With all the talk about Summers and his lack of sensitivity and understanding on issues of gender, I think the core problem is being overlooked. Summers, in his short tenure as president of one of the world's most venerable institutions, manages to display a lack of sensitivity on a
broad range of issues, not just women in science. I came across this column written by a local commentator for North Jersey's
Bergen Record, my mother's local paper. Summers' battles with Cornel West are well-known by most here, but this column highlights Summers' more recent conduct which is in danger of dismantling Harvard's Africa American Studies Department, once the best in the country.
This matter is timely, given that February is Black History Month, though one sometimes wonders if Summers is aware of that. This is an excerpt from the column:
What black studies needs is continued support, not the kind of kick in the shins Summers is launching at what was once considered to be a model program. The latest high-profile casualty is an African-American woman professor who taught a course in hip-hop. After giving up a tenured position in anthropology to teach alongside her academic superstar sociologist husband at Harvard, Prof. Marcyliena Morgan was unanimously recommended for tenure but denied by Summers.
Around Thanksgiving the couple packed up and left for Stanford teaching jobs, two more rare birds flying the coop under a president with questionable commitment to his African-American Studies Department.
The situation would be unremarkable, except that with Summers presiding over the departure of a small army of African-American professors, the sun appears to be setting on black history studies.
The question is whether Summers' troubling positions with West and Morgan, and his tightening of the reins on Harvard's program signal trouble for black studies everywhere.
It started with the a dust-up involving West, who left Harvard in a huff in April 2002 after eight years there. He's now back at Princeton. In the midst of West's face-off with Summers, another key player, Anthony Appiah, slipped out of Harvard Yard and took a position at Princeton.
Henry Gates, the department chairman widely credited with turning Harvard's African-American Studies Department into a powerhouse by assembling the best African-American faculty, was coyly flapping his wings for a flight to Princeton. Then in September of last year you could almost imagine his sigh of reluctance as he announced that he would stay at the helm of Harvard's program.
Summers' turning a cold shoulder on several key players of his African-American Studies Department certainly suggests the beginning of the end of black studies as a focal point in academia. It came out of a Sixties and Seventies push for pedagogy relevant to black students, but has blossomed into a rich cross-disciplinary mix looking at Africans in America and the rest of the African diaspora.
Again, as an alumna, I say Summers has to go.