There are 1437 words in this post about university governance.

Not ONE of them is the word "student"

Of course, to be fair, it is about Harvard and
Harvard has very little to do with its students.

"But of course there would be no danger that the employees would stage a vote of no confidence, because every employee would take for granted that a CEO can be brusque, can chew out underperforming employees, can delegate as much or as little authority to his subordinates as he deems good for the firm, and can deny accusations of discrimination."

That's what I have been saying for years... corporate structures are fascist. The employees wouldn't dare vote.

Cornel West is a far more interesting and dynamic individual than Summers could ever hope to be. Their interaction is a perfect example of how intelligence and freedom of thought can be silenced or chased off by the exercise of CEO power.

I think it is time for everyone to admit that Harvard has become a parody of itself and find some new academic gods.

Good post. What you describe seems to be a common institutional problem with governmental and non profit organizations (where the caretakers or employees seize control of the institution's mission). This phenomenon extends to public elementary and secondary education as well. Teachers believe the schools exist for their benefit, rather than to serve the public. Teachers' unions believe what is good for teachers must be good for students (not that they are always in conflict, but it does happen).

"This phenomenon extends to public elementary and secondary education as well. Teachers believe the schools exist for their benefit, rather than to serve the public."

Oh please, the teacher's unions are the only thing standing in the way of the final conversion of our educational system into a discriminatory for-profit standardized test training academy.

Teachers contribute a larger percentage of their take home pay directly back into their work than does ANY other profession. Next time you do your taxes, check out line 23 on the 1040 form. Teachers spend so much of their wages on supplies for the classroom that we have given them a special deduction to show our gratitude. I am still looking for the economist expense deduction.

The CEO spirit at Harvard nearly destroyed the best Afro-American studies department in the country, disappointing the settled expectations of hundreds of current students. Personally, I think Summers was just jealous because Professor West got to be in the Matrix movies. :)

If you want to see what private business interests do to a school, look no further than U Chicago, which specializes in... big suprise... promoting private business interests in every sphere of life. But hey, they have a record number of winners of the famed "Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel."

Judge Posner's analogy to worker's coops is excellent. I believe that how we design institutions is a critical factor in how they progress and develop. Non-profits consistently have the value-inhibiting problem of being dominated by the employees, who maximize short-term gain at the expense of long-term institutional effectiveness.

The problem is exacerbated where such employees have access to enormous sums of money in trust funds or endowments, which tend to insulate them from market pressures. Such is the case with universities, where faculty are armed with a virtual entitlement to slices of endowment money and tenure. These two factors are a major reason why Professor Becker's confidence in the market seems misplaced--market forces are very weak with these perpetuities in place.

I used to be in graduate school in the humanities. I left, because I could not personally tolerate the political correctness and the insulation from challenge that the endowment entitlement created. Trustees generally are deferential to faculty, because their own self-interest in long-term institutional effectiveness is altruistic, not financial (as with shareholders). They would understandably rather be cordial with the university community than make the tough choices that shareholders, for example, are accustomed to making.

Hopefully, once in a while, they will rise up and stand for the institution.

I don't understand the position that faculty should dictate policy.

Again, to abstract to the non educational world, it is generally accepted that he who pays for the factory gets to decide what to do with it. If the workers actually acquire the assets of a company either by being original investors or by buying out other owners, THEN they get to make administrative decisions concerning those assets. It is certainly not the case that just showing up to work entitles you to any discretionary authority. This arrangement, at a minimum, serves to prevent uninvested parties from dictating policy to those who are paying the bills.

In what sense has ownership of the assets of Harvard been transferred to its employees?

Are all organizations the same? Do they differ not only in terms of composition, but also in terms of mission, purpose, vision, etc.? Even if we assume that universities can be compared to profit-making firms, what exactly is the product that universities sell? And who exactly are the customers, stakeholders?

When thinking about such questions, the case can be made that major research universities are different from liberal arts colleges are different from community colleges are different from high schools are different from pre-schools, etc. And that's not getting into differences between private, parochial and public schools in terms of management tools available to executives at each.

What a CEO can or cannot (does or does not, should or should not) do in the business/corporate world depends on the type of organizational culture s/he works within and the particular industry in which the firm exists. Industry determines many basic assumptions of a given business model (business model being shorthand for a particular understanding of the firm's mission, customers, shareholders, employees, stakeholders, product, market, role of capital, etc.).

And what are the primary measures of success among universities? Is it endowment size? Is it "influence" in public discourse? Is it popularity? Is it reputation? Is it profitability? Is it stakeholder satisfaction?

Like Summers' remarks, this posting is itself very interesting and provocative. It is indisputable that faculty members have shorter time horizons than a university itself, and it is sometimes the case that their interests are not always perfectly aligned -- though in many cases they will be. But by this same metric why do you believe that Summers will act as a better agent for Harvard than his faculty? His time horizon as president is significantly shorter than that of most tenured faculty, and his own career interests are not perfectly coupled to the success of the institution either. Witness the fact that you declare Summers "the most exciting and dynamic president that Harvard has had since James Conant" without any reference to whether his leadership has actually benefitted Harvard.

Your answer appears to be that the trustees of the Harvard Corporation -- who presumably have nothing other than the interests of Harvard at heart -- will cure the principal-agent problem and ensure that Summers acts only in the institution's best interests. Putting aside for a moment the problems with this view that Professor Becker raises, you fail to take into account the fact that Summers helped appoint three of the seven members of the Board of the Trustees; and Summers himself is the fourth member.

Individuals with personal loyalty to Summers thus comprise a majority of the board. Regardless of how much a trustee might fear a loss of reputation were he seen as performing badly, it is untenable to suggest that a trustee would place this possibility of inchoate disapprobation ahead of the value of his professional friendship with Lawrence Summers (particularly after Summers has already demonstrated the value of said friendship, and particularly given the difficulty inherent to measuring whether a trustee is indeed doing a bad job).

By consequence, there is little reason to believe that the board will actually restrain Summers or move to replace him if he actions disserve the university unless the opposition to Summers is extraordinarily mobilized and impassioned. Why, then, will he necessarily act as a more loyal agent to Harvard than professors who have devoted far greater proportions of their careers to the institution?

Judge Posner is lucid and sensible, as always. I would offer just one technical revision: the CEO has not commonly been seen as the agent of the stockholders; rather, he/she is the agent of the firm, since the firm (through its board), not the stockholders, controls the CEO. Of course, as a practical matter, if a majority of the stockholders were sufficiently determined to have the CEO removed, they could vote out the current board and vote in a board that would be committed to the CEO's removal. But the stockholders do not directly have a say in whether the CEO stays or goes, and a board would be justified in retaining a CEO who they thought was best for the firm even if they also knew that a majority of the stockholders wanted the CEO removed.

I would also add that I have been a student at four universities -- 2 middle-tier large public schools, 1 highly regarded small private school, and (within the last 10 years) Harvard. Based on my experience, Harvard's reputation for academic excellence is entirely deserved.

Interesting post. I am no expert on college administration, and I do not know much about Harvard in particular, so my comments can only be general.

Universities are set up differently than corporations for a reason. They want to encourage independent thinking and academic freedom. Corporations do not want too much dissent, and their main concern is the bottom line. Thus, a university president is not like a hard-driving CEO. Faculty members expect to be treated with a bit more deference than the corporate guy in the cube. In fact, that's one reason why people forsake the financial rewards of the corporate world to become academics. They obtain a better lifestyle, more respect, and more control over their own work and work environment.

The presidency of a major university is an inherently political job. Sometimes, hard-driving tactics might help shape up a troubled institution. But they also will create enmity and thus should be avoided unless there is no choice. Is Summers a little rough around the edges because he needs to be or because he does not have the patience for politics? If the former, I applaud him; if the latter, his troubles are deserved.

Final note: if the CEO of a biotech firm stated, even hypothetically, that women are genetically inferior to men at science, he would be facing a revolt from within his workforce, and rightly so. It is bad management to make unsupported, provocative statements that can do no good and can only offend. Summers should have thought twice about what he said before he said it. It is a fair point that the under-representation of women on science faculties might be the product of forces other than discrimination. But there are more politic ways of saying that.

The problem with limiting a university president's accountability to faculty is that there isn't another group _better_ informed and interested in proposed policies. While it may be true that tenured faculty do not have the long-time horizons, their horizons are at least longer than the students', or other employees'. Perhaps trustees know more about the financial implications of the president's policy decisions, but there are plenty of other implications for most decisions, even most financial decisions. Besides, in addition to English professors, there are economics professors, law professors, and physicists who might have meaningful contributions to make to the debate. There are more Rabis in the academy (especially at schools, like Harvard, with the huge endowments that presidents are responsible for) than Judge Posner is giving credit for.

I think one of the problems with excessive faculty discretion and control is that the endowment entitlement entrenches attitudes that can tend to place unrealistic or even counterproductive weight on the importance of debate and reflection, as opposed to real world understanding and the facts of life.

A major reason why the faculty tend to be systemically biased is because all of them are either partially or mostly funded by (1) the endowment perpetuity, (2) government funding, or both. It is this systemic bias, combined with the unfettered nature of tenure, which creates the need for the Trustees to exert some counterbalancing weight on the faculty as a whole.

A major purpose of the Rule Against Perpetuities, as well as state constitutional restrictions on monopolies and perpetuities, was to break up absolute power structures that can entrench themselves when an endowment, whether it be of land or money or title of nobility, becomes close to an absolute right. Universities and the faculty in particular have succeeded in capturing a big perpetuity. At Harvard, it's now over $20 billion!

What has become abundantly clear from the emerging differences in opinion between Becker and Posner is that Becker is the only one with bona fide conservative creds. Haven't faculties been the university for a long, long time (since faculties, after all, are what makes a university)? Maybe all those years of deciding cases rather than making them have made Posner flabby in his conservative principles. I wonder if anyone has ever shown whether newer judges tend to be more incrementalist in their judgments. Circuit court judges must grow accustomed to receiving so little feedback on their decisions. Academics, to effect change, have to be persuasive. That in itself may be a reason to leave the status quo alone.

Couldn't the university circumscribe faculty involvement in decisionmaking without eliminating it entirely in favor of oversight by trustees?

It might be worth considering the real value that students get out of attending a school like Harvard. Certainly, part of it is the education itself. Still, it's hard to believe that the instruction is so much better as to justify Harvard's "premium" - its ability to attract the best students and some of the best faculty in the country. In all probability, many students attend Harvard as a signal to future employers: see, I got into an extremely selective school, I must be brilliant. There is circularity here: Harvard can afford to be selective because it gets so many applicants, and it gets so many applicants in part because it is selective (and can thus send a meaningful signal about its students).

So I think we have the ingredients for path-dependency. It's a coordination game in which the best teachers and students identify a focal point and go there. It could as easily have been somewhere with better weather. In this view, Summers is fine as long as he doesn't disturb the equilibrium enough for a new focal point to emerge. In fact, he sits in a position of unique power, since the accidents of history have made his school the preeminent university in America. I suspect that this is the real reason for the controversy: control of this focal point is a valuable ideological tool, and interest groups are flexing their muscles to assert their dominance.

Of course, being the most selective isn't the same as being the "best." Summers can help decide if Harvard will be a dynamic source of new ideas, like the University of Chicago, or a backwater college with a mediocre football team, like Williams.

James, Williams is THE best D-III athletic school in the entire nation, which is why it is the only current D-III school to have been awarded the Sears Cup. Incidentally, it's also currently ranked #1 among liberal arts colleges, and has been for the last several years. When was the last time Harvard -- or Chicago, for that matter -- was ranked #1?

Harvard also has substantially more students than Williams just on the undergraduate level, not to mention the hordes of graduate students.

If you want to talk about inferior backwater colleges, look no further than AmHerst.

I would suggest our universities are unique institutions that have developed organically over several hundreds of years in free societies, with their origins and enduring distinguishing features in ecclesiastical communities, not corporate business. There is no reason why business methods might not be usefully employed to examine the contemporary operation of these institutions that have so many modern elements (in purpose and funding as well as governance and structure), but it will not in the end help explain their internal processes. For all the innovations in size, cost and government regulation of higher education, the role of fundraising, and the impact of race, the university still wears its medieval costume to conduct its business.

Faculty (especially in humanities and social sciences), like their ecclesiastical predecessors are as much ideologues and sectarians, as workers - even if they are committed to and produce top rank independent research (Professors Posner and West are excellent examples). There is nowhere where their conflicts are likely to be more intense, or triggered by small or symbolic statements by those who possess leadership status than in the places where they are the ministers. They have their flocks - their students - to think about, and their extended flocks (their readerships). It was the same when heads of Colleges espoused a (new) ecclesiastical vision, which it was believed represented its imposition.

There is much arrogance and vanity in this, and even dementia, but even allowing for this, the relationship of academics to their institutions and to their leaders (in the University and their departments) will never be properly explained in rational terms. That University Presidents fall foul of one or another of the forces that have led them, eagerly, to take up their posts (and it is not a simple matter of appointment to a job, but the outcome of long a long process with many formal and informal components). Periods of great success and harmony may turn into conflict, failure and bitterness. The history of the American presidency is not complete without considering Woodrow Wilson's time at Princeton. Any University head who has the independence of mind of say what he thinks, will nevertheless looks at the institutional complexity with which he has to work, in which mamy will have the ability to frustrate him even if they can do nothing constructuve, and decide whether or not there is an issue worth fighting. If not, it is best to placate and get on with power.

That said, one should add that since the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, the liberal elite (who dominate the university faculties) have in their frustratio turned with increasing venom on any Bush-substitute. Summers is in part the victim of this essentially empty but dangerous thrashing, and he is is well advised to placate it, and watch it soon turn on another.

"the liberal elite (who dominate the university faculties) have in their frustratio turned with increasing venom on any Bush-substitute."

That is silly, this has nothing to do with Bush or a Bush substitute, and by the way Larry Summers was a CLINTON cabinet secretary. At issue here is corporate governance of universities, and since BOTH political parties in the US are to varying degrees pro-corporate, your attempt to characterize this issue as part of the FOX News "culture war" is rather unhelpful to the debate.

The only people likely to oppose Posner's CEO-ification of universities are 1) the students, who would perceive it as yet another obstacle to self-determination in education, 2) the faculty, who as someone pointed out often chose academia for its non-corporateness, and 3) those few remaining fans of free-thought in the US/UK.

And of course category #1 and 2 would have to exclude those students and faculty at places like U Chicago who are willing to sacrifice their own free thought to the double-plus-good agendas of the ruling class in the hopes of diversifying into some scraps from the bacchanal of lassiez-faire capitalism. (Present company excluded of course.)

At the risk of seeming a simpleton, I'm not sure anyone has yet explained what the purpose of a university is.

Is the main goal to educate students who will go on to create a better-functioning world? Is it to gather great minds who will do important and useful research? Is it to create a space free of the pressures of society where pure thought can gain purchase? Is it (more realistically) a diploma mill that punches young people's tickets on the gravy train? Is it a sort of self-sustaining quasi-corporation that needs to regularly raise money to keep on going?

Who does the University primarily serve? The students? The faculty? The administration? Society?

Until we have decent answers to these questions, it's hard to say what the place of a college president actually is.

"Their interest is to get as much from the institution as they can before they retire; what happens afterwards has no direct effect on them unless their pensions are dependent on the institution’s continued prosperity. That consideration aside (it has no application to most professors' pensions), their incentive is to play a short-run game, to the disadvantage of the institution...."

Posner ignores that professors are not solely motivated by cold hard cash. Some professors are interested in their legacies and reputations, which are bolstered by the continued and future prestige of the institution where they spent the majority of their careers. Legacies' and reputations' value exceeds one's lifetime; they can also be a gift to one's children and grandchildren, or an indicator of quality (e.g., Black's Law Dictionary is highly prized as a reference tool because Black made a name for himself). Any professor interested in his legacy or reputation would seek to improve the institution where he is tenured. He would not seek to exhaust the resources before he is gone, but rather would consider himself a trustee of the institution's purpose and ideals. He would not have a short-term view. Posner is wrong.

Loweel- Yes, Williams has had a run of good luck with its football team, punctuated by regular devastating losses to Amherst. If the term "backwater" means anything, though, it's no contest between Amherst and Williamstown. One thing we can all agree on, I think, is that the western side of Massachusetts has far better schools than the eastern end.

By the way, the first Heisman trophy was won by a player at the University of Chicago.

Finally, Corey (who wrote "And of course category #1 and 2 would have to exclude those students and faculty at places like U Chicago who are willing to sacrifice their own free thought to the double-plus-good agendas of the ruling class in the hopes of diversifying into some scraps from the bacchanal of lassiez-faire capitalism.") - get a life! Students and faculty at the University of Chicago are some of the most independent-minded in the world. If you don't like the traditional Chicago approach to economics, fine - but recognize that:

1. Chicago is not monolithic. Its faculty provides a wide array of viewpoints on economics. See Steven Levitt, both Posners, et al.

2. Even if Chicago truly were in thrall to free-market economics, that would be far from pro-corporate. In general, corporations are not big fans of the rigors of the marketplace, and they seek to circumvent it as much as possible.

3. Of course, motivation is something that can only be guessed at, but I suspect that most Chicago faculty could make far more in the private sector than they do teaching. They do it at least in part because they reject corporate constraints on intellectual curiosity. If they truly were scrounging for capitalist scraps, surely they could do better than the south side of Chicago and a teaching salary.

Before claiming that the trustees can best guard the true interests of the university, Posner ought to define what the objective function of the university is.

Intellectual honesty and freedom to express hypotheses without facing a witch hunt would be a convenient starting point.

The point of this controversy is not what the raison d'etre of Harvard or any other college is. It is the fundamental idea that good faith, plausible hypotheses should be treated with calm, rational deliberation. Getting the vapors over something which may be uncomfortable and instigating a vote of no confidence does not contribute to that basic platform... especially among science faculty. That's what makes the whole thing so ridiculous.

From what I've seen, U Chicago students, in all departments, are extraordinarily weird people. For many, that is a bad thing. If you are weird yourself it is comforting. Regardless, it is hardly a school of pre-corporate conformists. There is a difference between an econ nerd and a soulless pre-MBA (a big difference). For the latter try Duke University.

Now someone will jump on and sing the praises of Duke. Let us all praise our alma maters and cease talking about policy, about which everyone on this thread only speaks nonsense anyway.

Cornel West was one of the few academics at Harvard that was able to recognize the racist nature of capitalism and competition.
Competition between people of unequal natures will naturally lead to the person of lesser ability into slavery.
That is what I mean when I say capitalism leads to slavery. Because it embraces difference between people and speaks of comparative advantages, it must also embrace the master-slave dialogue.
I would not be looking to Cornel West for answers were it not for the inherent racism of lassiez-faire economics.
Furthermore, let me add on the teaching issue, that holding teachers accountable is merely a wedge of the right. Allow me to elaborate:
As anyone who has gone to public school, from kindergarden to undergraduate studies (and nonreligious private school for undergraduate studies) teachers obviously have liberal biases. I don't deny that. But that isn't what is at issue here. The right will say that they are brainwashing our children with their propoganda, will speak of "parents rights" and lead us to a complete privatizing of education, where people get taught what they wish to, rather than what the government mandates.
If we are to continue this country, we must allow the government to have its say to young people from a very early age. That

"Competition between people of unequal natures will naturally lead to the person of lesser ability into slavery.
That is what I mean when I say capitalism leads to slavery. Because it embraces difference between people and speaks of comparative advantages, it must also embrace the master-slave dialogue."

Let me be up front in stressing that there are numerous dimensions along which this argument makes no sense to me. Without implying anything whatsoever about racial differences from my perspective, it seems to me that the basis of this argument is extraordinarily racist. What does unequal natures mean here? Aren't you saying that capitalism's failing is that it is intrinsically UNINTERESTED in race, instead focusing on the ability to compete?

How would Judge Posner apply his comments to the University of Chicago Law School -- which is the most "Professor-centric" institution of which I have been a part? (I am also an alumnus of Harvard College.)

Also, let us not minimize the importance of Harvard's "customers". Certainly, a CEO should pay close attention to his or her customers. Certainly, a wise, commonsensical CEO should steer clear of potential insults to large swaths of the consumers of the company's products.
In this, Summers failed. I agree that he may be the subject of a witch hunt. I support logically rigorous debates on even the most sensitive of subjects. (I am a Chicagoan, in this sense.) However, it is part of a University President's job to be politically astute, and to anticipate likely misreadings of his statements. Many, including but not limited to female students and alumni of Harvard, will have read his question as countenancing biological determinism -- an attitude which may harm them in myriad ways. (For example, it is foreseeable that sexists will cite President Summers' remarks to ratify their own biases, including the (biologically) undiverse status quo in the sciences.) I do not argue that this harm/insult was a logical consequence of Summers' statements; merely that it was a foreseeable one.

Summers wasn't wrong to challenge liberal orthodoxies. He erred in confusing the roles of leading Economist with that of Chief Executive. He, however inadvertently, insulted a substantial group of his customers.

Joshua Walker
Menlo Park, California

ADDENDUM: To Judge Posner's rebuttal that the Dean of the University of Chicago Law School is relatively independent I cannot directly reply, because I, as a student, was never privy to such structure. Regardless, the real power of faculty members may not correlate with the instant goverance regime, particularly in the Chicago context. While incredibly stimulating intellectually -- I had the strong impression that the Chicago Professors dominated the life and course of the school more than at peer schools. Whether this shared impression was caused by relatively greater / quarterly examination demands on students (which may impede independent research and extracurriculars), the individual bargaining power of star faculty in relation to the total pool/school size, or the attitudes of the students themselves, I do not know.

On a separate point, one may excuse occasional brusqueness in a chief executive. Hubris, however, can be fatal to man and institution alike. Which was President Summers accused of?

R posted "There is a difference between an econ nerd and a soulless pre-MBA (a big difference). For the latter try Duke University."

This comment is not only a low blow but also a complete fallacy. I will not bother to offer an in depth explanation or defense of Duke University. But I will say, that as a current student, I know for a fact that you are completely wrong and have no basis for your criticism. If you really want to see soulless, you only have to look at some of the University of Chicago’s undergraduates whose ideological dogmatism is only matched by their extraordinary pretentiousness.

I just want to say that I really enjoy reading this blog and the mostly thoughtful comments written as responses. Thank You.

"Cornel West was one of the few academics at Harvard that was able to recognize the racist nature of capitalism and competition."

I did not write this post. Someone has used my name and email address. This is a childish and pathetic move and is destructive to the free and open nature of this discussion.

Please stop doing this now.

Moo,

My basis is that I have attended both institutions. Have you?

And yes, it was a low blow, though not a fallacy, partial or complete. Duke is a more conformist place that the University of Chicago. Not that it doesn't have its strengths. I sort of think this whole "my alma mater over yours" bit is silly and I wanted to see if anyone would step up and defend Duke.

You may be right that Chicago students are more pretentious than Duke students, but they are not politically conformist. I can't even think of which direction you mean. Conservative? Many of the law professors are, but the students are split fairly evenly. Liberal? Probably most undergrads are, but what undergrads, anywhere, aren't?

The truth is, I have self interest as an almuni to hype Duke. Yes! Duke is great. Thanks Moo. Send your kids there.

Anyway, yes, this whole thing is silly and I have made us all dumber for having written this post, myself most of all. Soon I will use caps-lock to make my points more persuasive, like THIS. Please, everyone, stop doing that.

As a final note, I request that you all stop mistaking earnestness for thoughtfulness. Most of the posts on this thread are earnest, yes. But are they thoughtful? Read them again.

I am with you Corey. Soon there will be a bizarro R, insulting everyone and their dear alma maters to boot.

However, the only real defense to this type of attack is to sound consistently more reasonable than your bizarro self. As a fellow liberal, I will say that nine times out of ten you are more reasonable than the post at issue. Also you rarely end your posts with a run-on "that." But that one time out of ten, I am not sure. Slow it down a little.

I guess I struck a nerve with that U Chicago comment. Given the context I have to conclude it was a Chicago student that decided to pretend to be me. What a cowardly way to represent your school.

The world needs more earnestness R, that is the quality that permits me to stand behind the things I say with my actual identity. Was it thoughtfulness that led you or one of your fellow Chicago associates to appropriate that identity from me?

I will not stop posting here. If someone takes my identity, I will point it out and use another.

"But that one time out of ten, I am not sure. Slow it down a little."

Ironically, it was style and traditional notions of proper academic work that set Summers off against Cornel West.

I am sorry if I sound defensive or accusatory, but I'm pretty sure at this point behaving more like an academic is not going to help my ability to be credible in this forum.

Ok, I am going to continue with this, because I like ridiculousness.

Corey -- why do you suspect a U Chicago student over all other possible evil-doers? Do they teach idenitity theft there? I would suspect one of the dumber conservatives you do battle with daily. Anyone seen Palooka around?

As to earnestness -- no, I think there's too much of that. Rather, there's too much fake earnestness. It's harder to fake kidding. I stand behind my nonsense as much as anyone else his or hers. Anyway, keep fighting the good fight. I'm with you. Just want you to be more convincing is all.

It's not style that you need to slow down but reasoning. Getting upset is fine, but don't emote your way through an argument -- you will say things that you later disagree with.

Back on topic: Larry Summers blah blah blah. Witch hunt! Witch hunt! Sexist! Racist! Come on, who's next?

"Duke is a more conformist place that the University of Chicago"

A typo? Why that could not be the true R. Fake R, I challenge thee! Identity thief! Come out of hiding. I'll bet you're conspiring with Palooka as we speak.

In all seriosness, whoever is the fake Corey really ought never to do it again. I think you've hurt his feelings, and besides, even if you are a conservative, you have to admit it would be awful boring around here with Corey gone and nobody to make you upset. Now, now.

May I suggest to both Posner and Becker that they at least contemplate going to a registration system for comments, as it would prevent "R" and others like him from disrupting the converstation by stealing identities and posting under multiple handles.

Palooka, when you point at someone else, five fingers point back at yourself. I, who share Corey's political views and only wish he were less insane, have much less incentive to impersonate him than yourself, who has been repeatedly out maneuvered by his vehement posting.

J'accuse

"when you point at someone else, five fingers point back at yourself"

Five fingers! Why it's only three. The real R would not have made such a mistake. Fake R, you've struck again! And in such close proximity to a Palooka comment. Hmmm.

I think it is an excellent point that we cannot begin to discuss the role of a university president until we have defined the role of a university.

This is far too general, but universities are places for learning, study, and the exchange of ideas. This is true for both students and faculty. Moreover, both students and faculty are necessary to make a university. The students learn from the faculty and are attracted to the university because of the excellent teaching and research it offers. The faculty are attracted for the same reason. Thus, the goal is to create an optimal environment for learning and research.

A Harvard -- or a Chicago (about which I can speak more intelligently) -- does more than that: it attracts an elite type of student and faculty. The elite schools have the money (whether from John D. Rockefeller or other sources) to build the best research facilities, pay the best faculty, and recruit the best students; for that reason, the best students are willing to pay $30K per year for the privilege of attending, not to mention the resume value of the school. The goal of an elite school is to maintain its elite status in order to continue that cycle.

A Harvard or Chicago is not likely to lose its brand easily; even an awful president will not likely do lasting damage. But poor management can drive faculty away (more so than students, who will come for the name) and drive the school down in the rankings, at least somewhat. Probably the # 1 goal of a university president is to keep the faculty, donors, and students happy. That means recruiting strong faculty candidates, supporting innovative research of every kind, recruiting good students, and projecting a positive image to the press and to donors. All this involves a huge political balancing act. A president nurtures the university more than shapes it. He (or she) plants the trees, waters them, and helps them grow, all the while showing off the green forest to prospective students and faculty, the press, and donors. A president should have strong academic credentials, so that the elite faculty and students respect him or her, but need not be overly intellectual at heart. Administrative work is a different type of skill.

I don't know how well Larry Summers has nurtured the forest. The likes of Lee Bollinger, John Sexton, and Geoff Stone have shown excellent skills in that regard, because of their deft touch. That would be my #1 hiring criterion if I were looking for a university president or a high-profile dean.

Actually, one of the strangest things about Posner's post is that the Presidents he points to as examples of good leadership, Conant and Summers, are themselves former faculty. That in itself suggests there's something fishy in the argument. If faculty really do make poor owners, then why haven't CEOs from publicly-traded companies taken their place? The Harvard Corporation requires one form of leadership, which, presumably, the trustees serve well-enough. The Harvard Presidency requires another.

The more I read about the Summers controversy the more it looks to me like it's become an opportunity for the (apparently legion) enemies he's made with his lack of common touch to depose him. He's a perfectly fine CEO; just a poor University President.

Michael, that's not Posner's whole argument at all. It's not that faculty as people are inherently poor governors of a college, it is that faculty as an institution have an incomplete ability to represent the university's best interests. It is institutional analysis. Summers did not become unfit to adapt to the role of president by having been a faculty member. Through time in the Clinton administration and at the World Bank, he probably acquired excellent skills that added to his understanding of academic pursuits in a very unique way; thus his being hired.

The last line of the blog post also does not mean that faculty should be shut out of university governance, just that they should not consider themselves *the* university and the sum total of what a university is and does.

In response to David, I think that there is a decent argument that Summers's style may be in the long-term best interests of Harvard. There is a major backlash in this country against intellectual elitism that purports to know more about human life, economic reality, public policy, and such than it does, and looks down on the unwashed masses. Bush was elected last year in no small part because of this reaction against that stuff. To the extent that places like Harvard acquire a reputation for caring more about faculty's own research fancies and/or irrational biases than training students to be intellectually and economically prepared for the real world, they will not attract the best students.

I am one such person who chose a liberal arts college over the Ivies for that general reason, and I could off-hand name half a dozen or more friends who made the same choice. When I was in grad school at a private research university, I saw up close how such biases squeeze out other viewpoints and tend to ignore student needs and interests.

So, the Trustees may be right in having chosen someone who can challenge the Harvard employees to get with the times and step up to the plate. The women in science issue is one such issue. I have had several email discussions with highly intelligent people who have laughed off Harvard faculty as intellectual cowards for avoiding rational debate of it, and I can virtually guarantee they won't be sending their kids to any university that is so closed-minded.

Since when has intellectual elitism been considered a "problem" at Harvard, or at any other elite university? The fact is that Harvard, Chicago, Stanford, Columbia, etc., etc. are designed by the intellectual elite for the intellectual elite. That includes "conservative" and "liberal" elite alike.

The oft-discussed anti-elite "backlash" voters (to borrow a word from Thomas Frank), to the extent that they really exist, are no more fans of Becker or Posner than of Lawrence Tribe or Cornell West. All of them are members of the "intellectual elite." And, I submit, there is nothing wrong with that. We want to watch elite athletes compete in the Olympics, the World Series, and the NBA playoffs, and we want to see elite actors performing on the stage and screen. Why should we not want elite academics discussing the future of ideas?

The problem with some campuses is that they have let "political correctness" interfere with their ability to think rationally about subjects. There is a similar blindness among those who have an absolute faith in free markets or religion, and some dismiss all who disagree with them as "liberal elitist snobs." I think that this is basically a breakdown of communication, on both sides, resulting from a politically-charged atmosphere. A good university president will bridge that gap and make sure that everyone talks civilly to everyone else, regardless of their political persuasion.

There are a couple problems with the analysis from my perspective.

First, administrators are identified with the institution. In fact, their time horizons are much shorter than that of the average faculty member. Their interests are not the interests of the institution either. Institutional goals are an amalgam of the goals of all its components. The institutional goals that we favor here are those that align themselves most closely with the academic purpose of the institution.

Herein lays my second criticism. As the faculty is closer to the students and sources (the end product of the university and primary source of research activity) as well as sources of funding, the faculty forms a stronger base than the administration in observing the state of the university and future direction.

That said, the scope of individual faculty members is very small. So a wise administration would survey the faculty -- aggregating and synthesizing their observations. In particular, it seems that at Harvard, myopic faculty members have been allowed to run amok. It is the job of the administrators to bring discipline to these groups. Here again, the administration of Harvard fails.

It's a nice point that tenured faculty have longer associations with Harvard than its president, and with a longer time horizon comes a better alignment of personal and institutional interests. After all, the fate of these long-termers rises and falls with the fate of the institution. (Note that non-Harvards won't see this alignment of interests as perfectly, as tenured faculty will be successfully poached by other schools to a greater extent, though of course even Harvard loses faculty to less prestigious schools for other reasons, such as a desire to be in a fairer clime, or to be near family.)

But there's an additional dynamic at play that is the product of the fact that there's lots of faculty and only one president. As such, we should expect to see individual faculty members to free ride off one another's efforts to stand up for the institution's best interests. By contrast, faculty members who complain for selfish reasons that are detrimental to Harvard's longterm interests won't suffer from this free-riding problem. Can the faculty's internal govenance structures (e.g., departments and so forth) mitigate this effect?

More generally, aren't the problems of university governance to which Posner and Becker have addressed these columns endemic to all nonprofits?

I'll be provocative here, since this discussion is partly about Summers' provocative comments. Numerous commentators have stated that academia is "dominated" by "liberals." Let's assume for the sake of argument that 75% of all university professors are "liberal." What should we conclude from that? Here are some hypotheses:

1. Universities discriminate against conservatives.

or

2. Liberals are better at academic thinking than conservatives.

or

3. Liberal ideas are better than conservative ideas, which is why more smart people are liberal than conservative.

What would be the conservative response if a liberal university president suggested further study of hypotheses (2) or (3)?

Now that I'm sure I've angered 75% of everyone here, as this is largely a "conservative" audience, let's see the responses! :)

David,

I have to question your premise in #3. If you are basing this on universities, then you must be assuming that professors in the liberal arts are "smarter" than in the hard sciences.

Also, there must be the assumption that smarter people work at universities than not. That is quite a stretch.

Alternatively, we hear a lot of "smartness" mostly from those that cannot produce measureable results. So the "smartness" factor is possibly an appeal to authority to justify their work. To say that such and such is "smart" we need to be able to measure. Were we cannot measure, we cannot presume.

Interestingly, a survey of blogreaders shows that conservatives are more thinking than liberals -- the discriminant was statistically significant. Please also note that this has nothing to do with "smartness".

Paul, I think David was partly just suggesting three hypotheses for consideration, similar to Summers’s hypothesis.

My answer to that would be that I, as well as all my conservative lawyer buddies, would gladly take on those hypotheses on their merits and not fuss about them being illegitimate question. Our one request would be that we not have p.c. strictures around the debate that prevent us from bringing forth hypotheses or facts. That is what the faculty may do to further their views. It’s easy to win a debate by framing what can and cannot be said in that debate.

http://www.volokh.com (Professor Eugene Volokh and friends’s blog) has a post on the Univ. of Alabama Faculty Senate’s unanimous “hate speech” code that the students considered so restrictive that the Student Senate unanimously opposed it! That is how far political correctness can prevent debate. Loosen the restrictions, and we conservatives would be happy to get into the debate.

Here is a blog devoted to dispelling the notion that, for example, “values voters” (this guy is pro-life, and religious conservatives tend to be the butt of jokes in liberal arts halls, something I can personally vouch for and probably laughed at at one time in my life) are less intelligent than the academics or whatnot:

valuesvoter.blogspot.com

As to Kevin's question whether nonprofits generally exhibit the distortions that occur in universities, that has been my experience. Posner's economic analysis in the post appears to make that assertion--it is an institutional issue.

Corey said unions are "the only thing standing in the way of the final conversion of our educational system into a discriminatory for-profit standardized test training academy."

I certainly agree that Posner's claim that elementary and secondary school teachers believe the school exists for their benefit is silly. Anybody willing to tolerate K-12 students daily is not acting entirely in his rational self-interest. But unions in public schools have excessive legal leverage, to the point that it is not worth the monetary and legal costs to fire tenured teachers who demonstrate any incompetency short of rape. I've witnessed a few of these gems; they spend the majority of their daily teaching time chatting about pop culture, playing with their school-issued iBooks, and boasting of the extent to which they manage to avoid having to show up for or do any work.

When I took NJ's required-for-graduation standarized test, I found it neither discriminitory nor for-profit. I laughed at it, since I had learned most of the content in middle school. So did most of my classmates. What I find pathetic is not the trendiness of standardized tests; rather, it's the fact that there exist numerous public schools who have great trouble passing them. I'm not inclined to blame unions, in this case; the communities the teachers must teach to are rarely the most welcoming. Privitization would also do little to solve the problem of apathetic communities -- whether the root of that apathy be in their nature or in the constraints society has unfairly placed upon them. I don't know where the solution lies, but the problem is not standarized testing; it is the fact that schools consider them a problem.

Say what you will about professors, their teaching styles, their political beliefs, what have you. but how dare you make a blanket accusation that all faculty are in academia for personal gain?
Not all professors can capitalize off their name and write books and give lectures. Some spend the bulk of their time teaching to pay the bills and raise families and - most importantly - help their students.
Of course the spectrum of caring and talent is very broad, but I have had some outstanding professors and graduate student instructors (University of Michigan, Loyola University Chicago Law) who don't fall into your delusional, fictional world of greed. In fact, it's often at the bureaucracy level that such anti-teacher, anti-student greed exposes itself. Be that as it may, don't drag down your colleagues to make your point. It's a disservice to everyone.

"Say what you will about professors, their teaching styles, their political beliefs, what have you. but how dare you make a blanket accusation that all faculty are in academia for personal gain?"

What is this supposed to mean? That they hate being a professor, but do it anyway? I will immediately stipulate that professors may not have chosen their profession only for its monetary rewards (which isn't bad, especially considering the hours), but how does that translate into the selflessness you project onto them?

Judge Posner as usual wrote an interesting piece. I just have to make a couple of points:

1. Some faculty interaction with the administratoion might be quite useful. Consider the case when a university president tries to use his position for publicity, based on career concerns problem. Let's say that the above mentioned president has legitimate fears that his position may not be secure in the long run, and tries to produce a golden parachute in case he loses the current employment. In academia it translates into moving from a good university to a mediocre place in need of a celebrity administrator. To gain this reputation, you do not try to build a competitive university, you try to market yourself as a champion of say minorities in a fine university. If the intellectual output of the university starts to go south, or it loses research funding, loses good professors, ..., faculty members are the closest people to the problem to raise the red flags.
2. Regarding the Cornel West mess, who really cares? Now he can happily star in movies and produce rap albums. To be a run of the mill celebrity, you don't need to be a Harvard professor. The fewer of these clowns in Academia, the better off we are. My only regeret is that he went to Princeton instead of Holywood.

RWS - yes, I was just posing the hypotheses to mirror those suggested by Summers. I respect your view that you would address them head-on, and I believe that Judge Posner would do the same, because he enjoys debate of all kinds and wants to participate in the search for the truth. That would explain his, and your, lack of outrage at Summers for the things he said. However, my guess is that if any university president said the things I proposed, there would be a firestorm, fed by talk radio and Fox News, and the president would immediately be forced to apologize in what Judge Posner calls a "communist-style reeducation." In my view, regardless of whether the questions (either mine or Summers')are academically legitimate, they are politically stupid, and any university president would be ill-advised to ask them. It also raises, to me, the question whether Summers has the proper temperment for the job.

David,

What are you smoking?

The points you asserted are hardly original. They are the standard excuse lines that we have all heard before used to defend the blantant anti-academic PC movement. For example, see the discussion on that topic at left2right.

Note also that informational insularity is characteristic to "feeling" type individuals. It is a safeguard for a system of rationalizations that buffers their ego/id from externalities.

I guess that is why Summers has apologized so profusely. Personally, I would like to see my university president stand up for what seems to me to be *such* a bottom line for universities: free discourse and rational deliberation, even if it knocked us down a notch or two on the rankings or whatnot, because I think it would be in the institution's long-term best interests to maintain intellectual integrity, even if that may be uncomfortable for some people inside and outside the institution in the short term.

I do think the question Summers posed is not superfluous or just provocative. The woman who ran out with the vapors during his comments was from MIT, and apparently she had complained about the amount of lab space women had at MIT. So, MIT put together a small committee to investigate gender differences in lab space. The only problem was, the committee was all women, and she was the head of it. Of course they found gender differences existed, and naturally they all got more lab space as a result of the investigation. Such differences may or may not have existed, and there may or may not have been performance-based reasons for that, but to have the accusers be the judge and jury is sort of a farce. So, that is an example of how there are real bottom lines associated with how we address these questions. "Sensitivity" can morph into institutional ineffectiveness.

RWS - here's the thing: I agree with you that certain interest groups on campus can make unreasonable demands. There could be simple reasons for Harvard's lack of women science faculty: perhaps the qualified female candidates are less than 50% of the candidate field, or even if not, perhaps women have turned down Harvard's offers, for whatever reasons. Summers would have come out of this better, and stronger, if he had laid bare the details of Harvard's recruitment efforts and explained, calmly and rationally, the current composition of the faculty. If he had done so, no one could take him to task.

Perhaps Summers reacted badly because he did not believe that he had to justify his recruitment record to women faculty. Or perhaps he just wanted to strike back by saying, "hey, your gender doesn't do as well at science - maybe that's more than a coincidence." In my view, either one of these responses is juvenile. It displays a lack of recognition that the job of a university president is inherently political and demands a certain amount of compassion. Of course, one should not bow to unreasonable demands. But one should not treat PhD-educated faculty like a bunch of squabbling children, even if they are.

David, I saw Summers's comments and subsequent statements as actually overly bending over backwards towards the faculty, almost in a tail-between-his-legs sort of fashion-- far from being an impolitic backlash against the faculty. I mean, during his remarks he was almost compulsively saying "and I would like to be proven wrong" repeatedly. Then, after the faculty expressed their disdain, he kept apologizing. I mean, he was only suggesting a plausible hypothesis that has ample scientific data to back it up (at least the variance hypothesis).

A number of friends of mine (we've been carrying on an email conversation about this) have agreed that Summers basically caved and made it worse by trying to "feel their pain" and apologize when he had no need to. That just makes those that would criticize his hypothesis-posing think that their reaction has been validated. I think that does long-run damage to the intellectual climate.

Of course, the Trustees have backed him up, so they are the ones who seem to be standing most firm here.

The "variance" data means nothing in light of history: women have been discouraged from studying science, and certainly from becoming too good at it. It is just not the stereotype of what a woman should do, and that stereotype persists to this day. Summers knew that or should have known that.

Either Summers' comment was intended to provoke, or he is remarkably naive about politics. I doubt the latter. This was a calculated backlash to criticism of his hiring practices. Supporting the premeditation theory is the fact that he made these remarks in a closed session with no tape recorders. He planned to provoke and wanted plausible deniability. It backfired on him, as any second-rate political consultant would have told him would happen. So I have no sympathy for his predicament.

I don't know how good a president Summers has been for Harvard. Maybe he has been great overall. But he muffed this incident.

I have a couple of points to add that I believe had not been addressed by anyone.

1) In response to something that Judge Posner wrote in his first post on this issue... Judge Posner says that Summers has no particular expertise on the subject of gender differences and so him not speaking on the issue would be no loss.

If one reads his comments, however, he was speaking as an expert on faculty gender diversity as a University President, which I would assume he would have some expertise on. Second, he was commenting on a study done by a couple of scholars about scores on exams or something of that sort. He then spoke about what the statistical analysis means. Presumably, as an economist, he would have expertise on the issue of what implications various statistical conclusions have for how society is organized.

2) David writes that the "variance" hypothesis means nothing in light of history. But why does it matter. Either the "variance" hypothesis explains the reason there aren't a whole lot of female physicists or it doesn't. Regardless, Summers was claiming that it was one of many reasons that could contribute to there not being many tenured female hard scientists. Furthermore, your argument about girls being discouraged from doing math and science right now is really off-base. I am a Ph.D. student studying applied math at NYU (the top place for that in the country). NYU, particularly the math department, back over backgwards to encourage women to do math and science. To my knowledge, other math departments have a similar level of encouragement.

3) Posner is correct that faculty often do not know what is best for a university from an administrative standpoint. It is certainly true that they know what is best from an academic standpoint (curriculum, research, tenure decisions, etc). And Posner concedes as much.

But in my experience (four years undergrad at Yale, two years grad student at NYU), academics tend to be too affected by the fads and trends in their own little nook of the academic world. Take the example of Don Kagan when he was Dean of Yale College trying to establish a Western Civ. program for sophomores (Philanthropist Lee Bass gave Yale something like $50 mill for the project). Partially due to bungling by Levin, but greatly due to faculty thinking that this project was not worthy since after all, who needs more studying of dead white men, Yale bungled the entire project and had to return the funds to Bass. Faculty in the Women's and Gender Studies Department who are riding on the latest fad in the field might not realize that on the grand scheme of things, it might be important for us to first know where we came from, before we branch out and take courses in the effects of Victorian attitudes in England on female tribal leaders in Fiji between January of 1872 and March of 1873.

I have found most academics to be really bad aggregators of different types and branches of knowledge. That is not to say that I have not met many Renaissance men and women. But those are kind of rare and I do think that they make for particularly good deans and university presidents since they are more capable of seeing where the various academic specialties fit into the entire intellectual smorgasbord of a university.

4) On the list of good university administrators, I think that it is necessary to add Rick Levin of Yale, who basically brought the institution out of financial morass in the early 90's. Certainly, I think that he botched the Bass Western Civ Grant. But other than that, he has stood up to politically correct pressures (like graduate student unionization and the anti-sweatshop people) to make Yale into an institution back on the rise.

5) Having been at NYU for almost two years now, I would like to say that John Sexton has been a terrible president. I don't know what he had done before I came to NYU, but he has basically continued and encouraged the state-school-ification (it's a technical term) of the university. One example is pay-by-credit. Another is that any class with enrollment of less than five students has to get cancelled (the math dept. has resisted this for years, but the chickens have come home to roost). A third is nickel-and-diming of its students. A fourth is that they have decided to charge market rents of their students in university housing. In the Greenwich Village, that makes housing affordable to only Law and Business School students.

6) Even though Corey's comments (particularly his praise of the pseudo-intellectual Cornell West) tended to be rather thoughtless, he does raise the issue of one important group that both faculty and administrators often ignore: the students. I do not think that students ought to have decision-making responsibility in either the curriculum or how the university is run administratively (as the recent Yale undergraduate unionization drive has tried to usurp for themselves). But I do think that academics rarely consider what is best for the students.

Academics fail to realize that the fact that there are so few political conservatives or even moderates on university faculties has a chilling effect on the types of educations received by students. It is interesting that Posner quotes Mill about adversity making one's ideas stronger to say that professional adversity for conservatives in academia stands to benefit conservatives. I think that there is a corollary to this statement that says that the political imbalance on faculties harms students (and not just because they are not seeing both points of view). If liberals are not challenged regularly to think rigorously about their views (since faculties tend to be 5-1, 8-1, 10-1, etc liberal-conservative), then their ideas will become weaker, less nuanced, less erudite, less informed. The first group that it harms is the students.

One other point to make on the students issue is that, in general, the chasing of fads that is so common in academia hurts students to a great extent as it doesn't provide them with a balanced view of a field.

7) As for teacher's unions... my girlfriend is a teacher in NYC, with one of the largest and most powerful unions in the country. The union boss, Randi Weingarten is more concerned about herself and her power than she is about the teachers or the schools. That is not to say that the union doesn't serve its purposes. But, they manipulate the teachers into believing the worst about the city's school board, even to the point of lying to them about the specifics of the city's contract proposals.

This actually brings me to the problem of tenure. I am not saying that tenure at the university level ought to be eliminated. But I do think that the mistake of tenure in the public schools can help us understand the problem of tenure at the university level. In New York City, teachers with five years teaching (maybe it's three... i forget) get tenure, which is much like what tenure in academia is about. One teacher at my girlfriend's school has been absent from school this year, about a third of the time, for pretty much no reason. There are other teachers who are awful teachers, forcing their colleagues to teach the things that they failed to.

My girlfriend has spent the last year teaching 7th graders the skills of 2nd graders. The year before, she student taught in the 12th grade, where the students had the skills of 3rd graders. She wondered what the elementary school teachers were doing. The unions don't just hurt the educations of the students, but make the jobs of the good teachers that much harder since the school district is stuck with the bad ones after a couple of years of service. The best idea I think would be to increase teacher salary in exchange for elimination of tenure. It would make teaching more like other professions, hopefully enticing better people into the field. I am not sure how practical it would be to implement this system in higher education, but it might be an idea worth floating out there.

sorry about that ridiculously long post and the messed up spacing. due to preview taking out all line breaks, i put in a bunch of br tags and it made it look crazy. sorry.

Interesting post, Yevgeny. I had a high school history teacher who used to let us watch movies or would just ramble on about his thoughts concerning current events for perhaps 2/3 of the classes. Protected by tenure, he was unconstrained by anything but his own fancies, pretty much.

In reference to your point concerning the axing of a Western studies program at Yale, the University of North Carolina is going through the same thing: faculty are raising Cain and trumping up charges against the administration in opposition to it:

http://www.herald-sun.com/orange/10-582491.html

David, I think your statement that the variance hypothesis means "nothing" in light of past cultural attitudes shows the root of the problem. The hypothesis may be right or it may be wrong, but it is not facially ridiculous so as to constitute an obvious nothingness. There is plenty of good science about gender differences in various animal species that is generally accepted. But then when we have such studies about humans, some will fight tooth and nail the idea that such conclusions have even a shred of legitimacy, or that even posing the hypothesis is legit.

In addition, one plausible hypothesis about prior cultural attitudes about gender differences, of which there are obviously many physiological differences, is that past cultural attitudes are a dependent variable, not merely an independent variable. I.e., if the sexes are biologically different in brain function as well as some other biological processes, one would expect cultural attitudes to reflect those differences. That may or may not be true, but it is a hypothesis worth exploring without a political correctness witch hunt.

One reason why conservatives are few in the halls of the academy is that many are selected out by faculty, either through lower grades or through an intolerance for alternative viewpoints in the graduate schools. Shoot, I was a Democrat and certainly "left of center" back in my grad school days, and I still couldn't handle it. I can name at least two other people I know who are generally left of center but who likewise had no use for that kind of stuff in grad schools and left.

I have not the best undergrad grades but my desire is to attend, graduate highly recommended,a law school program. I live in louisiana (neoplean code system) but if moving away to attend and thus practice law required me to do so, I am asking for your ideas. Thank You,
Robert Dale LeDoux II.

Trustees that DON'T own their nonprfoit should be fired or re-orangized under Policy Governance, a bitchin' system created by Dr. John Carver to stop exactly this. Many small colleges and school districts have adopted it because of EXACTLY this kind of nonsense.

See www.carvergovernance.com
http://www1.yukoncollege.yk.ca/about/board_of_governors/governing_model/index.php

Boards That Make a Differnce

Reinventing Your Board

A New Vision of Board Leadership: Governing the Community College

The Board Member's Playbook: Using Policy Governance to Solve Problems, Make Decisions, and Build a Stronger Board