Philip Terzian
It seems that President Summers invited Prof. Cornel West, the
race-minded writer and publicist, in for a chat this past fall. Cornel West,
part of the self-described academic "dream team" assembled by Prof. Henry
Louis Gates Jr. in Harvard's Department of Afro-American Studies, may be
best known for his recent declaration that the United States had been
"niggerized by the terrorist attacks" on the World Trade Center and
Pentagon. Details are incomplete, but President Summers seems to have
complained to Professor West about his notion of academic standards: His
chairmanship of the Rev. Al Sharpton's presidential exploratory committee,
his gut introductory course on black studies where half the students get
A's, and his recently-released rap CD, recorded while absent from Harvard on
medical leave.
President Summers appears to have suggested to Professor West that he
choose his extracurricular activities with better care, and devote himself
more to his Harvard duties. But what President Summers seems not to have
realized is that, by holding Professor West to the ordinary standards
expected of Harvard faculty members, he disrespected one of America's
leading African-American polemicists. As Professor West, Professor Gates or
any of their colleagues at Harvard's W.E.B. DuBois Institute could have told
him, "dissing" is a calculated affront, an ethnic insult, for which amends
must be made.
The whirlwind was not long in coming. Professor Gates, Professor West
and Prof. Kwame Anthony Appiah soon made it clear that they were so
disturbed by President Summers's evident racial insensitivity that they
might be tempted to accept a longstanding offer to transfer Harvard's
Department of Afro-American Studies, and perhaps the W.E.B. DuBois
Institute, intact to Princeton. Reporter Pamela Ferdinand wrote a breathless
story in The Washington Post, quoting innumerable anonymous faculty sources,
explaining that unless President Summers apologized to Professor West, and
swore his public fealty to racial quotas, the university's fidelity to
veritas, Latin for truth and Harvard's motto, would be
called into question.
To be sure, no racial controversy would be complete without the arrival
of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who called for a "national conference on racial
justice" at Harvard, and speaking from the pulpit in Cambridge, demanded
"clarity" about Harvard's devotion to affirmative action. Not to be outdone
was the Reverend Jackson's main rival, the aforementioned Reverend Sharpton,
who plans to sue Harvard for questioning Professor West's contribution to
his candidacy.
To all of which, in due course, President Summers suitably responded. At
the height of this manufactured furor, he met with Professor West to express
his admiration, pledge more cash to subsidize the Dream Team, and issue a
statement on Harvard's support for "diversity" -- which, in Cambridge and
elsewhere, may be translated as uniformity of thought and action.
It should be noted, of course, that all of this has less to do with race
than with money. Harvard is not alone among institutions of higher learning
in purchasing academic celebrities like Cornel West and Henry Louis Gates
Jr., and it pays a certain price in lavishing attention on scholars with an
inexhaustible appetite for flattery and loot. The fact that the money that
is showered on the Dream Team is deducted from other academic resources, and
yields little in the way of useful scholarship, is a fair trade so far as
Harvard is concerned. The modern university president understands that, in
the short term, truth is less valuable than publicity; and that "diversity"
ensures that Harvard's Department of Afro-American Studies, and the W.E.B.
DuBois Institute, will continue to adhere to strict ideological standards.
Then again, race does have something to do with it, for no sooner had
President Summers offered his sword to Professor West than the university's
Latino scholars were heard from. Harvard's commitment to diversity, they
declared, required nothing less than a separate department, new programs and
policies, and a Latino studies center. This is probably not what President
Summers, or any of his distinguished predecessors, had in mind; but if black
Americans are to be segregated within the academic establishment, why not
balkanize the university in general? It would satisfy every race- and
ethnic-conscious scholar at Harvard, and grant to Massachusetts the same
standards of fair play that Gov. George Wallace defended at the University
of
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com --
LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS, who was Bill Clinton's last secretary
of the treasury, enjoys a reputation as an academic wunderkind,
economic sage and bureaucrat who does not suffer fools gladly. But
then last year, Mr. Summers was appointed to the Harvard presidency, where
suffering fools may be an occupational hazard. A case in point is his recent
violation of the code of racial etiquette, as widely understood in
Cambridge, Mass. 
JWR contributor Philip Terzian is associate editor of The Providence Journal.
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