See, Larry didn't understand the subject, and decided to talk about it, using terrible, unscientific papers as evidence. His later statements claiming that he was unaware of the existence of bias, showed that he was either a complete moron, or he was trying to use bad science and ego to hoodwink everyone.
He was never looking for debate; he was looking for justification of his beliefs vis-à-vis maintaining a faculty free of women.
You forgot 2 things
1) Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean William C. Kirby
2) The Russian fraud scandal involving Andrei Shleifer
"using terrible, unscientific papers as evidence"
I'm not sure of that. Many studies have indicated cognitive differences between men and women (even as unborns, girls kick earlier than boys!) There has been debate about the cause and significance of these findings.
See http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/
...te05_index.html for aninteresting debate on the subject.
As for Kirby, Summers was criticized for hiring the guy then criticized for forcing him out. Now I don't know all the details, and maybe Summers mishandled it, but his critics were out to get him.
And Andrei Shleifer ... yes that's bad, but Summers didn't deffend him and recused himself due to a conflict of interest (Shleifer is a friend of his).
But Summers did some good too. He resolve animosities between Harvard, Menino, and residents of Alston over the Harvard expansion (begun before him). He also promoted involvement of Harvard Faculty with many community programs. And he advocated that Academia get involved in public debates ... something I strongly support.
Advocating public debate, community involvement, resolving problems using land use: those were basic parts of his job. He did nothing special with those subjects. Frankly, I would have been a better person for his job, and that is pretty pathetic.
It will be a simple task to replace him with someone of similar abilities. They can just head down to the Common and pull some guy off the street (note that Harvard would be looking for a male).
"He did nothing special with those subjects."
That's not true. The land in Alston was bought, by underhanded means, before he arived. Citizens in Alston and Menino were upset by the whole thing and there wasn't a single department that wanted to move there. He made that happen. In fact now that he's gone, there's been talk that they may have to scale plans back. we'll have to wait and see what happens.
Yeah, but what did he do? Kiss some ass. Promise some chump change tax payments? He wasn't really involved in that stuff; the legal and finance departments are the people that fixed the situation. He just happened to be around at the time, and to make the official statements about them.
Besides, he *didn't* make anything happen. To make things happen, he would have had to stick around, not get forced out for incompetency.
As for Allston: what a bizarre idea. Who in their right mind would want to move there, from Harvard Yard? Reminds me of the U of T Scarberia campus.
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