Professors Mull Response to Vitriol in Media

The episodes that drove the Faculty to oust its president mainly took place behind closed doors. But professors are facing a backlash in the court of public opinion-, as the response to the resignation drains ink barrels across the country.

A piece in The Washington Times called Lawrence H. Summers’ opponents “the Lilliputians guarding their miserable little nests of selfish indifference.”

The editor in chief of The New Republic, Martin Peretz, wrote in the magazine that an “alliance of frightened souls and hyped-up orators” chased Summers out.

The most visible rebuke came on the Op-Ed page of Saturday’s New York Times. Columnist John Tierney cast Summers as a victim of professors with “delicate psyches” who are “accustomed to teaching whatever’s in their latest book.”

Frustrated by these and other attacks in the national media that are painting them as reactionary, lazy, radical, and worse, professors are pondering whether to launch a counter-offensive.

Compounding their dilemma, Faculty members say, is the fact that their outrage against Summers stems from interactions that occurred in private and that they don’t want described in the press.

“The problem is that many people have felt that it will not be good for Harvard if we wash dirty linen in public,” said Judith L. Ryan, the Weary professor of Germanic literatures and languages, and the sponsor of the no-confidence resolution that the full Faculty would have voted on at its cancelled meeting Tuesday.

“But because of our wish to protect the institution,” Ryan added, “we haven’t in fact been able to articulate specifically what our objections were—and thus it gets reduced to some vague ‘discontent.’”

Most of all, professors—even those who have been vocal in their criticism of Summers, including Classics Department Chair Richard F. Thomas—say that the Faculty should move past last month’s crisis despite stinging rebukes in the press.

“To really respond would require going into specific ethical and managerial issues that simply keep the state of upheaval going on,” Thomas said. “And he’s already resigned.”

TRYING TIMES

Underlying many opinion pieces nationwide is a perception that Summers cared more about students than professors did.

“Senior professors can shunt off the more tedious jobs, like teaching freshmen or grading papers, to low-caste graduate students or visiting lecturers,” Tierney wrote. “That’s why Summers had to push them to teach survey courses and other basics.”

Historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, the 300th Anniversary University Professor, responded to Tierney’s column by submitting an Op-Ed piece to the Times. So far, Ulrich said, the newspaper has declined to publish her piece because the Op-Ed page doesn’t run responses to previous columns.

Some professors are also offering to talk to students about the Summers saga.

James J. McCarthy, master of Pforzheimer House, sent a House-wide e-mail on Monday announcing the cancellation of a study break with the president that was scheduled for last night.

In the e-mail, McCarthy also wrote that much of what is written about Harvard in the news is “uninformed and/or misinformed.” He provided links to two pieces in Harvard Magazine that he said accurately summarized the situation, and invited Pfoho residents to “catch me in the dining hall some evening” if they had more questions about the events of last month.

McCarthy is the chair of the committee on degrees in environmental science and public policy, and the co-coordinator of the Caucus of Chairs, an informal group of department heads. He declined to comment for this article.

‘THIS IS DONE’

Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk show host, said last Thursday that Summers was brought down by “a bunch of angry feminazis.”

So, for the record, was the issue of political correctness at play in the Faculty’s outrage last month?

“I’m so sick of hearing that charge,” Ryan said. “I believe firmly that anybody should be allowed to say what they want to say.”

And Kay K. Shelemay, the Watts professor of music, called the suggestion of political correctness being involved “ridiculous.”

“This was not about politics of any sort or kind,” Shelemay said. “This was about the very basic processes of running our university.”

Some pro-Summers professors say that his critics are motivated by objections to his political views-—such as his support of the Reserve Officer Training Corps and his outspoken opposition to calls for Harvard to divest from Israel.

But most of Summers’ critics don’t want to be bogged down in a point-by-point debate over the factors that led to the president’s departure.

“This is done, okay?” Ulrich said. “It’s done, and the question is, What do we do now?”

—Staff writer Anton S. Troianovski can be reached at atroian@fas.harvard.edu.