LETTER: Responding to Student Concerns about the Weatherhead Controversy

To the editors:

Thank you for publishing the op-ed by Johnny F. Bowman ’11, Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, and Abdelnasser A. Rashid ’11 (“On Kramer’s Statements,” Mar. 11, 2010) that was addressed to me, Professors Jeffrey Frieden and James Robinson, and President Faust. I am replying on behalf of myself alone. Their letter gives voice to their sincere reactions to Mr. Kramer’s statements, reactions that many of us feel those positions deserve. Their words are statements of resistance to attitudes that can easily be taken as racist and inhumane. It demonstrates the strength of our university and our society in general when its members insist on opposing what they believe to be hateful statements, especially ones that initially appear to be supported by a venerable institution such as Harvard. As these students are no doubt aware, the remarks described were not uttered at or under the auspices of Harvard or the Weatherhead Center, but the students’ response to the incident is appreciated nonetheless.

The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs cannot and will not take the specific actions that Mr. Bowman, Ms. Gharavi, and Mr. Rashid call for in their letter. This does not constitute support for Kramer’s positions—far from it. It constitutes an unswerving commitment to the principles of academic freedom and free speech, even when the content of that speech causes us institutional and personal embarrassment, which, I will be frank, it has done in this case. But please do not make the mistake of concluding that the Weatherhead Center has defended Mr. Kramer’s positions. To paraphrase Voltaire, many of us strongly disagree with what he has said, but will defend to the death his right to say it. The WCFIA statement these students refer to only makes the case that the speech in question is probably protected, for better or for worse. In another place and time, it might not be. In much of Europe, there might be legal grounds for prosecuting someone who propounded such positions. But we are at a university in the United States, the freest possible venue for making an ass out of oneself.

I cannot indulge in Professor Walt’s speculation about “what if” the target of Kramer’s policies had been different. The WCFIA has never excommunicated an affiliate for political or policy views. We cannot go in the direction Mr. Bowman, Ms. Gharavi, and Mr. Rashid suggest—vetting associates for such positions, even on something as distasteful as racism. What we can and must do is screen our affiliates for the highest possible scholarly qualifications, and then let them burnish or ruin their own reputations by non-scholarly utterances in the broader public sphere. Mr. Kramer has a Princeton Ph.D. and a record of scholarly publication, but he has not published recently in peer reviewed journals, so one might decide he is not an “active scholar” and should not therefore be affiliated with Harvard at all. That is an appropriate question for vetting, and as Director of the Weatherhead Center (currently on sabbatical), I can assure you, I will redouble my efforts to make sure our visiting scholars really are scholarly.

The bottom line is Mr. Bowman, Ms. Gharavi, and Mr. Rashid have set an excellent example of exactly what responsible and conscientious people should do: expose and oppose views that offend them and many others. That is a much better response to the Kramer affair than a system of vetting for views on sensitive issues.

BETH A. SIMMONS

Cambridge, Mass.

Mar. 11, 2010

Beth A. Simmons is Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs in the Department of Government at Harvard University. She is Director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.