Summers' continuing education. Also: Presidential Condi. Uranium mixes. Fits of moderation. Plus much more.
p>
CONTINUING EDUCATION
br>
Re: George Neumayr's
Summers is
Over
:
/p>
p>Another very fine piece, this time on Lawrence Summers, who is
really on the ropes, I'm afraid, and for all the wrong reasons.
Interesting to me that someone like him, so silver-tongued and I
always thought pretty decent as Sec. Treas. under Clinton, should
have run so badly afoul of the harpies, harridans, fakers,
wastrels, and low-crawlers that populate the Ivy League these days.
As I recall, they were the ones who wanted him and set great store
by his coming to Harvard. Just goes to show you: make one wrong
move in academia these days -- altho' so far not so much in my alma
mater Washington & Lee -- and offend one blinkered dingbat with
a bad case of righteous rage, and you're dead. Yeesh.
br>
--
Tony Outhwaite
br>
New York City
/p>
p>
George Neumayr, in "Summers is Over," says repeatedly that the
problem with the Harvard faculty is that they don't care about
their students. This is an unfortunate, yet all too common,
misstatement of the grave crisis in today's academy. What Mr.
Neumayr should have said is that the professors don't care about
education
. They care plenty about their students -- way
too much in fact. Today's universities are "student-centered,"
revolving around student's expressed and perceived needs and
desires to the exclusion of the fundamental mission of the
university, which is the transmission of knowledge. See, for
example, Kay Hymowitz's article, "J Crew U," in the spring 1996
City Journal
