Larry Summers makes sense up to a point
As I read this interview with economist and former Harvard president Larry Summers, I was in basic agreement with the points he made in the first half or so. For example:
So I think what happens in universities is immensely important. And I think there is a widespread sense—and it is, I think, unfortunately, with considerable validity—that many of our leading universities have lost their way; that values that one associated as central to universities—excellence, truth, integrity, opportunity—have come to seem like secondary values relative to the pursuit of certain concepts of social justice, the veneration of certain concepts of identity, the primacy of feeling over analysis, and the elevation of subjective perspective. And that has led to clashes within universities and, more importantly, an enormous estrangement between universities and the broader society.
When the president of Harvard is a figure on a Saturday Night Live skit, when three presidents of universities combine to produce the most watched congressional hearing film clip in history, when applications to Harvard fall in a several-month period by more they’ve ever fallen before, when alumni are widely repudiating their alma mater, when they’re the subject of as many legal investigations as the Boeing company, you have a real crisis in higher education. And I think it’s been a long time coming because of those changes in values that I was describing. …
I think the values that animated me to spend my life in universities were values of excellence in thought, in pursuit of truth. We’re never going to find some ultimate perfect truth, but through argument, analysis, discussion, and study we can get closer to truth. And a world that is better understood is a world that is made better. And I think, increasingly, all you have to do is read the rhetoric of commencement speeches. It’s no longer what we talk about. We talk about how we should have analysis, we should have discussion, but the result of that is that we will each have more respect for each other’s point of view, as if all points of view are equally good and there’s a kind of arbitrariness to a conception of truth. That’s a kind of return to pre-Enlightenment values and I think very much a step backward. I thought of the goal of the way universities manage themselves as being the creation of an ever larger circle of opportunity in support of as much merit and as much excellence as possible. …
We celebrate particular ideas in ways that are very problematic, and we are reluctant to come to judgment: What started all the controversy at Harvard, and it has many different strands, was on October 7, when 34 student groups at Harvard, speaking as a coalition of Harvard students, condemned Israel as being responsible for the Hamas attacks. Those reports of the 34 student groups were reported in places where literally billions of people read them. And based on some inexplicable theory, the Harvard administration and the Harvard corporation (the Trustees of the University) could not find it within themselves to disassociate the university from those comments. I have no doubt that if similar comments had been made of a racist variety, there would have been no delay in the strongest possible disassociation of the university. But because Israel demonization is the fashion in certain parts of the social justice-proclaiming left, there was a reluctance to reach any kind of judgment, even about the most morally problematic statements.
All very correct. But then, after a mention of how Reagan’s early political career involved criticizing policies at Berkeley, Summers says:
And so it seems to me that universities that fail to govern themselves effectively are at immense peril to themselves and to the broader progressive values that they hold.
Ah, so the problem is that the universities’ behavior imperils progressivism? And it is understood that universities hold progressive values? But what if truth imperils progressivism and its values? Is that even a possibility in Summers’ mind? Is this about truth or is it about politics?
More:
I think it’s fine to stand strongly against a set of people who in many ways are riding this horse, but wish the process of thought and wish academic freedom ill. The problem is not that Harvard has worked itself into a war with Elise Stefanik. The problem is that it got itself condemned from the White House press briefing room of the Biden administration, that it finds itself subject to investigation from the Department of Education of the Biden administration, that the attacks on it are coming in a bipartisan way.
Oh, so it’s okay to do something that alienates the right, but doing something that also alienates at least a portion of Democrats is a no-no. And it seems that Summers thinks the likes of Stefanik “wish the process of thought and wish academic freedom ill.” Really? And just what evidence does Summers have for that, other than his own Democrat politics? After all, he’s just spent quite a lot of verbiage to say that on campuses it’s the left that’s been wishing the process of thought and wishing academic freedom ill – and not just wishing these things ill, but actively stomping on them. But he continues to cling to the idea that it’s somehow the right wishing it and doing it.
When I read the interview, the sudden change startled me although it absolutely shouldn’t have. It is completely standard. And it doesn’t matter how smart the person is otherwise – like Summers – or how persecuted that person has been by the left. One of the reasons Summers was hounded out of Harvard was that he told some inconvenient truths that angered the left; the right had nothing to do with it. And yet he thinks the right is the bigger problem. Go figure; it’s another case of a mind being a difficult thing to change, especially regarding politics.
I guess Summers modulates his message for this audience for fear or being dismissed out of hand and ostracized even further? So he feels he has to heavily imply that of course Republicans and The Right are ignorant and backward, and of course Progressives are morally superior beings with noble intentions regarding higher education, but they’ve (we’ve) gone too far here. It’s tedious.
So, leftist academics have repeatedly misbehaved, but the real problem is that nasty right wing. Sure.
There is no academic freedom at harvard not the likes of banfield or huntington would be welcome
I wonder what “progressive values” Summers thinks are at risk. The Democrats are no longer Bill Clinton’s party. They have moved hard left, so that what the 1990s Democrats thought is considered by today’s radicals to be regressive.
Can anyone on the Left think straight?
He told the vinklevossi not to sue zucke
rberg he told the russians shock therapy would be fine he didnt object to the so called inflation adjustment act that i can recall
Arthur schlesinger made similar arguments 30 some years ago
Virtue signaling is more important than facts or truth. Case in point from this week. I received my former employer’s quarterly PR magazine. Lead article was about how they spent $35k on a “solar flower”. Cute design of a tracking solar panel. The school claims 5000 kWH per year and it will support 40% of the electric energy needs of the building it’s connected to. It took me about a 10 minute calculation to show that the thing will provide on a sunny day about 400W…7 light bulbs worth.
Truth? Facts? Hell no! As long as they can lie to show how wonderful they are. I wrote a letter, but I doubt it will published.
physicsguy….”Lead article was about how they spent $35k on a “solar flower”. Cute design of a tracking solar panel. The school claims 5000 kWH per year and it will support 40% of the electric energy needs of the building it’s connected to.”
France has also entered the dumb-energy-ideas sweepstakes with miniature generators connected to the turnstiles in the Paris Metro system…the idea is that all the people going through would generate enough electricity to make a significant contribution to powering the Metro trains.
Well, Larry doesn’t want to be excommunicated from the cool kids club like Alan Dershowitz was. You can claim to still be a Democrat while strongly disagreeing with many of their key ideas and platform, but it won’t matter. They will punish you severely.
Plus, there is the added wrinkle that these words like “liberal” and “progressive” have been effectively skunked. Thomas Jefferson was a classic liberal. Progressive ideas should lead to social or economic progress. The words have become meaningless.
It’s all about the cool kids club. And the more inane the ideas of the club are, the stronger the litmus test as to your loyalty.
It almost makes me forgive him for working for Clinton and chiseling the Winkelvosses out of the Facebook gazillions.
“the idea is that all the people going through would generate enough electricity to make a significant contribution to powering the Metro trains.” – David Foster
Which gives me an idea. Let’s build electric factories where people peddle bikes with large gear systems to power generators hooked in parallel. Pay people minimum wage to ride the bikes. Time and a half for 5pm to 1am, and 6am to 10am.
Homeless people need a job? The electric factory is waiting.
Need to lose some weight? Take a job at the electric factory.
Need to fight cardio-vascular disease? Take a job at the electric factory.
Want to get in shape and get paid while doing it? The electric factory awaits.
Watch your favorite TV and get paid at the electric factory.
Playing the market? Ride the bike while making trades at the electric factory.
The mind boggles. 🙂
Alan Bloom spoke of the Larry Summers in academia
in his The Closing of the American Mind. Those who give lip service to academic integrity but who invariably follow it with contradictions that expose their intellectual dishonesty.
“It took me about a 10 minute calculation to show that the thing will provide on a sunny day about 400W…7 light bulbs worth.”
Point of pedantic nitpickery: These days a typical 60 Watt bulb* only draws about 9 Watts. So a 400 Watt power source will power fortyish light bulbs.
* The LEDs are rated, of course, to be as bright as an X Watt incandescent.
@ Neo > “After all, he’s just spent quite a lot of verbiage to say that on campuses it’s the left that’s been wishing the process of thought and wishing academic freedom ill – and not just wishing these things ill, but actively stomping on them. But he continues to cling to the idea that it’s somehow the right wishing it and doing it.
When I read the interview, the sudden change startled me although it absolutely shouldn’t have. It is completely standard”
This post about Joe Scarborough may have an explanation for the phenomenon, which we have seen in countless pundits & plain people, Left or Right (but mostly Left because the Right is more often correct in the first place).
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/daily-memo/2909317/the-best-biden-ever/
by Byron York
Suggested improved wording:
“Go figure; it’s another case of a mind being a difficult thing to change, especially in-absentia.”
Scarborough is for sale and always has been. Cha ching.
}}} We’re never going to find some ultimate perfect truth, but through argument, analysis, discussion, and study we can get closer to truth.
Indeed, this is entirely and absolutely, exactly what the process is about. A continual refinement of what can be objectively known to get closer and closer to objective truths.
And, for things that are inherently subjective, a clear dialogue/debate to clarify public understanding and develop an actual “wisdom of the crowd” (as opposed to mob rule) to be used as a standard for what is expected in those scenarios.
That york piece is defining devisncy down biden was never any good yet they vouched for him
it’s another case of a mind being a difficult thing to change, especially regarding politics.
It’s more the case of the enormous pressure to conform in academia. I happened to know Larry Summers early in his career pretty well, and he seemed at that point to be moderately conservative. He was a protege of Martin Feldstein, who was Reagan’s chair of the Council of Economic Advisors (and Larry was a senior staff economist on the CEA under Feldstein for a couple of years). It’s possible he was more liberal but played it down the middle because of his relationship with Feldstein, but my impression is that he shifted from Republican to Democrat in the late 1980s after joining Harvard. Change in that direction seems relatively easy.
Probably an overgeneralization:
On the left, the people are “in” their and the generally left viewpoints, and the viewpoints are “in” them.
On the right, the viewpoints are external to the individual.
Thus, on the left, change is a personal issue, not solely a matter of taking in new facts are rearranging one’s assessments.
And personal issues are…personal. You don’t want to become a Very Bad Person just because of some facts, do you? Facts, then, must go away.
What Larry Summers said that drove him out of the Presidency of Harvard is that while male and female average IQs are the same, the male distribution has a higher standard deviation, meaning that males are more prone to extreme low and extreme high IQs than females, who tend to be clustered towards the center of the Gaussian curve.
Basically, he said there are more idiot and genius males than females.
This is scientifically accurate as has been shown by > 100 years of IQ testing.
Erronius