ACADEMIC FREEDOM?

“We didn’t invite Larry as a Harvard president per se,” Freeman said in the days following Summers’ speech. “We invited him because he has an extremely powerful and interesting mind. And I think if we had invited him as Harvard president, he would have given us the same type of babble that university presidents give. And thank God we have a president who doesn’t say that.”

“Clearly, if there was to be any reaction to Larry Summers’ speech, it should have begun with giving him the freedom to present his ideas in the form that he chooses to do so,” Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature Ruth R. Wisse said in February.

In a Jan. 17 interview with The Crimson, Summers said that his speech was a “purely academic exploration of hypotheses.”

“Everyone agrees that working toward gender equity is vitally important,” Summers told The Crimson in that interview. He said that universities must address discrimination head-on, but that academics must also engage in “careful, honest, and rigorous research” to understand the factors fueling the underrepresentation of females. “My speculations were intended to contribute to that process,” he said.

But others argue that Summers spoke with the force and weight of the University behind him.

“The notion that Larry Summers’ position should be kept a secret on issues like this—that’s just wrong,” Hopkins told the Crimson that month.

“This is not about academic freedom. It’s about academic responsibility,” Hopkins said in March.

Freeman says that he thinks it was “normal operating procedure” that the academic conference would be conducted privately. “Unfortunately, we didn’t say it at the beginning of the conference. You assume everyone knows that’s the way you do things.”

Freeman says he did not expect Hopkins would be “going to the press instead of yelling at him.”

“That’s what we’re normally used to, we disagree with you, we yell at you,” says Freeman.

“It was a kind of outrage that a woman scientist would walk out of that meeting pretending to be getting sick and giving it out to the press, and a brazen rejection of reason and discussion and scientific inquiry,” says Kenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield ’53.

Freeman says that there was objection at the meeting beyond Hopkins’ decision to leave.

“There was a lot of objection at the conference. People stood and said you’re totally wrong about this. You’ve got your weights wrong,” says Freeman.

After his remarks, Summers faced harsh questions from conference participants critiquing his conjectures, particularly his emphasis on biology.