Editorial: Lawrence Summers is an embarrassment

As the flames at Harvard president's Lawrence Summers's ass begins to tickle, defenders rush in to justify his offensive (and uninformed) remarks regarding gender and employment.

And the defenders largely share two common details: gender and age.

Why aren't we surprised?

Having just watched stiff shirt Paul Bratter (Barefoot in the Park) this week, we're quite aware that men of that generation grew up with a different frame of reference. Many have learned to adapt with the times, many have embraced the changes.

We do wonder if the defenders have. Certainly, were this 1967, there would be nothing shocking about Summers's remarks. But this is 2005. And apparently we're loooking at a gap created by gender and generation.

We're also looking at an assumption (male) that some jobs require more work. (Is the English professor slaving away in off time on fiction really not a hard worker? Or is just that the writing of fiction or poetry is seen as "soft" by those still living under pre-second wave feminism assumptions?)

From the start, Summers tried to have his cake and smear his face in it too. He offers that he's speaking for himself, when in fact, were he not president of Harvard, he wouldn't be at the conference. He continued to attempt to have it both ways by refusing to release a transcript of the tape of his statements while arguing that he had been misunderstood. (If you truly believe that, you tend to rush out a transcript immediately.)

His latest tactic is claiming that his appearence was not that different from a grad seminar. He's attempting to reduce the event from a formal conference to an informal seminar. Maybe that trick will fool some, but it's not fooling us.

It was a conference. It had a topic. Summers agreed to speak.

He opens his mouth to embrace what can kindly be termed a contrarian view. And somehow forgets that as someone responsible for hiring, such a view (that contrasts with notions of equality in employment) would cause outrage. If he were a potential jurist in a sexual discrimination case and made those comments, he'd be disqualified from the jury pool.

But his defenders rush in to question the logic of those criticizing Summers. Up is down all over again, apparently.

The point has been made elsewhere (including at The Common Ills) that when you participate in an academic conference, you're supposed to be operating under a certain set of academic goals in the pursuit of higher knowledge. Even those who accept the laughable idea that as university president Summers can speak at an academic event without his remarks reflecting on the university or his role have yet to address the issue of how someone heading a university can participate in an academic conference without pursuing intellectual standards.

The remarks were uninformed and as a participant in an academic conference that's possibly the worst critique one can offer. As he stumbles through the question and answer period attempting to note some author or remember some study that he thinks might have been done in the seventies, on baseball!, he's like a high schooler bullshitting his way through an oral report. This is not the behavior appropriate for an academic conference. And whether he thinks he was representing his institution or not, this desire to speak on a topic with no academic knowledge certainly doesn't speak well for the way intellectual pursuits at Harvard will be greeted by Summers.

What's next? Cancelling library subscriptions to journals and periodicals while offering the opinion that anything necessary can be found in Psychology Today and Time magazine?

It was embarrassing for both him and the university. It's past time for him to take responsibility for attempting to bluff his way through an appearence before academics who seriously study topics and issues.

To bumper sticker it for those who can't wrap their heads around what's going on: It's the Lack of Academic Standards, Stupid!