Month: January 2002

Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers is seemingly in a bind. It’s over the issue of how to respond to Cornel West, the high-profile, black professor and prominent member of Harvard’s Afro-American Studies Department.

West took umbrage at Summers’ questions about whether he had missed classes to campaign for Bill Bradley in the 2000 presidential campaign. In addition, Summers apparently had misgivings about the role, if any, of scholarship in West’s rappy recording of a CD of African American music. Moreover, Summers, a treasury secretary in the Clinton Administration, reportedly has not yet spoken out forcefully enough in favor of affirmative action and diversity.

Summers, in effect, has said that just because Harvard’s Afro-American Studies Department is a celebrated one, its top celebrity-scholar-author isn’t immune from scrutiny. It speaks volumes that this even has to be spoken.

There was an attempt to patch up the resultant “terrible misunderstanding,” according to an aide to Summers. To which West responded: “As much as I forgive, I will not forget.”

Forgive what? A president for doing something other than care-taking Harvard’s image?

Forget what? Being held accountable?

As a result of the carpet calling, West may leave Harvard and head to Princeton. West said his decision would depend, in part, on whether his colleagues in the Afro-American Studies Department were staying at Harvard.

A spokesman for Harvard now says, “Dr. Summers has made it clear that collectively and individually he holds the Afro-American Studies Department in high regard.”

C’mon, President Summers. Speak for yourself — and in so-doing speak for all those who know that university campuses, especially elite ones, are bastions of political correctness run amok.

Try saying something like this: “We wish Dr. West good luck at Princeton. We also wish all the best to those colleagues of his in the Afro-American Studies Department who are also certain to leave. That’s because we are closing the department.

“Legitimate courses in Afro-American studies will continue to be offered here at Harvard; indeed, they are appropriate on any American campus that gives more than lip service to meaningful diversity. But not a whole department. Do we really want to turn out graduates with a bachelor’s in blackness? The same principle, I should add, also applies to women’s studies and other ethnic or racial studies. Individual, academically authentic courses, yes; separatist, academic apartheid, no.

“We want legitimate, world-class, academic departments — buttressed by rigorous standards — not partisan, polemicized, faux scholarship, group-think, self-esteem citadels that serve only to buff a university’s bona fides as champions of ‘diversity.’

“Harvard will manage well without Dr. West and his colleagues, thank you. As for me, of course this will cost me my presidency, but it’s worth it.

“For now, however, I can live with myself knowing I’ve used the prestigious and influential forum that is the Harvard presidency to say what no one else in academia will. If the emperor has no clothes, I’m not pretending he’s dressed to the nines.”

Primary predate: With so many senators doing a drive-by lay-of-the-landing in Afghanistan, it’s beginning to look like the first primary of the 2004 presidential race. So where’s Al Gore? Would he have to shave for a better fit with post-Taliban fashion?

Plane speaking: If an airline pilot says he’s uncomfortable with paperwork and the deportment of a man of Middle Eastern descent who’s armed and says he’s with the Secret Service, and you’re about to board that American Airlines’ plane, who do you side with? Thought so.

Born (Suit) Free: The U.S. continues to reign, of course, as the world’s most litigious nation. No one is close. But not even in the U.S. has a court ruled that a person has a right not to be born — and a concomitant right to sue for being brought into this world.

But that’s what a French court ruled in the case of a boy who was born deaf, nearly blind and retarded. His mother said she would have aborted him had doctors correctly diagnosed her German measles when she was pregnant.

But tragedy and heartache do not excuse flawed law and perilous precedent. The French National Assembly has approved a bill overturning that decision. States the bill: “No one can sue for damages for the sole fact of their birth.”

Imagine having to actually codify that concept. Only — to date — in France.

Driven to extremes: How ironic — and unsettling — is it that Charles Bishop, the 15 year old who flew a plane into a Tampa skyscraper, had to get his grandmother to drive him to his flying lesson? And she had done so before, when he was 14.

Bishop was too young to be at the wheel of a car but old enough to be at the controls of a plane. Anyone want to revisit this logic?

Drawing conclusions: Please, no more Defense Department-doctored photos of a westernized Osama bin Laden as he might look on the lam. Is the generic geek look some sort of dead give-away? It makes it too easy for those too easily disposed to dismiss legitimate evidence, such as videos and hard drive information, as the devious work of American infidels. Save it for Comedy Central and Jay Leno’s “Where’s bin Laden been hidin’.”

Flag flap: Not everything that is run up a flagpole is salute-able. Case in point: the flap over the 19-foot bronze sculpture that ostensibly replicates the famous photo of the three New York firefighters raising the flag at the World Trade Center.

A major liberty was taken, it turns out, in moving between mediums, and it has nothing to do with artistic license. It has, however, everything to do with assuring and enshrining political correctness. Not even the trauma, tragedy and sanctity of Sept. 11 is immune from the PC police, because the photo depicts three white firefighters — members of a fire department that is 93 per cent white. It’s a sensitive issue. As a result, two of those firefighters have now morphed into a black and a Hispanic.

If the controversial sculpture hadn’t been based on an actual, historic photo, then no harm, no foul, no problem. In fact, had that been the case, why not show a black, a white and a Hispanic firefighter? It would symbolically honor all those who made the supreme sacrifice.

But there’s this famous photo of three white firefighters. It was these three, actual, New York firefighters who historically hoisted that flag. Not three demographically acceptable figures. What those firefighters did was symbolic; who they were wasn’t.

Atoms Family values: Is this a definition of obscene or what? India, which can’t quite feed itself and leads the world in the number of people who live on traffic islands, has a defense budget of $15.6 billion. Pakistan, smaller but no better off, prioritizes defense to the tune of $2.6 billion annually.

The NCAA is threatening to penalize member schools for academic deficiencies. Among the proposals: taking away scholarships and withholding eligibility for post-season play. It’s all aimed at improving graduation rates — especially among football and basketball players, especially among blacks.

The proposal is well intentioned, of course, because big time intercollegiate athletics is rife with hypocritical, sham programs where players major in sports eligibility. The devil, however, is in the details, where the calculation of graduation rates is less than precise. For example, how best to factor in transfers and early pro league departures?

Here’s a suggestion. Approach it from the other end. Make athletes meet the same incoming criteria as the student body at large, where high school GPAs and SATs matter more than 40-yd time, bench-press reps, vertical leap, touchdown passes and points-per-game average. Let’s ask “Who’s got grades?” — not “Who’s got game?”

Need remedial help? That’s what high schools and community colleges are for. Need to prep for the NBA and NFL? Try hire ed and go semi-pro — and at least be honest about it.

It’s been a long time coming, but out of the atrocity of Sept. 11 has come a reality check of America’s immigration policy. In effect, we need a meaningful one.

As a nation of immigrants, we’ve been reluctant to look beyond Statue of Liberty rhetoric that never envisioned 10 million illegal immigrants in a nation at war with Islamic terrorists. Whether “huddled masses” or “muddled asses,” a “c’mon over” sentiment has been the American way.

By contrast, there’s nothing ennobling about “border security,” but it comes with the sovereign territory. The very words “border security” have all the warmth and fuzziness of a “Bad Dog, Keep Out” sign. It’s just that without it, a lot of “yearnings” will go unrealized and undermined.

The experiences of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, all “nations of immigrants,” should be illustrative. They have no qualms about saying, in effect, “It’s our country, and we get to choose who’s invited to stay.”

They have quotas as the U.S. does, but they have criteria that make much more sense. Economic and security issues matter more than family connections. For example, age, education level, prioritized skills and English proficiency are critical factors. Family ties are relevant, of course, but they aren’t in themselves determinative.

Patrick Buchanan raised this issue a few years back, but unfortunately his ham-handed, politically incorrect phrasing overwhelmed his argument. “Who would better assimilate into Alexandria, Va.?” he asked. “A hundred thousand Brits or 100,000 Zulus?”

But then, that requires agreement at some point that assimilation — even at the expense of some diversity and charges of racism — is desirable as part of a national immigration policy.