Larry Summers, President of Harvard, is still in hot water and can;t seem to get out. About a month ago he made some remarks at a meeting about women scoring lower on some test than men and that may be the reason why women are underrepresneted in engineering and science fields. Okay, probably not the best thing to say at a meeting. I’m not even sure it is true. I do know the women I know in engineering are as smart, if not smarter, than any man in the field.

Dr. Summers says he was asked to be conrtoversial at the meeting and that is why he made the comments. Well he certainly stimulated conrtoversy and is now likely to be strung up as a sacrifice to the policitally correct god. As a president of a university he does indeed need to meet a higher standard but is what he said, under the conditions he said it, all that bad? He has apologized many times, created task forces to look into women’s issues, yet some Harvard faculty really want to see him gone, all because of something he said.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Colorado, we have a professor who has said really nasty things about 9/11 and Americans. Some want to see him gone from higher education, if not from the entire country, but many run to his aid and claim he is entitled to say what he wants becuase of his freedom of speech. Okay, do the faculty and others have the right to freely criticize this guy and call for his termination?

So what gives here? On one side of the Mississippi we can’t get rid of a professor because of what he said but on the other side we can. One university is private, the other public but does that really matter in this case? Must you only be below a certain rank to say anything controversial?

A few years ago at the Naval War College, I attended a conference where one speaker introduced himself and gave his job title as Cheif Devil’s Advocate. He claimed that his job in his organization at the Pentagon was to always be a devil’s advocate. No matter what position was taken, he would always take the opposite just to make sure everyone had their thinking caps on. Sounds like Larry Summers was asked to be a devil’s advocate and is now being sent to meet the devil. Unfairness rules the day once again in academia.