What Summers' end tells us

London Times editor Gerard Baker's column today leads with: Summers' end marks the start of a long winter in American universities:

TWENTY YEARS AGO the American philosopher, Allan Bloom, published a book called The Closing of the American Mind, a devastating indictment of the nation’s universities and, more broadly, of its cultural elites.

Its premise was that the spirit of openness, a willingness to consider ideas freely, the great virtue of American life and the guiding ethos of a university had been perverted into a cultural relativism.

From the 1960s liberal philosophy had taken hold, defiantly asserting that truth was in the eye of the beholder, and that notions of absolute ideals or virtues were anachronistic.

In this new world, liberal democracy was no better than totalitarian theocracy, Plato’s philosophy was no more valid than Marianne Faithfull’s and Mozart should be considered on the same terms as the Monkees.

The resignation of Larry Summers as President of Harvard University this week indicates that the closing of the American mind is a continuing process, remorselessly squeezing the light out of its academic enlightenment.
...
Smooth, Mr. Summers was not. In his often awkward personal habits, overweening intellectual self-confidence and execrable management style, he variously appalled and terrified.
...
Though a liberal Democrat, Summers had a traditional view of what a university should be doing, pursuing truth and excellence wherever it led. As he surveyed the vast ranks of well-paid academic celebrities at Harvard, puffing out their ideologies on women’s studies and black history, he wondered what it was all about.

His first run-in was with Cornel West, the black professor, who had produced more rap music in recent years than he had books or papers. After a very public row, West left for the more forgiving pastures of Princeton.

Mr. Summers quickly challenged the other pillars of political correctness on which most American universities sit. He opposed an effort to block university investment in Israel and condemned attempts to ban the US Armed Forces from recruiting on campus.

Note that these were not assertive steps designed to enforce a particular world view, but the opposite — attempts to keep minds open to the possibility that their accumulated prejudices might need to be re-examined. (bold added)

But his campaign was a challenge to the view that the approved answers of America’s academic elite to the great issues of our time and history were the whole truth, never to be reopened or re-examined.

Most famously, a year ago, he questioned whether that there were so few women professors at the top of their fields in mathematics and engineering might reflect not only sexual discrimination, but also gender-specific aptitudes in different disciplines.

In the Index of Sins against modern academic political correctness, this is about as grave as it gets. Even to suggest the possibility that there might be innate differences between the sexes or races that could lead to different outcomes is to invite condemnation from the academic Church of the Closed Mind.

There's more Baker here.

What do I think?

Obviously large parts of many American campuses are no longer friendly to intellectual diversity. If you don't toe the party line, "leave before we throw you out."

Later today I'll post on a letter of mine The Harvard Crimson published in response to one by Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe, who represented the Vice-president Gore in Gore v. Bush.

Tribe's letter is an example of what people mean when they say much of what is called "intellectual life' at Harvard, and at most other campuses, is really one or another form of ideology nixed with elitist bluster.

Look for the Tribe, Harvard, JinC post around 6 PM Eastern.