As I read this interview with economist and former Harvard president Larry Summers, I was in basic agreement with the points he made in the first half or so. For example:
So I think what happens in universities is immensely important. And I think there is a widespread sense—and it is, I think, unfortunately, with considerable validity—that many of our leading universities have lost their way; that values that one associated as central to universities—excellence, truth, integrity, opportunity—have come to seem like secondary values relative to the pursuit of certain concepts of social justice, the veneration of certain concepts of identity, the primacy of feeling over analysis, and the elevation of subjective perspective. And that has led to clashes within universities and, more importantly, an enormous estrangement between universities and the broader society.
When the president of Harvard is a figure on a Saturday Night Live skit, when three presidents of universities combine to produce the most watched congressional hearing film clip in history, when applications to Harvard fall in a several-month period by more they’ve ever fallen before, when alumni are widely repudiating their alma mater, when they’re the subject of as many legal investigations as the Boeing company, you have a real crisis in higher education. And I think it’s been a long time coming because of those changes in values that I was describing. …
I think the values that animated me to spend my life in universities were values of excellence in thought, in pursuit of truth. We’re never going to find some ultimate perfect truth, but through argument, analysis, discussion, and study we can get closer to truth. And a world that is better understood is a world that is made better. And I think, increasingly, all you have to do is read the rhetoric of commencement speeches. It’s no longer what we talk about. We talk about how we should have analysis, we should have discussion, but the result of that is that we will each have more respect for each other’s point of view, as if all points of view are equally good and there’s a kind of arbitrariness to a conception of truth. That’s a kind of return to pre-Enlightenment values and I think very much a step backward. I thought of the goal of the way universities manage themselves as being the creation of an ever larger circle of opportunity in support of as much merit and as much excellence as possible. …
We celebrate particular ideas in ways that are very problematic, and we are reluctant to come to judgment: What started all the controversy at Harvard, and it has many different strands, was on October 7, when 34 student groups at Harvard, speaking as a coalition of Harvard students, condemned Israel as being responsible for the Hamas attacks. Those reports of the 34 student groups were reported in places where literally billions of people read them. And based on some inexplicable theory, the Harvard administration and the Harvard corporation (the Trustees of the University) could not find it within themselves to disassociate the university from those comments. I have no doubt that if similar comments had been made of a racist variety, there would have been no delay in the strongest possible disassociation of the university. But because Israel demonization is the fashion in certain parts of the social justice-proclaiming left, there was a reluctance to reach any kind of judgment, even about the most morally problematic statements.
All very correct. But then, after a mention of how Reagan’s early political career involved criticizing policies at Berkeley, Summers says:
And so it seems to me that universities that fail to govern themselves effectively are at immense peril to themselves and to the broader progressive values that they hold.
Ah, so the problem is that the universities’ behavior imperils progressivism? And it is understood that universities hold progressive values? But what if truth imperils progressivism and its values? Is that even a possibility in Summers’ mind? Is this about truth or is it about politics?
More:
I think it’s fine to stand strongly against a set of people who in many ways are riding this horse, but wish the process of thought and wish academic freedom ill. The problem is not that Harvard has worked itself into a war with Elise Stefanik. The problem is that it got itself condemned from the White House press briefing room of the Biden administration, that it finds itself subject to investigation from the Department of Education of the Biden administration, that the attacks on it are coming in a bipartisan way.
Oh, so it’s okay to do something that alienates the right, but doing something that also alienates at least a portion of Democrats is a no-no. And it seems that Summers thinks the likes of Stefanik “wish the process of thought and wish academic freedom ill.” Really? And just what evidence does Summers have for that, other than his own Democrat politics? After all, he’s just spent quite a lot of verbiage to say that on campuses it’s the left that’s been wishing the process of thought and wishing academic freedom ill – and not just wishing these things ill, but actively stomping on them. But he continues to cling to the idea that it’s somehow the right wishing it and doing it.
When I read the interview, the sudden change startled me although it absolutely shouldn’t have. It is completely standard. And it doesn’t matter how smart the person is otherwise – like Summers – or how persecuted that person has been by the left. One of the reasons Summers was hounded out of Harvard was that he told some inconvenient truths that angered the left; the right had nothing to do with it. And yet he thinks the right is the bigger problem. Go figure; it’s another case of a mind being a difficult thing to change, especially regarding politics.