| Username |
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| sparsha |
Posted
on 03-Jan-02 12:04 PM
"Just over a decade ago, Benno Schmidt, an ambitious and rather bumptious president of Yale University, was derided by students for his interfering ways, some of whom chose to wear T-shirts bearing the words: "Schmidt Happens." Now, at Harvard, students may soon be deciding upon the phraseology for a similar T-Shirt......"
Check out the link for full article.
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2060318
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| ashu |
Posted
on 03-Jan-02 08:51 PM
Well, let's just hope that that the whole thing was a "huge misunderstanding", and
that amicable solutions will be found.
Harvard, along with Larry, would be foolish to lose Gates, West and Appiah after all the hard work of Rudenstein to woo those stars to Cambridge to make Harvard
THE place for cutting-edge Afro-American studies.
oohi
ashu
ktm,nepal
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| sparsha |
Posted
on 04-Jan-02 09:45 AM
Lawrence Summers may be a great man but everytime I hear his name this memo(see the link) comes to my mind.
http://www.whirledbank.org/ourwords/summers.html
LDC...Dumping sites?
I hope, he is no more harboring the same attitude towards LDC and I aslo certainly hope that he will quickly abandon his move as a bull in a china shop (given the accusation is true).
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| Biswo |
Posted
on 04-Jan-02 08:09 PM
Sparshaji:
Didn't Sammer repudiate these memo? I think there was a discussion about that
here also!
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| Biswo |
Posted
on 04-Jan-02 09:13 PM
May be this news will allay fear of some anxious souls.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,42234,00.html
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| ashu |
Posted
on 04-Jan-02 10:03 PM
Sparsha,
Please read this.
This is the third time I have posted this link here.
It's really unfair to keep on hounding Larry as some have done in public domain, especially on account of this memo which Larry did NOT write, but which but some knee-jerk critics of the World Bank insist on using all the time to denonce both the World Bank and Larry and economics in general EVEN AFTER contary evidence has come to light.
Cornel West is a touchy, sensitive scholar: it's quite possible that he felt slighted/insulted by Larry's typical "in your face style". But I hope those
two work things out.
http://www.harvard-magazine.com/archive/01mj/mj01_feat_summers_2.html
oohi
ashu
ktm,nepal
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| sparsha |
Posted
on 05-Jan-02 11:21 AM
Ashu,
cc Biswo ji
I once again read the link you posted. I am willing to give him the benefit of doubt and reluctantly accept the fact that he did not read what he signed for (even though, the memo is not that long and he says he gave a cursory look and also he was not a stupid dude not to know what his signature means).
Anyway, I can't help remembering the memo he did co-sign for everytime I hear his name. However, as I mentioned above I am willing to give him the benefit of doubt (not that he cares if I give him the benefit of doubt but for my own easiness).
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| ashu |
Posted
on 06-Jan-02 11:12 PM
A Harvard President Who Brings His Elbows to the Table
By KATE ZERNIKE and PAM BELLUCK
FROM NYT
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Jan. 5 — It was undoubtedly the most negative publicity Harvard University's new president, Lawrence H. Summers, had received in his six months on the job. A dust-up with the professor Cornel West and complaints that Mr. Summers had snubbed or disappointed other celebrated black scholars raised the possibility that Harvard would lose the stars of its Afro- American studies department.
But the dispute, resolved this week when Mr. Summers took steps to mend fences with the professors, was not the only time that Harvard's president has ruffled feathers.
In November, at a meeting with law professors, he was perceived as giving a disparaging response to a professor who objected to plans to move the law school's campus.
In September, he rankled leaders of public service organizations on campus, who complained that he was unfairly advising them to stick to charitable work and not get involved in social or political advocacy.
And several professors of Latin American studies say that over the last few months, Mr. Summers has deflected requests that a Latino studies center be established on campus.
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| ashu |
Posted
on 06-Jan-02 11:13 PM
His critics say that since Mr. Summers took office in July, he has developed a reputation for excessive bluntness, lacking the quiet diplomacy they praise in his predecessor, Neil L. Rudenstine. They say Mr. Summers, who was treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, brought with him the sharp elbows for which he was known in Washington. Even though he taught economics here for nearly a decade, they speak of him as a kind of interloper, one who does not understand how universities are supposed to operate.
In many ways, he is what people used to expect university presidents to be: outspoken, a strong hand and a public figure, not simply a smooth fund-raiser. The education of Larry Summers suggests how much that expectation has changed.
"Given someone who has experience in Washington, his behavior has been quite shocking," said William Julius Wilson, who was recruited under Mr. Rudenstine as a professor and part of the Afro-American studies department.
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| ashu |
Posted
on 06-Jan-02 11:13 PM
"He's now saying things he should have said from the beginning," Dr. Wilson added. "That's to his credit. I hope he learns something from this."
At the least, Mr. Summers cast a figure far different from the owlish Mr. Rudenstine — and faced more withering scrutiny. When Mr. Summers's sweat pants sagged during a halftime game of Red Rover at a November football game, for example, gossip columns here and in Washington obsessed about whether his underwear had been red or white.
In an interview in his office off Harvard Yard, Mr. Summers defended his tenure and suggested that the criticism reflected the need to adjust to a new style, one of questioning, not conciliation. The questions are intended to force people to rise to the high expectations worthy of Harvard, not to shoot them down.
"I think the questioning is a mark of respect for people, an interest in what they have to say," Mr. Summers said. "I've always believed that you can't do anything without having a sense of the pros and cons."
Mr. Summers's defenders, too, challenge the idea that he sought an imperial presidency by saying that he is acting from his roots as a professor. It is not uncommon, they say, for faculty members to challenge one another's ideas; rather, it is the essence of the university. Instead of being unfamiliar with the university ethos, Mr. Summers is perhaps a little too familiar with it.
"If he made any mistake at all, it's that he thought he was coming back as a faculty member," said Sol Gittleman, provost of Tufts University. "The faculty is free to say whatever they want. Once you became an administrator it's something else."
Dr. Gittleman said that Mr. Summers "brings his own kind of unique faculty baggage to the job." He added: "I don't see him as arched. I don't see him as pompous. He didn't realize that he was no longer faculty; he's the president of Harvard."
Others say that the committee that chose Mr. Summers was looking for a strong voice. And that, say Morton and Phyllis Keller, historians and authors of a recent book on the university, is a natural transition for Harvard. Historically, the Kellers say, Harvard has alternated between strong presidents and those they call stewards, whose chief task is to build up the university's endowment. The presidents in between have been freer to focus on some aspect of the university that they think needs improvement. For Charles Eliot, it was making the curriculum more flexible. For James Conant, it was improving the quality of the faculty and students. For Derek Bok, it was making Harvard more relevant to the outside world.
"Larry Summers comes in at a time when money is not the problem, the quality of students is not the problem," Morton Keller said in an interview. "There is a serious problem in the way in which Harvard's worldliness and prestige drives professors away from their core responsibilities: teaching and scholarship. He is responding not only to his own sense of the university having strayed from its core mission, but to the criticism outside the university."
The criticism of Mr. Summers is largely over how he delivers his message, but sometimes it is the message. Trevor Cox, president of Phillips Brooks House, Harvard's umbrella for community service groups, said that at the meeting with student leaders, Mr. Summers seemed to be saying that public service should focus more on charity work than on advocacy of a particular approach to solving social problems. Tutoring children might be appropriate, for example, while fighting vouchers might not, even if it was based in a belief that they make conditions for children in public schools worse.
"The general drift of it was that he didn't consider advocacy public service," Mr. Cox said. "His conception was more of charity. To have the president of the university define a narrow definition of public service was not well met."
So far, Mr. Cox said, he and other students have found things about Mr. Summers to praise and criticize.
"Summers has done a very good job at the beginning of visiting groups of people, indicating by his presence that he's willing to learn about issues that affect the college," Mr. Cox said. "He has had office hours, and a lot of students have gone in to see him."
On the other hand, his probing questions can be disconcerting.
"If you have a short time with him, it's not too encouraging if the whole time he spends a lot of time challenging your views, even though he may not really believe that," Mr. Cox said. "I think he is for both his sake and ours challenging us and challenging himself on a lot of these issues."
That is how Mr. Summers explains it. In two interviews in his office, he seemed eager to refute any suggestion that he was too confrontational.
All his questions, he said, are aimed at making the best decisions toward a broad agenda: improving undergraduate education, tamping down grade inflation, making it possible for more students to attend Harvard regardless of cost. He acknowledges that there are challenges in trying to satisfy everyone.
"Not everything can be a priority," he said.
At the meeting with the students, he said, he was making the point that the university cannot be seen as endorsing political causes, particularly if they are at one end of the ideological spectrum. As for the misunderstanding at the law school, he called the faculty member to make sure no insult was felt — an account the faculty member corroborates.
And while Mr. Summers acknowledges that it may be different for Harvard to have its president in the gossip columns, he is a public figure and has been for years.
Even his critics seem to grant that Mr. Summers has learned from the disputes over the past few weeks. "He's trying to make things better," said Charles Ogletree, a professor at the law school who represented the Afro-American studies professors in their dispute. "He's been conciliatory. He's been calling people, meeting people, wanting to set the record straight, trying to fix what he describes as a misunderstanding."
"We've made a lot of progress," Dr. Ogletree said. "I'm just thrilled that he's open."
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