Summers Deserved a Public Forum, Not a Private One

To the editors:



The editorial “Squashing Summers” (Sept. 20) admits that Lawrence H. Summers “was not a perfect president” of Harvard but excoriates the hundreds of University of California (UC) faculty who objected to his planned talk to the UC Board of Regents as representing “the worst of academia.” Chair Richard Blum invited Summers to address a private dinner for the Regents, and then retracted the invitation after faculty objected.

The editorial alleges that this episode demonstrates that “the University of California has ceased to value academic freedom.” This view is apparently based on the notion that the planned Summers talk would somehow have advanced the “marketplace of ideas,” but in fact Summers would not have been giving a public speech in which the validity of his ideas on the proper place of women in science (or on any other topic) could be debated.

Instead, Blum invited Summers to address the Regents in private, without the opportunity for any meaningful public scrutiny or debate. The plan was apparently to honor Summers as an “expert” on higher education by giving him privileged access to the governing body of one of the world’s premier public educational institutions.

Blum’s invitation was extended without consulting the University community, and Summers was not even listed on the public agenda or any other public document. Until word of the event leaked out, faculty and students had no opportunity to indicate whether they considered Summers an appropriate recipient for such an honor from the University.

This controversy has nothing to do with academic freedom. Summers remains entirely free to present his views to university audiences and to the public at large, and I look forward to the day when he defend his views in public, whether at UC or elsewhere.



JOHN C. SIMS

Davis, Calif.

September 23, 2007



The writer is a professor of law at University of the Pacific currently visiting UC Davis.