AS PRESIDENT OF Harvard University, Larry Summers holds perhaps the most prominent office in American academia and, you might think, one of the most powerful. But after just six months on the job, he now better understands who really holds the power. In late December, three members of Harvard’s Afro-American Studies department–Henry Louis Gates Jr., Cornel West, and Anthony Appiah–threatened to leave for Princeton, dissatisfied with Summers’s leadership. Through surrogates, the trio complained to the Boston Globe that Summers was not clear in his support of affirmative action and did not place adequate emphasis on diversity. What’s more, they claimed, he had personally insulted West. According to the Globe, during a private October meeting, Summers had “rebuked West for recording a rap CD, for leading a political committee for the Reverend Al Sharpton’s possible presidential campaign, and for writing books more likely to be reviewed in the New York Times than in academic journals.” Summers also reportedly questioned West’s easy grading policies. In an interview with National Public Radio, West confirmed the Globe’s account of that meeting, adding that he was “attacked and insulted.” And, he grumbled, “The one thing I do not tolerate is disrespect, being dishonored and being devalued.” The potential defection of Harvard’s best-known black scholars elicited an immediate response from the university, which characterized the conflict between Summers and West as a “huge misunderstanding.” But West and his allies were not to be easily mollified. Within a week, Jesse Jackson was headed to Cambridge, demanding a meeting with Summers, and Al Sharpton was threatening a lawsuit. Then began a more intense effort to quiet the storm. Declining a face-to-face with Jackson, Summers released a statement explaining, “I take pride in Harvard’s longstanding commitment to diversity. I believe it is essential for us to maintain that commitment, working to create an ever more open and inclusive environment that draws on the widest possible range of talents.” He also held private meetings with Gates and West, during which Summers again said he was “sorry for any misunderstanding.” The university claims those meetings “cleared the air,” but West’s spokesman, Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree, was less sanguine. He says West may still leave for Princeton, declaring, “This is not over. We’re still waiting for finality. There’s still a ways to go.” Having promised in a public statement to “compete vigorously” to keep West, it seems Summers may yet have to do further penance. But if Cornel West is still dissatisfied with Summers, far more disappointed are those who would have been delighted to see West, and perhaps one or two more of the Af-Am stars, pack their bags. Senior members of the Harvard faculty say Summers’s criticism of West was well-founded and long overdue. The quality of West’s scholarship has long been suspect. In a 1995 review of West’s books, the New Republic’s Leon Wieseltier concluded that “West’s work is noisy, tedious, slippery . . . sectarian, humorless, pedantic and self-endeared.” That judgment is confirmed by West’s more recent offerings such as “The Future of American Progressivism,” co-authored with Roberto Unger, a stale, platitudinous call for the “reenergizing of democratic politics and the democratizing of the market economy.” Making matters worse, West is one of only 14 University Professors at Harvard, a distinction shared by Nobel laureates and super-luminaries like Samuel Huntington. But when students looked for wisdom in the wake of the September 11 attacks, West offered this pearl: “America has been ‘niggerized’ by the terrorist attacks.” He questioned the government’s eagerness to provide aid to the victims, chiding a campus audience, “Sounds an awful lot like reparations to me. I didn’t think America was into reparations.” West’s new CD, to which Summers reportedly objected, is described on its promotional website as “a watershed moment in musical history.” West says the album is an effort to be “intellectual without being cerebral.” He cut the album during a one-year leave from Harvard, and while it has posted meager sales, he appears to revel in his cross-over status as an academic cum hip-hop impresario. On a promotional tour this past summer, West bragged to the New Yorker: “We’re going to hook up with Shaq tomorrow. Call the Trump International. We’re just gonna go kick it with him, talk about life, talk about struggle.” To be fair, West’s classes, when he is teaching them, are popular among students. He can be a colorful speaker. He is also not especially demanding. According to the university’s most recent annual review of undergraduate courses, students rate West’s Introduction to Afro-American Studies a 2.5 out of 5 on the scale of difficulty. They give the workload a 1.8. Both ratings are below the average among social science courses in general, a category of instruction not known in general for its rigor. Of course, in the context of the modern academy, it seems the substance of Summers’s complaint with West hardly matters. Harvard history professor Stephan Thernstrom explains, “The Fellows of Harvard College, the members of the Corporation, don’t like Harvard to be on the front page of the New York Times impugned as racially insensitive.” Writing in the Wall Street Journal last week, Shelby Steele went further: “Institutions today lose their mainstream legitimacy unless white guilt defines their approach to racial matters.” Still, most of the pro-Summers faculty are hoping the president’s conciliatory gestures were not a complete capitulation. One question now is whether his tangle with West will derail Summers’s commitment to address the plague of grade inflation. Summers gets full marks for taking up this issue, which as recently as six months ago was the quixotic crusade of a happy few, led by political science professor Harvey Mansfield. Yet any serious campaign to restore standards cannot bode well for scholars of specious disciplines. This most recent spat with the Af-Am department may be just round one of a larger fight. Perhaps more important, while Summers has expressed support for the principle of “diversity,” nowhere has he been directly quoted on the more substantive matter of racial preferences in hiring and admissions. As one Harvard insider puts it, referring to the ongoing litigation over racial preferences in University of Michigan admissions, “the ultimate litmus test will be the Michigan case, if it gets to the Supreme Court. Will Harvard file an amicus brief defending racial preferences in admissions?” In the meantime, Summers faces a more immediate concern–growing agitation for a Latino studies center. So far, indications have been that he will resist the project. On the other hand, it hasn’t made the front page yet. Noah D. Oppenheim is a producer at Hardball with Chris Matthews on MSNBC. His “Grading on the Harvard Curve” appeared in our March 5, 2001, issue.
