The Bullied Pulpit

Walk through Harvard Yard and a curious quiet surrounding the war in Iraq will strike your ears. It’s not from students—their posters and demonstrations both for and against the war have occupied the Yard for weeks. Is it the faculty? Well, not really. Between calls for defense divestment and prominent speeches at walkouts, Harvard’s professors have made their strong opinions on military action well-known. No, the deafening silence on this most timely of issues comes from an unlikely place: the first floor of Mass. Hall.

It seems implausible that often-outspoken University President Lawrence H. Summers hasn’t made any public statement of his sympathies in the debate on Iraq. And yet the best he has mustered so far is Mar. 20’s half-hearted, vague statement that “This is a solemn moment” filled with the “anxiety” that comes with war. With that kind of noncommittal platitude, neither here nor there in the ideological conflict, his lips might as well be sealed.

It wasn’t always like this. As recently as September, Summers was taking a risky, unabashed public position on Israel and anti-Semitism—famously declaring signers of the Israel divestment petition “anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent.” Back then, love him or hate him, we all knew what Summers thought.

So why has Summers become more of a Coolidge than a Teddy Roosevelt? The answer, it seems, has something to do with the “hate him” half of the equation. Last fall, Summers’ bold stance was met with a firestorm of outrage. “We’ve been suffocated!” shouted crybabies at the top of their lungs. Somehow, his expression of profound personal conviction was taken as an implied threat to free discourse.

And in January, Summers seemed to take this foolish logic to heart, frowning at Adams House Masters Sean and Judy Palfrey’s House-wide e-mail opposing the war in Iraq. Sounding oddly like his own accusers, Summers appeared to think that the Palfreys’ strong, reasoned opinion should remain under wraps simply because they were University officials. Many who had supported him earlier were shaken. Before he had merely expressed his own view—why, now, was Summers proving his critics right three months later by telling others not to express theirs? More criticism came his way.

With a chorus of critics—some legitimate, some not—ready to call every strong stance Summers takes an Orwellian lockdown of free speech at Harvard, it is no surprise that he has since said little. No one likes to be castigated as a Stalin of the academy. But his silence has been worse. Any strongly-worded statement on the war in Iraq would be sure to stir up healthy debate and controversy, whether by challenging the prevalent anti-war mood at Harvard or by standing up to the Bush administration and the majority of Americans. Whatever his views on the war in Iraq—and it is preposterous to suggest that a man as savvy and opinionated as Larry Summers might lack any—he owes us a public, clear statement on the topic, even if that means opening himself to sometimes-absurd flak. Let’s hear it, Larry.

—Simon W. Vozick-Levinson is an editorial editor.