Poll of FAS at Harvard Supports Summers

The Harvard Crimson, a student newspaper, polled every professor in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences over the past four days. A polling expert at Columbia University, contacted by Crimson staff, called the poll results "imperfect but not invalid." The results show that most professors polled don't want to see Summers removed over his recent speculation that innate differences between men and women may account for a relative paucity of women in scientific and mathematical fields of academe. At the same time, it shows that 56 percent believe he's "diminished" Harvard's image. Of 683 professors presented with the questions, 280 responded. Here are the results:

If these results are accurate, they bode well for Summers and for Harvard. Even those who find the president's style abrasive, or who disagree with his tendency to transgress the faculty's coveted autonomy don't wish to see him ousted. That's good for those of us who believe that free speech and freedom of thought must be central to academic life. Absent the ability to inquire freely into areas declared by some as off-limits, the clichéd "chilling effect" seen by some leftists as the consequence of every disagreement could become a reality. If Harvard's president isn't safe from those whose politically orthodoxy has all the intellectual subtlety of Stalin's, then no university president, professor, or student can hope to survive a confrontation with the forces of conformity.