HARVARD IN DECLINE (1)

Leftists eventually destroy everything they get control of. Destroying things is what they like doing. "Revolution" they often call it. The first article below however, by Peter Beinart, is a view from the moderate Left

Some of my best friends are professors. Many of my relatives, too. I'd probably be one myself, had I done better in graduate school. But, this week at least, I'm glad I chose another line of work, because the most prestigious professoriate in the world, Harvard's, has just made an ass of itself.

It has done so by toppling President Lawrence Summers, who resigned rather than face a second faculty no-confidence vote, which he seemed set to lose. In explaining the coup, conservatives will cite political correctness. They'll say that, by challenging African American Studies Professor Cornel West and musing about the relationship between gender and scientific aptitude, Summers ran afoul of the left-wing dogmatism that dominates campus life. But that gives the faculty too much credit. It lets them pretend they were defending some abstract ideal, some principle larger than their own self-interest. The truth is far shabbier: The Harvard faculty deposed Lawrence Summers because he wanted them to care about something beyond themselves.

First, Summers wanted tenured professors to teach. And not just that; he wanted them to teach large undergraduate survey courses. Summers noticed what people have been noticing for a long time: Students at Harvard--and at other prestigious universities--often graduate without the kind of core knowledge that you'd expect from a good high school student. Instead, they meet Harvard's curricular requirements with a hodgepodge of arbitrary, esoteric classes that cohere into nothing at all. Summers wanted to change that, perhaps by making students take overview courses that gave them a general introduction to different disciplines. The problem is that those are exactly the kinds of courses Harvard professors don't want to teach. Most professors are specialists. They want to delve ever more deeply into their particular research areas. The more their teaching tracks that research, the easier their lives are. So they offer classes on obscure micro-topics. The last thing they want is to bone up on introductory material they forgot in graduate school. Summers, who made a point of teaching a freshman seminar himself, thought perhaps they should. And, for that, he was accused of not respecting the faculty. When he mentioned reviving Harvard's introductory art history survey to one top professor in the department, she responded that no self-respecting scholar would want to teach such a course. "Are we citizens or employees?" asked another professor, pretentiously. How na‹ve of Lawrence Summers: He actually thought they might be teachers.

Summers certainly wasn't opposed to research. But he was impolitic enough to ask various departments to explain why their research mattered. He evidently believed that, as president of the world's premier university, asking probing questions about the direction of academic disciplines was part of his job. The poor fool. He even had the temerity to ask West, one of only 19 "university professors," a rank supposedly reserved for the greatest scholars in the world, what he was doing. The confrontation exploded because West is high-profile and black. But he wasn't the only university professor who was asked about his work. And, for many faculty, the really offensive part wasn't that Summers confronted a black faculty member. It's that he asked any tenured faculty member to justify how they spent their time. "Once someone's a tenured professor," one professor told The Chronicle of Higher Education, "if he wants to write articles for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times instead of doing his scholarship, he has every right to do that. Once someone is a tenured professor, they answer to God. It's as simple as that." Summers thought it was a little more complicated: He thought that tenured professors had a responsibility to cultivate more than their own egos. It's unlikely his successor will make the same mistake.

Finally, Summers thought it was a problem that roughly 90 percent of Harvard seniors were graduating with honors. The Ivy League considers itself a bastion of meritocracy. But, as Summers understood, Harvard's shameless grade inflation mocks that pretense. By giving almost everyone very high grades, Harvard promotes the fiction that virtually all of its graduates are academic superstars--and obscures those who actually are. Worse, it punishes those less exalted universities na‹ve enough to believe that a mediocre student deserves a C. As a result, students with honest transcripts find themselves at a disadvantage when competing for jobs or graduate school.

But, for professors, giving everyone absurdly high grades is the path of least resistance. The last thing an academic wants is angry students showing up at her office door, trying to appeal their grades. Far easier to preemptively capitulate, which seems to be what the Harvard faculty thought Summers would do as well.

Even more than professors, one might have expected Harvard students to rebel against Summers's crusade against grade inflation. But they didn't. In fact, despite all the news reports about how controversial Summers was at Harvard, he doesn't seem to have been that controversial among students at all. An online poll found that only 19 percent of undergraduates believed Summers should resign. A New York Times Magazine profile noted that virtually "every student who has actually had contact with Summers has come away liking him." And, while the faculty passed a no-confidence vote against him last year, graduate students in the arts and sciences rejected one. One wonders, in fact, what might happen if Harvard students were given the chance to vote no-confidence in their professors.

Perhaps none of this really matters. In this era of conservative power, in which politicians are more likely to run against America's top universities than to learn from them, Harvard is largely irrelevant. But that was part of Summers's project: to challenge the narcissism that makes Harvard easy to ignore. It's why he has made it easier for students to participate in rotc. It's why he waived tuition for families making less than $40,000 a year. It's why he wanted professors to do useful research and students to learn basic knowledge. As one of the few contemporary college presidents who tried to turn liberal ideals into government policy, rather than just opining about them from the ivory tower, he wanted Harvard to serve the nation, not merely itself. And, when Harvard hired him five years ago, that's what it said it wanted, too. Now we know the truth.

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HARVARD IN DECLINE (2)

When James Bryant Conant became president of Harvard in 1933, he took over an institution riddled with anti-Semitism, bound by parochial ties to wealthy Northeastern families, and hostile to the broad teaching of modern science. Fortunately for Harvard and for the United States, Conant could rely for two decades on the firm backing of the Harvard Corporation as he implemented a curriculum that became the gold standard of American education in liberal arts. Although Conant served more than half a century ago, the Harvard that the world imagines today-an internationally renowned center of learning that attracts the brightest minds in every discipline-is very much his creation.

For the past three decades, however, Harvard's reputation for preeminence has not always reflected reality in Cambridge. Who now thinks Harvard is better in engineering than MIT or Caltech? Who thinks Harvard's Law School, hobbled by rancorous dissent, is better than Yale's, Virginia's, or Stanford's? Its Philosophy Department, once the home of William James, C.I. Lewis, and W.V.O. Quine, is now typically ranked below departments at Michigan and Pittsburgh.

Harvard's relative decline is not entirely its own fault: It is difficult to remain at the top in dozens of academic fields, especially in a prosperous nation where many universities pursue excellence. Is it Harvard's fault that the University of Texas became ambitious enough to lure away Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg and his entire team?

And yet we expect more of Harvard than of other schools, if only because its $26 billion endowment alone accounts for 9 percent of the total endowments of America's 3,500 colleges and universities. A university that rich cannot have financial problems and ought to be able to maintain its lead in all fields. Harvard has not.

One would suppose that some such candid self-assessment led the Harvard Corporation to appoint Larry Summers as president in 2001. Summers's vast experience in government and world affairs gave him a perspective on the world and Harvard's position in it not available to those who have never left the cloistered confines of academia. He did not come complacently to Harvard, ready to accept the status quo. He came to make Harvard-great as it is-even greater and to guide Harvard into new important areas of study and service.

Why then did the Harvard Corporation quaver before a few hostile articles in the press, generated by faculty ideologues who, with rare exceptions, spoke under the cloak of anonymity? Why did the board cast aside the best and most effective president of Harvard since Conant at the behest of a minority of faculty?

The Boston Globe and The New York Times reported the opinions of faculty members that there was a ''crisis at Harvard," ''a state of paralysis," that it was overwhelmed by ''a tide of chaos and dysfunction," and that the cause was one man-Larry Summers

But the facts are very different. Harvard was and is functioning beautifully. Students are attending classes. The faculty-even those fomenting revolt-were and are teaching their classes and continuing their research in all of Harvard's many schools and colleges. The situation at Harvard today can hardly be compared to the paralysis in the Vietnam era. The fact that a small minority of faculty wished to depose the president did not constitute a crisis until the Corporation made it one.

Summers's removal will haunt Harvard as it seeks his successor. Harvard needed what Larry Summers had to offer. But will anyone of his drive and courage now take the job?

. . .

As the Harvard Corporation proclaimed in announcing his departure, Summers ''brought to the leadership of the University a sense of bold aspiration and initiative, a prodigious intelligence, and an insistent devotion to maximizing Harvard's contributions to the realm of ideas and to the larger world." This is quite an endorsement, one fully merited by Summers's major accomplishments-including, among other initiatives, the Allston campus, the digitizing of library holdings, the Stem Cell Institute, and curricular reform.

Summers also fulfilled his academic responsibilities by questioning the work of faculty and challenging ideologues to support their claims with facts. Many faculty members believe they are infallible and that no president should dare criticize them, while every faculty member sheltered in the cocoon of tenure feels free to criticize the president (though again, usually on the condition of anonymity). Woe to the president who asserts his right to criticize a faculty member.

Summers also exercised his intellectual leadership in a forthright address to an academic conference on women in science. By raising provocative questions, he had the temerity to assert that no subject of scientific inquiry is taboo in the university.

As has been noted, Summers is himself partially to blame for his loss of authority. In a futile effort to placate his critics, he met with faculty and apologized for the way he expressed himself. He was not so much arrogant as naive, for his critics were not seeking understanding, but power; they interpreted his repeated efforts at reconciliation as weakness and vulnerability. Summers made the mistake of apologizing again and again for being right.

But the members of the Harvard Corporation must accept most of the blame for Summers's fall and its consequences. Disgruntled faculty activists were greatly emboldened in recent weeks when members of the Corporation began meeting with them behind Summers's back. There is nothing so effective as Star Chamber proceedings to secure a conviction. The Corporation must also accept responsibility for taking far too seriously the vote of no confidence among members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Only 218 out of 657 members of one Harvard faculty supported the measure. The vote would have been meaningless if the Corporation had ignored or repudiated

In recent years the faculty of Emerson College in Boston has twice voted no confidence in President Jacqueline Liebergott, but Emerson's Board has wisely supported her in developing a new campus and resisting faculty obstruction.

At Boston University in the 1970s, I raised standards for tenure and promotion, fought the formation of a faculty union, restored ROTC, and addressed our precarious finances. I was twice subjected to votes of no-confidence-about 500 voted the first time, about 700 the second, and in each case the majority of professors attending voted against me. Nine deans called for my resignation. I was even falsely accused of going through the wastebaskets of faculty and employing photographic surveillance. One distinguished faculty member who opposed my reforms lamented, ''Why don't you let the university go bankrupt with dignity?"

The attempt by faculty at Boston University to unseat its president was ended by a vote of confidence from the Board of Trustees. The late Arthur Metcalf, a member of the board, brought its deliberations to a close by saying, ''If the board removes its president, Boston University will descend into the leperdom it shall richly deserve." The board then gave me its hearty endorsement by a three-fourths majority. While many faculty members and deans believed my dreams were impossible aspirations, the board shared my vision of a great Boston University. The board's resolve ended the revolt, and board members proudly endured the contumely of the press.

The members of the Harvard Corporation have shown no such courage, nor did they understand that the changes they endorsed would inevitably lead to controversy. Faculty members may be well-informed in their specializations, but they have limited knowledge and experience-and no responsibility-with regard to the needs and goals of the university as a whole. They lack the objectivity to govern the entire university or to assess the president's service to it.

...

The Corporation's failure of nerve has debased the presidency of Harvard. The office is now at the mercy of any minority of faculty who can convince the media that a contrived tempest in a teapot is a crisis of major proportions and, thereby, spook the members of the Corporation.

Where will Harvard now turn to find another leader? The Corporation has repudiated a strong president who recognized Harvard's weaknesses and was determined to correct them and who perceived new objectives and was determined to pursue them. Many timid and compliant souls will seek this prestigious office with promises of obeisance. But what outstanding person intent on making a difference at Harvard will consider it?

One member of the Corporation, Nannerl O. Keohane, anticipates no problem. ''Faculty members are not interested in 'taking over' the university," Keohane pronounced; ''they are mainly interested in getting on with the work they do as teachers and scholars." This is true for the large majority of faculty who supported Summers but stuck to their work. It is pure balderdash with regard to those who schemed to remove him. Their appetite for power increased by what it fed on. Summers's opponents now propose changes such as giving professors a controlling voice in the appointment of deans and even putting faculty members on the Corporation.

Once reality sets in, the Harvard Corporation may well abandon the quest for another Conant, a president who can restore substance to the university's international reputation. It may perhaps adopt the German system, permitting the faculty to elect a rector who will serve with limited influence for two or three years. Power will then be thoroughly diffused among deans and activist faculty. But Harvard may then need to replace its motto-Veritas-with Status Quo.

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ALL KIDS ARE EQUAL IN AUSTRALIAN SCHOOLS

Smart kids not wanted

As many as 250,000 gifted children across Australia are being forced to dumb down at school, trapped in classes up to four grades below their ability. The head of the gifted education centre at the University of New South Wales, Miraca Gross, said between 10 and 15 per cent of the school population was exceptionally talented. Half the gifted children aged 8 to 10 who were tested on Year 8 maths, English, science and reading scored better than the average 14-year-old and similar results were found for children in years 7 and 9 who were tested on Year 12 material, Professor Gross said. "If they achieve at their full level, other kids don't particularly want to be friends with them," she said. "The other choice is to dumb down and work at a level much lower than they can, ask silly questions in the classroom and make deliberate mistakes in their work or tests so other kids will think they're like them."

The centre tests about 2000 students every year who are identified as advanced learners by their teachers but Professor Gross said the vast majority of talented students left school unrecognised. Professor Gross said schools were still poor at identifying their gifted students and often reluctant to develop and accommodate their needs. "We are only scratching the surface on the tip of the iceberg," she said. "And eight-ninths of an iceberg is underwater, so we are failing to identify a lot of kids. "In every class of 30 there would be at least two or three who could work about three years beyond their age."

The university's Gifted Education Resource Research and Information Centre tests about 1500 students annually in years 4 to 6 (aged between 10 and 12) with work designed for Year 8 students (about 14 years) in maths, science, English and reading. About 500 students in years 7 to 9 sit Year 12 tests. Primary students Talia Jacobs, 11, and Jack Lo Russo, 10, performed so well in the tests they were invited to one of the university's residential programs that run for five days in January for students who score in the 97th percentile for their age. Jack started a new school this year that recognises his talent. He has a large group of friends who are also bright students, but said that at his previous school he was often bored because the work was too easy.

Talia has been more fortunate in having a teacher and a school who recognised and stretched her academic talent, but she still appreciated the chance to mix with other gifted students at the residential program. "I just liked that there were other people of the same ability as me, and that I could relate to them in the same sort of way," she said.

Professor Gross said many gifted students were ostracised or quietly ignored by their age peers and it was imperative that schools started actively identifying and catering for gifted students, in the same way as for those gifted in music or sports. "Gifted kids can feel they have to make a choice between friendship and achievement," she said.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

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