Posted on 06/24/2002 7:48:56 AM PDT by aculeus
On June 6, under an overcast Thursday-morning sky, a crowd of thousands gathered in Cambridge, Mass. for Harvard University's 351st commencement ceremony. From their seats on temporary chairs in Harvard Yard, an expanse of grass and trees amid Harvard's red-bricked Georgian elegance, students and their families looked toward the dais at which the university's professors and administrators — including Harvard's president, Lawrence H. Summers — sat.
Following custom, the ceremony began with the Star-Spangled Banner. It was then that graduating senior Jason Brinton noticed something amiss: "[A] good dozen of the professors and administrators on stage were either silent or didn't have their hands over their heart or both. Some were from foreign countries, but even adjusting for that, there were a handful of academic leaders up there who wouldn't pledge to the flag or sing the anthem."
But Larry Summers was singing enthusiastically. The display was not out of character. Just the day before, Summers had become the first Harvard president since 1969 to speak at an ROTC commissioning ceremony, and his remarks to the graduating cadets and midshipmen reveal much about his attitude toward both the Star-Spangled Banner and the country whose anthem it is: "It was a thrill for me as it always is to hear the Star-Spangled Banner performed before the ceremony began, and I'm looking forward to the fact that we will be hearing the Star-Spangled Banner tomorrow morning before the Harvard commencement begins, and that is as it should be."
The contrast between Summers's unapologetic patriotism and the stony silence of his colleagues is, in many ways, a perfect metaphor for Summers's relationship with the university he leads. Since the Sixties, when it was a hotbed of protest against the Vietnam War, Harvard has been unable to shed its reputation as a bastion of anti-Americanism. This is, after all, the school that Richard Nixon famously christened the "Kremlin on the Charles." Yet in his freshman year as president, Summers has both demonstrated his own patriotism and encouraged Harvard to follow suit.
The most prominent example is Summers's support for the ROTC. In a round of conniptions over the Vietnam War, the Harvard faculty voted in 1969 to exile the ROTC; later, in 1993, the faculty denied the ROTC university funding on the grounds that the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy discriminated against gays. Harvard's ROTC cadets and midshipmen train at MIT instead, and their program is funded by an independent alumni trust.
Summers has called that arrangement "uncomfortable" and "unorthodox." He has praised the ROTC in public — as at the commissioning ceremony — and in less visible ways: He sent a letter to cadets on Veteran's Day expressing his support, and he asked Harvard's yearbook staff, whose publication does not include student groups that are not officially recognized by the university, to make an exception for the ROTC.
Summers has also left no doubt that he supports a vigorous national defense against terrorism. At his installation last October, he made pointed reference to the Sept. 11 attacks, encouraging his audience to "honor those who defend our freedom and the calling of public service," and to "promote understanding — not the soft understanding that glides over questions of right and wrong, but the hard-won comprehension that the threat before us demands." The latter injunction may seem unremarkable, but many in the audience heard it as a subtle repudiation of the peacenik pacifism that had sprung up just weeks before when 500 students rallied to promote "peaceful alternatives to President Bush's calls for war."
It would of course be a gross oversimplification to identify Summers with conservative politics. He is a self-identified Democrat and a former Cabinet official in the Clinton administration. And while patriotism finds fluent expression in Summers's public statements, he has made little effort to reverse entrenched university policies that seem at odds with his personal sentiments. Summers has not, for example, pressed the faculty to restore university recognition and funding to the ROTC.
But even if Summers is content to leave vestiges of Harvard's leftist legacy intact, campus conservatives can take heart in his opposition to the institutionalization of new bad ideas. Take, for example, his lack of sympathy for the left's perennial grudge against Israel. When asked at a student gathering what he thought of the petition — signed by several prominent Harvard and MIT professors — calling on Harvard to divest itself of holdings in companies that do business in Israel, Summers said, "the suggestion that [Israel's] defense against terrorist attacks is inherently immoral seems to me to be an unsupportable one. It would be one I would be acutely uncomfortable with." Shortly thereafter, his office released a statement saying that Harvard would not divest.
For Ivy League conservatives, that was an important victory — the first, one hopes, of many to come during Summers's tenure. Larry Summers may not count himself among conservatives, but he listens to them when they are right. In a place filled with liberal ideologues who talk about the U.S. and the war on terror with thinly veiled contempt, Larry Summers is a welcome presence indeed.
Perhaps he believes in the spirit of the First Amendment.
See reply #7.
I said the spirit of the First Amendment. Please read my post more closely. The principle of free speech is much broader than the Constitution or one of its Amendments. If a private institution chooses to operate on the same principles we impose on the Federal Government, I am prepared to give that institution the benefit-of-the-doubt.
I am sure there are those who would have been greatly offended if Harvard had kept a student from speaking about Christianity, even if the school had been within its legal rights to do so.
Perhaps Summers thought the best approach to student speeches was to let the students choose their own subject matter. If so, this would be very much in the spirit of the First Amendment, especially if the speech was religious or political in nature.
Those who oppose free speech in a private setting act as if they see this principle as a bane and not a blessing. If the principle makes sense for the Federal Government, it is not unreasonable to assert a broader application.
The halls at Harvard are private and the administrators can permit or deny speakers as they wish. They have chosen to allow the expression of an unpopular view. If you don't like it, hire your own hall--or get appointed to run theirs. Then you can make the rules.
To lambast Summers because he chose to honor the spirit of the First Amendment--when he was under no legal obiligation to do so--seems hostile to the liberty of Harvard, the liberty of the speakers, and the liberty of those who chose to be in the audience.
My $0.02...
See reply #10.
See reply #10.
Sorry, aculeus, I meant see reply #14, which is in response to reply #10 by Right Wing Professor. Post references get tricky sometimes..
I read your post. The first amendment says that Congress (and, since the 14th, the states) shall pass no law abridging the freedom of speech. However, there is no freedom of speech on someone else's dollar; in fact, the Supremes have ruled that to force a private individual or institution to pay for speech it does not want to pay for is in itself a breach of the first amendment.
Therefore, I fail to see how a liberal* institution providing a soap-box for illiberal ideas is in the spirit of the first amendment. On the contrary, I would argue that Reagan's famous "I'm paying for this microphone, Mr. Chairman" is far more in that spirit.
* Liberal in the JS Mill, not the Ted Kennedy sense.
You apparently disagree, but I consider the spirit of the First Amendment to be unfettered freedom to advocate ideas--especially political and religous ideas. The technical details which you mention are the practical working out of free speech in our Constitutional Federal government--but free speech is the purpose and the spirit of the law. Such a free exchange of views is also an example of Mill's "marketplace of ideas."
So, no, I don't think Mill would consider banning illiberal ideas to be a liberal proposition. I believe he would maintain that illiberal ideas should be tolerated--both to maintain the integrity of liberal society and to expose the flaws of the illiberal ideas.
My point on this thread is that Summers was perfectly within his rights to allow the speech in question, and that by doing so, he was promoting free speech, which is the spirit of the First Amendment. If you wanted to ban such speech from your private premises, I would defend your right to do so--but speech in your establishment would be less free than at Harvard. Do you disagree?
I am not conversant with Mill's work, merely with a very broad outline of his ideas. So if you can provide documentation that he would have approved the suppression of illiberal ideas in a context such as a private university, I would very much like to consider it.
NOTE: As Right Wing Professor and I have veered into a philosophical discussion, I have elected to adopt his classical use of the terms "liberal" and "illiberal." "Liberal" in this context means "an advocate of the maximum amount of personal liberty which is consistent with social order." Please don't flame me for being what you think is a left-wing wacko.
'Unfettered freedom' is an oxymoron. If I am broke and homeless, my advocacy of ideas is necessarily more circumscribed than Ted Turner's. Any attempt to provide me with the soapbox I can't afford myself will involve the confiscation of other people's resources, thus forcing them to pay for ideas not their own and abridging their rights.
Turning to the specific issue at hand: Harvard's missions are education and scholarship. In no way are those missions furthered by helping to promulgate, say, the Moslem relgion, which IMHO is the fount of much of the ignorance and superstition in the world today. Harvard may well to choose to have a chair in Islamic studies, by which the Islamic religion and culture may well be put under the microscope of Western rationalism; but it shouldn't be in the business of promoting Islam (or any other religious movement) under that movement's own terms.
Summers was certainly within his rights to allow the student to speak, but I regard his doing so as bad governance, and as an alum. who votes annually to elect members of the Board of Overseers, I will be communicating my views to the Overseers.
I don't propose 'banning' illiberal ideas; to the extent that Harvard provides a public forum, such ideas should be permitted in that forum. However, a commencement speech is not a public forum.
BTW, the 'marketplace of ideas' is Oliver Wendell Holmes' phrase, not Mill's.
'Unfettered freedom' is an oxymoron. If I am broke and homeless, my advocacy of ideas is necessarily more circumscribed than Ted Turner's. Any attempt to provide me with the soapbox I can't afford myself will involve the confiscation of other people's resources, thus forcing them to pay for ideas not their own and abridging their rights.
Turning to the specific issue at hand: Harvard's missions are education and scholarship. In no way are those missions furthered by helping to promulgate, say, the Moslem relgion, which IMHO is the fount of much of the ignorance and superstition in the world today. Harvard may well to choose to have a chair in Islamic studies, by which the Islamic religion and culture may well be put under the microscope of Western rationalism; but it shouldn't be in the business of promoting Islam (or any other religious movement) under that movement's own terms.
Summers was certainly within his rights to allow the student to speak, but I regard his doing so as bad governance, and as an alum. who votes annually to elect members of the Board of Overseers, I will be communicating my views to the Overseers.
I don't propose 'banning' illiberal ideas; to the extent that Harvard provides a public forum, such ideas should be permitted in that forum. However, a commencement speech is not a public forum.
BTW, the 'marketplace of ideas' is Oliver Wendell Holmes' phrase, not Mill's.
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