Summers Tours Middle East

Closing out the year with a six-day jaunt to the Middle East, University President Lawrence H. Summers told an audience in Jerusalem that instances of apparent anti-Semitism on American college campuses had declined since he first spoke on the issue more than two years ago.

“Reporting from my locale,” Summers said in a speech on Dec. 22 at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, “I can tell you that while these tensions are by no means absent, they seem to have receded somewhat over the last two years.”

Summers said the rejection of calls to divest from Israel at American universities “has led to the drying up of the divestiture movement.” In an address at Memorial Church in September 2002, Summers said such movements were “anti-Semitic in their effect if not in their intent,” and he repeated those same words in Jerusalem.

Speaking for more than an hour last month, in far more extensive remarks than his Memorial Church speech, Summers excoriated those academics who, he said, have demonized Israel while ignoring human rights violations elsewhere.

“The important issue is that such rhetoric is wrong and such rhetoric is dangerous and that such rhetoric has to be confronted,” Summers said.

Addressing critics of his speech two years ago, who said he was attempting to silence criticism of Israel by labeling such sentiments as anti-Semitic, Summers said he was committed to absolute freedom of speech on campus. “The answer to wrong speech is more speech, showing why it is wrong,” he said.

But Summers rejected what he called “relativistic nihilism, in which all positions are equally legitimate, all positions must be respected and compromise must be entered into, no matter what the starting point or reasonableness of the two parties. It seems to me that Israel is right, its friends are right, moral people everywhere are right to resist that approach.”

Summers, Harvard’s first Jewish president, visited Jordan and Israel during his trip, meeting with top government officials in both countries, including King Abdullah II bin Al Hussein of Jordan and Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister.

In an interview on Monday, Summers declined to say with which Israeli leaders he met, but they included Sharon, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to an individual in Israel with knowledge of the details of Summers’ visit. Summers also met with two other former Israeli prime ministers, Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak, the source said.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem bestowed Summers with an honorary doctorate when he spoke there on Dec. 19. In a telephone interview yesterday, Menachem Magidor, president of the university, said the school had chosen to honor Summers for his academic achievements as well as “his very, very strong statements against any kind of anti-Semitism.”

“His ability to combine both his academic career and his public career—I wouldn’t say this is unique, but it is rare and impressive,” said Magidor, who said he had talked with Summers about possible collaborations between their two universities.

Summers enjoyed equally effusive praise at the Academy of Sciences and Humanities, where he delivered his remarks on “the new anti-Semitism.” Daniel C. Kurtzer, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, told the audience that Summers “epitomizes and personifies all that is good about the United States,” and Menahem Yaari, president of the Academy, praised Summers as “outspoken.”

“President Summers has never allowed political correctness to stop him from saying what he thought needed to be said,” Yaari told the audience. “This was true at the World Bank, this was true at the Treasury, and now it has been true in his role as president of Harvard University.”

In more than three years at the University’s helm, Summers has emerged as a far more public figure than his predecessor, Neil L. Rudenstine. Summers’ speech in Memorial Church, after little more than a year on the job, provoked impassioned responses from friends and critics of Israel alike.

“Now, in ways that I anticipated to some degree but frankly did not fully anticipate, these words did not go unnoticed,” Summers said last month in Jerusalem. “They probably did little to reject Mr. Yaari’s suggestion that I was outspoken.”

In a keynote address at an October fundraising dinner for the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York, Summers also addressed his allegations of anti-Semitism and rejection of calls for divestment from Israel. The text of that speech appeared in November as an op-ed in Jewish Week, a New York-based newspaper.

—Staff writer Zachary M. Seward can be reached at seward@fas.harvard.edu.