Last year University President Lawrence Summers dared to suggest something very politically incorrect - that men and women might be fundamentally different. He was driven out of his office.
An interesting consequence of this fiasco is Larry Ellison has decided not to give $115 million to Harvard because of how Harvard treated Lawrence Summers.
A university is supposed to be looking for the truth. It is suppose to teach students truth, and how to recognize truth. The backlash against President Summer's comments showed that many people at Harvard weren't interested in the truth. They didn't ask if he had any evidence for his theory. He was attacked because of how his statements made some of the professors at Harvard feel.
I'm glad Larry Ellison decided not to gift his money to Harvard. Maybe more people will take a hard look at what universities are doing these days.
(Hat tip: OpinionJournal)
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Technorati tags: Harvard, Lawrence Summers, Larry Ellison, Oracle
2 comments:
There are a thousand conservative little colleges that could really use that money, even if he gave 100 colleges one million each. I know that would be a HUGE boost to the Southern Baptist college I used to work at.
While the media made a big deal of Lawrence Summers' famous speech, Harvard had much stronger and more pragmatic reasons for getting rid of Summers.
Harvard lost a lot more than Ellison offered due to problems Summers caused. He alienated many wealthy donors, in part by getting rid of Jack R. Meyer, president of the Harvard Management Co., who increased Harvard's endowment from $4.7 billion to $22 billion during his term there. Summers' ties to massive corruption in Russia during his Clinton years, and his support of his friend Shleifer, whose corruption cost Harvard tens of millions, were also a major reason for his termination.
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