Clueless in Academe

By Stanley Fish

Imagine this scene: It is some months ago and there is a meeting in the office of the president of Harvard University. Larry Summers asks, "What kind of progress are we making in recruiting and promoting women in the sciences?"

"Not very much," answers one of his lieutenants, "and, in fact, the figures have declined rather precipitously during your stewardship. I don't know what to do about this, but we have to do something."

"I have an idea," Summers says excitedly. "Everybody thinks that I'm a klutz and a serial bungler. What if I participate in a conference on this very subject and say something outrageous and dumb. There will be a great outcry and calls for action from all sides, and in the end I'll be forced to take steps for which I probably couldn't get support today. How does that sound?"

"Brilliant" is the choral response.

Did it happen that way? Was Summers taking a page out of the book of Denny Crane, the lawyer played by William Shatner on Boston Legal, who uses the perception that he is losing his marbles to gain an advantage in the courtroom and in the political maneuverings of his law firm?

Well, I don't know. And neither do I know any flies on the wall, but the results have certainly occurred and have been widely reported. Two task forces have been appointed; their reports are to be completed and submitted by May 1 (literally warp speed in the molasses world of academic administration), and the university promises to act on their recommendations by September, thereby breaking all land- and air-speed records known to academic man; oops, I mean academic man and woman.

Barbara Grosz, dean of science at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and now the head of one of the task forces, makes my point when she says, "There is now an opportunity that didn't exist before." That is, had Summers not (apparently) put his very big foot into his very big mouth, none of this would have happened, or at least would not have happened in the space of a few months.

My fanciful speculation has a real point. It is only if Summers' performance at the January 14th conference (where he wondered if the underrepresentation of women in the sciences and math might have a genetic basis) was intentional -- it is only if he knew what he was doing -- that he can be absolved of the most serious of the charges that might be brought against him. And that is not the charge that his views on the matter were uninformed and underresearched (as they certainly were), nor the charge that he has damaged the cause of women in science (which he surely has), but the charge that he wasn't doing his job and didn't even seem to know what it was.

For the record, his job is being president of Harvard University. And you get a sense of the kind of job it is when you recall that one of his august predecessors, having been urged to be a candidate for the presidency of the United States, replied, "Why would I step down in office?"

What the anecdote (apocryphal or not) tells us is that the president of Harvard is in the E.F. Hutton position: When he speaks, everyone listens, and everyone listens to him as the president of Harvard, and not as good-old plain-speaking Larry Summers.

That basic fact seems to have escaped Richard Freeman, a Harvard professor and one of the organizers of the fatal conference, who said in comments to a newspaper, "We didn't invite Larry as a Harvard president. ... We invited him because he has an extremely powerful and interesting mind." Freeman then added, "If we had invited him as Harvard president, he would have given us the same type of babble that university presidents give, and thank God we have a president who doesn't say that."

There are so many things wrong with those statements that it's hard to know where to begin. First, Summers's powerful and interesting mind must have been taking a day off. Second, the faculty members and students at Harvard can at least thank God that Richard Freeman is not their president; for he seems to be even more clueless than the incumbent he defends. Third (and more important), the president of Harvard always carries his office with him. His pronouncements (wise and foolish) are always uttered ex cathedra and can never be detached from the responsibilities of his office. (Exactly the point made by Harvard's Standing Committee on Women in a letter of almost parental rebuke: "The president of a university never speaks entirely as an individual, especially when that institution is Harvard.")

Larry Summers is no more free to pop off at the mouth about a vexed academic question than George Bush is free to wander around the country dropping off-the-cuff remarks about Social Security or Islam. Of course both men are free in the First Amendment sense to say anything that comes into their pretty little heads; but the constitutional freedom they enjoy is freedom from legal consequences, not from consequences in general. (Can anyone say, Trent Lott?)

The constraints on speaking that come along with occupying a position have nothing to do with the First Amendment (there are no free-speech issues here, as there almost never are on college campuses) and everything to do with the legitimate expectations that are part and parcel of the job you have accepted and for which you are (in this case, handsomely) paid.

Those expectations (and the requirements they subtend) are not philosophical, but empirical and pragmatic. They, include, first and foremost, the expectation that you will comport yourself in ways that bring credit, not obloquy, to the institution you lead.

That doesn't mean that there are things you can't say or things you must say. Rather, it means that whatever you say, you have to be aware of the possible effects your utterance might produce, especially if those effects touch the health and reputation of the university. Steven Pinker (another Harvard luminary) asks, "Good grief, shouldn't everything be within the pale of academic discourse, as long as it is presented with some degree of academic rigor?"

The answer is yes (although the "academic rigor" part can certainly be disputed in this case), but the answer and the question are beside the point because academic discourse is not the game Larry Summers can possibly be playing -- remember, he's the president, all the time -- even when he finds himself in a setting where everyone else is playing it. James Traub observed in The New York Times that Pinker's views on innate differences between men and women are close to those voiced (as a speculation) by Summers. But if that is Pinker's reason for defending Summers, it is a bad one.

As a faculty member you should not give your president high marks because he expresses views you approve or low marks because he espouses views you reject. Your evaluation of him or her (now there's a solution to Harvard's problem) should be made in the context of the only relevant question -- not "Does what he says meet the highest standards of scholarship?" or "Is what he says politically correct or bravely politically incorrect?" (an alternative form of political correctness) or even "Is what he says true?" but "Is he, in saying it (whatever it is) carrying out the duties of his office in a manner that furthers the interests of the enterprise?"

Almost everyone who has commented on this fiasco (including the principal actor) gets it wrong by regarding it as an instance of some high-falutin issue rather than as an example of someone falling down on his job.

The offended academic left sees Summers's remarks as an affront to its causes and as the latest chapter in the sad history of gender-discrimination. The right (both inside and outside the academy) regards the entire hullabaloo as an instance of political correctness run (once again) amok. And pundits on both sides think that something deep about the nature of a university is at stake here. (Whenever the phrase "academic freedom" is invoked, you know you're hearing cant.) Brian McGrory, a Boston Globe columnist, achieves a new high in fatuousness, even in this rather dreary context, when he observes portentously, "I've always assumed that the strength of the academy is its ability to encourage difficult questions" (January 21).

Well, that may be the strength of the academy, but it is not the strength sought by search committees when they interview candidates for senior administrative positions. No search committee asks, "Can we count on you to rile things up? Can we look forward to days of hostile press coverage? Can you give us a list of the constituencies you intend to offend?"

Search committees do ask, "What is your experience with budgets?" and "What are your views on the place of intercollegiate athletics?" and "What will be your strategy for recruiting a world-class faculty?" and "How will you create a climate attractive to donors?"

The Larry Summers of this episode might have a little trouble with the last two questions, and he wouldn't help his cause by saying, as he now has in a profusion of apologies, I was just being provocative.

Sorry, that's not in the job description; nor is the (supposedly) moral quality claimed for Summers by Freeman when he describes him as "a straight-talking, no-baloney president." (That goes along with Freeman's assumption that a university president can either speak meaningless "babble" or go boldly where no man, at least one with half a brain, has gone before; but surely one can be strong and tactful at the same time.)

If straight-talking, with no concern for the fallout that may follow, is what you like to do; if that is your preferred brand of baloney ("I just call them as I see them"), then maybe you've wandered into the wrong profession. Not every virtue (if straight-talking is a virtue, and I have my doubts) is pertinent to every practice, and it is surely part of your responsibility to know what virtues are appropriate to the position you hold.

In the end, there is only one question (with many parts): Does Harvard want a president who makes Prince Harry of England -- he at least has the excuse of being 20 and without a real job -- seem sensitive and sophisticated? Does Harvard want a president who makes the proverbial bull in the china shop seem like Nijinsky? Does Harvard want a president who, despite the reputation of being brilliant (where's the beef?) acts as if he were the leader of the Know Nothing Party? Does Harvard want a president who cannot be trusted to go out into the world without a keeper?

The answer, I guess, is "yes."