Summers Summer's End: Harvard

Prejudice Wins at Harvard from the Washington Post discusses the resignation of Harvard President Larry Summers at the end of this summer, thanks to the PC pressure and an impending review of his performance at the university. 

At a time when the US is decrying our lack of standards and slippage on the world education scene, Summers has been castiaged by the left-wing PC fascists on the faculty who live in a more rigid bubble than the one that they accuse the rest of the world of existing in and forego intellectual rigor for the tunnel vision and phony narrow diversity and divi-culturalism.  These kooks have given a bad name to liberal education as Summers sought to raise it through insisting on high standards and real diversity and distinction of his faculty.

Hailed as a reformer whose recent stop was with the Clinton administration's economic team that helped fuel the 90s boom, he wasn't acceptable even with these credentials to the Harvard cognisenti.  One has to wonder where the Harvard board will go from here - perhaps weeding out some of the faculty flactulence would be a good starting point.

Comments

[Larry]

This one's on twice with slightly different titles.

[Auros]

You showed up in Slate's Today's Blogs column. One minute down, fifteen to go...

Speaking as a lefty type, I have to say I'm pretty peeved at the Harvard faculty, myself, so I don't think it's fair to blame this particular incident on "the left" in general. There comes a time when one just wants to say to folks like the anti-Summers arts faculty, "Please, stay off of my side." Summers said a few dumb things, in pursuit of opening a debate on an important topic. For that they crucify him? Geesh.

I get the impression that there's a fair chunk of academia that, even if they think Summers needed to work harder on his political instincts to be an effective university president, thinks the Harvard folks are nuts. I read Brad DeLong regularly -- he's another Clinton administration alum, and econ prof at UC Berkeley -- and there's been a lively coversation over there, with most of the academic bloggers seeming to be on the "he shouldn't have had to leave" side.

Anyways, I think in general the PC-ness of the left is greatly exaggerated. e.g. I literally do not know ANYONE who thinks the imprisonment of David Irving (loathsome though he may be) was a good idea.

Cheers,
Auros