Let’s be clear: freedom of speech is a right, one worth defending regardless of how distasteful that defense might become. That written, can we find the world’s smallest campus (enough room for two desks and two huge egos) and send Larry Summers and Ward Churchill there? In recent days Mr. Summers, president of Harvard, wondered aloud if perhaps women are somehow physiologically disinclined toward math and the sciences. Mr. Churchill was pointedly disinvited to speak at Hamilton College in New York and volunteered for a demotion at the University of Colorado, where he teaches ethics, because of a 2001 essay in which he wrote that some of the 9-11 victims got what was coming to them.

Mr. Summers, speaking informally and without notes at an economics conference, suggested that innate differences between the sexes – rather than old boy sexism – explains the dearth of women represented in those disciplines in higher ed. Predictably, Mr. Summers set off a storm of protest from academics and pundits of both genders. He responded by saying he was merely being “provocative” and trying to stimulate statistical research into the disparity.

Uh huh. Like I wrote, free speech, particularly at a university, is a sacred thing and who knows, maybe some day statistical (or other) research may show Mr. Summers has some sort of point there… somewhere. Or not.

It does, however, strike one as odd that the president of Harvard would decide to take a wild hare and throw out a statement like that and then decide, after the fact, to announce his provocative intent. Is this what a grown-up university president would do?

It’s been three years since Mr. Summers left the Treasury Department and returned to his alma mater. First thing he did on arrival was to “provoke‿ the eminent African-American scholar Cornel West to decamp for Princeton. Then he provocatively accused unnamed faculty members of being anti-Semitic. Hey! Lab partner! Hypotheses are fine, but they’re only the first stage in an experiment. You have to have a little follow-through if you want to be a real academic. Maybe you missed that class.

In December ‘91, Mr. Summers, then a rising economist at the World Bank, wrote a famous memo in which he recommended that pollution be steered toward African nations and other less-developed countries because, since wages are low in those places, people’s lives have less value. After the memo was leaked and people started screaming, Mr. Summers protested that he had been misunderstood and that he was only trying to be – guess what? – provocative.

Do a bit of Googling on Mr. Summers and you’ll see any number of pundits rising to the defense of his free speech and the sacred grove of the academy. This may be principle, or it may have to do with the fact that Larry Summers is a white guy presiding at the definitive eastern establishment. And after all, he only bashed women, right?

Notably fewer voices, almost none really, have been raised in defense of Ward Churchill, not a college president, not a white guy (he’s Native American), not eastern and definitely not establishment. Whatever he may have going against him, Mr. Churchill is giving Mr. Summers a run for the money in the jackass department.

In late 2001, Mr. Churchill wrote an essay saying the 9-11 attacks were in part the result of US military and corporate policies around the world. He further noted that the rules of war the U.S. plays by would have made buildings like the Pentagon and World Trade Center legitimate targets for attack. (The WTC had a CIA office in it.)

Those points could be the start of an interesting debate. Unfortunately, Mr. Churchill chose to write: “If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it.‿

If you use fighting words, don’t start crying when your nose gets punched. It’s clear Mr. Churchill was looking for attention, to be “provocative‿ or trying to start a fight. After he got one, he discovered his skin was too thin and wants to portray himself as victim.

Ward Churchill has a right to speak his mind and I’ll defend that right but at the same time remind him that as a professor (of ethics, no less) he has a responsibility to use tones more elevated than the pre-fight trash talk boxers engage in.

As mom used to scold, it’s not what you say; it’s how you say it. If you want respect for your ideas, you have to give respect to your intended audience.

© Mark Floegel, 2005