Leadership, Larry and the Left

Soon after University President Lawrence H. Summers made his now infamous remarks in January, I sent an email to a list-serve of campus progressives. “Rather than off-handedly dismissing Larry’s comments”—I call him Larry, we’re tight like that—“can we discuss them?” Until that point, comments on the issue had been limited to clever quips like, “Good thing he has a penis so he doesn’t need to worry about it.” Despite being a former leader of the organization, I’m that guy who regularly incites the ire of list members. As a result, I’m no stranger to list-serve pseudo-controversy. Even so, I was taken aback:

“Andrew, I’m a little disappointed that on MLK [day] you are saying we should ‘discuss’ why women are inherently inferior to men in math and science. Do you also want to discuss why African Americans are inherently less intelligent than white people? It is totally unacceptable for the president of the best university in the country to imply that half of the students at his school are naturally disadvantaged in their mental capacities, simply because they are women. I will not have an ‘open dialogue’ about that...”

I got similar reactions from others, both on the list and in e-mails addressed only to me.

To be clear, I admit to knowing little about the topic on which Larry was commenting, and I know that, as a man, my opinion will always have to be a working hypothesis informed by listening. My initial reaction was that he was wrong. But in many fundamental ways, before the Larry brouhaha I was probably a lot like most people on campus and in the progressive community, some general leanings based on an observation here or an article there but without a fully developed understanding of this particular issue.

So, with a knowledge base somewhere between zero and bupkis, why challenge a community in which I had a small part in leading to have a dialogue about Larry’s apparently sexist comments? Why try to create debate in a group where most are likely to agree?

Because that’s how we learn and progress. And most of us, both within the progressive and the greater student community, have lots to learn.

Too often, Harvard’s progressive leaders say “this is bad, this is good” and that’s the end of the conversation. This leaves us with an opinion we know we’re supposed to have, but no understanding of why we’re supposed to have it—much less the ability to articulate it to others. It leads to socially-pressured group-think that can produce false conclusions and shoddy logic.

The problem with the progressive community is not one of substance, it’s one of strategy. Everyone on this campus holds in them—to at least some extent—an understanding of and sympathy with the ideals we hold most closely: community, compassion, diversity and opportunity. It’s our responsibility to speak to that common ground, to educate and persuade, to lead our community in progress toward these ideals.

Part of leading, however, is engaging in thoughtful dialogue, making your case to those who either don’t know or don’t agree and then listening. Only through such a dialogue will the uneducated learn and the skeptical be persuaded. More importantly, only through dialogue will we as a community learn how to educate and persuade others by developing shared, well-informed arguments.

In the case of the Larry debacle, the Harvard progressive community failed to do just that. Across campus, students who would have otherwise been open to hearing from progressive voices were put off by knee-jerk reactions as the progressive community itself struggled to listen and develop a coherent argument for exactly why Larry was wrong. The opportunity was there to re-energize one of our foremost causes, and we decided not to lead.

At a time when progressives have supposedly lost their voice, it’s more essential than ever that Harvard’s progressive community, whether in the form of Harvard Progressive Advocacy Group, the Dems, Harvard Social Forum or Freshman Urban Program, learns to engage the rest of campus in an ongoing dialogue and lead it towards progress. To do this, we can’t just all agree that 2+2=4. As advocates and activists, its our responsibility to understand and articulate to others why 2+2 does not equal 5, why fighting poverty, racism, classism and homophobia is fundamental to the moral strength of our community, why Harvard should stop treating workers like cogs in a machine and take seriously demands for a women’s center and a more diverse faculty.

Strongly held beliefs alone will not accomplish this. We need to learn as a community how to engage our own beliefs and engage the rest of campus. If we can’t do that, we’re not leading, we’re just lecturing.

Andrew Golis ’06 is a social studies concentrator in Winthrop House. His column appears alternate Tuesdays.