Dr. West and Mr. Summers: A Harvard tale - Cornel West vs. Larry Summers

National Review, Jan 28, 2002 by Roger Kimball

When an individual assumes certain positions of public responsibility, we require him to place his financial assets in a blind trust. We do this in order that he not profit personally from his office. When an individual assumes the presidency of a great university, we require him to place his testicles in a blind trust. We do this in order that he not rebel against the dictates of political correctness.

As an illustration of what might happen were university presidents allowed to think for themselves and exercise independent intellectual leadership, consider the recent case of Cornel West vs. Larry Summers at Harvard. West is the Alphonse Fletcher, Jr., University Professor of Afro-American Studies at Harvard University. (He is also, incidentally, head of Al Sharpton's presidential exploratory committee.) Summers, a former professor of political economy at Harvard, served briefly as Bill Clinton's secretary of the treasury and has been president of Harvard since last July.

Summers early on showed troubling signs of independence. Last fall, for example, he extolled the U.S. military, publicly noting the "special nobility . . . [of] those who are prepared to sacrifice their lives for our country." True, the terrorist attacks of September 11 have resulted in a partial dispensation for patriotic speech. Still, when was the last time you heard the president of a major university praise the military?

Well, this friskiness soon caught up with Summers. In October, he had the temerity to meet with Cornel West and suggest that he turn his hand to some serious scholarship-West's most recent production was a rap CD called Sketches of My Culture-and lead the way in fighting the scandal of grade inflation at Harvard, where one of every two grades is an A or A-. What an outrage! West went to sulk in his tent, announcing on the way that he was applying for another year's leave of absence (he had just returned from one) and letting it be known that he might just up and leave Harvard.

The true seriousness of this firestorm became evident when the New York Times put the story on its front page at the end of December. The firmament trembled. Not only West, but also other members of Harvard's Afro-American Studies department-including Henry Louis Gates Jr., the high-profile chairman of the department-were thinking of defecting, to Princeton perhaps, in the wake of Summers's perceived insult.

Within a week, the situation seemed to be spinning out of control. Jesse Jackson asked to meet Summers to seek "clarity" on Harvard's commitment to "diversity." Charles J. Ogletree, another professor of Afro-American Studies at Harvard, thundered that "it's absolutely critical that the president make an unequivocal public statement in support of affirmative action."

Oh dear. A Harvard spokesman whined that the whole thing was just "a huge misunderstanding." Summers himself declared, "We are proud of the Afro-American Studies program at Harvard, collectively and individually. We would very much like to see them stay at Harvard and will compete vigorously to make this an attractive environment." In other words: "Name your price, boys; we give up." The Times rewarded Summers with a second front-page story that announced his rehabilitation: "In two interviews . . . he seemed eager to refute any suggestion that he was too confrontational," the paper reported. "Even his critics seem to grant that Mr. Summers has learned from the disputes over the past few weeks."

You betcha. He's learned, for example, that if he dares to criticize black professors at Harvard, he will face the wrath of the Times, Jesse Jackson, and the whole steamroller smear machine of racialist political correctness. (Even Al Sharpton got into the act, threatening to sue Harvard for damaging his prospects as a presidential candidate.) The episode of Cornel West vs. Larry Summers is not simply another sorry tale from the annals of academic pusillanimity. It is a textbook example of liberal intimidation at work. That first story on the Times's front page was not news-it was a warning shot fired across the bow of Summers's presumption of independence. What it meant was, "Be careful. If you do not capitulate, we will hound you out of office with an avalanche of negative publicity."

The Times was quite right to take Summers's initial insubordination seriously. A college president out in Podunk might be allowed to buck the trend of political correctness. But the president of Harvard? Never. The Times understood that if Summers held firm, the intellectual Potemkin Village that three decades of political correctness has built might be exposed for the rickety stage prop it is.

In all the mainstream press coverage of this affair, it was put about that Cornel West is a serious scholar, that Afro-American Studies is a serious academic discipline, and that Harvard's department of Afro- American Studies in particular boasted a "dream team" of important intellectuals. I suspect that the Times's bizarre decision to call West "Dr. West" while it habitually refers to other academics and Ph.D.- holders as "Mr." or "Ms." So-and-So ("Mr. Summers," for example) was part of the general effort to burnish West's academic aura. The unpalatable truth is that Afro-American Studies is a pseudo-discipline- an academic ghetto constructed to accommodate the beneficiaries of "affirmative action"-and that the celebrated occupants of Harvard's department are second-class scholars with first-class salaries and perquisites.