Harvard Rules

by Richard Bradley

  Muslim and Middle Eastern students were devastated and demoralized by Summers’ speech. Some had supported the divestment movement, and virtually all of them advocated vigorous debate about the Middle East. They now wondered which comments about Israel would earn them the anti-Semite label, or if the very act of questioning Israeli policy was now ipso facto anti-Semitic. “Criticizing the actions and laws of a country is very different from attacking people for their religion, nationality or ethnicity,” wrote three self-described “students of Middle Eastern descent” in the Crimson.

  Such students did not see Summers’ speech as a statement of morality, but as a flexing of ethnic power. To them, the speech was an exercise in identity politics, that same brand of ethnic politicking Summers scorned when others practiced it. From their perspective, Jews at Harvard were powerful; there were Jewish members of the Corporation, Jewish deans, and, of course, a Jewish president. Jewish names were carved into buildings all over campus. Muslims, however, were clearly not powerful at Harvard. As a more recent ethnic presence, they occupied none of these positions—no deans, no Corporation members, few faculty members, obviously no president—and their numbers were considerably smaller than those of Jewish students. And so, from their tenuous position, Summers’ speech meant simply that a Jewish leader had used his position of power to stamp out opposing viewpoints. In addition, many of them knew Zayed Yasin, and were still angry about Summers’ treatment of him.

  Some Muslim students had left authoritarian countries to come to a university where they could speak their minds. But now they were afraid to do that. After all, in the wake of 9/11, Muslim students were already worried about attracting attention to themselves—even at Harvard. Now, perhaps, especially at Harvard.

  Certainly Summers’ talk at Appleton Chapel raised legitimate questions. A significant number of liberal members of the Harvard community had not signed the divestment petition, concerned that it could be exploited by anti-Semites and uncomfortable advocating a tactic that seemed to equate Israel with South African apartheid. And who could doubt that, after the devastation of 9/11 and with war in Iraq imminent, anti-Semitic acts and advocates were growing in number, especially overseas?

  But in implying that those who advocated divestment were anti-Semitic, Summers used a stigmatizing label to characterize and isolate a small minority of the Harvard community, the petition signers, and an even smaller minority group, Muslim and Middle Eastern students. In the process, he had raised his visibility outside of Harvard, winning praise from pundits and politicians. But he had also heightened the growing conviction on campus that the president of Harvard used his power to reward those who agreed with him and punish those who did not.

  His talk had its desired effect. While debate about the speech itself raged, debate about divestment fizzled out, and very soon the issue became a dead letter. As the drive to divest from Israel ground to a halt, so, largely, did any ongoing campus debate about Israeli policy toward Palestinians. “Unpopular opinions have become even more unpopular in recent times at Harvard, and that troubles me,” said Peter Gomes shortly after Summers’ speech. “We seem to have lost the mechanism by which strong and differing views can be stated and dealt with in a pluralistic community.”

  In his discussions about economics, Summers had always preached a vigorous competition of ideas, an intellectual meritocracy. But now, from the bully pulpit of the Harvard presidency, he had won an argument not on its merits, but on the force of words backed up by sheer power. The results were predictable. Summers had already alienated African American students; now Muslim and Middle Eastern students also felt that the president of Harvard was not their president.

  For his part, Summers moved on. He rarely raised the issue of anti-Semitism again, except fleetingly or in response to questions—years later, he still made the “in effect if not intent” argument. When he was inaugurated, though, he had not wanted to be thought of as Harvard’s “first Jewish president.” He was not comfortable being labeled. Now he did not want to be known as “the Jewish president of Harvard.” He knew too that, by responding, he could get drawn into an endless debate, and though Summers loved debate, he saw no point in getting mired down in this one.

  And so he did not publicly extend or clarify his remarks. The Morning Prayers speech would speak for itself, by itself.

  “I wrote three e-mails to Larry Summers [about his speech],” said Bradley Epps, who has successfully corresponded with Summers on other matters. “He responded to none. He never has, and he never will.”

  But before the year was out, the question of anti-Semitism would resurface in ways that Summers had never expected, ways that showed how difficult it is for a university president to speak out on public issues without finding himself in conflict with the activities of his own university.

  In February 2001, an Irish poet named Tom Paulin wrote a poem called “Killed in Crossfire.” Published in The Observer, an English newspaper, it read:

  We’re fed this inert

  this lying phrase

  like comfort food

  as another little Palestinian boy

  in trainers jeans and a white teeshirt

  is gunned down by the Zionist SS

  whose initials we should

  —but we don’t—dumb goys—

  clock in that weasel word

  crossfire

  A professor of English at Hertford College, Oxford, Thomas Neilson Paulin is well known for his inflammatory political opinions. Born in England in 1949 but raised in Belfast, Paulin is a rare combination in Ireland, Protestant but pro-republican. Literary critics consider him a serious poet, and many admire his work. With the help of a substantial grant from the English government, he is writing an ambitious, multi-volume epic poem about World War II called The Invasion Handbook. But despite his impressive output, Paulin is best known in England for his appearances on Late Review, a feisty talk show about the arts aired on England’s BBC2 channel. On one episode, Paulin called the British soldiers involved in the Bloody Sunday killings of 1972 “rotten racist bastards.” Such intemperate declarations had turned the poet into an intellectual bad boy welcomed in certain leftwing circles. One sympathetic newspaper writer dubbed him a “sexy curmudgeon.” A mildly successful English pop band named itself “tompaulin.”

  But many readers thought that “Killed in Crossfire” crossed a line into anti-Semitism, particularly in Paulin’s equation of Israelis with Nazis. Then, in April 2002, the Egyptian English-language weekly newspaper Al-Ahram published an interview with Paulin in which the poet expressed his sympathies for Palestinians and his opposition to the state of Israel. Brooklyn Jews who had become Israeli settlers “should be shot dead,” Paulin said. “I think they are Nazis, racists. I feel nothing but hatred for them.”

  The interview provoked an instant uproar in England, where critics called for Oxford University to dismiss Paulin. The poet testily defended himself in a letter to London’s Daily Mail. “My views have been distorted,” he wrote. “I have been, and am, a lifelong opponent of anti-Semitism and a consistent supporter of a Palestinian state. I do not support attacks on Israeli civilians under any circumstances.” It was true that Paulin had publicly lambasted literary critics who whitewashed the anti-Semitism of T. S. Eliot. But Paulin did not claim to have been misquoted in Al-Ahram, nor did he explain how his opposition to the killing of civilians could be reconciled with his suggestion that Jewish settlers “should be shot dead.”

  The controversy over Paulin’s remarks attracted little mention Stateside. Only a handful of American writers noticed it, much less remarked upon it. One of the few who did, Martin Peretz, wrote in the New Republic that Paulin was “a lousy but famous poet” who spewed “venom towards Israel.” The first assessment was debatable; the second seemed undeniable.

  Soon enough, Tom Paulin’s anti-Semitism problem became a problem for Harvard. Sometime between the publication of “Killed in Crossfire” and the Al-Ahram interview, the Harva
rd English department invited Paulin to campus to deliver the Morris Gray Lecture, an annual reading. In November 2002, about seven weeks after Summers’ anti-Semitism talk, the fracas over Tom Paulin came to Harvard.

  Three professors had chosen Paulin for the honor. One was Helen Vendler, probably the doyenne of American poetry critics and a University Professor, just as Cornel West had been. The other inviters were poets named Jorie Graham and Peter Sacks. Graham and Sacks are partners both in life and in politics; they are one of Harvard’s more left-wing couples. But none of the three professors, they would all insist later, had been aware of “Killed in Crossfire” when they invited Paulin to speak, nor had they read or heard about the Al-Ahram remarks.

  Someone else, however, was aware of Paulin’s feelings toward Israel—a Harvard lecturer named Rita Goldberg. When she received an e-mail invitation to the Paulin lecture, Goldberg was shocked that it said nothing of his controversial background. And though Goldberg was not particularly influential on campus—lecturers are non–tenure track teachers hired for three years to fill in curricular gaps—she was married to someone who was: Professor Oliver Hart, then the chairman of the economics department. On Thursday, November 7, just a week before Paulin was scheduled to lecture, Goldberg and Hart attended the annual department dinner. Economics is Harvard’s most popular undergraduate concentration, and as a sign of the department’s wealth and status, the dinner was held at Harvard’s imposing Fogg Art Museum. Larry Summers was on hand, and Goldberg buttonholed the president to tell him about the poet whom the English department had invited to campus. “That sounds pretty bad,” Goldberg recalled Summers saying. She suggested to Summers that the English department either disinvite Paulin or publicize his remarks on Israel. Summers cautioned her that opposition to the event would raise issues of free speech.

  The next day Goldberg took a step that would ordinarily have been done before protesting to the university president. She e-mailed Lawrence Buell, a scholar of American transcendentalism and the English department chairman, to complain about the Paulin reading. “I assume that the people who selected him…know about the reputation he has recently made for himself,” Goldberg wrote. “In the minds of many thoughtful people both in England and here in the U.S., Paulin’s vitriolic attacks have crossed a certain boundary between civilized discourse and something much more sinister. You ought at least to attach a warning label to your announcement of the reading.” Buell, a respected and well-liked figure, responded that he had not known about Paulin’s background and would look into the matter.

  But things were already progressing beyond Buell’s dominion. Goldberg sent a similar e-mail to a contact at Harvard Hillel, who forwarded it to other interested parties. By November 11, on the Internet and over e-mail, the Paulin problem had erupted. Within the English department, there was instant concern about the emerging public controversy—and about Summers’ reaction. Tom Paulin was exactly the kind of figure the president had warned them about, apparently the paradigm of the left-wing European intellectual who glibly tosses off anti-Semitic comments at radical chic dinner parties.

  Perhaps inevitably, several professors asked Elisa New what her boyfriend thought. New’s colleagues had become wary of her presence during their conversations on the Paulin matter, fearing that she would share their comments during pillow talk with Summers. Rather than avoid the subject, they decided simply to ask her directly. Their requests put New, who did not want to serve as a conduit to or from her boyfriend, in an awkward position. She answered, “If you want to know what Larry Summers thinks, you should ask Larry Summers.”

  On Monday evening, the eleventh of November, Larry Buell picked up the phone and did just that.

  Telephoning the president of Harvard to ask for his feelings about a controversial lecturer was not a normal thing for a department head to do. The university, after all, has hosted plenty of divisive figures, from Robert McNamara in 1966 to Colin Powell in 1993. (The award of an honorary degree to Powell was protested because of his recently announced opposition to allowing gays to serve in the military.) Tom Paulin’s lecture was a minor event compared with, say, the November 1997 talk by Chinese president Jiang Zemin. That visit, the most hotly debated in recent years, prompted thousands of demonstrators to rally outside Sanders Theatre in Memorial Hall, just beyond the rear gates of the Yard, where Zemin spoke. To ameliorate the protest and promote a different kind of discussion, the university organized “China Debate Week.” Neil Rudenstine issued a statement articulating why such a visit affirmed “the traditions and purposes” of Harvard. “The invitation does not represent an institutional endorsement of the speaker’s particular point of view,” Rudenstine said. “Rather, it reflects a broader belief that we are ultimately stronger—as a university committed to education, reasoned discourse, and mutual understanding—if groups within our community have broad discretion to invite speakers of their own choosing.”

  It was one thing to involve the president when the authoritarian head of state of the world’s most populous nation was coming to Harvard; but for Larry Buell to contact Summers four days before the arrival on campus of a relatively unknown poet-provocateur—anti-Semite or no—showed just how edgy the campus had become. Rather than risk the president’s anger, Buell preferred to ask Summers’ opinion, even if it meant sacrificing a part of the faculty’s autonomy.

  During that phone call, Summers reportedly told Buell that while he certainly wouldn’t have invited Paulin, he would defer to the English department as to how to handle the visit. Summers apparently believed that withdrawing the invitation would create an appearance problem, and that his Morning Prayers talk would be seen to have discouraged free speech on campus. But he also thought that the Department of English should explicitly disassociate itself from Paulin.

  The next morning, Helen Vendler called Paulin, who was teaching at Columbia University while on sabbatical from Oxford. She told him of the situation that had developed and the pressure the department was under. She suggested that perhaps there should be some sort of panel discussion or question-and-answer session in which the charges of anti-Semitism could be discussed. Whether because he found the invitation half-hearted or because he did not want to engage in such a discussion, Paulin declined.

  Later that day Larry Buell posted a message on the English department website saying that the Tom Paulin reading “will not take place.” Moreover, he wrote, the department regretted the “widespread consternation that has arisen as a result of this invitation, which had been originally decided last winter solely on the basis of Mr. Paulin’s lifetime accomplishment as a poet.”

  If Summers had indeed asked for a disavowal, there it was: Harvard’s English department wanted nothing to do with Tom Paulin. For his part, the president released a statement saying, “My position was that it was for the department to decide, and I believe the department has come to the appropriate decision.”

  Then something unexpected happened. The “appropriate decision” prompted almost as much controversy as did the original invitation. Some suspected that the decision had been made under pressure from Summers—that as soon as the president stated his opinion, he’d given Buell an implicit command. Others thought that the canceled appearance was a lost educational opportunity regarding the exercise of free speech. Law school professor Charles Fried sent the Crimson a letter, co-signed by his colleagues Alan Dershowitz and constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, lamenting the cancellation. “What is truly dangerous is the precedent of withdrawing an invitation…” Fried wrote. “Now [Paulin] will be able to lurk smugly in his Oxford lair and sneer at American’s vaunted traditions of free speech.”

  The law professors were hardly the only ones who thought that the English department had buckled. Many of its own faculty felt that however misguided the original invitation had been, it should have been honored. Professors of literature, they suggested, ought to be especially sensitive to free speech issues, since many of the works they taught had be
en banned or continued to be the objects of censorship. In Paulin’s appearance, the English department had had a chance, however inadvertent, to practice what it preached, and it had instead skulked away from the opportunity.

  On Tuesday November 19—a few days after Paulin was to have lectured—the entire department convened to discuss what had happened. Larry Buell conducted the meeting, and Helen Vendler walked the faculty through exactly what had transpired. Peter Sacks, who had been Paulin’s strongest advocate, apologized for conducting insufficient due diligence. But the gist of the meeting was what to do about the fact that a department devoted to freedom of expression appeared to have caved in to political pressure. Skip Gates, who also taught in the English department, noted that Harvard had hosted white supremacist David Duke and black nationalist Malcolm X and survived. Why not Paulin?

  A vote was taken: though two professors abstained, the rest of the department—including Lisa New—voted to re-invite the poet. Two days after announcing that Tom Paulin would not be coming to Harvard, Larry Buell posted another announcement saying that Paulin was being asked back. But the invitation was less than enthusiastic. “The department in no sense intends to endorse the remarks by Mr. Paulin that have given offence,” Buell wrote. “We are glad that Mr. Paulin has in fact gone on record as regretting those remarks, stressing that they do not represent his real views”—which was not exactly what Paulin had said.

  Summers quickly produced a statement of his own. “Invitations to Harvard departments are commonly extended by those departments,” it began. His language was awkward, the tense passive, because the intent of the sentence was to remind the reader that he had nothing to do with inviting Paulin—just as he’d wanted people to know that he’d had nothing to do with Zayed Yasin.