Tensions Linger at Closed FAS Meeting

Tensions between University President Lawrence H. Summers’ supporters and opponents lingered at yesterday’s Faculty meeting, with one of the outgoing president’s critics, mathematician Wilfried Schmid, telling the pro-Summers Yiddish scholar Ruth R. Wisse to “stop poisoning the atmosphere at this University.”

Wisse told The Crimson last week that anti-Semitism was “one of the factors at play” in the run-up to Summers’ resignation, and she made similar remarks to The Boston Globe. Yesterday, German literature scholar Judith L. Ryan, who sponsored a motion of no confidence in Summers’ leadership, said that she wondered if Wisse “realized how hurt I felt personally by the allegation of anti-Semitism.”

The exchange between Schmid and Ryan, on one side, and Wisse, on the other, was a departure from the otherwise upbeat tone at yesterday’s session. “Optimism was the word of the day,” former Provost Jerry R. Green, an economics professor, said. Professor of Anthropology and of African and African American Studies J. Lorand Matory ’82, who had been one of Summers’ most vocal opponents, quipped, “It was almost a love fest.”

A longstanding Faculty rule allows campus publications to send reporters to all Faculty meetings. But the chair of the Faculty Council’s docket committee, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, told The Crimson on Sunday night that “there are occasions when meetings need to be in camera, and this is one of them.” Reporters were barred from the session.

WISSE: ‘I HAVE NO FAITH’

Early in the meeting, Schmid read a statement chastising his colleagues for departing from “norms of civility” in recent weeks. “Most disturbingly, [economist] Edward Glaeser, [law professor] Alan Dershowitz, and Ruth Wisse have insinuated anti-Semitism,” Schmid said, according to a copy of his remarks that he gave to The Crimson.

“Edward Glaeser fortunately, and to his credit, has apologized,” Schmid said. In an interview with The Crimson last month, Glaeser drew a comparison between a magazine article that criticized Summers and the early-20th century anti-Semitic hoax “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” But Glaeser later said that he did not intend to suggest that the magazine article—or any criticism of Summers—was motivated by anti-Semitism.

Several speakers later, Wisse rose. When asked afterwards about the content of her remarks, Wisse said, “I wrote an op-ed for The Crimson...my thoughts are in it.” In a Feb. 17 op-ed, Wisse criticized fellow faculty members who signed a 2002 petition urging Harvard to divest from Israeli firms.

“I’m tired of this, and I have no faith,” Wisse said last night. “My colleagues have gotten rid of Summers. It seems that they need another target.”

Later in the meeting, Ryan rose to speak. She said afterwards that, though she did not sign the Israel divestment petition, she felt that she had been personally targeted by Wisse’s remarks because she had sponsored the no-confidence motion. “I felt it was important for me to put a personal face on this to make clear that [Wisse] was not just addressing a group of nameless people,” Ryan said. “There was a very real person whose name was on the motion.”

ECK: ‘THE REAL TEST IS NEXT WEEK’

Diana L. Eck, the Wertham professor of law and psychiatry in society, said after the meeting that Wisse’s remarks “don’t make much of an impression on the Faculty” because of their “extreme” nature.

And Ulrich said that the vast majority of yesterday’s meeting was “remarkable” for its positivity.

As the Faculty prepares to vote on curricular changes later this spring, Werner Sollors, a professor of English and of African and African American studies, said, “everyone was ready to look ahead at the reforms.”

Meanwhile, Ulrich said that the Faculty’s 19-member governing council is prepared to work with the incoming interim president, Derek C. Bok, and outgoing Faculty Dean William C. Kirby to chart a path for the curricular review that is “realistic but serious.”

The council will meet tomorrow with Bok, who is making his first known visit to campus since being chosen as interim president by the Harvard Corporation on Feb. 21.

Green, who as provost from 1992 to 1994 was Harvard’s second-highest administrator, said of yesterday’s session: “I don’t think anybody expressed a doubt about the good will of the Faculty and the good will of the Corporation.”

Professors are expected to tackle curricular review proposals head-on at next Tuesday’s Faculty meeting.

Eck, who is also master of Lowell House, said, “the real test is next week.”

There are just five more regular meetings of the full Faculty this spring, and Kirby has stated the goal of having professors consider concentration-choice changes and a Core curriculum replacement this semester.

“I am somewhat concerned that it is March,” Eck said, “and we only have a few meetings left before the end of the year. There is really a lot to do.”

—Lois E. Beckett contributed to the reporting of this story.
—Staff writer Allison A. Frost can be reached at afrost@fas.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Samuel P. Jacobs can be reached at jacobs@fas.harvard.edu.