Weekly Standard: "Harvard Lays an Egg"

The Mar. 6 Weekly Standard has an article, Harvard Lays an Egg, that’s a must read for all of us seeking to understand Harvard today and how and why President Summers was brought down.

Writer James Piereson provides information and analysis you’re not likely to find in the NY Times or Newsweek. Example:

Summers's major sin in the eyes of the liberal and left-wing faculty was his insensitivity to the diversity regime that has taken over at Harvard and just about every other major institution in the country.

This regime is propped up by mythical presumptions, the major one being that the United States has been guilty of oppressing or otherwise holding back various groups, especially blacks, women, homosexuals, American Indians, people of Hispanic origin, and others who make up perhaps 75 percent of our population.

These groups, so the argument goes, are owed special consideration on the campus by virtue of their victimization, which means in practice that no one is allowed to question their oppressed status, their claims to special consideration, or their privilege to complain about any institutional practice that they find inconvenient.

Piereson says the diversity ideologues goal of getting rid of Summers ultimately became the goal of the majority of the Harvard Corporation, who themselves embrace the diversity ideology:

There are some, both on and off the campus, who will now look to the Harvard Corporation as a source of level-headed guidance for the institution. The Corporation, established by the original charter of the college, is a seven-member governing board consisting of five self-appointed "fellows" plus the president and treasurer of the institution.
…
(T)he Corporation greased the skids for Summers's fall, taking their cues from disgruntled members of the arts and sciences faculty and failing to consult with students or with deans and faculty members in the various professional schools.

One explanation for its unhelpful role in this fiasco is that the Corporation itself seems fully committed to the diversity regime that drove Summers from office. There are two liberal Democrats on the panel, Robert Rubin and Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute in Washington, both of whom are policy wonks in the Summers mold.

There appears to be a "feminist" seat on the board, currently occupied by Nannerl Keohane, formerly president of Wellesley and later of Duke, who replaced Hanna Holborn Gray, retired president of the University of Chicago.

It also appears that there is a "black" seat on the Corporation, which was occupied until late last year by Conrad K. Harper, a New York lawyer, who resigned in protest against statements Summers had made about women and minorities.

He was replaced recently by Patricia King, Georgetown University law professor and wife of the left-wing author Roger Wilkins. King is a feminist activist who in 1991 testified against confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court.

More recently (King) was one of the signers of a petition at Georgetown calling on Congress "to repeal the disgraceful Solomon amendment" (which requires universities to permit military recruiters on campus or lose federal funding) and reaffirming the faculty's opposition to military recruiting on campus. King, who takes her post in the spring, seems an unlikely ally for any president in the Summers mold.

The membership of the Corporation, in other words, runs the gamut of political opinion from A to B, from liberal Democrat to left-wing Democrat, and seeks to represent the same groups as are active on the arts and sciences faculty. It stands to reason that they would be willing to force out their president.

I’ll say more about Piereson’s article very soon.

Meanwhile, I hope you give it a look. It’s lengthy (3200 plus words), but organized and filled with information and analysis which, as I said at the outset, you’re not likely to find in the NY Times or Newsweek.

One criticism of Piereson: He mentions a scholar who spoke at Harvard and had

“some fun at the expense of Harvard's students and faculty, all of whom had competed mightily to gain entrance to one of the most selective and prestigious colleges in the world, only to turn around once there to adopt a posture of thoughtless egalitarianism.”

Piereson doesn’t make clear whether it’s the scholar, himself or both of them who believe “Harvard’s students and faculty, all (adopt) a posture of thoughtless egalitarianism.”

Whatever the case, we should acknowledge that not all at Harvard engage in such an adoption.