Summers Is Blunt Instigator, Not Courageous Martyr

To the editors:



As a recent alumnus, and a current graduate student in the Yale University Department of Geology and Geophysics, it makes me more than slightly queasy to see student reactions to President Lawrence Summers’ resignation reflected in the Crimson (“Viva!: Summers’ Image Lives On,” news, Feb.24).

Current undergraduates seem to think that Summers was in the vanguard of a courageous attack on a stagnant faculty, and are treating him as a martyr to the cause of curriculum reform. This is not the case.

Trust the faculty on this one: Summers is not an intellectual. He is a reactionary who tried to promote his personal political agenda under the guise of intellectual rigor. He believes in rigor only in the sense of rigor mortis—the intellectual paralysis that makes an economist incapable of acknowledging that African-American history or contemporary French theater might be legitimate scholarly pursuits. Respect for careful quantitative treatment of scientific questions is one thing, but the application of economics to the philosophical question of where a university is headed deserves the scorn with which the Faculty of Arts and Sciences has treated Summers.

Summers’ presidency has consisted of a long series of misguided and ill-conceived decisions and it is time to quietly fill in the grave he has dug for himself and find a president to succeed Dr. Bok who will inspire by example and illumination.



WALTON A. GREEN ’98

New Haven, Conn.

February 24, 2006