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Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Clueless in Academe
By STANLEY FISH


An inside look at the politics of academic careers

Imagine this scene: It is some months ago and there is a meeting in the
office of the president of Harvard University. Larry Summers asks, "What
kind of progress are we making in recruiting and promoting women in the
sciences?"
"Not very much," answers one of his lieutenants, "and, in fact, the figures
have declined rather precipitously during your stewardship. I don't know
what to do about this, but we have to do something."

"I have an idea," Summers says excitedly. "Everybody thinks that I'm a klutz
and a serial bungler. What if I participate in a conference on this very
subject and say something outrageous and dumb. There will be a great outcry
and calls for action from all sides, and in the end I'll be forced to take
steps for which I probably couldn't get support today. How does that sound?"
"Brilliant" is the choral response.

Did it happen that way? Was Summers taking a page out of the book of Denny
Crane, the lawyer played by William Shatner on Boston Legal, who uses the
perception that he is losing his marbles to gain an advantage in the
courtroom and in the political maneuverings of his law firm?

Well, I don't know. And neither do I know any flies on the wall, but the
results have certainly occurred and have been widely reported. Two task
forces have been appointed; their reports are to be completed and submitted
by May 1 (literally warp speed in the molasses world of academic
administration), and the university promises to act on their recommendations
by September, thereby breaking all land- and air-speed records known to
academic man; oops, I mean academic man and woman.

Barbara Grosz, dean of science at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced
Study, and now the head of one of the task forces, makes my point when she
says, "There is now an opportunity that didn't exist before." That is, had
Summers not (apparently) put his very big foot into his very big mouth, none
of this would have happened, or at least would not have happened in the
space of a few months.
My fanciful speculation has a real point. It is only if Summers' performance
at the January 14th conference (where he wondered if the underrepresentation
of women in the sciences and math might have a genetic basis) was
intentional -- it is only if he knew what he was doing -- that he can be
absolved of the most serious of the charges that might be brought against
him. And that is not the charge that his views on the matter were uninformed
and underresearched (as they certainly were), nor the charge that he has
damaged the cause of women in science (which he surely has), but the charge
that he wasn't doing his job and didn't even seem to know what it was.
For the record, his job is being president of Harvard University. And you
get a sense of the kind of job it is when you recall that one of his august
predecessors, having been urged to be a candidate for the presidency of the
United States, replied, "Why would I step down in office?"

What the anecdote (apocryphal or not) tells us is that the president of
Harvard is in the E.F. Hutton position: When he speaks, everyone listens,
and everyone listens to him as the president of Harvard, and not as good-old
plain-speaking Larry Summers.
That basic fact seems to have escaped Richard Freeman, a Harvard professor
and one of the organizers of the fatal conference, who said in comments to a
newspaper, "We didn't invite Larry as a Harvard president. ... We invited
him because he has an extremely powerful and interesting mind." Freeman then
added, "If we had invited him as Harvard president, he would have given us
the same type of babble that university presidents give, and thank God we
have a president who doesn't say that."

There are so many things wrong with those statements that it's hard to know
where to begin. First, Summers's powerful and interesting mind must have
been taking a day off. Second, the faculty members and students at Harvard
can at least thank God that Richard Freeman is not their president; for he
seems to be even more clueless than the incumbent he defends. Third (and
more important), the president of Harvard always carries his office with
him. His pronouncements (wise and foolish) are always uttered ex cathedra
and can never be detached from the responsibilities of his office. (Exactly
the point made by Harvard's Standing Committee on Women in a letter of
almost parental rebuke: "The president of a university never speaks entirely
as an individual, especially when that institution is Harvard.")

Larry Summers is no more free to pop off at the mouth about a vexed academic
question than George Bush is free to wander around the country dropping
off-the-cuff remarks about Social Security or Islam. Of course both men are
free in the First Amendment sense to say anything that comes into their
pretty little heads; but the constitutional freedom they enjoy is freedom
from legal consequences, not from consequences in general. (Can anyone say,
Trent Lott?)

The constraints on speaking that come along with occupying a position have
nothing to do with the First Amendment (there are no free-speech issues
here, as there almost never are on college campuses) and everything to do
with the legitimate expectations that are part and parcel of the job you
have accepted and for which you are (in this case, handsomely) paid.

Those expectations (and the requirements they subtend) are not
philosophical, but empirical and pragmatic. They, include, first and
foremost, the expectation that you will comport yourself in ways that bring
credit, not obloquy, to the institution you lead.
That doesn't mean that there are things you can't say or things you must
say. Rather, it means that whatever you say, you have to be aware of the
possible effects your utterance might produce, especially if those effects
touch the health and reputation of the university. Steven Pinker (another
Harvard luminary) asks, "Good grief, shouldn't everything be within the pale
of academic discourse, as long as it is presented with some degree of
academic rigor?"

The answer is yes (although the "academic rigor" part can certainly be
disputed in this case), but the answer and the question are beside the point
because academic discourse is not the game Larry Summers can possibly be
playing -- remember, he's the president, all the time -- even when he finds
himself in a setting where everyone else is playing it. James Traub observed
in The New York Times that Pinker's views on innate differences between men
and women are close to those voiced (as a speculation) by Summers. But if
that is Pinker's reason for defending Summers, it is a bad one.

As a faculty member you should not give your president high marks because he
expresses views you approve or low marks because he espouses views you
reject. Your evaluation of him or her (now there's a solution to Harvard's
problem) should be made in the context of the only relevant question -- not
"Does what he says meet the highest standards of scholarship?" or "Is what
he says politically correct or bravely politically incorrect?" (an
alternative form of political correctness) or even "Is what he says true?"
but "Is he, in saying it (whatever it is) carrying out the duties of his
office in a manner that furthers the interests of the enterprise?"
Almost everyone who has commented on this fiasco (including the principal
actor) gets it wrong by regarding it as an instance of some high-falutin
issue rather than as an example of someone falling down on his job.

The offended academic left sees Summers's remarks as an affront to its
causes and as the latest chapter in the sad history of
gender-discrimination. The right (both inside and outside the academy)
regards the entire hullabaloo as an instance of political correctness run
(once again) amok. And pundits on both sides think that something deep about
the nature of a university is at stake here. (Whenever the phrase "academic
freedom" is invoked, you know you're hearing cant.) Brian McGrory, a Boston
Globe columnist, achieves a new high in fatuousness, even in this rather
dreary context, when he observes portentously, "I've always assumed that the
strength of the academy is its ability to encourage difficult questions"
(January 21).

Well, that may be the strength of the academy, but it is not the strength
sought by search committees when they interview candidates for senior
administrative positions. No search committee asks, "Can we count on you to
rile things up? Can we look forward to days of hostile press coverage? Can
you give us a list of the constituencies you intend to offend?"

Search committees do ask, "What is your experience with budgets?" and "What
are your views on the place of intercollegiate athletics?" and "What will be
your strategy for recruiting a world-class faculty?" and "How will you
create a climate attractive to donors?"

The Larry Summers of this episode might have a little trouble with the last
two questions, and he wouldn't help his cause by saying, as he now has in a
profusion of apologies, I was just being provocative.

Sorry, that's not in the job description; nor is the (supposedly) moral
quality claimed for Summers by Freeman when he describes him as "a
straight-talking, no-baloney president." (That goes along with Freeman's
assumption that a university president can either speak meaningless "babble"
or go boldly where no man, at least one with half a brain, has gone before;
but surely one can be strong and tactful at the same time.)

If straight-talking, with no concern for the fallout that may follow, is
what you like to do; if that is your preferred brand of baloney ("I just
call them as I see them"), then maybe you've wandered into the wrong
profession. Not every virtue (if straight-talking is a virtue, and I have my
doubts) is pertinent to every practice, and it is surely part of your
responsibility to know what virtues are appropriate to the position you
hold.

In the end, there is only one question (with many parts): Does Harvard want
a president who makes Prince Harry of England -- he at least has the excuse
of being 20 and without a real job -- seem sensitive and sophisticated? Does
Harvard want a president who makes the proverbial bull in the china shop
seem like Nijinsky? Does Harvard want a president who, despite the
reputation of being brilliant (where's the beef?) acts as if he were the
leader of the Know Nothing Party? Does Harvard want a president who cannot
be trusted to go out into the world without a keeper?

The answer, I guess, is "yes."

Stanley Fish, dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at
the University of Illinois at Chicago, writes a monthly column on campus
politics and academic careers.