Summers’ Critics Will Never Quiet

To the editors:

Today’s article on President Summers’ speech about the Native American experience (“Sept. Remarks Resurface,” News, Apr. 20) goes to show that liberal academia will stop at nothing to see Summers tossed out of office. Everything he said was factually correct, as even his opponents acknowledge. There were no epiteths hurled. While the transcript of remarks cannot tell us about delivery style, there appears nothing in this speech which would seem offensive. One must conclude that the only offense Summers committed was straying off of the politically correct ideological reservation these professors inhabit.

Once historical facts start being labeled “quite problematic,” as Prof. Kay K. Shelemay said, or “offensive”, the academy becomes a farce. I hope that Harvard students will fight against this dangerous tendency and that it does not find its way to Virginia.

JAMES E. PROSSER

Charlottesville, Va.

April 20, 2005