Medicating Larry
When boys act up too much in class, pulling girls' hair and shooting spitballs, some parents (with the blessing of teachers) rush to an M.D. for some little pills to smooth out the child's rough edges. This has proven a popular means of behavioral modification, as it's easier to have the little tykes pop Ritalin and similar drugs given for ADHD than to bother with them in and out of class. That's not to say that some kids don't need the help that these drugs provide, but such scholars as Christina Hoff Sommers have pointed to the abuse of such drugs, which can be over-prescribed for boys when they act like, well, boys. Male behavior has taken such a bad rap over the past few decades -- remember the uproar from the chattering classes when Dan Quayle attacked the fictional Murphy Brown for claiming that fathers are optional at best -- that normalcy can be diagnosed as disease. It's a mad, mad world indeed.
Just as boys present behavior patterns that are distinctly different from what one sees in girls, so do strong leaders of either sex possess personality and behavioral traits uncommon in the general population. We're not all alike, Jean Jacques Rousseau and his merry band of followers notwithstanding, and our chains aren't always provided courtesy of society. That is, human nature is not infinitely malleable, or perhaps even very malleable at all. We can read texts as old as the Iliad or Odyssey, or the Hebrew Scriptures, and immediately recognize ourselves in the people described, no matter how great the cultural, linguistic, or material differences. The rage of Achilles, homesickness of Odysseus, or trials and triumphs of the ancient Israelites are not as foreign life forms to us, but reflect much of what we know about ourselves. They can teach us because they were like us.
I thought of all this when I read this article about Larry Summers in this morning's NYT. Plagued by his blunt, bull-in-a-china-shop demeanor, and now by his lack of self-censorship among fellow academics, Summers appears to be undergoing a self-improvement effort that would make Dale Carnegie blush.
He is reading tomes about leadership. He also recently took his children to see "Hitch," a new movie, as it happens, about men who are trying to improve their social skills.
At the age of 50, Lawrence H. Summers, the 27th president of Harvard since its founding in 1636, finds himself trying to become a new kind of man as he seeks an end to a controversy centering on his leadership style.
"The days have been long, and the weeks have been long, too, because there's a lot to talk about," Dr. Summers said, sitting beside a fireplace on Friday in his office at Harvard. "I've spent a lot of time here talking to people, I've been out meeting people, I've talked to people in my home, I've spent a lot of time on the phone and I've spent a lot of time on e-mail. It certainly has not been a lonely month."
During much of the interview, Dr. Summers's voice was controlled, and his hands were occasionally thrust deep into his suit pockets. "I think I do have a tendency to challenging dialogue in the way of a graduate seminar," he said. "It's probably both a strength and a weakness, depending on the context. But there are also very much issues of relationships. That's why the things you work through with people, you don't work them through overnight, but you work them through with a lot of discussion and dialogue."
Assuming that he doesn't undergo therapy to retrieve repressed memories, the problems Summers is dealing with stem mainly from his belief, which reports show to be a trademark of his style in the classroom, faculty lounge, and in Washington, that intellectuals should be able to defend their assertions with factual information delivered in a logical and effective manner so as to persuade listeners and readers of the plausibility of their beliefs. That's a fancy way of saying that people with advanced degrees and teaching responsibilities should be able to argue well. And part of arguing well includes listening to and then responding to critics, even provocative ones who dare to step on your toes.
But Summers is being pressed from all directions to reign in his effusive enthusiasm for debate, to curb his often combative style. In other words, to play by the rules laid down by too many Harvard presidents over the past many decades, men who knew their place and were happy with it. That place was as the faculty's lap dog, and the presidential visage preferred by faculty who, one might think, are themselves expert debaters armed with reams of information and reason, was a smiling, congenial one, happy to agree, eager to please.
Yet Larry didn't play by those rules. Assuming as he did that high powered types who made their living defending themselves would give as good as they got, he challenged them, sometimes one-on-one. Their response? They folded like a cheap suitcase before crying foul, demanding apologies, and sometimes leaving town. Such is the much-vaunted, and remarkably over-rated, ability of Harvard dons to engage in reasoned debate over the intellectual problems to which they have devoted their lives.
How to change? How to free oneself from inner convictions and intellectual prowess? Why, you can be a David Gergen if you try, try, try:
One coach is Mr. Gergen, an adviser to four presidents who is a professor of public service at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
"This experience has not been without personal pain," Mr. Gergen said of Dr. Summers's ordeal, adding that "it's a good thing when a male demonstrates vulnerability."
"He takes a very Socratic approach," Mr. Gergen said, referring to Dr. Summers's customary method of intellectually engaging others through probing, even combative, questioning and challenging.
It was this method, perhaps, that was on display at a conference last month when Dr. Summers suggested that "intrinsic aptitude" might be one explanation for women's relative lack of success in math and science careers. Many women scientists and other academics at Harvard and around the country were furious.
Mr. Gergen said: "Socrates was ultimately put to death. People couldn't deal with the hard questions all the time. History tells us that this approach can be jolting."
The long-term challenge facing Dr. Summers is "to rebuild his presidency," Mr. Gergen added. "To put it in political terms, the second campaign began Wednesday morning." He was referring to the morning after the emergency faculty meeting on Tuesday where professors in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences continued to discuss problems with Dr. Summers's style, but with less fury than the meeting the previous week.
There's a remedy for a crisis in leadership if ever their was one. Shed your monochromatic skin for the ever-changing epidermis of a professional chameleon. Got a problem with a particular group of profs? Not if you agree with them, no matter what they say! Feeling the heat from offended prima donnas? Feel their pain, too, and engage in a little public flagellation. There's no problem that can't be solved by a lack of principal and the ability to speak from two faces at once.
Let's call this the new medicine. It takes the edge off leaders who, in the bad old unmedicated days, challenged stupidity and led by example. It solves the character problem by compromising the virtues upon which character rests. And it changes the behavior of smart men and women who won't play by the rules by reminding them that they have much to lose -- namely, their jobs and the false collegiality of the oppressed -- if they continue to, as my sister used to say of me when I became unmanageable, act ugly.
Will Summers go down this path to blissful irrelevance? It's too early to know, but if past is prologue, and it usually is, he'll be dragged down it a short distance before digging in his heals. A couple of developments make me slightly optimistic about his future health. First, Harvard's board has voiced its strong support for Summers in spite of the bad press. I suspect they understand that the degree of attention this episode has received from the mainstream media has served mainly to increase the sympathy for Summers among the reading public. By highlighting how easily some academics are sent over the edge, Harvard's internal fight strengthens the board's hand in its efforts to reform the school to make it a more responsible shaper of culture.
Second, the recent poll taken by the Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper, revealed strong support for Summers among FAS professors, even though a plurality (52%) said they disapproved of his leadership. Is it too much to believe that a strong minority of professors agrees with Summers's principal critiques of higher education? After all, his remarks on women in science weren't his first challenge to reigning orthodoxies that stifle debate, stigmatize dissenters, and discourage the truly talented from pursuing academic careers. From radical feminism and hyper-sensitive racialism to anti-Semitism and hostility toward ROTC and the U.S. military, one privileged ideology after another has felt the heat of Summers's intellect.
Summers is both the quintessential academic and a forward-thinking visionary capable of transcending the parochialism of the academic tribe. Socially blunt and quick to step into controversies, he fits a model of professorial behavior that can still be found, at least in the best departments. Harvard, like many other universities great and average, suffers from an intellectual sclerosis inevitable in institutions resistant to reform. Ideology is not intellect, and stale orthodoxies cannot substitute for curiosity and free-wheeling debate. If Summers can resists swallowing the pill offered him by the likes of David Gergen or his "friends" among the faculty, he can rebound and lead. Let's not medicate our boldest leaders into subservience.
| Feb. 26, 2005 | 10:53 AM