WASHINGTON — The present acrimonious controversy that Lawrence
H. Summers, the president of Harvard University, finds himself in
reminds me of something I have suspected for years. The First
Amendment’s guarantee of free speech is a reactionary blight
inimical to all true progressives and certain to be formally
eliminated from the Constitution as soon as progressives again gain
ascendancy.
There have been times when progressives, or liberals as they are
often called, championed free speech, for instance, in the early
days of the Cold War and during youthful protests in the 1960s. In
the early days of the Cold War progressives favored the right of
Communists to denounce America as they often did, particularly on
college campuses. In the 1960s progressives favored the right of
youthful idealists to use the F-word. At the University of
California at Berkeley, something called the Free Speech Movement
rose up dedicated to the freest possible use of the F-word. So
successful were these idealists that I am told today on college
campuses the F-word is often employed by professors in their
lectures, often as a punctuation mark. I think I learned that from
Tom Wolfe’s new book I Am Charlotte Simmons.
Now times have changed and progressives are the most prominent
opponents of free speech, especially on campus. This has gotten
Summers in his present predicament. He is not keeping up with
intellectual fashion. Some years ago he created an enormous furor
by denouncing anti-Semitism as it is practiced on campus. Then he
made bold to state that a Harvard faculty member’s scholarly
writing was not very scholarly. Now he has said that there are
“innate” differences between men and women. He said this at a
scholarly meeting. There were progressives there. They were
furious.
At a meeting of the National Bureau of Economic Research in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the condition of women in academia
was the topic, Summers said that the comparative lack of women in
the sciences might be explained by a number of things — social
practices and genetics were two. It is a fact that though girls
score about the same as boys in the median range of standardized
math and science tests, girls are less likely to score in the
highest ranges. It is also a fact that women scientists are
infrequently responsible for major scientific discoveries.
Possibly, said Summers, this is because of their child-bearing
responsibilities or other cultural norms, but he had to add the
possibility the difference in achievement might be because men and
women do not have the same chromosomes. That did it. Summers moved
from being a free-thinker to being a health threat.
Said a biology professor in attendance, Professor Nancy Hopkins,
“I felt I was going to be sick.” And she offered grisly details:
“My heart was pounding and my breath was shallow….I was
extremely upset.” As for the issue Summers raised, Hopkins said:
“That’s the kind of insidious, destructive, unthought-through [?]
attitude that causes a lot of harm….It’s one thing for an
ordinary person to shoot his [not his/her?] mouth like that, but
quite another for a top educational leader.”
Well, Summers probably will not make that mistake again, if he
wants to remain a “top educational leader.” From the reports I read
of the meeting only about half the women professors were offended
by Summers. One, an economist named Claudia Goldin, actually told
the Washington Post, “I left with a sense of elation at
his ideas.” She is proud that Summers “retains an inquisitive
mind.” How very old-fashioned.
For years now there have been things that one simply cannot say
in the presence of progressives. The possibility that men and women
have different aptitudes is one of those things. There are others.
This means, of course, that there are things progressives are
unlikely to hear. When they do hear them they are astonished and,
as Professor Hopkins demonstrates, physically convulsed.
That progressives rarely hear ideas displeasing to them I think
explains their present dazed condition regarding the drift of
American society. It also explains their anger. What is to be their
fate? Allow me a suggestion, unwelcome though it may be. They are
going to go to their graves dazed and angry and thinking they are
right. They are going to cause a great deal of unpleasantness but
they are going to disappear. The First Amendment will outlast them
all. They have seen their last ascendancy.
