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November 2004
In Defense of Larry Summers Published In Canon New School University Graduate Faculty Publication By Shel Kimen On August 24th The New York Times Magazine featured a profile of Larry Summers, the Chief Economist for the World Bank from 1991 to 1993, the Treasury Secretary during the Clinton administration, and the current President of Harvard University. The feature offers all the drama and intrigue of a made-for-TV special, citing his numerous awards and extraordinary accomplishments (for such a young man!) alongside the shocking details of his many public calamities, with brief interludes about his childhood and recent divorce. According to the Times at 28 years old he was the youngest tenured professor at Harvard; He later won the John Bates Clark medal, a prestigious award given to economists under 40, for work he did in his early 30's; He was responsible for Cornel West's departure from Harvard; And as a young boy he and his academic family used to rate sunsets (so the legend goes). He's caricatured as a hyper-rational stoic with awkward social skills and radical plans to transform American education away from "ways of knowing" towards "actual knowledge." Harvard established what we could call "the liberal tradition of education," in the late 1800's, "adding electives to what had been a rigidly defined program, thus changing the nature of undergraduate study throughout the country (New York Times). Since the 1970's, when humanities classes ceased to be electives and instead became part of the core curriculum, its students have been told that they are learning how to think, not what to think. This dichotomy put forth by the times, and to a certain extent by Harvard itself, between how we learn and what we learn is curious, if not absurd in 2003. It highlights a profound issue both for education and society at large about the increasing polarization of ideas in politics, in culture, etc., which pins left against right, high against low, hard against soft, and how against what. These are all oversimplified and dated reactions to an increasingly complex world in which extremes should be regarded as reference points, not ends in themselves. Larry Summers could very well be the man to blow the whistle on such backwards and irrelevant categories. While the Times hints at his significance by the simple fact that they ran the feature, coupled with some favorable anecdotes about his successes slipped in between all the gossip, they sadly miss the point framing the debate as they do. Most people know Summers only as the man who motivated Cornel West to leave Harvard, hurdling its Afro-American Studies department into total chaos. According to the Times at Summer's first meeting with a handful of Black Scholars, Law-School professor Charles Ogletree asked him whether or not he supported the University's affirmative action program. Summers replied, ''The jury's out. I want to make up my own mind,'' (New York Times) which spread across the campus as disapproval of the program. His response, an honest reaction to the simplification of a complex issue and an obvious political "litmus test" as Summers would describe it, demonstrates his commitment to dialog and debate more than it suggests he is anti-affirmative action. It is puzzling (and depressing) that some of Americas most prized intellectuals, black or white, would favor political jockeying over a potentially profound academic debate. While it is tolerated, and even accepted that our educational institutions have turned into factories churning out media celebrities and political demagogues, it is nonetheless disturbing. Harvard especially should be ashamed having declared its authority in the once noble realm of education. Incidentally, Summers later made a statement supporting Harvard's approach to affirmative action and is now, at least publicly, accepted by the upper echelon of Black scholars at Harvard. Cornel West is said to have left for a number of reasons related to Summers, not just this particular meeting. (New York Times). Regarding education, Summers has strong feelings about the role of public service, which includes the military, political office, and public health. He is a vocal advocate for the campus R.O.T.C. program and has hopes that Harvard will direct its wealth of talent and resources to solving, or at least contributing positively to a myriad of public health issues. He favors both "conservative" politics in the form of better integrating the R.O.T.C. into the campus and also "liberal" politics in advancing an agenda of social medicine. He's also intent on revising the undergraduate curriculum to focus more on science, math, and data analysis than it does now. He stands accused of favoring "hard" science, technology, and "facts" over the "softer" social science and the humanities. He rightly thinks it detrimental that our future leaders should quote Shakespeare before understanding the difference between a chromosome and a gene, which brings us to the question of how to learn vs., what to learn. Summers never says that Shakespeare is unimportant, or that philosophy is irrelevant. It would be silly to assume that he doesn't understand the relationship between morality and technology. He does say that the world has changed and advances in science and technology have altered the very nature of careers not just in chemistry and biology, but also in political science, anthropology, and sociology, all of which depend heavily on computer generated models, mathematics, and statistics in addition to theory. Summers seems to understand that the how is intrinsically related to the what, (although he himself doesn't say this directly) and that while there are many ways to learn how to think, its likewise important to understand the context of the subject one theorizes. It simply isn't enough to know how to debate. It's a matter of debate about relevant issues in relevant context, with what some would call "hard" knowledge of facts, figures, terms, technologies, etc. He uses the examples of an archeologist who needs a chemist to analyze data from fingernail clippings, or a political scientist who needs to use computer models to understand the spread, and possible prevention, of the AIDS virus, which has relates to how think tanks advise governments on NGO funding and foreign policy. I have hopes that Summers will deflate these terms "hard" and "soft" along with the political litmus tests concerning "left" and "right." Summers seems to be carving as Tony Giddens advocates "a third way," cutting through the dogma of left/right, liberal/conservative, and hard/soft. It seems that our propensity to frame the world in these ultimatums is our fear of an unknown future with infinite choice. Instead of defining new positions, we cling to old, stable, choices, consequently missing possibility between the lines. It's certainly easier to align oneself with an extreme political opinion than to take the time to expand our views through careful dialog of the many options, which includes an understanding of the basic terminology of our subjects. Isn't this what Larry Summers wants to change? His approach is definitely supportive of Harvard's mission to teach young people how to think. He's merely adding to the scope of what "how" involves, considering a future that blurs our understanding of science and philosophy, or hard and soft. Summers is not "radical" in his desire for change. (The New York Times article is titled "Harvard Radical."). If anything he is traditional and moderate, radical only in comparison to the extreme intellectual choices available in our society. Perhaps his stance that public school teachers should be paid well and that doctors should work for the advancement of social medicine is radical to a population unaccustomed to someone acting on what everyone already believes, or to elite academics spinning dutifully in corporatized hamster wheels, academics who preach to believe but rarely act in accordance. I contest this is not radical. It is common sense. And whether or not one agrees with what Larry Summers proposes as a new curriculum is not nearly as important as what the act of this proposition signifies. It is not about how or what. It's about a potential breakdown of institutional dichotomies that serve only to re-enforce old systems, promoting fear and ignorance over understanding and much needed effort.
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