Squashing Summers

Former President of Harvard Lawrence H. Summers was set to speak in California this week at a dinner meeting of the Regents of the University of California (UC). That is, until his invitation was abruptly cancelled.

Over 150 professors in the UC system, led by Maureen Stanton, a professor in the Department of Evolution and Ecology at UC-Davis, started an online petition drive to put the kibosh on Summers’ impending speech. Their preposterous claim was that “inviting a keynote speaker who has come to symbolize gender and racial prejudice in academia conveys the wrong message to the university community and to the people of California.”

Instead, the UC’s regents have sent an altogether different message—the University of California has ceased to value academic freedom.

More generally, the quashing of Summers’ speech points to a troubling trend in academia. Increasingly, the unrestricted marketplace of ideas that must form the heart of any university worth the name is being poisoned by a perverse pressure to conform truth to political agenda and stifle any speaker who espouses uncomfortable or invonveneint opinions. In the present case, the culprits are academics who fashion themselves as progressives eager for social justice and tolerance, but the other side of the political spectrum is no less guilty in others. This situation is alarming and dangerous. If academic freedom cannot exist in the university, our society is in trouble.

To be sure, Summers was not a perfect president. At times, he was less tactful than he should have been; he may have been overly ambitious in his reforms; and many of his ideas were controversial. But Larry Summers is not a symbol of racism or sexism. He is a progressive who values intellectual honesty in academia. To claim otherwise is to grossly distort his words and beliefs.

Maureen Stanton and company represent the worst of academia. The side that politicizes its classrooms and refuses to hear, or let others hear ideas that they find distasteful or uncomfortable, no matter their merit. We hope the UC realizes the gravity of its error and makes amends by inviting Summers back. We know he’s worth listening to, even if one disagrees with him.