Harvard Story Caused Furor Across Country

Globe Blackmails Harvard President

The crisis at Harvard that was created by the machinations of the Boston Globe was successful to the highest degree.

The story resonated across the entire country with dozens of stories magically appearing in major newspapers.

But even most liberals saw big problems with the Globe’s reporting. Many thought it was too bad that Pres. Summers reacted so quickly to the Globe’s machinations and didn’t wait to see the reaction from others.

For example, the black, liberal columnist Clarence Page supported Prof. Cornel West, but not Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

“Talk about double trouble,” he wrote. “Harvard’s new president Lawrence Summers must have wondered what sin he possibly could have committed that was horrendous enough to bring both the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton to his campus. If so, he was not alone.” Page opined that Jackson and Sharpton were “drawn to this heat like moths.”

He also reported, “Reports hit the New York Times and other major Eastern newspapers …” but Page did not reveal that it was a NYTimes satellite that had created the story.

Al Hunt Wades In

Another liberal columnist, Al Hunt, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the “shrill and silly conduct” of Jackson and Sharpton “reinforces the political bankruptcy of these national black politicos.”

But he didn’t mention the conduct of the Boston Globe which invented the whole debacle. Hunt summed up his message as follows:

“ Larry Summers’s towering intellectual capacity always has exceeded his interpersonal skills. But the message he delivered to Dr. West is precisely what he has told other Harvard dons. The message has merit and it’s ridiculous to accuse him of racial insensitivity. This was about academic brinkmanship, not race. (Academic politics is so bitter, Pat Moynihan once remarked, because so little is at stake.)

“ Dr. West had no cause to be intimidated. Indeed, he teaches a popular course, but even if he did not, he’s a tenured professor. The only way Dr. Summers or anyone else can touch him is if he commits a truly egregious offense.

“ As Jesse Jackson stormed into Cambridge demanding a meeting with Harvard’s president, over the ‘insult’ he had inflicted on the professor, he had never spoken to Cornel West about the incident, the Boston Globe’s Scott Greenberger revealed.”

The liberal columnist at the Washington Post, Mary McGrory, wrote an article, “Hullabaloo at Harvard,” in which she referred to West and his colleagues as “academic divas” from a “spoiled college department.” As for Jackson and Sharpton, she called them “two premier demagogues” and “two of the world’s most preposterous personalities.”

Some conservatives also weighed in with David Horowitz saying that West is an “incredible lightweight.” He told the Conservative News Service, “I don’t believe Cornel West has ever written a work of serious scholarship.” He said that West is a Marxist who has written, “The relative unity and strength of our capitalist foes requires that we must come together if our struggle is to win!” He said that West is cozying up to “anti-Semitic blacks” like Louis Farrakhan.

Sidebar:
Shelby Steele Got Most Attention

But the commentator who got the most attention across the nation was Shelby Steele, the black fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

The black power brokers have told Mr. Summers that he does not have authority to say what he sees when he looks at Mr. West. He must put clothes on the naked emperor, or shame himself and his institution.

He wrote that the “white guilt” that is shown in this story is terribly damaging to the country, especially to blacks.

“Harvard’s new president,” Steele wrote, “is reported to have rebuked arguably the most famous professor in the university’s well known, if undistinguished, Afro-American Studies Department – Cornel West. Even on their face, the reported charges behind this rebuke seem screamingly true – that Mr. West is an academic lightweight, that his service to Al Sharpton’s presidential campaign and his recording of a rap CD embarrass his professorship, and that his uncritical grading practices have contributed to Harvard’s serious grade inflation problem.”

The tremendous pressure against Summers was too much to bear, opines Steele.

“From his Harvard bunker, Mr. Summers was no longer peering at just the gangly Prof. West in his trademark three-piece suit and 1974 Afro. He was looking at men who threatened to mark out Harvard in the culture as the racist Ivy – a deadly reputation in the academic world. In rebuking a well-known black professor, Mr. Summers had also rejected white guilt as a guide to administrative affairs. Good move. But it overlooked the ugly fact that institutions today lose their mainstream legitimacy unless white guilt defines their approach to racial matters. It also overlooked the fact that white guilt is black power and that the reprimand of a single black professor would call out the biggest guns in the black establishment.

“White guilt is best understood as a vacuum of moral authority. Whites live with this vacuum despite the fact that they may not feel a trace of personal guilt over past oppression of blacks. Whites simply come to a place with blacks where they feel no authority to speak or judge and where they sense a great risk of being seen as racist. It is a simple thing, this lack of authority, but it has changed everything.

“One terrible feature is that it means whites lack the authority to say what they see when looking at blacks and black problems. Political correctness is what whites have the authority to say about blacks, no matter what they see. It is a language of severely limited authority, of euphemisms that steer whites around associations with racism. The black power brokers have told Mr. Summers that he does not have authority to say what he sees when he looks at Mr. West. He must put clothes on the naked emperor, or shame himself and his institution. After all, Princeton’s president dressed the often incomprehensible Mr. West in a suit of eminence.”

Summers tried but failed, said Steele. “What is admirable in all this is that Mr. Summers seems to have actually wanted excellence from Mr. West. His rebuke for failing to deliver excellence was an act of social responsibility. It was also an opportunity for Mr. West and the Afro-Am department to move from celebrity academia to serious achievement. How many of us ever get near our full potential without at least the threat of rebuke?”

As a result of Summers’ failure to stand his ground, all of us have suffered, says Steele. “So whites have made it socially virtuous to defer and stand aside as institutions erode. The public schools are all but devastated, universities are stunted by ideology, corporations are more unctuous than churches, the media are more unctuous yet, and American politicians – of left and right – speak in barren clichés about all of this when they speak at all.”

But no one noticed, not even Steele, that the whole affair was being orchestrated by the powerful, rich, white liberals at the NYTimes/Boston Globe complex.

Sidebar:
Globe’s Uproar About Harvard Helped Jesse Jackson

Even though Jesse Jackson has suffered terribly in the last few months because of the illegitimate child he sired to an employee who was given “hush money” by his nonprofit organization, and because of what many see as Jackson’s attacks against the U.S. since 9/11, the Globe was quick to use him in its efforts against Harvard.

It was easy last month to understand why Jackson is still a “national leader” despite the fact that most black people strongly disagree with his views.

The white, liberal owners of the NYTimes/Boston Globe complex are the ones who have made him a “national leader.”

Every poll shows that black people do not want special favors in getting ahead, but the Globe used Jackson and Al Sharpton to strong-arm Harvard into accepting the quota system.

Jackson Arrives

Jackson first faxed a statement from Chicago and the Globe immediately gave him large amounts of coverage. He got front-page in the City & Region section on Monday, Dec. 31, with a long story under the headline, “Jackson steps into Harvard dispute.” Almost everything in the story was merely a repeat of what had been said in the first article on Dec. 22.

On Wednesday, another story appeared on the front page of City & Region with this headline, “2 black leaders confront Harvard.” It reported that Jackson had arrived in Cambridge and Al Sharpton had told the Globe in a phone interview that he was considering a lawsuit against the school.

Jackson told the Globe he would try to use the incident to pressure Harvard into convening a “national conference on racial justice and affirmative action.”

Although the term “affirmative action” was used by the Globe, most understand this to be merely a euphuism for quotas.

Boston Herald Reports Globe Was Successful

The Boston Herald reported on the same day that the NYTimes/Globe was successful in its power play.

Under a headline, “Harvard president ‘vigorously’ working to keep black faculty,” it reported that President Summers said he would “work ‘vigorously’ to retain the prestigious teaching staff.”

It continued, “In a statement, Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers pledged his support to all the department’s faculty, after New Year’s Day speeches by the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton blasting the university’s treatment of professors Cornel West, Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Anthony Appiah.”

The Herald quoted the President, “With regard to the Afro-American Studies program at Harvard, we are proud of this program collectively and of each of its individual members. We would very much like to see the current faculty stay at Harvard and will compete vigorously to make this an attractive environment.”

The paper also reported: “Summers also addressed the university’s, and his own, commitment to affirmative action, which Jackson and Sharpton questioned. ‘I take pride in Harvard’s longstanding commitment to diversity,’ he said, citing statistics showing minorities comprising 23.5 percent of the university’s 17,061 faculty members and 42 percent of the student body of 18,918. I believe it is essential for us to maintain that commitment, working to create an evermore open and inclusive environment that draws on the widest possible range of talents.’”

Observers say that everyone would agree that Harvard should be “inclusive.” The only question is, will all applicants be treated equally or will they be picked by the color of their skin as Jesse Jackson and the professors desire?