Thrilla in Vanilla

The Conning Tower ^ | April 20, 2005 | Trentino

[Davis]

Those of you who have not been vacationing on Tierra del Fuego for the last three months will surely remember the sad sight of Larry Summers dressed in gray long-underwear and cutaway coat, a squashed top hat on his bowed head, carrying a sandwich sign—Dump on Me!—round and round Harvard Yard.

The surrounding crowd, members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, stood around brandishing razor sharp ibids and op. cits, screamed imprecations at poor Larry. "Colonialist," they shouted, "quagmire," came the response from the junior faculty lately released from their library carrels who weren't quite sure of what was going on but wanted to show their community spirit. "Homophobe sexist," was the cry from the tenor section over the barking bass continuo, "Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart, Die Die Die."

In a manner reminiscent of the Stalin purge trials of the ‘thirties, Summers appeared to agree with the judgment of the crowd. Under the panels of the sandwich sign, he beat his breast with puny fists and muttered, "I yam guilty, I yam very guilty, I yam maximum guilty."

"Guilty of what?" demanded a tenured sociology professor seated nearby in an endowed chair. Larry responded, "Sins of commission and omission," he said, picking his nose and farting. "Sins of emission," prompted the sociology professor. "Them, too," wailed Larry.

The ostensible reason for his humiliation, his quiet, hesitant rumination at a learned conference that the disproportionate scarcity of women in the upper reaches of science and mathematics might just possibly be rooted in genetics, women's innate difference from men. This is a truth so obvious that, like the tetragrammaton, JHVH, it must never be uttered.

It's not that noticing women/men differences is in itself so heinous. But, like fornication, it may lead to dancing, a long descent down the slippery slope to the pits of multi-culti Hell. So, stern measures to prevent its proliferation must be undertaken. Otherwise, who knows, some alert gent might notice other disproportions in academe, might even wonder why the upper reaches of science and math were disproportionately populated by Jews and Chinese and other weird cultists. (Although the most Progressive view is that race is merely a social construct, still...)

President Summers's suggestion of innate gender differences was only the precipitating cause, not the root or underlying cause. Rebellion had been simmering among the faculty for years, certainly since Summers dissed Professor Cornel West and exiled him to Princeton. (West, in turn, called Summers a "thug" of the Ariel Sharon variety.) Additionally, Summers had put the kibosh on a move to have Harvard declare its support for Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade, and divest itself of its huge stocks of gefilte fish. These activities raised the hackles of J. Lorand Matory, Professor of anthropology and African studies, who prepared a motion of censure specifying Summers's deficiencies.

We remain concerned about the substance of Mr. Summers' apparently ongoing convictions about the capacities and rights not only of women but also of African Americans and third world nations, gay people and and colonized peoples. The assembled faculty wish officially to register dissent from Mr. Summers stated opinions regarding the innate capacities of subordinate populations, the wisdom of dumping in third world nations, the authorized presence on campus of organizations that infringe upon the equal rights of gay people, and the proposition that criticism of Israeli military policy toward the Palestinians is inherently anti-Semitic.

It is hard to see how Summers has displayed any particular attitude toward the capacity of gay, or ofsubordinate populations (whatever they may be); he was indeed an author of a memo as a senior economic advisor to the World Bank concerning trading with third world nations for nuclear waste storage facilities but hardly an advocate of dumping; Summers's advocacy of restoring ROTC at Harvard hardly qualifies as an infringement of the equal rights of gay people—the don't ask, don't tell policy installed by our first black President, W.J. Clinton—Harvard had sent ROTC its marching orders long before that occurred; the Israeli military policy which stirred Matory's indignation was its quaint insistence on defending its citizens from suicide bombers and other assorted terrorists who seek its extinction.

Matory's specifications were blended into a general indictment of Summers pursuant to which it was Resolved, that Ikey Summers is a Honkie Scumbag.

Hooray for Harvard.