Harvard’s Crucible

THE battle between Harvard president Larry Summers and the university’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences reached a climax on March 15, when 218 members of the faculty voted that they “lacked confidence” in his leadership, with 185 opposed and 18 abstentions. A second resolution expressed “regret” about Summers’s “mid-January statements about women in science and the adverse consequences of those statements for individuals and for Harvard,” and about “aspects of the President’s managerial approach.” Only 137 faculty members voted nay on that one, and 253 supported it. In the end, then, almost two out of three condemned Summers for his expressed views, his leadership style, or both.

This is the first such faculty revolt to take place in a major research university in the United States. A majority of the faculty behaved with total disregard for the principle that is the life blood of the university: academic freedom. And the issue of academic freedom, in this instance, was inextricably linked to another principle of critical importance to higher education: meritocracy.

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Stephan Thernstrom

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THE battle between Harvard president Larry Summers and the university’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences reached a climax on March 15, when 218 members of the faculty voted that they “lacked confidence” in his leadership, with 185 opposed and 18 abstentions. A second resolution expressed “regret” about Summers’s “mid-January statements about women in science and the adverse consequences of those statements for individuals and for Harvard,” and about “aspects of the President’s managerial approach.” Only 137 faculty members voted nay on that one, and 253 supported it. In the end, then, almost two out of three condemned Summers for his expressed views, his leadership style, or both.

This is the first such faculty revolt to take place in a major research university in the United States. A majority of the faculty behaved with total disregard for the principle that is the life blood of the university: academic freedom. And the issue of academic freedom, in this instance, was inextricably linked to another principle of critical importance to higher education: meritocracy.