Well, I admire Rawls' reputation for humility and decency, but in this case he might be correct as well as polite.
You really think lack of clarity is distinctive of Rawls?
Timothy Burke also has a good point.
http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/tburke1/
Even if what Summers said was true, Harvard could still cherry pick excellent women scientists.
No, he's certainly not an egregious offender.
I'm with FL on Rawls. I dig him, I swear. But boy oh boy, that's some lousy writing at times. Of course some interpretations of Rawls are stupid (in which case Rawls really shouldn't have been apologizing for them), but when I read Anderson's post I thought to myself that he did have some reason to be modest when it came to his writing.
Of course Rawls was one of the greatest philosophers of our age, and I'm a schmuck who can't finish his dissertation. So whatever.
Pointing out that Anderson's point about the "rhetorical assignment of burdens of proof" was the point I was trying to make in the earlier thread.
Not sure it matters, Labs--if everyone's been doin' it, it's not fair to call one guy on the carpet for it. Even in private.
It might be fair if there are reasons to think that the one guy is an egregious offender.
The same might go for Summers' remarks on West's scholarly production. Anderson:
an imperious violation of academic freedom in the hands of a President who applies privately tailored standards at his personal discretion.
The CD is really bad, though. It's hard to see how West had his freedom violated.
Oh, I'm not defending West on scholarly production (all I know's what I've heard, anyway). I find it hard to think he could be a particularly egregious offender in grade inflation, given that the average grade at Harvard has made it into the A range. I'm not sure about the last claim--would it have been a violation of freedom if the CD had been good? West should've got the Neptunes in.
Well, that's a joke, but I wouldn't want to lose the right to make a CD while holding an academic job. I think lack of scholarly production is the legitimate issue.
Of course. I wasn't suggesting that CDmaking on the side somehow raised issues. It's that he doesn't do scholarship, even while taking on the big extracurriculars. McWhorter might be mostly right, though he doesn't really support some of the claims about West at critical moments, and that makes me nervous.
I have no bone to pick with West: I haven't read him, and don't know his scholarship. Likewise, I don't know (nor does anyone) what Summers said to him, and vice versa. Reports, predictably, vary, although everyone agrees all criticism occured in a private meeting. I believe, also, that it was West who initially went to the papers. Although I can't substantiate that recollection.
That said when you're a freaking University professor (highest rank at Harvard, fewer than 20 exist, sample comparators Amartya Sen, William J. Wilson), and are cross-appointed to the Div school to enable the University to avoid the salary cap, I think a poor scholarly performance is a legitimate cause for Presidential oversight. If a drop in scholarship occurs in the context of non-scholarly galavanting, that becomes fair game. Likewise, in the context of a university-wide call to examine grade inflation, I don't think it would be out of line for the president to mention this topic to a faculty member he's meeting with, even this means making a direct criticism of that faculty member's grading record. It's entirely possible that Summers acted like a jerk and pissed West off needlessly (can you imagine), but I do not believe the facts publically available support Anderson's depiction of Summers singling West out and berating him unfairly. Unless she knows more than we do, she can't know that.