Scolding or Teaching?
Posted on April 11th, 2011 in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
Drew Faust says she doesn’t want to be Harvard’s scold-in-chief. But the Boston Globe agrees with Harry Lewis: When Harvard professors exploit the university brand to front for dictators, the university’s president should dress them down.
Instead of heeding Lewis’s call to condemn those who worked for Khadafy, Faust offered the faculty a long, thoughtful statement about the need “to be sensitive and self-reflective about our engagements.’’ In other words, do only what you’re comfortable doing. That’s good advice for life, but a weak standard for an institution of global leadership.
In this case, it sounds like “thoughtful” means exactly its opposite.
The question thus arises: Is Drew Faust comfortable with leadership? Or is she covering up for her constituents while underestimating the potency of a public issue?
3 Responses
4/12/2023 7:49 am
A response to the Globe op-ed from Joe Nye at the HKS
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/letters/articles/2011/04/12/a_2007_trip_to_libya/
4/12/2023 1:43 pm
Is Drew Faust comfortable with leadership? Yes…. At times is it uncomfortable to be the “leader” of Harvard University. You bet… Is she covering up for her constituents? No, the main reason being that the issue at hand is one that is subject to subjectivity and it’s not her job to calibrate the barometer used to measure it… Has she underestimated the potency of this concern as a public issue? Perhaps, then again, perhaps not; It’s going to take more than the righteous indignation of Harry Lewis and is media campaigning to raise the profile of this.
4/12/2023 2:42 pm
If you’ve been following the Joe Nye/Michael Porter stuff, it has a pretty high media profile….hasn’t hit the NYT yet, but that paper is always late.