Harvard Rules (31 page)

Gomes was worried not only about Summers' apparent lack of interest in spiritual matters, but also about Summers' politics and the way the president seemed to be aligning Harvard with the military goals of the Bush administration. Before Zayed Yasin's speech the previous June, Summers had publicly declared that while the university must venerate freedom of speech, “we must also respect and admire moral clarity when it is required as in the preservation of our national security and the defense of our country.”

In a sermon on October 6, Gomes spoke words that appeared to be a direct rebuke to Summers. “How can we have an intelligent conversation on the most dangerous policy topic of the day without being branded traitors, self-loathing Americans, anti-patriotic, or soft on democracy?” he asked. “…We hear much talk of ‘moral clarity,' but it sounds more to me like moral arrogance, and it must not be met with moral silence.” Gomes himself would never acknowledge that the “moral arrogance” line was a shot at Summers, but many in his audience—both within and outside Harvard—interpreted it as such.

The reverend was right about one thing: Summers would have loved to trim his authority. But taking on a black, gay minister was a sure way to offend multiple constituencies, especially after the Cornel West imbroglio. Even so, according to one source close to Summers, the president wanted to needle Gomes a bit. He knew of the fight over Jewish weddings at Memorial Church, and of course he was aware of Gomes' insistence on the church as a Christian space. And so he provocatively chose Memorial Church to deliver fighting words on anti-Semitism.

These were deep currents, signs of underlying power struggles over the direction of Harvard and the relevance of the university's heritage and tradition. Many on campus were disturbed by Summers' speech for a more readily apparent reason. Despite the praise Summers had won from outsiders who applauded a university president acting as a public intellectual, these critics believed that his speech was, in fact, inappropriate for a university president. In their minds, Summers had crafted his talk not to promote debate, but to silence it. And that was exactly the
wrong
way for a university president to speak out on current events.

Of first concern was Summers' assertion that he spoke not as president of Harvard but as “a member of our community.” To many, this was an untenable distinction, so clearly unsupportable that they doubted that Summers himself believed it. No one could hear Summers speak and not understand that they were hearing the president of Harvard—especially when he used Harvard employees to publicize his speech and had it posted on his Harvard website. You couldn't simply slip off the robes of power and pretend to be an ordinary citizen whenever the mood struck. Hamlet and Henry V could disguise themselves and mingle with ordinary people, but they could hardly speak from a public pulpit and not expect their words to carry the weight of their station. As Carl Pearson, a lecturer in the history of science department, pointed out in a letter he wrote to Summers, “You seem to recognize this yourself, when you respond to calls for divestment by saying, ‘I hasten to say the University has categorically rejected this suggestion.'” Certainly a former treasury secretary, whose most casual remark could wreak financial chaos around the world, would have known the power inherent in a highly visible office. Even professor Ruth Wisse, who called upon Summers to fire Harvard professors who had signed the petition, admitted that “he should have been speaking as president, and in fact he was perceived as speaking as president.”

This mattered, of course, because the Harvard president's words had weight and consequences, and Larry Summers had just called everyone who had signed the divestment petition anti-Semitic, including nearly seventy Harvard professors.

That, at least, is what the petition signers believed. Summers would not have agreed; he'd have said that he'd called only their actions anti-Semitic. But by his own logic, even if this was not his intent, this was his effect. Several professors named in news accounts were promptly bombarded with hostile e-mails and anonymous phone calls calling them anti-Semites and Nazis. Even the act of defending oneself, of insisting that one was not anti-Semitic, could now be considered anti-Semitic. An unsigned item about the speech in the
New Republic,
Martin Peretz's magazine, posed the question, “Why would anybody who is not anti-Semitic recoil from a speech against anti-Semitism?”

“I signed the petition believing that the policies of [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon were terrible and misguided,” said professor of Spanish literature Bradley Epps. “I signed it in part worrying about just this reaction, that the act might be reduced to anti-Semitism. I am not anti-American or anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli. It was utterly irresponsible on Summers' part to resort to labels.”

The subject became so polarizing on campus that many simply refused to talk about it. “I found it extremely uncomfortable after Summers' talk, because it was very divisive,” said another professor who signed the petition but subsequently wished to remain anonymous. “Anybody who says that it didn't cause critics of Israel on this campus to think twice about what they could say—not just to the president, but to colleagues—is kidding himself.”

Law school professor Alan Dershowitz vigorously supported Summers, arguing that the president was exactly right: it
was
anti-Semitic to target Israel among all the world's alleged human rights violators. “To single out the Jewish state of Israel…is bigotry pure and simple,” Dershowitz said in a letter to the
Crimson.
“Those who sign the divestment petition should be ashamed of themselves. If they are not, it is up to others to shame them.” Dershowitz took it upon himself to do just that. He challenged one signatory, a professor of Middle Eastern studies named Paul Hanson, to a public debate. After Hanson, who was also the master of Winthrop House, declined, fearing that the debate would devolve into a public referendum on whether he was or wasn't a bigot, Dershowitz publicly repeated the challenge, “either with Hanson present or with an empty chair on which the petition which he signed would be featured.” In part because of Dershowitz's words, the climate in Winthrop House became so bitter and angry—at commencement time, one Jewish student would refuse to accept a diploma from Hanson—that Hanson came to feel he could no longer function as master. After resigning his position, he promptly left Harvard for a sabbatical.

Muslim and Middle Eastern students were devastated and demoralized by Summers' speech. Some had supported the divestment movement, and virtually all of them advocated vigorous debate about the Middle East. They now wondered which comments about Israel would earn them the anti-Semite label, or if the very act of questioning Israeli policy was now ipso facto anti-Semitic. “Criticizing the actions and laws of a country is very different from attacking people for their religion, nationality or ethnicity,” wrote three self-described “students of Middle Eastern descent” in the
Crimson.

Such students did not see Summers' speech as a statement of morality, but as a flexing of ethnic power. To them, the speech was an exercise in identity politics, that same brand of ethnic politicking Summers scorned when others practiced it. From their perspective, Jews at Harvard were powerful; there were Jewish members of the Corporation, Jewish deans, and, of course, a Jewish president. Jewish names were carved into buildings all over campus. Muslims, however, were clearly not powerful at Harvard. As a more recent ethnic presence, they occupied none of these positions—no deans, no Corporation members, few faculty members, obviously no president—and their numbers were considerably smaller than those of Jewish students. And so, from their tenuous position, Summers' speech meant simply that a Jewish leader had used his position of power to stamp out opposing viewpoints. In addition, many of them knew Zayed Yasin, and were still angry about Summers' treatment of him.

Some Muslim students had left authoritarian countries to come to a university where they could speak their minds. But now they were afraid to do that. After all, in the wake of 9/11, Muslim students were already worried about attracting attention to themselves—even at Harvard. Now, perhaps, especially at Harvard.

Certainly Summers' talk at Appleton Chapel raised legitimate questions. A significant number of liberal members of the Harvard community had not signed the divestment petition, concerned that it could be exploited by anti-Semites and uncomfortable advocating a tactic that seemed to equate Israel with South African apartheid. And who could doubt that, after the devastation of 9/11 and with war in Iraq imminent, anti-Semitic acts and advocates were growing in number, especially overseas?

But in implying that those who advocated divestment were anti-Semitic, Summers used a stigmatizing label to characterize and isolate a small minority of the Harvard community, the petition signers, and an even smaller minority group, Muslim and Middle Eastern students. In the process, he had raised his visibility outside of Harvard, winning praise from pundits and politicians. But he had also heightened the growing conviction on campus that the president of Harvard used his power to reward those who agreed with him and punish those who did not.

His talk had its desired effect. While debate about the speech itself raged, debate about divestment fizzled out, and very soon the issue became a dead letter. As the drive to divest from Israel ground to a halt, so, largely, did any ongoing campus debate about Israeli policy toward Palestinians. “Unpopular opinions have become even more unpopular in recent times at Harvard, and that troubles me,” said Peter Gomes shortly after Summers' speech. “We seem to have lost the mechanism by which strong and differing views can be stated and dealt with in a pluralistic community.”

In his discussions about economics, Summers had always preached a vigorous competition of ideas, an intellectual meritocracy. But now, from the bully pulpit of the Harvard presidency, he had won an argument not on its merits, but on the force of words backed up by sheer power. The results were predictable. Summers had already alienated African American students; now Muslim and Middle Eastern students also felt that the president of Harvard was not their president.

For his part, Summers moved on. He rarely raised the issue of anti-Semitism again, except fleetingly or in response to questions—years later, he still made the “in effect if not intent” argument. When he was inaugurated, though, he had not wanted to be thought of as Harvard's “first Jewish president.” He was not comfortable being labeled. Now he did not want to be known as “the Jewish president of Harvard.” He knew too that, by responding, he could get drawn into an endless debate, and though Summers loved debate, he saw no point in getting mired down in this one.

And so he did not publicly extend or clarify his remarks. The Morning Prayers speech would speak for itself, by itself.

“I wrote three e-mails to Larry Summers [about his speech],” said Bradley Epps, who has successfully corresponded with Summers on other matters. “He responded to none. He never has, and he never will.”

But before the year was out, the question of anti-Semitism would resurface in ways that Summers had never expected, ways that showed how difficult it is for a university president to speak out on public issues without finding himself in conflict with the activities of his own university.

 

In February 2001, an Irish poet named Tom Paulin wrote a poem called “Killed in Crossfire.” Published in
The Observer,
an English newspaper, it read:

A professor of English at Hertford College, Oxford, Thomas Neilson Paulin is well known for his inflammatory political opinions. Born in England in 1949 but raised in Belfast, Paulin is a rare combination in Ireland, Protestant but pro-republican. Literary critics consider him a serious poet, and many admire his work. With the help of a substantial grant from the English government, he is writing an ambitious, multi-volume epic poem about World War II called
The Invasion Handbook.
But despite his impressive output, Paulin is best known in England for his appearances on
Late Review,
a feisty talk show about the arts aired on England's BBC2 channel. On one episode, Paulin called the British soldiers involved in the Bloody Sunday killings of 1972 “rotten racist bastards.” Such intemperate declarations had turned the poet into an intellectual bad boy welcomed in certain leftwing circles. One sympathetic newspaper writer dubbed him a “sexy curmudgeon.” A mildly successful English pop band named itself “tompaulin.”

But many readers thought that “Killed in Crossfire” crossed a line into anti-Semitism, particularly in Paulin's equation of Israelis with Nazis. Then, in April 2002, the Egyptian English-language weekly newspaper
Al-Ahram
published an interview with Paulin in which the poet expressed his sympathies for Palestinians and his opposition to the state of Israel. Brooklyn Jews who had become Israeli settlers “should be shot dead,” Paulin said. “I think they are Nazis, racists. I feel nothing but hatred for them.”

The interview provoked an instant uproar in England, where critics called for Oxford University to dismiss Paulin. The poet testily defended himself in a letter to London's
Daily Mail.
“My views have been distorted,” he wrote. “I have been, and am, a lifelong opponent of anti-Semitism and a consistent supporter of a Palestinian state. I do not support attacks on Israeli civilians under any circumstances.” It was true that Paulin had publicly lambasted literary critics who whitewashed the anti-Semitism of T. S. Eliot. But Paulin did not claim to have been misquoted in
Al-Ahram,
nor did he explain how his opposition to the killing of civilians could be reconciled with his suggestion that Jewish settlers “should be shot dead.”