Matory was also one of the eight professors to speak against Summers at the Feb. 15 Faculty meeting, the first after the president made his remarks on women in science.
Matory passed out copies of that speech, which condemns Summers for “political selectiveness” in supporting free academic inquiry, to his Anthropology 1600, “Introduction to Social Anthropology” class. The professor says he showed students the speech in order to let them analyze the controversy surrounding Summers’ leadership in social anthropological terms.
In so doing, students say, Matory made his low opinion of Summers clear by drawing connections to his own scholarly views.
“I think he was coming from a very academic viewpoint” in criticizing Summers, says Shannon M. Kelly ’07, who took Matory’s course. “I think in general [Matory’s] views on social determinism are pretty cemented and he was pretty unforgiving to hypotheses that would put anything on biology rather than social arrangements.”
The crusade that Matory has undertaken against Summers has drawn mixed feelings from the faculty. While many praise him for voicing criticism openly and publicly—and hundreds voted for his no-confidence motion—some faculty feel that Matory walks a fine line between constructive and destructive criticism.
“It’s very courageous of Matory to be so outspoken, and it was good that he proposed the lack of confidence vote,” Judith Ryan, who chairs the Germanic Languages and Literatures Department, writes in an e-mail. “Still, I think he needs to be careful not to turn some people off by pushing too hard.”
But Matory stands firm in his opposition to the president. Referring to Summers’ recently-announced initiative to expand diversity on the faculty, Matory says, “I am not happy with the strategy that laying $50 million on the line should buy our silence.”
FROM HARVARD TO HARVARD
Matory began to cultivate his anthropological views early on at Harvard, when he studied social anthropology as an undergraduate, writing a thesis comparing the social structure of certain Yoruba worshippers in Nigeria and Brazil.
Matory had a brief stint at The Crimson and wrote two stories as a staff writer, including one headlined, perhaps portentously, “Bowdoin President Quits After Battle Against Trustees.” He sang for Kuumba and participated in the South Africa divestment movement and a feminists discussion group.
In 1981, when he was a junior, Matory faced rape allegations from a Wellesley sophomore, which he has always denied.
A Massachusetts criminal court tried and acquitted Matory that fall. He describes the trial as a “horrible experience,” but he notes it also helped establish his unapologetic and uncompromising demeanor.
“The year of that trial I got straight A’s,” he says. “If I believe in some things or I believe in myself, I do not give up easily. It’s very difficult for me to compromise when it comes to truth or fairness.”
—Staff writer Anton S. Troianovski can be reached at atroian@fas.harvard.edu.edu.