Friday, July 22, 2011

Tact

Early in the week, I was excited to find out that, apparently, it was perfectly appropriate for us professors to call (at least, already graduated) students assholes, publicly, because if it's good enough for Larry Summers, it's good enough for me.  (Or see here as well.)  That seemed very cool to me.

But now it seems the Winklevosses are asking for redress from Drew Faust, so the question of whether I can go around openly insulting students' character without worrying about whether anyone at Harvard will care is, for now, at least somewhat open.

(Further commentary, including some people at Harvard pointing out the inappropriateness of it all, can be found at Shots in the Dark, in temporal order here, here, here.)

3 comments:

JeffE said...

[Reads letter.]

Really? Did the Winkles really send an open letter to the president of Harvard complaining about their characters' having been unfairly impugned seven years ago by a former (and somewhat disgraced) campus administrator, as though his insult were some kind of high-level diplomatic incident worthy of official reparations, or perhaps Pistols at Dawn on the Field of Honor, instead of just laughing it off like grownups? Really??

Summers was right. What assholes.

(I have not seen The Social Network.)

Anonymous said...

No, not really: the interview in which Summers called them a**holes seems to have been published only four days ago.

Anonymous said...

Summers is a shame for Harvard.

He does not deserve to be part of Harvard.