. The faculty is broadly represented. The faculty are not anti-Semitic. They are anti-Larry Summers
2/17/2006 11:55 am
Glaeser likewise expressed doubts about the solidarity of the pro-Summers camp. “There are less people who are in a very strong, emotional, ready-to-fight-for-Summers place, and that’s a bit of a cost of moving hard to placate your opponents,” Glaeser said.
Is the above quote really by one of the intellectually elite? Sounds scarcely literate to me, but then I’m not an economist…
2/17/2006 11:58 am
In case there were any doubts about the responsiveness of the Corporation, the Crimson has this quote from Rothenberg:
Corporation member James F. Rothenberg ’68, the University treasurer, declined to say whether the board still has confidence in the president.
“I can’t comment on that,” Rothenberg said, during an interview about a $50 million fund for Harvard faculty that he helped develop. “When the Corporation wants to communicate with The Crimson about that topic, it will.”
And not one minute sooner. So keep waiting.