Larry Summers' Appointment in Samarra

One of the, perhaps neglected, classics of American literature is John O'Hara's Appointment in Samara. In the novel, the main character Juilan English's life slowly unravels after he crosses a social line while drunk at a Christmas party. He tries everything he can to rectify the situation, but all for naught. By the end, his entire life has been ruined by what could have been a fairly minor offense.

It is hard not to think of Appointment in Samarra while reading about the slow downfall of Harvard President Larry Summers. The most recent news on that front is that a member of the board of the Harvard Corporation has handed in his resignation in protest of a suggested pay raise for Summers. This is bad. To a certain extent, it doesn't matter if professors like or don't like a university president. They're still our bosses. But, if the board of trustees is jumping ship, then Summers may be on increasingly thin ice.

I've said before that I think the whole thing is ridiculous. But, to play devil's advocate, the guy is known for being a particuarly abrasive boss. Academics are generally malcontents, and we're not especially fond of managers, especially those ones who try to run a university like a corporation. "Okay, let's get on a timetable here, people! I need you to be producing at least three groundbreaking ideas every quarter! We have to increase production by 50%! More thinking, people!" It is, however, a bit surreal to see professors working so hard to get their boss fired.

Also, it's simply disasterous for academic speech to argue that there are some hypotheses that are so offensive that their existence can never be spoken of in a university setting, even if one is simply arguing that those hypotheses should be disproven. It was funny at first to see so many profs loose their shit over something so totally banal. But, after Summers has apologized numerous times, and pledged a great amount of money to the cause of getting more girls involved in science, it's more than a bit disturbing to see how this process of ruining his career simply cannot be halted.