I was a little shocked at Mr. Summers very first attempt at a response to Yascha's question about what went wrong at Harvard. In his list of things universities should do (training and preparing leaders, developing new ideas and setting the tone for cultural, political and policy debates), he leaves out what I think is the fundamental skill students need so much: how to think well.
His next comment illustrates the point. He says, "Paul Samuelson famously said that if he would be allowed to write the economics textbooks, he didn't care who would get to perform as the finance ministers going forward." Even looked at most generously, this view of education points the needle not about how to think, but what to think. Samuelson seems to believe that a properly written textbook would provide the ideas that students need. Perhaps that textbook would have contrary ideas that students would be asked to think through, compare and contrast, and defend with their own reasoning. But it doesn't sound like it.
The reason this is so important to me is that the rest of the conversation explores identity politics, the fashionable student vilification of Israel, the insularity of college administrations and their double standards. But all of these and more are results of bad thinking -- when there is thinking at all instead of just a base desire to conform -- among students, faculty and administrators.
Ironically, today's academic conformity is not so different from the conformity of the 1950s that the 60s radicals rebelled against. This time, though, the students and faculties and administrators of elite colleges have all banded together against anything that even alludes to nonconformity.
My hope here is that this brand of elitism has reached the extreme of its pendulum swing. And more, I hope this error gives more of a chance for students at non-elite schools to show their own stuff. Berkeley is not the only public -- or private -- college in California, or west of Chicago, yet how often is anything from UC Irvine or the the University of Washington or so many more heard from in the public square?
I'm not sure if it's fair to say that the East Coast/Ivy League monopoly is incestuous, exactly, but there's certainly a case to be made for that, which those of us in the rest of the country know pretty well. Maybe those great ideas for our cultural, political and policy debates that Summers wants to hear aren't just confined to those few colleges and media concentrated in the Boston/NY/DC Axis of Elitism. Maybe it's their conformity that we should be more worried about. Maybe we might have a more diverse discussion if we looked around a little bit more, and listened to hear the sounds of the non-elite trying to say something.
And maybe that's what Trump voters are trying to get across. Not eloquently, not aspirationally, not very clearly at all. But that might because they, like their elite counterparts, also haven't been taught to think well.
I was deeply gratified by Summers' eloquent defense of liberalism in education. He drew attention to the dangers that "woke" progressivism poses to the project of higher education, but perhaps could have also pointed to the dangers that progressive extremism in academia poses to the US political community as a whole.
No, the fact that not a single nuclear weapon has been used since Nagasaki doesn't guarantee that we'll be able to do so into infinity. But eighty years is too long for luck or coincidence to be plausible; somehow humanity *must* have developed more wisdom than we give ourselves credit for. Maybe we should try to understand what it is so we can do more of it
Great interview and discussion with Larry Summers -- thanks. I admire him greatly as a public intellectual: I don't always agree with him, but I always find him well worth reading or listening to.
I am a little concerned to learn that he's accepted a seat on the board of Open AI. I hope that it doesn't turn out to be another case like Theranos, where George Shultz was brought onto the board to lend his credibility to what turned out to be a scam. Best of luck to him.
I was a little shocked at Mr. Summers very first attempt at a response to Yascha's question about what went wrong at Harvard. In his list of things universities should do (training and preparing leaders, developing new ideas and setting the tone for cultural, political and policy debates), he leaves out what I think is the fundamental skill students need so much: how to think well.
His next comment illustrates the point. He says, "Paul Samuelson famously said that if he would be allowed to write the economics textbooks, he didn't care who would get to perform as the finance ministers going forward." Even looked at most generously, this view of education points the needle not about how to think, but what to think. Samuelson seems to believe that a properly written textbook would provide the ideas that students need. Perhaps that textbook would have contrary ideas that students would be asked to think through, compare and contrast, and defend with their own reasoning. But it doesn't sound like it.
The reason this is so important to me is that the rest of the conversation explores identity politics, the fashionable student vilification of Israel, the insularity of college administrations and their double standards. But all of these and more are results of bad thinking -- when there is thinking at all instead of just a base desire to conform -- among students, faculty and administrators.
Ironically, today's academic conformity is not so different from the conformity of the 1950s that the 60s radicals rebelled against. This time, though, the students and faculties and administrators of elite colleges have all banded together against anything that even alludes to nonconformity.
My hope here is that this brand of elitism has reached the extreme of its pendulum swing. And more, I hope this error gives more of a chance for students at non-elite schools to show their own stuff. Berkeley is not the only public -- or private -- college in California, or west of Chicago, yet how often is anything from UC Irvine or the the University of Washington or so many more heard from in the public square?
I'm not sure if it's fair to say that the East Coast/Ivy League monopoly is incestuous, exactly, but there's certainly a case to be made for that, which those of us in the rest of the country know pretty well. Maybe those great ideas for our cultural, political and policy debates that Summers wants to hear aren't just confined to those few colleges and media concentrated in the Boston/NY/DC Axis of Elitism. Maybe it's their conformity that we should be more worried about. Maybe we might have a more diverse discussion if we looked around a little bit more, and listened to hear the sounds of the non-elite trying to say something.
And maybe that's what Trump voters are trying to get across. Not eloquently, not aspirationally, not very clearly at all. But that might because they, like their elite counterparts, also haven't been taught to think well.
I think that the existence of nuclear weapons prevented a WW3 even worse than WW2 was.
I was deeply gratified by Summers' eloquent defense of liberalism in education. He drew attention to the dangers that "woke" progressivism poses to the project of higher education, but perhaps could have also pointed to the dangers that progressive extremism in academia poses to the US political community as a whole.
No, the fact that not a single nuclear weapon has been used since Nagasaki doesn't guarantee that we'll be able to do so into infinity. But eighty years is too long for luck or coincidence to be plausible; somehow humanity *must* have developed more wisdom than we give ourselves credit for. Maybe we should try to understand what it is so we can do more of it
Good to see Yascha
Great interview and discussion with Larry Summers -- thanks. I admire him greatly as a public intellectual: I don't always agree with him, but I always find him well worth reading or listening to.
I am a little concerned to learn that he's accepted a seat on the board of Open AI. I hope that it doesn't turn out to be another case like Theranos, where George Shultz was brought onto the board to lend his credibility to what turned out to be a scam. Best of luck to him.