Posted on 02/24/2006 8:01:37 AM PST by mathprof
If Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers was worried about how the undergraduates would greet him Wednesday night at his first scheduled event since announcing his resignation, those fears quickly were put to rest.
He got a standing ovation after he walked in. He got a standing ovation before he left. A row of students with red letters painted on their chests spelled out "Larry."
Sarah Bahan, 22, was wistful as she left the meeting. She had kind words to say about Summers' emphasis on hard sciences.
Mark Hoadley, 21, said Summers' monotone speaking style was balanced by a "dynamic mind."
Troy Kollmer, 21, said "a lot of students feel bad for him and think he got a raw deal."
The show of student loyalty has come as a surprise to many faculty members and administrators at Harvard, who grew to loathe Summers during a five-year tenure that brought a raw blast of politics to the 370-year-old institution.
In the past, it had been Harvard's students who forced change. In the spring of 1969, amid unrest over the Vietnam War, students angered by a campus ROTC program raided University Hall and threatened to burn the card catalog at Widener Library. The turmoil hastened the resignation of then-president Nathan Pusey, a classics scholar who had little patience for such activism.
This time, students held back while the faculty fumed.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
"This is a sort of 'I'm-not-a-feminist-but' generation," said J. Lorand Matory, a professor of anthropology and of African and African American studies. "I don't know if the word is 'conservative' as much as 'careerist.'
Good news from Harvard....
I didn't realize Summers had actually resigned. Remarkable.
Especially considering that 1) Summers is a big Clinton liberal, and 2) he had a wildly successful career at Harvard (youngest full prof ever, I think) before going to world bank, etc.
In two senses, then, Harvard truly ate one of their own. Incredible.
I pray that this self-destructive pattern will continue. Now, about that endowment...I'm thinking if they put it ALL in derivatives....
"I do think that there is a big disconnect between the students and faculty at the elite liberal universities."
Maybe, but the liberal students are the loudest and seem to run the student newspapers.
"Maybe, but the liberal students are the loudest and seem to run the student newspapers."
They are cosen to run those papers by someone...
Another classics professor whose career was changed by the student unrest in the late 1960s was Donald Kagan, who left Cornell for Yale. He is the father of Frederick Kagan and Robert Kagan.
Widener Library is named after someone who died on the Titanic.
I had not heard this, although it's of a piece with Allan Bloom's description of the late 1960s activism as fundamentally nihilist, totalitarian and antithetical to the values of a university. Not much different, I suppose, than the sacking of the library at Alexandria.
Summer's biggest fault is that he is a male.
Second fault, he is white.
In other words he was on the low end of the PC totem pole.
No, not unusual; it's about 90% of the political spectrum.
threatened to burn the card catalog at Widener Library.
...hmmm, having dodged the tear gas around Univ Hall, I don't remember anything about Widener being part of the protest/takeover. Pusey brought in the Mass State Police to empty the trashed Hall after the admin got wind that the jocks were about to wail on the SDS leftist hippies... they were deathly afraid of students fighting students and prefered the focus be on battling the State cops (all of whom seemed to be at least 6'4'' or bigger with riot shields). Could clear'em out fast enough for my taste and after the buses left there was the lead SDSer with the bull horn trying to incite somemore (he couldn't be bothered with the jail thing). ...Veritas indeed...
A more diverse group, they are also "eager to prosper and less willing to take risks by rebelling," Lewis said. His upcoming book, "Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education," traces what he considers to be the decline in the quality of education at Harvard. It's left them far more likely to support the power structure, he said.
"The Harvard student body looks more like America than the Harvard faculty," he said. "That's what's happened."
Isn't that the most amazing thing you've read in a long time? He's lamenting the loss of the elite!
And evidently in his mind, if you're not "elite," you have to be devoid of a "soul."
God forbid "the rest of America" should infiltrate Harvard.
Yes, boy-o, he is a white male.
He also DARED to make an entirely inoffensive
statement which posited the possiblility that
perhaps there were some innate differences between
males and females that MIGHT account, God forbid,
for why the sciences SEEMED to contain more men than
women. That in itself branded him as either the Al Campanis or the Jimmy the Greek of the Ivy League.
Therefore, he had to go. Eventually.
How dutifully the press reported that pseudo-controversy
is even more disgusting than the supposed issues of the
controversy. And if he was "a big Clinton Liberal" as someone noted, I kind of doubt that he is now.
" How can that BE? ,... no one I know voted for Nixon!"
There's no diversity in the FACULTY.
Yep, and those students are professors now, likely some of them at Harvard. They haven't grown up; they believe, as they did then, that they're smarter and more sophisticated than everyone else, so if someone disagrees with them, THAT person must be wrong because they themselves couldn't possibly be wrong.
Sounds like the students have grown up with a belly full of that nonsense, and know it when they see it in the tenured professors at Harvard.
so, why didn't they support him before he resigned?
I am a lot more cynical about this instance. I think the students are just being 'students' - that is, going against the faculty in a high profile situation.
If the faculty backed Summers, I bet most students would be against Summers.
Just my gut talking.
Heck, it seems that Chairman Mao is to the right of most professors.
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