The clouds

The Harvard faculty has narrowly voted (218-185) to express “no confidence” in the leadership of Harvard President Lawrence Summers. Socrates was convicted of impiety by a roughly comparable vote of 280-220. Click here for the Harvard Crimson report, and here for the AP report.
The vote essentially represents the conviction of President Summers for not believing in the gods of the city. Unlike the “Apology of Socrates,” however, the apology of Summers was a ritually repeated exercise in self-abasement.
The resolution condemning Summers was the handiwork of Harvard Professor of Anthropology and of African and African-American Studies J. Lorand Matory. Speaking like a true Athenian, Matory commented following the vote, “There is no noble alternative for him but resignation.”
Let us now recall the words of the great Willliam F. Buckley Jr.: “I would rather be governed by the first 200 names in the Boston phone book, than by the Harvard faculty.” The wisdom of Buckley’s statement is proving timeless.
HINDROCKET adds: Of the educational institutions with which I have been associated, the one for which I have the least affection is Harvard. This story reminds me why. Summers is liberal, but not, apparently, liberal enough. His ritual denunciation by the wacko fringe of the Harvard faculty–oops, sorry, that’s a majority–is sickening. But this degradation has been a long time coming.